W.K. Everhart

2010-10-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

Imagine a writer, fingers poised above the keyboard, mind snapping away at whatever morsel of plot is defying description at that particular moment. Well, that's pretty much me, every day, or at least, what I would like to be doing every day. You see, I have this "day" job: college instructor. I emphasize the word "day" because no teaching job simply relegates itself to daylight hours. As a matter of fact, some of the most difficult parts of teaching occur at dusk. Yes, the teaching demons fear the light and like tiny vampires simply suck the life right out of educational practitioners. Those vampires try to destroy my love of teaching by forcing me to grade horrendous essays in which students continually confuse the meanings of words like "your" and "you're" or "there" and "their."

Yes, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it; I knew that teaching takes more hours per day than say, plumbing. I knew the hours spent in "teaching" pursuits would reduce available writing hours; however, the longer I teach, it seems, the fewer hours I have available for writing. You'd think that by now, I'd be able to grade a paper in no time flat and then serve up a new chapter in the WIP before clearing the north forty. The truth is: students coming from today's public school systems are, for the most part, woefully unprepared for college level writing and have little to no formal training in grammar and mechanics, the popular theory of education being that students learn said grammar and mechanics from reading. Given this unpreparedness, it takes much more time to grade than it did twenty years ago. Education in grammar primarily comes from copious comments that explain why the student's comma usage is flawed or the difference between the meanings of "defiantly" and "definitely." More time grading equals less time available for writing.

At least I can say I have a job, something that 9.6% of the American population can't say, and that's not taking into account the vast number of I'm-so-tired-of-looking-for-a-job-that-I'm-not-looking-any-longer individuals or those PhD's who've been reduced to bagging groceries at the Kroger. I can't complain about being employed, but I'm allowed to miss the writing hours I once enjoyed

I keep telling myself I should sacrifice sleep or time with the grandchildren, but the use of the word "sacrifice" usually implies unpleasantness on some level. In the past, my writing time just popped up like the lovely jingle announcing the arrival of the ice cream truck on a hot summer's day. How utterly pleasant! I'd finish one task, take a peek at my clock, and suddenly discover I had an hour or so before I was due to attack the next chore of the day. I'd rush to the keyboard and read what I'd last written. Then I'd think, "Oh, what would (fill in a character's name here) do if that happened to her/him?" Words would come, ideas would flow, and I would be in writer's Heaven. Not so these days.

These days I spend time plying my trade, not writing but teaching to write. I've heard the old addage, "Those who can't teach." Well, I suppose that's true, but not always for the reason the addage implies.

So Close

2010-09-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

I'm so close to being finished with volume one of the two-part series that I can smell the words "the end." In a way, it's sort of sad, leaving my main character for a while so I can beta then query the first book. Although I think it stands alone (emphasis on I think. We'll see what the Dawg Pack thinks), somehow I still feel it's one book not two. I find the concept of dividing a life slightly disturbing. Does that sound stupid or what?!

Speaking in terms of word count, a life that say spans fifty years would take a lot of words. Add that three score and seven Biblical thingy and Va-zoom! Multiply that fifty-year-old's life-words by 6.5. That's even more words. Are there limits on the number of words used in a novel? Sort of.

One agent won't look at a first-novel with less than 85,000 words or more than 110,000. Words count. (Pardon the pun.) Not all agents are that particular, but if even one would toss your work in the circular file over word count, then word count must be watched closely.

Some authors might disagree, even published authors, saying word count doesn't count as long as you submit quality work. I suppose there's some truth in that argument. In a perfect world, a good book is a good book no matter how many words appear between the words "chapter one" and "the end." However, the lack of perfection in this world is one of its most endearing characteristics.

Very few publishing houses accept unrepresented manuscripts. Why? Because their slush piles of "to read" became so tall it seemed there was no room for desks and copiers and the like. Today, in order to get the eye of a legitimate publisher, the piece must be represented. If a would-be author takes a peek at a site displaying the names of literary agents, it seems the world is filled with potential representation. However, that would-be author must be careful because not all who claim the title "agent" are true author representatives. Some are more interested in representing themselves and will charge innumerable "fees" to Mr./Ms. Would-Be while the now "represented" novel languishes on some dusty desk.

Just like any other industry based on dreams, there are people who choose to use the dreams of others to promote themselves, to pilfer a dollar at a time until dreams die and artists who might have had some measure of success with the right guidance toss their keyboards into whatever waterway is at hand. Dreams are like apples to some people, just something ripe for the picking. Writer beware.

How do I know this? Me? An unrepresented author? I've made it my business to know. How? Researching. Asking questions. Reading blogs. Talking to authors who are represented. Checking out on-line contracts. Searching who and what agents have represented in the past. What's their track record? The business end of writing. If the business end includes advice on word count, I listen. If the business end includes the requirements of certain legitimate agents, I comply. It's business, the business of dreams.

I'm not by nature a woman of business. I'm a little flighty and a lot disorganized. I often lose my car keys or can't remember exactly where I parked. My desk is riddled with papers, pens, and folders while my file cabinets are barren. I over-check and overeat. I'm a mess, but I've listened carefully to others. I'm a member of Absolute Write Water Cooler (one of the best writers' boards). I read comments. I check out threads that offer warnings issued from other authors.

In my life, I've been fooled. After all, I've been married three times: once to a cop, once to a criminal, and finally, to a psychologist so I could figure out why I married a cop and a criminal. That pretty much says it all. My dreams? Well, that's a different story. I treasure them, coddle them, nurture them. My work as a writer? Very much like children, my children, and I won't have my children misused. That's the truth of it.

I'll seek representation, but I'll be wary as we all should be. I'll keep asking questions and looking to the experience of others. When I query, I'll query agents who've had successes with books like my own. I'll make sure I've identified the genre correctly, and I'll make sure that the Dawg Pack has hounded the piece thoroughly before I send the first letter to a would-be agent.

There endeth the sermon for the day.

Discouragement

2010-09-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Do writers get discouraged? You betcha. The need to write comes with a deep need for approval. I suppose that's true with plumbers or electricians or any profession, but practitioners of the arts seem to require more "ointment of appreciation" than do most. Yep! I'm guilty. I sometimes allow friends to read my work for the sole purpose of having someone, anyone, say, "Hey, you're pretty good at this."

One of the greatest compliments I ever received came from my sainted mother. After reading one of my partial manuscripts, she said, "It's like it was written by a real author." From some perspectives, a comment like that might be vaguely insulting; however, to hear it from one of my hardest critics? Well, I'll remember that moment for a long time. Compliments are part of the salve required to soothe the nerves of a would-be author, but there are more important things.

Constructive criticism from people the writer respects is like gold in the pocket. One of my betas (people who read and suggest revision to manuscripts) is tough, really tough. She doesn't sugarcoat anything. She doesn't pick and choose words to avoid wounded egos or injured psyches. She, to coin a tried yet true phrase, "tells it like it is." If a piece has problems, she's quick to point them out without the encumbrance of euphemistic terminology. "This sucks" are words she might use or perhaps, "I stopped reading here because it was terrible and I couldn't force myself to go on." Hard to hear? Again, yes, but each time I drag my deflated ego to the keyboard after one of her betas, my work gets better, so much so that even I can see the difference.

Difference. Improvement. Polish. These are all words that go toward publication. My few and far between moments of publication are partly due to the fact that I submit very little work to potential publishers, but without voracious betas, even those few moments would be non-existant. In very short order, I'll be sending part one of my two part series off to be beta-ed, and I'm hoping to recieve the hard-hitting, ego-splitting responses that usually come my way. Discouraging? Sometimes more so than others. Helpful? More often than not, and help is what every would-be writer needs. Criticism works toward strenghtening any piece of writing as long as the author learns the value of that criticism. The publishing climate is always stormy and the stronger the manuscript the easier it is for the good ship "Get-Me-An-Agent" to find safe harbor.

Love, Sex, and Writing

2010-09-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Okay. So I'm not so good when it comes to writing love scenes. It's not that I haven't had a few 'love scenes' of my own. After all, I've been married three times. (That, however, is truly another story.) It's just that I don't feel comfortable writing sex scenes. I realize there's a difference between sex and love, but somehow, one seems to follow the other. Mostly, I just fade to black since I can't write a scene where music swells and the reader sees a field of daffodils.

Maybe it's my fundamentalist upbringing or maybe it's simply not my forte. Either way, when the heroine falls in love, somethings got to give and usually, it's her. I'd be interested to know how other authors deal with this problem. I can write tender. Tender's not so hard, literally and figuratively. My characters brush a cheek with their fingertips. They stroke the hair of a weeping partner. They look deeply into someone else's eyes. I got the hang of tender long ago.

I can't write down and dirty, that pulsing thump-thump, that sweat beading on the forehead, that heat beating its drum between the thighs stuff. Just as if I were in middle-school again, that stuff makes me giggle. I feel a tinge of guilt, a flash of fear, and then the heat stops beating its drum and I'm left with characters unfulfilled. Bad for them and bad for my work.

Needless to say, my writer friends think of me as a prude. Maybe I am. Who knows? I, personally, don't think of myself that way. I'm a modern woman, albeit some of my ideas about how to live life run toward the archaic by 21st century, American standards. I've always thought a reader felt the burn from a hint more than from a club over the head. But let's face it, sex sells.

From Suzanne Summers stint on Three's Company down to Beau and Hope between the sheets on Days of Our Lives, most people in charge of television programming believe that without a few naked bodies, the modern viewer would flick channels faster than Elizabeth Taylor flipped Eddie Fisher for Richard Burton. To make that clearer to the younger crowd, just substitute Jessica Simpson or Paris Hilton and their personal flavor of the weeks for Liz and her paramours of the past. I'm afraid the written word is no different. One very famous writer in my circle of acquaintances wrote a wonderful historical novel. He sold it to an agent who subsequently sold it to a publisher. The editor wasn't happy with the work as my friend had written it. The editor asked for the infusion of a love story, complete with that hot-and-bothered love scene. My friend complied with the editor's request, as do all clever writers, and $3.5 mil later, my friend no longer spends his days as a teacher. He's usually on the golf course or writing the next tome.

I've read many steamy scenes in other authors' works. I've read steamy scenes in the books of yester-year. I've watched ... well, I've watched movies noted for those scenes, but I still get giggles, guilt, and gut-wrenching fear of my inadequacies as a writer. I'm hoping all good things come with practice, practice, and more practice. Who knows? Some day I might venture into the world of Anne Rampling/ Rice. It could happen. Right?

Once More into the Breach

2010-08-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, so tomorrow is it....tomorrow is the first day of fall semester. I'm teaching three sections of Freshmen Comp...It's time to be afraid, very afraid. They're coming to my classroom and what will ensue only God knows.

As each year begins, I've got another set of headaches. Most of the students are woefully unprepared for college level writing. It's not really their fault. Actually, it's the fault of all those hippies (I confess. I was one for a while) who grew up to change the structure of education in America. I can remember hearing someone say that all children could learn but each child learns at a different rate. What my generation failed to take into account is the basic laziness of ALL humans. We take the easy way out from the time we walk to the time we become a boxed lunch for the worms. That's right. From the cradle to the grave, we strive to do as little as possible.

That little-as-possible thingy holds true. I've even experimented with the prospect, and I always come up with lazy as a result. There are a few students, very few, who contradict the principle, but their diligence is overshadowed by the majority of their peers. Learning stations, relaxed grading systems, re-vamped tests that "dumb down" the requirements for graduation and college admission...it all comes down to taking the easy way out. If a child resists learning, then by all means, make it easier for that child to pass so his/her parents won't be upset, so the statistics for a particular school look good on paper. You guessed it! This stuff really pisses me off!

Did you know that if a prospective teacher doesn't have an education degree but wishes to take a job in public education and if that teacher took SAT's before 1990 and scored above 1000, then the prospective teacher doesn't have to take the first of the two exams required for state licensure. Since 1990, the SAT test has been revised to accommodate the weaker students graduating high school in the 21st Century. The tougher test of the 20th Century go a long way. Sad. Very sad.

AS for writing...very few college freshmen can write a research paper. Heck, very few can write a cohesive paragraph. They have no understanding of basic grammar because the new pedagogy re-enforces the concept that grammar doesn't have to be taught. Students simply absorb grammar rules via osmosis as they write and read. Read? My experience tells me that they only read what they're forced to read with the exception of instructions on video games.

I'm going into the breach once more, packing up my book bag, searching for things that my students might find interesting, and thinking of presentations that won't cause (as it did on one occasion..honest!) students to stand up and question my right to ask them to read a book. I'm teaching a class called "Literature in context of Culture." So far, 10 students have signed up. If I'm lucky, that's the cut-off number and my class will make. If I'm really lucky, all 10 students will know who Hemingway is and will have read more than the back of a cereal box.

Whew! Glad I got that off my chest!

As Always

2010-08-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

As always happens, my writer's mind has begun its usual diversionary track. Yep! While revising and expanding my work in progress, a new work or maybe a new series has reared its ugly head. Characters are begging me to create them, scenes are appearing in dreams, imagination is putting together settings, and I'm struggling to keep my mind on the task at hand.

Some writers can handle multiple projects at one time. I can't. I'm a writer in focus. In other words, if I'm not in focus, not zeroing in on one piece, then nothing really gets finished. I may write character profiles for this new piece, and I most likely will attempt a general outline (something I never really adhere to).

Outlines work for some but not for me. It seems that my stories begin and then write themselves, each scene appearing on the inside of my eyelids and then transferring through my keyboard onto the screen in front of me. I usually know how the story is going to end, but I seldom know how it'll get from point A to point B. If I outline, it is very general, meaning it has a few character names, where or if those characters survive to the end of the novel, and how the story climaxes. That's it. Nothing more.

This burgeoning thing that is trying to distract me, as is true in all my stories, is founded in personal experience. I live in a region of the country served by the regional electric service monopoly known as AEP. AEP serves the general Appalachian region most associated with "mountain folk" as defined by popular, national opinion. Nevermind that these "folk" earn almost 50% less than people living in urban areas. Nevermind that these "folk" have fewer job opportunities, cannot access public transportation, and are bereft of some of the services available in other areas like public water and sewage, trash pick up, and zoning. Regardless of these facts, AEP has raised their electric service distribution prices almost 100% in the last 5 years. That's right. Cost of electric service has DOUBLED! Needless to say, the villain in my new book will be an electric company, a thinly disguised version of my nemesis, AEP.

That's all I'm telling right now. BUT my two-book series, WIP MUST COME FIRST. I can't trunk it again, not while I'm making headway in character development and plot line. This is when it usually happens...when I begin to rush toward the end, effectively disjointing the storyline and leaving my characters to perform deeds that seem foreign to the character I developed early in the story. This is when that virtue, patience, must take hold. Jumping from an unfinished novel into another not-yet-written piece will jumble my feeble brain and make both endeavors fruitless.

Writer know thyself. That's been a little hard for me. I've learned about me and about how I write over time. I know that if I hurry to finish the WIP, then the story will feel rushed and choppy. If I leave the WIP to move to another story that is bubbling up through the curly strands of my brain, then the work in progress (a good story by all accounts) might never be finished.

What is a writer to do? In this case, I'm pretty sure I've got a handle on it. I take notes. When the new story bubbles up, I wipe it from my brain by taking notes on possibilities as to how it might turn out. I keep the notes in a safe place. The WIP will be finished, to my satisfaction, and beta-ed by the Dawg Pack. After the pack has howled out its approval or disapproval, after the final edits are done, then I'll query the piece and keep my fingers crossed. While I'm querying, I'll slip out my notes and let all those collected bubbles of possibility breathe again. I'll write the first chapter of the next WIP, then the second chapter, and so on. When the agent who requests the full manuscript of the two-book series calls and says, "I'd like to offer you representation," I can say (after the screaming and fainting and shouting for joy, of course) "You know what? I've got two finished books on the old computer and I'm half way through a new one." Won't I be proud? :D

Finally!

2010-08-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

Okay. I've finally made some great headway. The one thing my beta-readers found unsettling in the one-now-two books I'm working on was character development. It seemed I slacked up a bit when it came to almost everyone in the story. Yep! As Robbie the Robot (oops! dated myself) once said, "Error. Error."

Character development appears in class number one of any writer's workshop. The key to success is to make the reader love at least one of the characters and have strong feelings about the rest, whether they're villains or heroes. When members of my writing group began the book, my main character was spellbinding. Well, that may be a little strong, but hey! They liked her a whole lot. When the book passed the half-way point, I began to hurry, letting my compulsive desire to finish overwhelm the characters, all the characters. Doesn't work. By the end of the book, most readers were glad the read was over, having seen the MC turn from strong and complicated to whiny and overbearing. Not good. Not good at all.

This go around, I'm trying to be more patient, to read the un-trunked volumes with an objective air, and through revisions, to tell readers what I already know: that the main character is indeed complicated, rootless yet strong enough to try to find a place in life to plant herself and grow. I'm hoping that all these revisions will work that magic and that by the time readers close the book, they'll want to open it and start again from the beginning. A good dream if I can pull it off.

Harper Lee did just that in To Kill a Mockingbird. Dare I hope to achieve that success? Well, a girl can hope, but I'd be happy with simply writing a good book and finally have readers other than my long-suffering writing group. Of course, no writer writes just to see hundreds of unsold books stacked in a dusty warehouse. I, like all authors (I sometimes call myself 'author' just so somebody says it), want to be read and often. My name on a bookjacket is a nice thought, but knowing that readers think I actually have something to say is a better idea.

I'd certainly like to think I have something to say, that my work will not only entertain the reader but also offer insight into the human condition. I write literary fiction, so far mostly historical literary fiction. For some reason, looking back at what we've been seems more appealing than looking forward to what we might become. We learn from history, or so I've been told, and history has always shown me a new way to view the present. As a writer, I can re-write history just a bit, hopefully just enough to offer that 20/20 hindsight we've all heard talk about. Some write about a future that we may never see. Their imaginations send us to apocalypse or to a wonderland in which all things evil are overcome by good. A nice place if you can find it.

My late husband was a visionary of sorts, even though, like John Milton, he was legally blind. He enjoyed Star Trek, not so much because of the scifi adventure but because the Trekkie world held cures for all diseases, hope that poverty would be eliminated, and laws that forbid the use of force except at times when Justice had been raped by burgeoning Injustice. Evil was always nipped in the bud, as Barney Fife once said. He liked to learn what visions writers had for the yet-to-come. To those who write futuristically, I doff my hat.

As for me and the 1800 or so words I've added to the WIP, I'm hoping my words give insight to the importance of personal history, to the idea that where we come from does as much to shape who we are as any other component of life. We're built, brick by tragic brick. We don't spring to life fully completed. Like the potter's clay, we're molded and shaped by circumstance, geography, and history, ours and the history of those around us. That's the point. We're born, yes, but then we must become.

My main character is finally becoming. What? Well, should the book be published and if you're interested, you must purchase a copy or otherwise, wait for the movie. :D

Running a Good Race

2010-08-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

My good friend, Gini Koch, is expecting. Her second book will be on shelves come December, 2010 (Alien Tango), and two more are scheduled to be out soon. If she and I were in a race, I'm running well behind the champ. However, as she often reminds me, it took her a while to get where she is on the publication track.

I'm not so patient. You might even describe me as impatient (or so says Gini). I started my attempted writing career rather late in life. That fact shouldn't surprise anyone. I finished my BS when I was forty-five, and although I went straight from under-grad to graduate school, I was the oldest graduate teaching assistant in university history (I really don't know that for sure, but it certainly seemed that way.) Getting out of the gate behind the rest of the pack is something I'm used to.

Oh-Wise-Gini also reminds me that she worked hard at becoming a professional writer. She wrote countless volumes before she hit on just the right combination to catch the eye of her agent. She wrote hundreds of query letters and got almost as many rejections, some formula "I'm not interested" letters and some more personal. She's no novice, no got-an-agent-the-first-time-I-entered-the-race kind of gal. Gini is the consummate professional, a hard-working writer who's not afraid to take a shot at her dreams no matter how long the realization of those dreams take.

In this day and age when thousands of would-be writers are talking about the great books they're going to write, I'm told that only about 1% of those books are every really written. I've written three manuscripts. I hesitate to say that I've completed three novels because I'm not sure you can say that unpublished manuscripts are ever completed. I've even queried one of them with some success. I had several requests for full manuscripts from my query. That's why Ms. Gini calls me Query-Dog.

Am I back at work on my latest efforts? You betcha. I can't wait to get the okay from the BIG DAWGS (writing group) to go ahead and query. My old impatient self might just want to query with the work I have, but rule one of the writer's handbook: Never query on only a partial manuscript OR on a manuscript with issues. I've got rule one down pat!

Well, back to the race. I'm more like the tortoise than the hare. I came out of the gate rather late, but I'm ahead of the 99% of runners who never even finish the book. That's something, huh?

Late Nights

2010-07-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it's 12:45 AM here on the creek. The moon is shining only half-full, and Buddy, my basset hound, is sleeping on the couch, as per usual. Now and again, some wayward night creature howls or yowls from the woods behind the house, and I catch a glimpse of a deer making his/her way across the lawn and toward the water. Unlike the citizens of Churchill, Manitoba (I'm hoping I got the province right), I'm not facing polar bears as they follow their migration route down main street; however, deer migrate from their hide-outs in the woods to open pasture at night.

Why am I up? Well, normally I'm not, but my daughter is heading home from a business trip to Chicago. I thought I'd wait up to welcome her home and get some writing done in the mean time, but 'the best laid plans' and all that. I find that I do my best writing in short spurts not those long, laborious eight hour stints I used to pull. Oh, I got a lot of words in when I forced myself to sit in my relatively uncomfortable desk chair and write. Nowadays, I'm not doing that to myself. Nowadays, I'm writing when the inspiration strikes, and I don't keep pushing if that same inspiration dwindles away. It's called self-preservation.

I still have the same desire to be published, but I'm not so willing to kill myself in doing it. I WILL get an agent. Of that, I am certain. However, I must exercise patience along with all that perseverance. Between the day job and the nightly sojourns into Creative-ville, I've allowed very little time for me to be me. Wisdom comes to those who wait.

Withdrawls!

2010-07-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

Okay. I'm giving up on worrying, just like I gave up on guilt. Both practices are totally non-productive, as a wise man once told me. They serve no purpose except to steal any joy that might come. I'm not into allowing anyone or anything to steal my joy (it's such a rare commodity!)

The fourth of July has come and gone, the fireworks have fizzled out, and I am back at my keyboard. Writing has been more challenge than joy lately, but as I said, I simply refuse to allow the joy I take in the written word to be pilfered by my own insecurities. As of yet, I am an unpublished novelist, but I have been published: Raving Dove, Raphael's Village, EXIT 109, and others. True. I've been published mostly as a poet, but I've sneaked in a few essays and short stories. My days as an AGENTED and PUBLISHED novelist approaches. I refuse to have any doubts.

One day, readers will stumble across this blog and discover that ALL writers have insecurities, fears that their work doesn't come up to muster, and doubts that they'll ever see their name on a book jacket. I sound bold and confident here, but just a few short posts ago, I was wallowing in the quagmire of desperation. Comes with writing territory, I suppose. Keep up with me folks. Better days are coming. More words, more hope, and more works in print. Persistence wins the game, not that runner who shows well out of the gate but loses advantage in the long haul.

Keep smiling. Keep sending up skyrockets, and don't spare the word count!

Okay! Okay! So I need a job!

2010-06-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

It's summer, and the university where I work during fall and spring semester doesn't give adjuncts summer work. What does that mean? It means summers suck, at least, financially. No worky-no earny-no earny-no buyee (That didn't come out just the way I wanted it, but you get the drift!)

I did pick up five weeks of work, teaching through a special program for disadvantaged high school students. I love the program and the kids, but it IS only FIVE weeks of work out of four months. Every summer, I tell myself, "You've got to get a real job." BUT every summer, I procrastinate because, darn it! I like to teach almost as much as I like to write. So what if being an adjunct means that I make very little money compared to other people who have MA's. So what, if I get no benefits from the state, and I have to pay for on-campus parking. So what if I spend Christmas vacation sweating it out as to whether I'll get a contract for spring! So what if public school employment possibilities are as dead as post secondary jobs! Teaching? What am I doing?

I'll keep teaching. That's what I do, but I also keep hoping that writing becomes my job and teaching is just my hobby. That's why I can't believe I let myself get so far down that I couldn't write. If anybody's out there, if anybody's reading this: DON'T GET THAT FAR DOWN! (That's right. I shouted.) Writing gets under your fingernails and embeds itself in the pores. It becomes as much a part of the writer as blood and bone. To punish myself by not hitting the keyboard is as bad as Van Gogh cutting off his own ear (an event whose validity recently became a subject of debate)!

I write. Writing is as much therapy as production. Remember that. Remember me, and for Heaven's sake, send me job suggestions! :D

Might-Moan-Again

2010-06-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

It seems that moaning about my sad state might just have worked, ergo I might just moan more often. (Wow! That's a nicely alliterated sentence, if I do say so myself.) Anyways, after the moan, I found 1536 words, some not-so-evaporated editing skills, and two new chapters in my series. Not bad for someone who wanted to go to a cliff and beg God to have the rocks fall on her. See...it can happen. A writer who felt like she had no words left can find those words lurking in the most unexpected places.

The way I see it now is that anyone who's thinking about suicide should write a suicide note, then sit, read, and think some more. First question: Who the hell would care that I was dead? Second question: How long would they care? Third series of connected questions: Did I play the lottery this week? What if my numbers won and *gulp* I had already checked out? Would the undertaker find the ticket in my pocket, collect my winnings, sell his establishment before my service, and end up on MY beach in the Caribbean? Fourth series of connected questions: Hey! Wouldn't that dead lottery winner/undertaker thingy make a great plot line for a novel? Should I write the novel or let that damned undertaker take something else that belonged to me? That undertaker! Who does he think he is? (But I digress.)

See how it works? (Not connected to the above series of questions) Get sad. Okay. Everybody gets sad, and it's okay to be sad unless that "long barrel of despair" lasts longer than three weeks. (If it's that long-lasting, it's time for the doc and the happy pills. Depression, serious depression, is a serious matter with serious consequences unless taken seriously. I mean that!) The best solution for sadness that I've discovered is madness, not insanity but true anger. Don't be mad at others because the only person that can make you happy is YOU. There are no knights in shining armor, no surprise visits from previously unknown billionaire parents, no magic (other than the perfect sunset), and no one to snap your suspenders but you. In this case, ME.

So...after the previous blogged moaning, I thought about what I always told my clients: "It's not the hand you're dealt in life. It's how you play your cards." (I'm sure that I'm not the first person to use that line, and so I bow to the original purveyor of that great wisdom.) I looked at my recently dealt hand and then asked for four cards. Quite a risk, huh? Well, I didn't get a Royal Flush, but I picked up at least a pair and am still in the game. I got some employment for July, only July, but hey, a month of salary is a month of salary. Know what I mean? When I flick the switch on my wall, I like to have the lights come on. Bills are bills and, as hard as this is to believe, people actually expect payment. Just saying.

Everything Old is New Again

2010-05-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

I've not been well...not so much physically as emotionally. My writer's muscle keeps freezing, storylines keep evading me, and I'm looking down the long barrel of despair. Job. Economy. The heat of summer-yet-to- come. Whatever the reason, I've been struggling. Oh, I have moments, moments when I jump back on that keyboard and gallop away, but they've been few and far between. Let's face it. I haven't even blogged since March and it's now the end of May.

I tell myself that I'm just in a slump, that the world will tick my way someday, and I'll get going. BUT the world never ticks my way. Hell, the world never really ticks anybody's way. It took months for me to realize that I had to wind my own clock, so to speak. Time doesn't wait, but it can sure leave you behind if you're not careful.

This blog is supposed to be about writing, about my efforts to write the great American novel. Well, whether my book (books in my case) will ever see the light above the printing press, I don't really know. I know there are stories in me: scary stories, romantic stories, suspenseful stories, and stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. I know they're all there, waiting for my fingers to begin the rudimentary canvas on which each will be painted. (You guessed it I'm getting to another BUT) ...but...my dreams have gotten pressed between my health and my economic circumstances. Some are completely gone...shot to hell...others are still there, like that last tiny light just before the cigarette is pushed against the bottom of the ashtray.

I write this here because I've come to believe that no one reads it anyway. Some of my friends used to drop by and give me a boost/comment, but since I've been so slow to post, they've found other places to comment. Who can blame them? I can't say that I won't ever finish the two book series. In fact, even in this great, deep funk, I actually did some edits, starting from the beginning and reading through again. (I like the book, but then again, I'm not an agent.)

My computer was new in 2002. It's not so new anymore and it, like its owner, is showing its age. I've been getting lots of blue screen/disc errors and I've tried to back things up as much as possible, but soon and very soon, the old Gateway is going to give up its ghost. When that happens, I'll have to travel to write, and in order to travel, I have to have gas money. I'm hoping to finish at least the first book in the series before the thing goes "Ker-Plow", but who knows? The way my luck's been going lately, I'll probably do something brillant, then the screen will go blank, and it'll all be lost. (Knock on wood that that doesn't happen!)

Well, I'm going to stop complaining. I'm down to my last four cigarettes, and I've got the urge to chain smoke.

At It Again

2010-03-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

Neither snow, nor hail, nor dark of night, or (in my case) disease shall stay the writer on her appointed keyboard. Yes. It's me again, and I'm sort of writing once more. Mostly, I'm reading, and from my perspective, that may very well be the best way to spur inspiration. My friend Gini Koch's new book Touched by an Alien comes out on April 6th, and by the time I get through all the Patricia Cornwell I'm reading, I'll be up-and-at'em for Gini's effort.

My effort, the big book that turned into two books might even turn into three if Gini gets her way. I'm not sure, but hey, I could do worse I suppose. My main character lives to be 104 years old in my story, soooo it could work. I'm still leaning toward two spans: younger woman then older woman. I'm not sure I won't to talk about the middle-aged woman. I'm having enough trouble with that myself.

Every time I say "middle-aged" I think of Spencer Tracey. The Hollywood folk threw him an enormous bash when he turned fifty. Tracey was throwing back a few drinks with his friends when one raised a glass and said, "Welcome to middle-age." Another so-called friend smiled, downed his Scotch, and responded, "Middle-age, hell! Who lives to be a hundred." Tracey took it to heart and stalked sullenly away. I'm not quite as sensitive as Tracey, but I don't really expect to live to be a hundred.

As for the book...I've come to terms with one of my many flaws: the tendency to rush the story. I think I rush partly because I can see the finish line, and I want to make it there, at least with this one. It's well over 125000 words all together. :) Hey, there was a time when I only wrote poetry (some of which can be viewed in the on-line magazine Raphael's Village which contains a lot of good reading. I recommend it.) and poets don't usually write 125,000 words. Know what I mean?

Anyway, back to the reading, the writing, and the hoping that this time I can slow down and let my characters catch a breath between scenes. There is something to be said for a quiet walk by the creek.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

2010-01-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

Okay. I've been gone for months; that's true. You see, I had another stroke, not the usual TIA, a CVA (bleeding into the brain). All in all, it set me back, but speaking of back: I'm back in the saddle again. I'm not writing new stuff, but at the urging of a friend, I am revising again. As a matter of fact, it's not so bad. At first, I couldn't quite get the hang of it, but writing is like riding a bicycle, I suppose. I just hopped right in there and finally, after long suffering efforts, I'm at the revision of the last novel.

As far as I can tell, I'm actually making sense, or rather, the novel is making sense. I put in a few extra words this week (like 1,000) and next week I might get a few more in. The absence from craft hasn't been bad for me. I'm seeing things I should have seen earlier and my excitement at the effort is growing stronger.

For those of you who might actually read this: Thanks. And for the others, the ones who don't take a look at my site...:P

Seriously Dry Spell

2009-10-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I haven't written in weeks. I know. I'm the one who keeps saying, "Write. Write. Write." But nowdays, I can't. I want to, but nothing I write makes it past that lovely, little key called 'delete'.

I've written rougly 5000 words within the last two weeks, all of which are now floating somewhere in the digital cosmos of the forgotten and deleted. Nothing works for me. No short story. No poem, and certainly, no novel. :( Woe is me, to coin a phrase.

I am now seeking encouragement. I need a writer's-soul hug, a kind word, or maybe an agent. Anyone listening?

Working, Working, Thinking, Thinking

2009-10-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

All right. So, I said I had two books. Everyone said I had two books in the one manuscript. As I write, I'm not so sure. I've made a fateful decision, one of those make or break kind of decisions.

I can't figure out how to break the book in two. I know where it should break...I think, but I can't figure out how to do it and make each book distinctly its own country. Know what I mean? Sooo...I decided to write one long book, a hellishly long book. When I get the flow right, make everything move quickly and effortlessly, finish the book with every section driving toward the next, then I'll think about the break. Good idea? You tell me.

Gone with the Wind, Silence of the Lambs, The Client, The Firm, Hawaii...they were all long books...really long books. Well, maybe Silence of the Lambs wasn't that long, but it wasn't short. There's Tolkien. He wrote long books. In fact, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was written as one long book. Tolkien's publishers decided it was three books, not Tolkien, himself. Tolkien wrote it all in one continuous volumn. I'm certainly no Tolkien, but...I've got one long continuous volumn. See what I mean?

I really don't know what else to do, but I'm certainly up for suggestions. I've toiled these past weeks. I need help. Any (and I mean ANY) idea is welcome, barring wrapping the manuscript around a stick of dynamite. I can't help feeling that this one...this troublesome story...is THE one, the one that might prick the conscience of the agent! HELP!

Twins?

2009-08-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

Okay. So, book number two has suffered through the beta read. Verdict? I've got twins! Not babies (God forbid. Having twins must be an absolute nightmare requiring far more organizational skills than I have!) No, not babies....books. It seems the mega project is really two books. It's either make it into a series of two or try to peddle a 200,000 word novel. Maybe...if I were John Grisham, but not as an unpublished novelist seeking representation for her first book.

Oh, well. (she sighs) This is good and bad. Good news first! (I always choose the good news first :D!) The good news is that most of both books is written. Book one? Starts when the heroine is around twelve and takes her through to adulthood and slightly beyond. With the division, I can flesh out characters that need fleshing and add chapters that need adding. The second half, or rather, the second book needs a little more work. I suppose the epic was getting a little long, and subconsciously, I rushed, barreled toward the end and left out a lot that needed to be said. I'm not thrilled that the betas didn't love it completely, but I am grateful for guidance. I tend to turn on the ignition before I check the road map. Know what I mean?

Bad news? Trying to exercise patience, not one of my primary character components. The new timeline for submission is longer, but I can prove my worth as a writer by having two books ready and a third in the wings should a might-be-my agent wonders if this old girl can write another novel. "Sure," I'll say. "I've got the sequel and another piece itching to get out of that trunk."

Well, back to the drawing board or "keyboard" in this case. I'm at it again fellow writers. With a vengeance!

See you when I've got two books in the can.

Back in the Saddle?

2009-07-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

I'm having a rare night at home. Relatives are staying with Mother and I'm joyously sitting in my big green chair and (glory of glories) writing. Of course, I should be finishing up the grading of the 1200 writing assessments, but time at home is so unusual, well, you know.

I once asked the question, "Are you a writer if no one reads your work?" Tonight I had an epiphany. The answer is a resounding, "Yes." My great moment came when I felt the need to rush to my keyboard and pound out a few words. I am a writer, whether a good one or a bad one. I need to spend time weaving intricate plot lines just like I need to breathe. That must mean that I AM a writer, no matter how many doubts I've had in the past.

Time away from the thing you love does make the heart grow fonder, at least in my case. The absence of writing made me irritable. A psychological study of that long ago case of the railroad spike that somehow ended up in a man's head said that the spike made him irritable, so I guess he and I have something in common. Not being able to write gave me the same symptoms. Go figure.

Although this particular blog has been touted by some, it's sort of fallen by the wayside. That is, it has fallen by the wayside since I've been unable to update frequently. I choose to believe the sparing entries are the cause rather than think my muse has slipped away and I've become uninteresting and boring. The multiple visitors that I once enjoyed with each entry have found other blogs to visit and I seldom get many hits these days. This doesn't stop me, however. I write. I write on this blog and a couple more. I comment on the blogs of friends and ,sometimes, strangers. I am a writer, whether I have the means to write or not. Undaunted by disinterest, I keep on plugging...writing away, commenting on the joy of the written word.

Alas, poor Yorik.

2009-07-14T06:15:00.001-07:00

I've been spending my downtime working. Not writing, unfortunately, but grading 1200 papers for the university writing assessment. Although tedious, I've found what the students have to say about writing very interesting. For example, almost all of the papers I've read so far say something to the effect that writing would be fun if there weren't so many "rules." I suppose that's true. If we never had to stop to insert a comma or indent a paragraph, if we could just keep going and ignore spelling and mechanics, everyone would enjoy writing. Alas, we cannot. We cannot ignore the basic rules of composition.

When I'm teaching, I try to explain that the rules of grammar are in place for a purpose. I use this analogy:

You've been invited to the party of the year and you've been given written directions: turn right at the second stop light, left onto Elm, go the the third stop sign, make a left onto Bird's Eye Ave, and the party's at the third house on the right. You put on your best duds, jump into the car and start out. Suddenly, you realize that there are no stop lights, no street signs. How do you find the party? You're hopelessly lost with no way to find the party of the year.

I tell them that grammar and mechanics are like those roadsigns. They help the reader interpret the writer's work. Without those rules of grammar, no one would understand anything that's ever been written.

There are rules, some can be broken by the wants/desires of the agenting and publishing community like that "single space between sentences" thing that's all the rage. Cormac McCarthy seldom if ever uses quotation marks during dialogue (but then he's Cormac McCarthy). The comma preceding a conjunction in a compound sentence is now dust on the publishing house floor. BUT (big but) most of us still cling to the rules, those grammatical roadsigns we so desperately need. To write, the would-be author must not only be good at spinning that fascinating yarn. He/she must be good at the craft of writing, the rules, the mechanics.

Well, there's my two-cents worth, but then again, I'm an English teacher by avocation. Those rules of grammar work and they've provided me with one more semester of work as a member of adjunct faculty.

Hello Again!

2009-07-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I had time to post. My mother's injury requires that she have care 24/7, and for the most part, that's me. As for writing, it's in my head mostly. I seldom have time to spend concocting a storyline or adding to the WIP.

As for the novel that's with my betas, still no word. I don't know whether they've just given up on me, it's so bad they can't find the words, or if they haven't even opened the file. That's the way it goes. Abscence, my friends, does not make the heart grow fonder. All I have to work with when it comes to edits is the new crit partner. She rocks, btw. She has given me a few suggestions as to how I might better develop some characters and she's pointed out a few grammar gaffs. If and when I get time, I'll work on those elements, all the while hoping that the Dawg Pack is chewing on my latest offering.

I may write something about my recent experience with my mother. I'm not sure whether it will be a short or a novel length story. I've been mulling over lots of things. For example, when my late husband and father were involved in hospice care, one of the nurses told me a story, a story that corroborated an experience I'd had with both. My conversation with that nurse has sparked many a sigh and many long periods of deep thought. Now and again, it still pops to the forefront of my brain, and for some reason, I think my hind brain is formulating something, a book or maybe just an essay on the event. Whatever is happening back there in the recesses has been bubbling up lately, maybe because I am once more a caretaker and maybe because it's almost completed percolating. Who knows?

At this point, I'm just so tired I can't think straight. Ever been there?

Life Rears Its Ugly Head

2009-06-15T05:02:00.000-07:00

A little less than two weeks ago, I received that phone call, the one you never want to receive. My eighty-two-year-old mother had fallen from her front porch and broken her back. Not just her back, but both bones in her left arm and her left thumb. Needless to say, I dropped everything and went to her side.

It's funny how things work out. We become so involved in our own lives that we often forget how many lives are entwined with ours. Our parents. Our children. Our friends. We laugh and say we don't like people. We chuckle at the 'idiots' on the road, but we forget that we're on the road and we are people, too. John Donne once proclaimed that "no man is an island." I've never been more certain that Donne is correct.

Before I knew God had ordained that I be a writer, I knew I was a daughter. I looked into my mother's hazel eyes, asking for comfort or guidance. Now, I'm her comfort. Life is truly a circle.

As Justice of the Peace, I've performed thousands of wedding ceremonies. In each ceremony, I raise the wedding rings and note that they are in the form of a circle with no ending and no beginning. I smile and say, "This circle, the symbol of commitment, stands as a reminder that love has no end." That's the way it is with a parent. They shed their love like nourishing rain, hoping to water the healthy emotional growth of a child. Now, it's my turn, I suppose. Now, I can return the favor of love my mother granted me over the years.

As she lays trapped inside the back and neck brace, I can show her what I have become. Although I wish it had happened in a less painful way, I have the opportunity to let her see what that nourishing flood of love she offered during my life has sparked. I have the opportunity to be kind and loving, to be supportive and encouraging. I hope I'm woman enough to catch hold of the opportunity.

Mother's recovery will be long and painful, but in the end, the doctors say she will recover but not without scars. The active life she once enjoyed will be hindered by chronic back pain. Her garden and yard work, the things she most enjoys during warm weather, are completely gone from this summer and possibly from the few summers she has left on this earth. I ask my readers for their prayers and, for those who do not pray to send good thoughts our way.

My life is temporarily on hold. I have little time to write, but in not writing, I have ample time to think about what family relationships should be: the continuation of emotional nourishment. My mother's fall is a learning experience, and I pray that I can take advantage of this new opportunity for education.

Once more into the Breach

2009-06-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

Okay. The new WIP is not working for me. I write. I delete. I write, and then I delete what I've written. I just can't seem to get where I want to go from where I am. What does that mean?

It could mean that I'm too close, that I've included too much of me and not enough of my characters. I'm not letting them live, letting them become their own creatures. It could mean that I'm completely off track, that the world I've created isn't capable of carrying the storyline. It could mean that I'm writing crap and don't realize it. Anything's possible.

Solution? Oh, yeah. There's always a solution. Trunk it. Wait a few weeks and go at it once again. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. What will I do in between, you ask. Well...since I had to open the trunk, I noticed a fully formed being lying right there in the bottom. The first book. The one that prompted an agent to suggest some changes. What changes? (my secret.)

What I'm going to do is start from scratch, change the POV, pump up the back story and make the plot a true tale of discovery. Vague, you say? Yes, maybe, but I can't stop writing. The creative muscle atrophies if you don't exercise it, just like any other muscle in the body. The more you exercise that creativity, the stronger it becomes. That's just how it works.

I'm not a quitter. Never have been. I've fought my way through three marriages: a philanderer, a batterer, and a psychologist (my best move. I got better at picking partners as time went on.) I've fought through the death of my youngest child. I fought to finish my education even when I became what the university calls a "non-traditional" student, and now, I teach at that same university. I fought to become a poet, and I've become a pretty damn good poet, if I do say so myself. (Read some of my stuff on Raphael's Village, then you decide.)

I won't quit, even though the current WIP has beaten me for the moment. When I finish my rewrite of the first book, whether it sparks a flame in an agent's eye or not, I'll open my trunk again. That's the way it works. I'll keep flexing my creative muscle until it's strong enough to lift that soon-to-become-my agent right out of his/her socks! (I also keep believing. Faith takes you a long way.)

Waiting

2009-05-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

A member of my writing group tells a long-winded story about a jackass and his master trudging through the desert. She keeps repeating the same lines over and over as a test of her listener's ability to wait for the punch line. Even the most polite member of her audience finally gets itchy and tries to hurry her toward the finish, and of course, that listener IS the punchline when he or she has the repeated line pointed toward him/her: "Patience, Jackass, patience."

I try. I really try to be patient, to wait humbly and silently for the group to finish their individual read through of novel number two. I work on other projects, read, or considering the season, garden. So far, I've planted ten oak trees (mostly because they were gifts from the forest service), two dozen Impatience, an Astrbilis, three Azaleas, twelve tomatoes, an equal number of pepper plants, four rows of beans (Blue Lake to be precise), and six rows of potatoes. I've read four short stories, all rather lengthy, and now I'm starting on a Stephen J. Cannell mystery (I won the book in a poetry contest. First place). Tomorrow? I'm dying my hair red....again.

See....patience isn't easy even when your brain keeps telling you it's all part of the process. Some time ago, I blogged about how the writer is very much like the hero in Shawshank Redemption, how we've all got our little rock hammer pounding against that concrete wall. I thought myself very wise when I wrote that, and now, I have to return to my words over and over again in order to reaffirm my own advice.

Only one pack of cigarettes remains in my carton, a carton that I promised myself would be the last. I'm sweating. After I plant the rest of my Impatience tomorrow and dye my hair, I'm sure I'll head off to the tobacco store to get the next "last" carton.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, is immune from worry. Although 'worry' is totally non-productive and, to the best of my knowledge, has never resulted in one, single accomplishment, we all do it. I worry about people who claim they never worry. I worry about the length of my dog's toe nails. I worry about the cat, the garden, the grandchildren, my truck. Now, I worry about that 120,000 or so words of mine that rest in the hands of my writing group.

The late Rita Riddle, my friend and fellow poet, once confided that she worried, too. She said that her poems were like her children and submitting one of them was like putting her five-year-old on the school bus for the first day of kindergarten. She knew what she had when she put the child on the bus, but she never knew what she'd have when the child got off the bus at the end of the day. Editors edit, and so do members of a writing group. It's all about trust. I trust my group, and I must trust that they will all operate in my best interests. They haven't failed me so far, so I've got the hair dye waiting in the bathroom and the shovel and gardening can are already by the flower bed.

2009-05-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, a long while since I was here. I tell my students that if life were a highway and each living individual was traveling down that highway, eighty-five percent of us would be in the passenger seat, letting someone else drive our vehicle. When we're unwell (if that's a word), invariably, someone or something else slips into the drivers seat of our life-vehicle. For a few weeks, I'm afraid I joined the statistics and moved over to my passenger seat. I didn't like it there, so I bumped the driver and took control again. So far...it's working out all right.

Last night, I returned to the third novel. As always, I read what I had written earlier, performed some surgical incisions, removed a bump here and a scar there, and I think I might have something. I added another 500 or so words (Hey, I didn't start until like 10:00 PM, so don't fault me on word count), and I'm liking where it's going.

Problem? Of course, there's a problem. Research. I hate research, viewing it as a sort of cross between that proverbial sharp stick in the eye and constipation. I know what I want my main character to do, but I have to find out if it's really possible for someone to do that particular deed.

"But this is fiction," you say.

"Yep! This is fiction, but whatever the task you want your characters to perform, it must be possible. Without some measure of reality, the whole book might die of spontaneous combustion."

"Hey, don't give me that. What about that old 'suspension of disbelief' thing? If you're such a good writer, why can't you make the reader BELIEVE the impossible is possible," you scoff smugly.

It's true. Every writer must spin the tale in such a way that the reader believes that the consumption of mercury actually can create a mutant, twelve foot monster that eats babies for breakfast; however, the good writer must throw in just enough truth about genetic mutations, the long-term effects of mercury, and how and in what quantities mercury might be ingested in order to create the illusion that he/she knows what the hell they're talking about. Most people know it isn't nice to eat mercury, that it causes some pretty severe birth defects, so the writer must take that info and expand on it to build a bridge between reality and what might be possible. Research, therefore, is an essential part of any novelist's work.

Snake bites, for instance. In my first novel, I needed to have a character die from a snake bite. Through my research into how that might happen, I discovered I had the wrong snake. In the eastern US, we have a snake called a 'copperhead.' It's a beautiful creature but one to be avoided at all times. Copperhead's have short fuses, often attacking before they're really threatened, and I'd always heard they were deadly. Not so, or so says my research. Copperhead venom won't kill an adult, but it can make you wish you were dead, offering up a variety of symptoms which, although painful, do not usually result in death. I discovered that I needed an eastern diamondback, a purveyor of hemo-toxin. When left unfettered by anti-venom, the hemo-toxin races through the bloodstream of a victim and slowly dissolves internal organs, causing swelling, internal bleeding often characterized by large blood pools forming just beneath the dermis, delirium and then, you guessed it, death. Research. Without it, anyone who really knew anything about snakes would have thrown my novel into the fireplace, laughing heartily about my misinformed presentation.

I don't know why the word 'research' conjures up so many demons in the back of a writer's (or really anyone's) mind. We do research everyday without ever including the word in conversation. We look up phone numbers. We check recipes. We study the winning lottery numbers for previous weeks as we fill in the dots on our tickets, hoping we're choosing the numbers most frequently called. We research names for our unborn children. We research prospective colleges and universities. We ask questions about the new neighbors.

Researching the possibilities is just as important as writing the novel. Don't write about Paris if you've never been there. Lots of people have been to Paris, and they will recognize false information resulting in market loss, defined in this case as lost readers. As a would-be published writer, I can't afford to lose readers. I need everyone who can read to pick up my novel and 'ooh' and 'ahh' over the darned thing.

Well, that's it. I've put it off long enough. I need to find out how a hacker can hack, develop a cult following, and not be readily caught by the powers that be. Wish me luck!

Dreams

2009-04-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

When I began this blog, I told myself I would never deviate from the process of writing, that I would devote these pages to my struggle to be heard. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to remain within self-imposed parameters, we must move outside those boundaries. This, my friends, is one of those times.

In the past few days, I've been hearing chatter about a Scottish woman, Susan Boyle. A contestant on one of the myriad of television programs that echo the format of Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour from 1950's America, Ms. Boyle took the plunge. She gathered her courage and auditioned for Britain's Got Talent. For the first time in her life, she faced more than her church's congregation. At forty-seven years of age and unemployed, she faced the sobering visage of Simon Cowell.

Ms. Boyle's nervousness gave the impression that she was just another addle-brained housewife looking for an opportunity to be on television. When Cowell asked, "What is the dream?", she responded, "I'm trying to become a professional singer." The audience roared with laughter, as did the judges, with Cowell rolling his eyes.

"What will you be singing for us?" was Cowell's next question.

"I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables," Ms. Boyle said as she gave the high sign to the audio engineer and he pushed the button to start the soundtrack. The rich music swelled and the dowdy little woman began. Within the first two bars, the audience rose to its feet as the purity of the voice brought many to tears. The soundtrack began to fade and Ms. Boyle almost whispered the last line, "Life has killed the dream I dreamed." The laughter with which she had been greeted was lost in the roar of the crowd and its standing ovation.

I can only imagine what Susan Boyle's life has been. Here, I give way to conjecture. Imagine spending nearly half a century with a dream. Imagine having heard the accolades of fellow choir members or from family. Imagine the times she's sung to herself and wondered if she was really any good. Imagine the one or two voices who dampened her dream. Think of the voice that whispered, "Actresses are beautiful. Take a look in the mirror if you think you can make it." Think of that voice that warned, "Showbiz is tough. You're good, but..." Think of the courage it required for her to stand on that stage.

Like Ms. Boyle, I have a dream. Like Ms. Boyle, I'm making the effort to realize my dream rather late in life, and I, too, have endured those discouraging voices. I can only hope that what I believe about myself is true. I can only hope that I'm not too late, that I'll have a moment in the spotlight and that, like Ms. Boyle, I can prove to myself and all those voices that talent transcends time.

WIP...BTW

2009-04-11T21:09:00.001-07:00

The third of my attempts at becoming a novelist is slowly forming within my word processing unit. I've just rounded chapter six. Given illness and a death in the family, I suppose I should be happy that I've made it this far. I'm not. I'm beginning to get that nagging feeling that I should, as they say, 'get a move on.'

Why? Because, as always, I'm impatient. I keep telling myself that by now I should be working on revision rather than first draft. And believe me! This is a first draft. A friend of mine finishes her first draft and sends it to beta right away. She can. She's been at this longer, she's managed to snatch an agent and a publisher, and she knows who she is as a writer. She's not exactly Father Time, but compared to me, she's an ancient, wizened writer. I'm still a toddler while she's got the writing biz down to a science. Can she make mistakes? Sure, but she's far less likely to do so than this babe in swaddling clothes. What's she got that I ain't got? Patience.

I'm reminded of Shawshank Redemption, of the hero spending decades pounding through the concrete with his little rock hammer. The whole escape process from the movie is very much a metaphor for becoming a writer. We hammer at our keyboards instead of concrete but getting the agent and publisher we need is equally difficult. The main character in Shawshank never gave up, no matter what obstacles he came across or what voice told him it was impossible. He didn't rush the process. He looked at each segment of concrete powder, grinned, and kept on pushing until, one layer at a time, he managed to reach his goal.

That's what it's all about, I suppose. We just have to keep on pushing, pounding away at the concrete wall that separates us from success. The powder will drop to the floor each time we made headway, and then finally....poof! Goal reached.

I'll try to keep Shawshank's hero in mind as I struggle with the WIP. BTW, I'm feeling better already!

Back to the Beta

2009-03-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finished my edits on novel number two and it's back to the betas. Yep. Another round of "Why did you do that's" and "What were you thinkings." At least, I brace myself for those comments. Hopefully, I won't hear those words of despair. Hopefully, I've worked long enough and hard enough to squash those things before they're even a gleam in the betas eyes. But...

Sometimes "the best laid plans", as Burns said. If the Dog Pack finds fault, it's because fault exists. If fault exists, fault must be eradicated. I'm searching for an agent, someone who believes in me and my work. If the might-be agent has a faulty representation of my work, then the words "might-be" will be eradicated and he/she becomes the not-interested agent.

Long ago, publishing houses accepted books directly. For example, Forest Carter, an old cowboy from the plains, wrote a book called Gone to Texas. Mr. Carter went to the library, looked into western novels, found potential publishing houses, and sent his novel off to the house he found most interesting. The publishing house accepted his work, published his book, and a very famous director discovered it in the stacks. The book became the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales. When Carter was interviewed about his new-found success, Barbara Walters asked what he was going to do. His response? "I think I'll buy a new pick-up truck."

Cute story, but...publishing houses don't do that very often. Nowadays, practically not at all. For some time, Algonquin Press would review the first thirty pages of a novel. I'm not sure if they still do that. Random House? St. Martins? DAW? Nope. They rely on the voice and the filtering of agents. That way the publishers can avoid the tedium of reading three-hundred badly written novels to get to the one good piece in the slush pile. Ergo: no agent/no publisher.

I need my betas to be tough. I need them to point out ALL the rough spots, the failed spelling (even an English major makes mistakes), the character flaws, ALL of it. If the Dog Pack approves, then I query, not one agent at a time but ten at a time. If I get the agent, I may be published.

Lots of ifs. Lots of maybes. Lots of hopes. The dream. Oh! One more 'if.'
If I get published, I'm definitely buying a new pick-up truck.

Bits and Snatches

2009-03-25T01:53:00.000-07:00

It's 4:51 AM. I'm up. Can't sleep. What to do? Write, of course. At this hour, the house is quiet, the children sleeping, and even the dog's unlikely to seek a trip around the block. There's time now.

The average writer has a day job, gets about ten percent of what he/she writes published, and frets over finance on a regular basis. I'm an average writer.

One of the problems with having that day job, that family, and those financial woes is time. Ideally, a writer should spend at least four hours per day at the keyboard, banging out whatever he/she bangs out. In the real world, those four hours are hard to come by. The writer sits down and suddenly, little Susie needs some help, a drink of water, assitance with homework. Then the phone rings, and Grandma can't get her remote to work. The clock's ticking. The sudden realization that the milk is running low sends our writer to the supermarket or the growling stomachs of the family demand dinner. It's almost as if the fates are against the dream being realized, and let's face it. Becoming a successful writer is THE dream.

An author doesn't become an author by his/herself. It takes the village, so to speak. The family of any would-be writer should understand the dream. The writer must make the dream clear to the people who surround him/her. Seek their support. In my case, I've promised my six-year-old granddaughter that if Nana becomes a full-time writer and sells books, then we, as a family, can buy a farm. She's already picked out the kind of animals she wants: a pony, some cattle, and some pigs. Thank God, she hasn't asked for any sheep yet. (For those of you who don't know, sheep are the stupidest of God's creatures, they require excessive care, and they smell to high-heaven! Yep, they're worse than pigs.)

Whatever course you chose to chart in life, support is an issue. Some can brave the seas alone and reach that final destination, but not me. Unfortunately, I require support. I need alone-time to write. I can't work through the chaos of normal living. My family must give me space and quiet so that I can focus on the task, or in this case plot-line, at hand. So far (knock on wood), the other members of my household have been relatively understanding. Oh, I've kissed a few boo-boos and answered a few questions, but all in all, they've given the support I require.

I don't get high accolades from them. In fact, I avoid having them read my work. I recently took a copy of my second novel to my mother. She read it. Her response to my effort? She said, "It feels like something a real author wrote." :D

I guess that's high praise, but somehow, it doesn't give me goosebumps. Know what I mean?

Gone?

2009-03-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Have I slipped under the radar, moved to Mazoula, been lost in the Amazon and eaten by cannibals? No. I had a stroke. In fact, I had three mini-strokes within as many weeks. Tough? Kind of, but not deadly thank God. I'm back, slowly rising from the ashes of my clogged arteries like the Phoenix. I'm not as attractive as that legendary bird, but I'm certainly as tenacious.

Writing? Not much right now. My mind still has a few dents and scratches, but they're slowly disappearing. I'll be up to full force in no time, but in the meantime, I'm regrouping and finishing those final edits on novel number two. As my previous post indicated, I'm almost finished. I don't think I'll trunk it for as long as was previously planned. These minor health interruptions have had it trunked for three weeks already, so sometime within the next three weeks, I'll open the trunk lid and have at it again.

The third novel is coming along nicely now. It was also inadvertently trunked due to the health crisis. Crisis breeds opportunity. At least, it certainly has in my case. I've taken a fourteenth look at those first pages and already found some things that can be improved.

As most of you know, the first five or so pages of any novel are the most important. The unwritten rule is that an author must grab the reader's interest within those pages or lose that interest forever. Something has to happen in that first chapter, something important to the story and something that tends to pique the curiosity in such a way as to lead the reader onward. By onward, I mean straight toward the cashier at the local bookstore.

Yep! How you begin is equally as important as how you end. The story must begin to race early. Oh, sometime after you've caught hold of the reader's imagination, there's room for character development and subplots, but those first events on those first pages should be tied directly to the main storyline.

A test: Go back. Read the first five pages of your work. Wrinkle your brow, tap your fingers, then ask yourself, "What happened in those pages?" If your answer is related to introduction of characters, description of setting and only to those things, you've probably started the story too early. If those things are there but hidden in the background of the main event, then keep on trucking or, in this case, writing.

Trunks

2009-02-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

Well, novel number two is almost ready for the trunk, so it's on to number three. Will it be less likely to contain the newbie errors I've been making? I certainly hope so.

According to the Big Dawg, it's all about the word count, not the actual word count of any individual piece but my personal, overall word count.

"You see," says Big Dawg, "the more words you write, the more short stories and novels you have under your belt, the more you learn. The more you learn? Well, the fewer newbie mistakes you make."

Makes sense to me. Essentially, the more you write, the better you get at it. If I were a carpenter, the third house I built would inevitably be better than the first. The same is true for any profession. Sooo...I have high hopes for novel number three. Practice makes perfect, or so they say.

The third book? The main character is female. That's all I'm going to give up, so hang in there and hope that the new one is the second part of a two book deal negotiated by my fabulous agent. Then you can pick it up at your neighborhood bookstore.

Funny Valentine?

2009-02-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

Okay. So it's 10:15 on Valentine's night and I'm updating my writer's blog. Tell you anything about my life?:D

That's right. My life is wrapped around the idea that one day I'll get this writing thing right. I have hopes. High hopes. But 'hope' must be tempered with a strong grip on reality. Unless a writer is visited by the 'miracle fairy' it's very unlikely that that first novel will ever see the published light of day. Some first novelists do so well as to catch an agent's attention and still that novel is never published. Reality bites.

My first novel is currently 'trunked' for a year. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, that means I've written, re-written, re-vised, and re-visioned so often that I can't stand it anymore. Even an author can tire of their own work. For another thing, 'trunked' means that even with all that re-writing and editing, it's still not up to snuff. Someday, it might be sitting on a shelf at the local Barnes & Noble, but I have to separate myself from it long enough to make it feel 'new' when I fish it out of the trunk. That way when I start its next round of re-writes, I'll be more likely to find the way to make it work.

As for the second novel, it's much better. I can almost see it growing by leaps and bounds as I prune its pages. Pretty soon, I'll see the words 'the end' pop up on my computer screen. When that happens, the second book gets to visit the first. Yes, it goes in the trunk for a month or so. When the time is right, I'll go fishing, pull it up on my line, and read it again. While reading, I'll get out my writer's wrench and tighten up some things that are loose. I'll make sure that it doesn't fall apart at one place or another, then I'll send it back to the Dawg Pack and see if they chew it up.
The great hope is that they'll carry it back, wagging their tails, and say, "Hey! This is pretty good. Time to query."

"Time to query." Time for that nail-biting, heart-wrenching, nauseating period when I send out my lovely product and wait to see if some agent might be interested. I may get a few requests for partials or maybe even some requests for the full manuscript. But if the past holds true, mostly, I'll get silence or form letters that say things like: "This is just not right for me," or "I can't seem to muster enough enthusiasm to represent your book." I may not remember the lines exactly as they're written, but you get the gist of it.

My hopes are still high, and if my patience holds out, you might just be passing a bookstore someday and see something interesting by a great, new author: W. K. Everhart.

Almost...

2009-02-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

That's right. I'm almost there. The revision process is taking longer this time, partially because of the stops and starts due to the new grandson's arrival and partially because I'm getting better at it. Yep. Better.

As my word-count rises (the number of words I've written in my efforts to become a novelist) and as my betas keep coming back with questions and those big purple marks, I'm beginning to notice errors on my own. I have some bad habits that I'm trying desperately to break.

For example: dialogue tags. For some reason (mostly attributed to those creative writing courses I took while in college), I tend to force a position on the speaker. Joe banged on the fireplace mantle. "Get out," he yelled! In reality, it should read something like this: "Get out!" Joe shouted, his fist pounding the mantle. The second presentation makes the words ring louder in the reader's mind and it gives old Joe an opportunity to emphasize the language. See? I am getting better.

Like all writers, my bad habits don't stop there. Because my work falls under the title "literary," I tend to wax eloquent when eloquence is unnecessary. You see, I love words and the images words produce in the mind. I use a lot of them, too many sometimes. The writers of the New Testament knew best. The shortest verse in the Bible is the most powerful. "Jesus wept." Two words. The Messiah weeping over the city of Jerusalem, looking down at the corruption in the streets, seeing the dim and bloody future. "Jesus wept." Instead of the long winded explanation, the writer chose to leave it to the two word, simple sentence. Those two words leave a lingering image in the mind of the reader. They're all that's necessary to get the point across.

Me? Well, I might have mentioned that it was dusk, that the sun had colored the sky a royal purple, or I might have noted the clouds grown red in the dying light of the sun. See? I'd have mucked it up. Never use eleven words when two will do. No matter how beautiful the passage, no matter how glorious the image, simplicity is best in dress and in writing. Words should never be measured by their beauty. They should be measured by their power to get the message across. They should be measured by their ability to advance the story. "Jesus wept" is powerful enough to make any believer hang their head in shame. That's what the author wanted. That was the point of the passage.

Now, I'm off to slice and dice, to remove those wonderful words I love so well. The Big Dawg calls it 'killing your darlings.' In many ways, she's right. I love words, images, metaphors. They are my darlings, and so, I must learn to kill them. True, I keep some passages in special files, leaving them only injured as I remove them from my work. Some 'darlings' simply must be remembered, saved for a day when, with a tiny tweak, they can be resurrected, reused some place where they leave the mark this author intends.

Once More into the Breach!

2009-01-28T06:29:00.000-08:00

Well, the excitement is dying down. "Little Man" is home from the hospital. He's taking his formula, crying and fussy around four to six in the afternoons, and sleeping in four to five hour stretches at night. That leaves Nana time to work on her writing, and work it is, my friend.

I started the way I always start, from the beginning. I re-read what I'd done so far. Not bad, but I did give a little tweak here and there. Now I'm moving into the bulk of the work, attacking the main problem as I see it: transitioning time. I find that my section headings, those lovely dates at the top of one page or the other, aren't quite enough. As Big Dawg said, "The reader gets lost as to which year it is."

As the writer, I've created this community, these characters, and their living conditions. I've given them jobs, and I understand their motivations. My omnipotence when it comes to the story is unquestionable. I know the outcome from the beginning. I stand God-like above the words. No so for the reader.

The reader stumbles on the story cold, as if meeting a few people at a bar. The characters are introduced slowly, their life stories are a mystery yet to unfold, and their families, connections, and attitudes yet to be discovered. As the writer, I must forget my prior knowledge and magically become the reader. As I re-read my work, my goal is to see through the eyes of a hypothetical reader. If I come across an event, a time frame, a character that doesn't quite hit the mark, something or someone that might give the reader pause, it's time to do some word addition and subtraction.

The 'be-the-reader' segment of editing and revising is the most difficult. Wearing two hats, that reader/writer thing, causes problems because one hat often drops off without notice and it's usually the 'reader hat' that slips onto the floor. I keep picking it up and putting it back on, but alas, I look down and there it is again.

Beta readers, writing groups, crit partners: they're all important, no doubt about it. However, before a manuscript reaches those wonderful people, the writer should do their level best to eliminate as much of the interference as possible. I'm getting better at it, I hope, but after a beta reads a novel for the hundreth time, they tire of it. I'd prefer not to tire my betas, wouldn't you?

Just a Note

2009-01-25T12:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this week. There's a reason. I've been on baby-watch. That's right. Baby-watch.

After a difficult week of starts and stops, I became a grandmother for the second time this morning at 2:20 AM. My grandson weighed 7 lbs and 10 ozs. Mother and child are doing fine.

I'll be back to writing, revising, beta-ing, and all that jazz soon...

2009-01-18T07:19:00.000-08:00

More feedback from my second novel. And, I'm afraid, it's more of the same. The first feedback I received was about 'naming' from the perspective of point of view. The point of view in the novel is that of a main character, a woman. The story begins when the woman is still a child.

Big Dawg, the infamous leader of The Dawg Pack, has *ur-um* strongly suggested that I hit the lines one more time. You see, I've elevated my child, something common in dysfunctional families. However, my child hasn't been elevated to the head of household or overseer of all children within the household as have some of America's children. I've given her, in some cases, the perspective of an adult while she was still only twelve. Not good, so Big Dawg says. I'm back at it, my tail tucked between my legs.

However, my tail not withstanding, the repeated returns to my manuscript does more than perfect this particular book. That perfection has side effects just like that horrible 'fat pill' that's supposed to cause uncontrollable diarrhea. Instead of that horrible add-on to the general beneficial process, my writer's add-on is that since I've worked so hard to correct POV issues in this novel, I'm unlikely to make the same mistakes again.

When I'm teaching at the university, I require multiple revisions of a single paper because, like the Big Dawg, I believe we learn, not so much from all the things we read or study but from the correction of our own mistakes. If my students come out better writers (which I'm proud to say, they do) from multiple efforts at correction, then I can't help but do the same. I'll be better with the issue of POV when I finish the revisions and therefore when I re-vision the current WIP. Yes, that's what it's all about really.

The process of beta or critique isn't to allow the crit partner to release the frustration built up on the job or to exact revenge for some perceived insult. The first priority is always to create a product worthy of publication. The second priority, that side-effect I talked about, is to improve the writer's ability to perfect their own work.

Perfection. Well, maybe not perfection, but as close to it as possible. That's what the newbie is looking for when they send a promising manuscript to an agent. Without a close-to-perfect piece of work, the prospective agent will toss that promising manuscript back on the slush pile from which it came. If the piece is not too far from perfect, the agent may request revisions and resubmissions, but most of the time, he/she doesn't. They don't because they're looking for a writer who knows perfection.

In today's volatile literary markets, it's particularly difficult to make that initial breakthrough. It's difficult for an unpublished writer to become published. If said writer isn't willing to polish and prune, to listen to the voices of others, to be the reader instead of the writer, then the hopes of seeing his/her name on a book jacket diminish, become that infinitesimal chance, that one in seventy-seven million. Assuming your work will stand without crit partner comments and subsequent revision is like assuming you'll win the mega-millions with only one set of numbers.

Writing a book isn't a simple process. It's hard, demanding, and sometimes humiliating work. Yes. It's work. Exhausting work. This work is not for the faint-hearted. Many would-be novelists shrink, slink back into the woodwork. Only the courageous writer makes his/her way to the words 'The End.'

I've never fancied myself courageous. I tell my students that beneath my nine dollar shirt beats the heart of a coward, that if the shooting starts they shouldn't expect me to take the bullet while they scamper to safety. However, pursuit of the dream changes hearts. I'm close. I can feel it. I'm willing to work toward it, to take my mental machete and hack away at the vines and brambles that separate my book from perfection.

Thick Skin

2009-01-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

Whew! That round's over. I've completed the requested revisions regarding point of view in my second novel. I've even managed to add around one thousand words to the current work in progress. All in all, a rather productive week. Provided my patience holds out, I might actually come up with something publish-worthy.

I know. I know. I talk a lot about patience, a virtue much desired but especially difficult for me to master. When my children were very young, they heard about patience. "Patience is a virtue," I'd chide each time they tried to stomp their little feet or asked "Are we there yet?" Too bad I really wasn't practicing what I preached.

Big Dawg preaches. She does a far better job than I do. She points backwards to illustrate her point. When I finished the first novel, I thought any agent would read the first fifty pages, begin to drool in that eager-agent way, and voila! Within the year, a publishing contract would be mine. I suppose most first-time novelists feel the same way. From the moment the words 'The End' appear on a manuscript, each of us find it difficult to believe that what we have before us isn't the great American novel we all want to write. Or maybe the best Bristish, French, German, etc. novel ever published. Ninety-eight percent of us are wrong.

What really rests in that envelope being mailed to a prospective agent is promise. That's it, with maybe a touch of possibility. Nothing more. Heinlein once said that only about one percent of all those people who wistfully announce they're going to write a novel actually finish one, the envelope holds promise that there is a writer in there somewhere. The possibility that the writer might be published lies there, too. The characteristic that separates the wannabe writer from the published author is the patience and perserverance to see the process through to the bitter end.

Patience is important, but another component must be added, a physical component. Good skin. How so, you ask? The skin of that wannabe writer must be thick. The wannabe must be able to take criticism on the chin without flinching. Bravely hiding his/her tears, the wannabe must be able to delete that beautiful passage that a crit partner thinks distracting. He/she must be able to add, substract, or change the appearance of their manuscript without woeful gnashing of teeth. If the crit partner or writing group feels that some element of the story deviates from the plotline, Wannabe must change that element without quarreling.

Crit partners and writing groups represent the reading public. What's more, they represent the educated reading public, the people who know what it takes to make a good book. Wannabe wants to be read. If any element of the story causes someone to put the book down, the desire to be read will never be fulfilled.

Hard at It!

2009-01-05T07:56:00.000-08:00

I've talked a bit about my second effort as a novelist. Well, I've had some feedback from The Dawg Pack. POV. Point of View issues are lurking within my text. Ouch!

Yes, it's painful to realize that old Susie can't really see her own face unless she's looking in a mirror. That's right. Something we understand by the time we're two or three. However, sometimes we forget, especially so when writing. In our mind's eye, we see Susie standing over the dead body. We see her raise her hand to stifle a scream. We see her face drain of all color and her eyes grow wide in horror, but old Susie? She can't see a thing. She's staring down at that dead body, the lifeless eyes gone dark, and the head tilted to the side with its mouth oozing the last vestiges of body fluids. Horrible isn't it?

We see her, but she can't see herself. We sometimes forget that when we're in the throes of our writing efforts. I did. Not often, but often enough to lift the eyebrows of the Big Dawg. She howled her discontent, and scratched out a quick critique. I yelped and scurried to my computer, forced once more into the act of revision. It's painful, but hey! That's the process, the long, agonizing process of creating my product: fiction.

After months of vision and revision, there's more. Once I get that agent (from these pages to God's ears), I can expect nine to eighteen months of work on the agent's part in order to find a publisher. Then, depending on how rapidly my editor works, there's another four to six months of edits on demand. In this world of instant gratification, you won't find it as a writer.

Writing is exhausting work with little reward for most of what an author produces. As I write these words, even I am asking myself why? Why do I continue to put words on the page? The truth? It's my calling. Some people are born teachers. Some born to work with their hands, to build and design. I was born to write. I feel it in my blood. It takes that--the ultimate desire--to become what you're born to become. I am becoming through all my revisions, all my yelps and whines.

My advice to you? BECOME. Everything in life is a process from brushing your teeth to finding a job to chosing a mate. Process is always difficult, always exhausting, but to be what you're meant to be is what life's really all about. Nothing more. Nothing less. Become, my friends. Become.

A New Year

2008-12-31T20:32:00.001-08:00

Some say there's bad news on the publishing front, that publishing houses are dropping like flies in a cloud of insecticide. Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930's, books continued to be published and read. Authors like Faulkner and Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Wharton turned out some of their greatest work during those terrible years.

As for the new writer, me for instance, dreams never die no matter how hard the times. Even on this New Year's Eve, I'm hard at it, working to perfect my second novel, beta-ing my crit partners projects, and thinking about the plot line for the third book. Somewhere in the back of my den, the television is blaring with the Times Square celebration. Revelers are shivering in the cold (something like 16 degrees) while they wait for the mighty ball to fall. Not me. I'm safe at home, a fire roaring in my fireplace, and I'm working, working toward the dream.

My dream is to land an agent in 2009 and to have that agent sell one of my novels. No, not a dream. "As a man speaketh, so he is," the Bible says. I am speaking into the cosmos this New Year's Eve, speaking as if the dream isn't a dream at all, speaking as if the dream is a reality. This is my year, my year to become an agented and published author. This is the year my name finally appears in print.

Before that can happen, of course, I must edit and revise the second novel and finish the current work in progress. Time. It's all about time, the time it takes to do the job, the time it takes to redo the job, and the time it takes to get an agent or editor to read my work. Of course, don't forget the time it takes to have the crit partner read and the writing group read.

New years offer new times. New times means more time. Time is the key. Take the time to create the best work you can. While I work within the element of time, I wish you good times: a good year, good fellowship, and most of all good writing. Happy New Year.

Back Home

2008-12-22T05:13:00.000-08:00

The day-job requirements, all that grading, are now complete. The fall semester over, I can return to my writing in full force, at least for a few weeks. Now what? What happens when you've separated yourself from that hot streak and you're suddenly back in the saddle, to coin a phrase?

While I was on my hot streak, plot flowed from my fingers like the current in a river. Now, after some time away, I must go back, read what I've written, and try desperately to feel the flow of that river current once again. Easier said than done.

Does this need to flow cause anguish? You betcha, but separation is also a good thing. When I advise my students about revising a written work, I say, "Don't try to revise the day you think you're finished. Wait at least twenty-four hours and then re-read, re-vision the work. While things are fresh in your mind, while you still remember what you meant, your brain can't see the problems."

You heard me right. What you meant to say and what you really said jumble themselves together like kittens sleeping in a basket. They become so intertwined that it's almost impossible to separate one from the other. Immediate revision lends itself to failure because our brain reads what we meant to say rather than what we said. From simple grammatical errors to confused and awkward sentence structure to failed plotlines, the process of quick revision doesn't work.

As I return to that glorious third novel, I've noticed things. What I thought of as clever quips are really dry prose and deviations from character and plot. What I felt worked toward character development appears to be nothing more than exercises in description. I've used forty words in some places to say what one good word would have said more eloquently and more effectively. Distance from that work in progress stimulates more real progress than forcing that thousand words out each day. Because I've had some time away, my brain is reading the new novel as if I just picked it up off the bookstore shelf. My revisions are more objective. I see where the author, in this case 'me,' is pushing herself into the work rather than letting the work stand alone.

Do I feel bad that I didn't notice these things while I furiously revised each day? No. It's not a sign that I'm a bad writer. It's just the normal function of the brain. For instance, if I were to stare at a lightbulb then close my eyes, the image of that bulb would remain on the back of my eyelids as just a bright light with no real form. The same is true with words. If you stare long enough and hard enough at a manuscript, the image of the words linger like that lightbulb, but the image and reality may be two different things.

The difference? The image is what I thought I said. The reality is what I really said, how I really put the plot together, how I really managed a character. Distance does make the heart grow fonder, and it makes your writing stronger. Victory comes from strength. Distance helps strengthen the piece and leads the work toward that great victory: publication.

Dry

2008-12-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

When a cow suddenly stops giving milk, the farmer tells his wife, "Bossy's gone dry."

Bossy's internal systems may need a tweak or maybe, she's getting ready to give birth. Either way, there's no viable milk to be had. Right now, due to a variety of reasons, my writing life is dry. The two thousand or so words I was able to crank out last week don't have a two-thousand-twin this week. For a very long time, I pushed for a thousand words per day. Now, I'm lucky if one hundred words make it from my fingers through the keyboard and onto the screen.

Some time ago, I wrote about writer's block, a condition that some believe to be non-existant. I'm not blocked, not now. Right now, I'm covered up with words, the words of the one hundred and fifty or so students who fill the desks in my university classroom. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's that old end-of-the-semester grading crunch that all teachers everywhere dread. I dread it more than most. Some might say that I truly hate it.

It's that day-job thing. Just like the would-be actress who waits tables while waiting for a full-time acting job, I languish in a day-job. I teach composition and American literature while I wait for the agent, the super-intuitive agent, who'll see the merit in my fiction.

The heroine of my newest work in progress had just been assaulted when I left her. She's waiting, too, waiting for the resolution to her problem. I really want to help her escape her tormenter, but the day-job thing is in the way, blocking my efforts to bring her to safety. Sometimes while I'm in the midst of determining whether or not that strange quotation is properly documented, she knocks on the door to my hindbrain saying, "Hey, remember me? His hands are still around my throat. I can't breathe. I feel the pressure of his fingers tightening around my larynx."

I tell her that the cavalry's coming, that she's not going to die. After all, I've only written the first five or six chapters. She can't go yet. I try not to tell her that my view of her situation matches the President-elect's view of the current U.S. economic crisis, that it'll get worse before it gets better. I try to leave her behind the hindbrain's door and focus on the task at hand, the completion of the final grades, but sometimes, I find myself writing the story in my head, formulating, creating, moving her from point A to point B.

"One job at a time," I tell myself. "Finish grading. There'll be time to lift her from her dire circumstances."

One job at a time. That's the key. We're back to patience, that illusive character trait that's so highly tauted. My late father had a saying, "It's all in paying attention." Details. Pay attention to the details even though, the details of living interfere with the details of dreaming. I dream of becoming a published author. Until the dream is realized, I'm a teacher, and a teacher must conform to the parameters of her job. She must teach and ergo grade. On that note, I leave you, dear friends. I leave you so that I may attend to the details of living. To paraphrase Langston Hughes, my dream must be deferred, at least until the grading crunch is ended.

Nobody's Perfect

2008-12-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

Yep. You heard me. Nobody's perfect. Oh, some might claim perfection, some might see themselves as perfect at one thing or the other, but that, my friends, is a delusion. The words 'perfect' and 'human' cannot be used in the same sentence.

Even the mighty William Faulkner, that bastian of American literature, failed to meet the mark of perfection. In 1955, he won The National Book Award for A Fable, his arrogant retelling of Christ's passion using a French, WWI soldier as the model for Christ. In 1955, Faulkner was considered the 'great man of letters,' and the fact that he produced a novel, any novel, seemed noteworthy to the committee making the selection. His acceptance speech turned into a long, rambling, almost incoherent series of sage advice and self aggrandizement. Faulkner wasn't perfect. Maybe he knew that. Maybe he didn't.

If Faulkner could fall short of perfection, if Ernest Hemingway needed to revise The Old Man and the Sea over one hundred times before he got it right, what should we fledgling authors expect from ourselves? Often, we expect agents to pound down our doors just to get a shot at that wonderful first novel. Often we can't understand why that publisher gave a thumbs down on the opportunity to have their house and our work joined on the shelves of the local bookstore. What we should understand is that it takes time, it takes thousands of words, thousands of failed efforts to finally reach the point where our work meets the standards of the industry.

Recently, a fourth-grader submitted a 'how-to' book to an agent. To be precise: How to Talk to Girls. The advent of this new author caused ripples in the writing community, especially among those who've been trudging along for years trying to get the attention that this child received so readily. Even I felt a pang, but I soon realized that the 'oddity' of the submission got the attention, not the talent or wisdom of the author. The boy may be the author of the book, but is he a writer? No. He's an oddity like the elephant painter on YouTube or the guy who has the longest fingernails in the world, someone or something that goes against the norm.

To all those talented, would-be writers out there, I send this message. Don't put down your pens in disgust. I haven't. I need to write like I need to drink water. The sudden and unmerited success of a fourth-grader doesn't mean that I won't reach my goal, that I won't finally put in the time and effort it takes to meet the industry standards, get an agent, and see my name in print. I can't say that my ego isn't suffering some bruising over the recent turn of events, but I can say that before Faulkner and The National Book Award committee made the 'great man' a laughing stock, he managed to write The Sound and the Fury. I cling to the hope that our fourth-grader is more fury than sound, that like all oddities he will fade into oblivion, and that soon I'll be interviewed because of a Pulitzer nomination or that National Book Award.

My Story

2008-12-08T07:10:00.000-08:00

I recently beta-ed for a friend, an excellent writer who is a regular contributor to a gardening magazine. An amateur gardener myself, I find her work fascinating. Most of the time, she writes touching vignettes about the gardening life: those plants that survive no matter what you do to terminate them, the unexpected gardeners like little squirrels who plant things in the oddest places. My gardening friend is a meticulous writer who seldom makes an error, so I often find it difficult to find anything to criticize. The combinations of subject and excellence make my job as critique partner a breeze.

I make a distinction here between the writing group I speak of so often and my critique partner. The gardener reads my work as I go along, as I do hers. She sends a chapter or two for my perusal, and I send her a few chapters for her review. We work in tandem to find those places where a reader of the potential finished product might find a non-sequitur or scratch their heads if a the heroine of the piece seems to do something out of character. We check each other's spelling and grammar. We strike and bold words and phrases that clutter up the story. We ask questions about where one or the other of us are going with a storyline, whether that beautiful descriptive passage really advances our plot.

What are we really? We're waxers. Before anything can have that final buffing, that application of craft that makes it shine, it has to be waxed. While waxing, we remove blemishes or nicks that might mar the final shine, the polish that comes when the writing group gets their hands on it.

My crit partner belongs to a writing group not unlike The Dawg Pack. Her group meets locally, occasionally having the luxury of holding readings for the public. My group meets, but over the internet connection. My friend knows what members of her group look like and sound like. Which is better? The virtual group or the group who's physically present? There is no 'better' in this case.

The trick to receiving constructive criticism, whether face to face or through virtual contact, is simply this: be willing to reconstruct your product based on the input of others. Just like me, my crit partner quivers in fear when she gives the copies of her pieces to her writing group so they can mull them over. She waits to hear what the next meeting will bring, whether she gets a thumbs up or thumbs down. Her anxious nail-biting is no different than my own. However, when members of the group offer their criticism, we both take it on the chin. Sometimes, we find things to smile about, but sometimes, the group leaves us with our eyes firmly pointed toward the floor or our noses bleeding from the battering. Either way, we go home, hit the keyboard, and work, honing the product based on criticism.

Every writer needs a crit partner. I found mine on Absolute Write, an internet community of writers. My friend found her writing group connected to a book club she felt the urge to join. Like any group with a common interest, writers tend to find each other. BUT (notice that's a big but) the important thing when claiming a crit partner is to find someone who's willing to give constructive criticism, someone who's not afraid to say, "Hey, I don't think that works." A crit partner isn't Cousin Millie who raves about your work or that friend who's too kind to tell you that 'in tact' is really 'intact.' Test a would-be partner. Don't rest in a nest of laurels created by flattery. Flattery won't make you grow. As my gardening friend says, crit partners water your roots.

Falling

2008-12-05T06:32:00.000-08:00

Last night, I read an article in On the Premises, an on-line newsletter for writers. The article, One Thing I Would Tell Writers, was the product of best-selling author Jodi Thomas. What she essentially said was "be prepared to fall." Oh, Ms. Thomas wasn't talking about that slip on the ice or tripping over that toy that Junior left in the kitchen floor. No. She was talking about moving on.

What does it mean to move on. According to Thomas, it means burying corpses. I have one corpse already buried, a manuscript that was obliterated from my document files long ago. There were no sad songs, no tears, no mournful cries. I looked up the title, hit delete, answered the question my computer asked regarding my serious intent. I seriously intended to forget the manuscript was ever written. I can't. I remember the title and the premise. That Clark Boy, my deceased first effort as a novelist, is dead. Good riddance.

I have another novel, what I lovingly call my real first effort, that may very well suffer the same fate. I'm not one of those writers who can't move on to another book if the first one fails to get the attention of an agent or publisher. Maybe it's because that 'real first effort' did get some attention that keeps it in the document files and not relegated to a dusty, floppy disc in the attic. It may be, however, that all I got from the months of painstaking work that ultimately resulted in that manuscript is an understanding of how to get a little attention. I learned that eighty percent of attention comes from the query letter.

In my writing group, I'm called "Query Dawg." Odd title, isn't it? Not so odd when you think about the attention I garnered for my first 'real effort.' After several rounds of querying, I received multiple requests for partial and full manuscripts. True, some of the requests came from questionable agents whose business offices were in BFE, Kansas, but some came from the most reputable agencies in New York and California. I did okay for a beginner.

I'm a firm believer that all things happen for a reason, that our associations and efforts are somehow guided from above, and that all we're asked to do in our lives is interpret the signs. Our job, our true input to our own successes and failures, comes solely from our ability to recognize true opportunity when it finally knocks. It always knocks, but we sometimes fail to answer the door. My ailing manuscript came to fruition for two reasons: 1)It taught me that I could write a novel and wasn't just a wishful thinker when it came to becoming an author. 2)I learned the query is the thing to catch the eye of the agent who, in turn, will catch the eye of the publisher. In that regard, I also learned how to write a query that might tantalize a prospective agent into taking at least a quick look at what an author has to offer. Ergo: I am "Query Dawg," and am frequently asked to take a quick look at queries from other would-be authors.

Jodi Thomas's advice is worthy of following. "Be prepared to fall," she says. I agree. If the goal is to become published, then you have to accept the idea that everything you write isn't worthy of that goal. Sometimes, no matter how long and how hard you've worked on a manuscript, you have to bury it on that floppy disc in the attic. I'm not saying that there won't be tears for words lost. What I am saying is that you must wipe your eyes, throw the tissue in the trash, and go back and try again. Find the right combination of story and words, of plot and action, and start the process all over again.

Advancing

2008-11-29T05:10:00.000-08:00

The big question? Does this advance the story? Sometimes, a writer lends his or herself opportunities to explore the profound, to wax eloquent, if you will. The temptation to offer up great pearls of wisdom or beautiful passages is always there, lurking somewhere under the lines. On occasion, these would-be beautiful passages work. Most of the time, they don't. Lately I've been tempted a lot, tempted to deviate just a bit, an iota, and allow myself the luxury of that eloquence. I fight that urge with every fiber of my being, but now and again, I give in only to have to remove those lovely words during a revision cycle.

On one occasion, even my crit partner recognized such an opportunity. In the story, a man was bitten by a rabid fox. "Oh!" my partner exclaimed. "Think of what you could do with that one!" I thought about it. A grown man, writhing and twisting, unable to swallow and foaming at the mouth. Man turned to raging beast, snarling, de-evoloution at its best. I caught myself before I indulged in the passage. Big Dawg and Mumsy Dawg's voices rang in my head: "Does this advance the story?" they asked.

The truth of the matter was that it didn't advance the story. I could have gone on for paragraph after paragraph, lending my readers a vision of the horrible, the twisted, but I didn't. I snapped a quick overview and moved on. The story wasn't about rabies. The story was about the youthful nurse who tried desperately not to dispel the hope of recovery after the initial bite. "Focus," I said to myself. "Focus on the story."

The novel that holds that particular snippet is still making its way among the Dawg Pack. I haven't heard how far it's gotten, but I'm sure it'll be back from Mumsy pretty soon, covered in her indigenous purple marker. Then it'll go to the Big Dawg and finally to our sweet, little pup, a woman known only as the Master Slasher. She works in red.

Now, the new work-in-progress is formulating in my files. Taking shape. Growing those embryonic legs I talked about. The bud of the story will soon blossom, and the hindbrain will force my fingers to work faster, harder, longer, until I write the words 'the end.' During the process of development, my crit partner will receive snippets, pieces of the story. She'll sniff out things I should have seen myself. She'll say things like, "I don't think so-and-so (insert character name) would say this or do this." I'll agree mostly, because if my first reader doesn't think something holds true to character, then my second and third reader probably won't either.

Advancing. It's all about advancing the story, keeping characters true to themselves, killing those darling passages that make you feel like a real writer but do nothing to push the plot. Maintaining action. Keeping the reader with you instead of sending them off to skim through so they can say they made it to the end. The words 'the end' should never make the reader feel relief. They should never make a reader feel like they've reached the top of Everest. The words 'the end' should be reached with regret. The reader should say, 'I hate to leave' rather than 'than God it's over.'

Giving Up

2008-11-25T10:57:00.000-08:00

Long ago, country music star Tanya Tucker, sang, "If it don't come easy, let it go." Of course, she was referring to a doomed love affair, but the advice holds true for writers. I've been struggling with a work in progress, trying desperately to get a foothold, but continually failing. So, I let it go. Another idea lay hidden in the folds of my cerebellum. I only found it the other day, resting somewhere between the thought that I might become a medical professional and the decision about who not to invite to dinner. I picked it up, dusted it off, and thought, "Ahhh, not so bad."

I started work and in less than thirty minutes, I had about a thousand words, good words. I didn't start the story too soon, one of my failings, I didn't lose interest around the five hundred word mark, and I didn't find myself struggling to get just the right images on the page. Like old Tanya said, it came easy so I didn't let it go.

The other work in progress has changed position. It's been relegated to the bottom of my document files and may or may not be resurrected. The new WIP is coming along nicely. The only problem I've had is deciding on chapter breaks. The story exits my fingertips with such rapidity that I have to go back and make those chapter divisions as a part of revision.

With the hindbrain firmly in charge, I'm desperately trying to stay out of my own way. Another of my problems. According to the betas, I stand squarely between my writing and any possibility of getting an agent. What does that mean, you ask?

That means that I make my own life difficult. I allow myself to filter in, telling the audience what's happening and not simply showing them. I over describe, my love of words obscuring the meanings of the words themselves. I use forty words to say what one well chosen term might say as well if not better. In other words, I try too hard. A newbie mistake, I know, but the first step in solving any problem is admitting it's there. The second step, STOP! Stop standing in the way of the story. Let the words breathe, something that's a lot harder to do than you might imagine.

One of my biggest problems is those darned creative writing courses I took in college. I've talked about their one genre focus before. I'm not saying don't take a writing course. I'm just suggesting that each writing course should be viewed from the perspective of 'will this work for me.' Not every professor is truly an expert, in that some don't have the publishing credits that a good creative writing teacher needs in order to help a future author toward the goal of seeing his/her book on the shelf.

Well, Hindbrain is calling. I must comply with its request that I return to the new WIP. Wish me luck. I'll need it. This new novel has a long way to go before it hits the beta trail.

Growling

2008-11-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

Last night during a discussion with the Big Dawg, I asked a question that involved the adverb "When." Much growling and snarling ensued. The 'when' word is apparently a serious no-no, even if it doesn't involve your own work. When is bad, no matter whose work you're talking about. No when's. Just patience and the willingness to wait.

According to Big Dawg, 'when' instills additional anguish in whoever you're talking to. Publishing and agenting are businesses. Business. Nothing more. It's about product, supply and demand, about giving the customer what he/she wants. When your work leaves your hands and goes to the selling floor, it's not yours anymore. That book you nurtured, the one you healed through revision, is not your baby any longer. It's just a product on the shelf. Hard to accept, huh?

After much whining from this old Query Dawg, I have to admit that Big Dawg's right. (Shhh! Don't tell, okay?) A book is very much like the child of the author. After all, just like that blastula that lodges in the walls of the female uterus, a book is a part of its creator.

An author experiences a moment of great passion, if you will. That passion is the desire to write. The idea for a subject emerges, sometimes in a burst of excitement, sometimes as the result of partial ideas merging into one. Zygote! That cell of a thought moves to the author's hindbrain and rests comfortably there until the writer formulates how to best tell the zygote's story. Time passes. With each stroke of the keyboard, the story develops, growing arms and legs, taking form. Eventually, the last stroke of the author's fingers manages a 'the end.' The story's fully developed and ready to make its entrance into the agenting world. All it needs is a little introduction.

Big Dawg says, that's where the child ends and the product begins. Once the idea and the author's talents are sold to an agent and/or publishing house, you've given your baby up for adoption. It no longer belongs to you. It's no longer a part of the family of documents in your personal files. It's product, making its way through the assembly line and heading for retail shelves everywhere. The better the product, the more often the creator of said product will be asked to produce more.

No matter how eloquent the producer is, no matter how in love with the embryonic idea, no matter what, ultimately any writer becomes Henry Ford. In the end, the goal is to create product that so entices the reader that the producer can earn a living through their creation. In other words, so that you can become a full time writer instead of a part time teacher or waiter or insurance salesman.

Art as product. We sometimes fail to believe that those singular, one of a kind creations are just shelf stuffing, but they are. Whether you're Gauguin or Grisham, art is product. If you're lucky, you don't give your babies away, you make a very good deal with Random House.

The Quandry

2008-11-20T06:20:00.000-08:00

The only way for a writer to learn how to write IS to write. Okay, so I can't come up with a novel idea (in more ways than one) every day. It's not like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Some writers have thousands of would-be manuscripts floating up there in their memory files. Others, like me, don't. I have what might best be described as the occasional epiphany. That is, out of the hundreds of possible scenarios that float through my brain in any given twenty-four hour period, there might be one that sparks my creative juices. Then again, none of those ideas might seem like something I'd want to spend weeks or months mulling over.

I envy the writers who grab onto one of the hundreds of ideas that flicker in their cerebellum and turn it into over one hundred thousand words or so. I've been working on the third book, but no matter what I try or how many times I start and restart, the words on the page look up at me through dead eyes and yawn. I have no desire to write a sleeper, or rather, to write a book that puts me and will inevitably put an agent to sleep.

While I was driving my granddaughter to school today, something flickered dimly. Ah! Cervical cancer, not my own but one of my characters. I smiled. This is it, I thought. Then I dropped the kiddie at the front door of her kindergarten and headed home. By the time, I'd made the left out of the school parking lot, the flicker went completely dead and the smile faded. I've had cervical cancer and I have no desire to revisit the surgeries and chemicals related to the disease. Write what you know, but some things you know are better left buried inside your brain.

Finally, it occurred to me that I could actually write about a whole, sane person. For me, that's an epiphany. By the time I reached my own driveway, the story I currently have in those dusty old document files had mutated into a lively, feisty woman fighting her way through the horrors of nature. There's the ticket, the ticket to the third addition to my persistent hope that one day I'll be published. The third book might work, if number one and number two don't garner the attention of an agent. Book two is far better than book one. If I hold true to form, book three will top two.

Pray for me, brothers and sisters. Pray for me.

Winter of My Discontent

2008-11-18T05:11:00.000-08:00

It's snowing, just a skiff, but snow nonetheless. I do my best work in winter. Before I started writing in earnest, I never considered myself to be seasonal. Now, I know I am. As I reread my work, I've discovered that summer, or rather, stories I set in the summer months, don't work as well as stories that include the bitter weather of winter. Why? Who knows. Maybe I've got some kind of internal descriptive clock that only ticks in high gear when it's cold.

My first novel happens during a week in July. Good guys chase bad guys. Good guys catch bad guys. Bad guys suffer justified but horrible fate. Basic stuff. The Big Dawg in the writer's group has always liked the premise. I mean who can go wrong with good triumphs over evil? Apparently, I can.

Big Dawg says that the only characters who seem real are the bad guys. The good guys? Stick figures. Two dimensional. And the reader? The reader doesn't seem to care if any of those good guys live or die. Although I accept the blame for this failed attempt, right now I'm personally blaming it on summer. The story has been trunked to rise from the dust another day, a cold day like today when the snow is covering my back deck and I'm locked in for twenty-four hours.

Although the agent who read the first novel and requested some changes is still waiting, logic dictates that he'll have to wait for a few, long months. Rather than rush a less than adequate tale to his computer screen, it's best to let it swelter in the trunk than lose overall. Another lesson in patience. Damn that patience! He's a hard lesson to learn. Necessary but hard.

Block or Burn

2008-11-12T19:17:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, I made much about starting the new novel. I did start, sort of. My problem? Block. That's the clever title some long-ago writer gave to explain a total loss of words. Yeah. I'm at a loss for words. For those who know me, that seems totally contradictory to my personality. I'm the one with the clever quips, the philosophical ramblings, the one who's always ready with an opinion or question. Writer's block isn't about any of those things.

Writer's block doesn't eliminate words from your brain. Those words are still there and the writer is still able to make clever comments, introduce theories and attitudes about life, and to offer an opinion on any subject. They're able to do that in conversation, but when it comes to advancing a story, developing a character, or defining a plot line? Ker-plooey! Nada. Zilch. The transfer of words from the brain through the fingertips and onto the computer screen just ain't happening, if you know what I mean.

It's not that I don't have any words under the heading "Chapter 1." I do. More than a thousand or so as a matter of fact. It's that when I reached that thousand or so, nothing I tried seemed to work. If you take a long listen to a weatherman, he'll inevitably use the phrase "intermittent showers" when talking about the iffy possibility of rain. That's what writer's block is like. It's the occasional spattering of words. They come in short bursts like a quickly passing shower or they just drizzle out, a few at a time. And like the weatherman, those drizzled words feel untrustworthy.

When block comes early on, I ask myself, "Is this the book I should be writing?" or "Is my hindbrain trying to tell me to move on to greener word pastures?" Who knows? Maybe. Mostly I think that writers are convinced that daily output is more important than quality output. I've just finished a re-write and I've written an entirely new book. My output is fine, sometimes reaching nearly 15,000 words per week. But that was the last book, and this is the current work in progress. Albeit progressing slowly.

Some writers, say Nora Roberts, can produce a new tome every two weeks or so. Some writers like Harper Lee produce one valuable book in a lifetime. I think I'm somewhere in between. Oh, I've got a short story brewing, and I write poetry. In fact, a poet friend of mind once told me that I was the most prolific poet she knew and at the same time, the most ardent revisionist.

I never thought of blogs as therapeutic, but as I write this, I'm beginning to understand the problem. My mind is still back on the second novel, thinking about what will happen when the Dawg Pack finishes their betas. Maybe I don't have block. Maybe I have temporary burnout.

Starting

2008-11-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

I'm starting the third book. At least, I keep telling myself I'm starting. So far, I've written almost 5,000 words and I've deleted more than half of them. Starting a book is like starting a car with an engine defect. You know those cars that grrr and grumble, the engine hinting that it might turn over more than twice but taking its own good time doing it.

I always begin with a gimmick. Never works. Then I try another gimmick. That doesn't work either. Finally, in desperation I might make it to the story, but I always seem to start too soon. I know agents prefer that sudden jolt that draws attention, but I seem to be stuck in the era when authors took time to set the stage before bringing all the actors on. I get over it eventually but only after hours of anguish. It's those false starts that kill me.

I actually started this book long before I finished the second novel. At 30,000 words, I sent it to one of my betas who absolutely hated it. I revised and sent it again, but she still hated it. I put it on the shelf to gather dust for a while and picked up something that had been floating around in my mind. I put that on the page and then took a fifteenth look at my previous effort. The beta, as always, was right. It sucked, so I deleted it (except for some very good stuff that I thought I might use in the future) and began afresh with a new title and a new premise. Only the names of the characters remained.

I will get started. I know that, but that first hump is the biggest and most difficult to maneuver. It's not as easy as saying, "Once upon a time," but believe me that's exactly how I'd like to start. I suppose my tenacity is what makes me a writer, that unfailing unwillingness to just let things lay. Without it, I'd be one of the thousands who keep saying, "One day, I'm going to write a novel." I've written a novel. In fact, I've written two and the third, well the third may actually be on its way.

Writing...What a Life!

2008-10-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it. I finished the second manuscript. As I often say, not bad for a beginner. That's two down, and hopefully, fifty or sixty to go. That is, fifty or sixty to go should I actually find an agent and a publisher.

Writing...what a life! To paraphrase Renee DeCarte, I write; therefore, I am. Sounds silly, doesn't it? A writer, a true writer, can't keep the story off the page. Whether they get published or not, they just keep hacking at it. Stories form inside their heads during the night. Potential plots swirl around their cerebellum while they drive to work or watch television. They read, honing their craft, and all the while think, I wish I'd written that or I could have written this so much better. Although those thoughts sound a bit arrogant, in reality it's the genes talking.

Whatever happens in the life of a writer becomes fodder for the gristmill. Writers, as is often said, write what they know. I know Virginia and its history. I know what it's like to be poor, really poor, eating the same meal night after night: boiled potatoes and beet pickles. I know how to plant a garden, raise chickens, and milk cows. I put all of that into my work, accompanied by an occasional burst of psychology melded with my own personal style.

My genre? I write in the literary genre. Can't help it. I've tried others, many others, especially the paranormal. My writing group doesn't like the paranormal elements I slip into my work...at least, they don't like it so far. As in the first novel, I've had to eliminate the concept of the paranormal: time travel, ghostly visits, second sight. The trouble is that I know that, too.

Am I a psychic? Do I frequently chat with the other side? No. I'm neither a psychic nor am I someone who's had extensive experience chasing down demons and such. I'm from Appalachia. During my childhood, I sat by the old, coal stove and listened, listened to the whispered tales of ghosts and evil spirits, from the Bell Witch to the shadowy figures that lived in local, abandoned houses.

I've wondered at my own inability to translate those ghostly tales into my work, and I think I've come up with a solution. I'm so steeped in the paranormal, that it doesn't frighten me. I'm not afraid of ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night. We can not fear the familiar, and I'm all too familiar with these kinds of stories. Because of my utter lack of fear, I can't make those stories frightening to my readers. They all come out bland and matter of fact. In my work, the sentences, "I ran to the mailbox" and "I saw a ghost" come out with the same sense of tension. No tension, no fear, and without fear, no excitement. I'm one of those people who, when subjected to the eerie sound of disembodied laughter, would just roll over in bed and say, "I wish them haints would shut up. I need to get some sleep."

Maybe someday I'll be able to create the kind of tension required to strike terror in the hearts of a reader. I think I'd like that: a very literary ghostly tale, filled with strange whispers and stranger sights. Till then, I'll simply practice on friends and family and occasionally torture the Dawg Pack.

Keeping On Keeping On

2008-10-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

My finished manuscript is with my betas, The Dawg Pack. I'm waiting...waiting...waiting. There are rules within the pack, and so I'm loathe to try to hurry them or to ask when they think they'll be finished. It's certainly bad form because ultimately they're doing me a great favor. It's not like they've borrowed money. They're reading and re-reading the book so it will be pristine by the time I offer the re-submit requested by an agent. I have to be patient. Patience is a virtue, one that doesn't come easy.

What to do when betas are working? Write. Write your little heart out. I'm writing, working on a new manuscript that will probably be finished by the time the betas return my current book. No, they've not had the resubmit for years, just weeks. During that time, I had an idea, polished it, and now I'm almost eighty-nine thousand words along. Do I still want to ask, "Hey, how's it going?" You betcha, but I won't...not anymore.

I tried that. Didn't work. I just got the "patience" thing repeated over and over again. These writers have lives, families, problems, their own work. Battering at their mental doors is not the way to win friends and influence people. It causes tension, unnecessary tension. The second great lesson in working in a writing group? If you pester, your work will fester, become an annoying boil on the (well, you can guess where) of your group members.

When John Keats lay dying from tuberculosis, he wrote his epitath: Here lies a man whose name is writ in water. If Keats had rushed his betas, had denied the concept of favor, those words would probably ring true. He would have received no concrete advice or help, and he would have been forgotten, left to lay beneath the sod, just another would-be writer. Instead, he worked with Byron and others, perfecting his craft. Now, his work is studied in every school and on every campus, and he's classified as one of the six great romantic poets in British history. I'd rather take Keats' route.

John Keats had no way of knowing how important he would become to the literary world, but he did understand the importance of perfecting his craft. That's what working in groups does for any writer. It helps that writer perfect the craft. There's more to writing a book that punching out the story. Craft is equally important, and it's craft that betas teach. Listen to the teachers, hear their words, never lose patience, and one day, you may be able to make a few calls in which you blurt out those all important words, "I just got an agent!"

DEAD...lines.

2008-10-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

I find myself setting deadlines, my own deadlines for work to be submitted. Big Dawg (the alpha female in my writing group) does not wag her tail happily when I do this. She bares her teeth and growls.

Artificial deadlines are not conducive to good writing. If you're like me, you say things like: "I want to finish up and get this out by next week." "I'm running behind. I should be finished by now."

The pressures of life are daunting. In the work-a-day world, there's competition for everything from a grocery cart to a job. Traffic lashes at good humor and something at home always seems to need fixing. The kids quarrel. The dog has to go to the vet. Stress. The stress of everyday living. Why add stress to your life?

As much as I hate to admit it, Big Dawg is right. Adding one more stressor to life by setting that artificial deadline doesn't make for successful writing. I've come to realize that if the writer pushes for inspiration, it seldom comes. The thousand words on the pages of that new work in progress must be the right thousand words. Setting deadlines for yourself, dates and times you feel you should be finished and ready to submit, add stress. Worse than that, those deadlines make for dead lines, words that will inevitably be erased during revision and that do nothing to advance your story.

Keep this in mind as you begin to twitch and writhe, believing yourself to be too slow or too late in submitting. If an editor says, "I need these revisions in a week," then that's a real deadline. Do it. If it's the voice in your own head talking, weigh it out. Deadlines or dead lines. Your choice.

Hard At It

2008-10-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

So, the first of my three betas gave the revise and resubmit version of my novel the once over. She's a reader more than a writer and has the equivalent of degrees in psychology, history, and God bless her, accounting. (To me, any math is more terrifying than Godzilla, up close and personal.) She cut ALL the paranormal elements in the novel.

Why, you ask? Even though I come from a region of the country that thrives on all things paranormal, Mumsy Dawg thinks that my presentation of things that go bump in the night is cliched. Would I like to believe that what I have to offer is new and fresh? You betcha, but if the first dawg in my pack thinks it's cliched, I have to pay attention.

I write in the literary genre. Can't help it. That's me. My efforts to cross over into the paranormal haven't reached her, haven't caused her to sit up and take notice. I'd like to say that I can write in any genre. Some can. Apparently, I can't. She's a trusted member of my pack, and gosh-darn-it, she's never been wrong before. I read and reread her comments and although I weep copious tears, "Out, OUT, dear darlings."

Mumsy Dawg works in purple. My manuscript is covered in long, deep purple marker. I weep and moan. I grimmace with pain, but I make the cuts. It's still my story, still my book, but a review of the version in which her edits have been made offers a clearer picture and more finely honed dialogue. She was right after all. I loved all those paranormal darlings, but without them, I'm inching toward a real story, what Hemingway called the Iceberg Theory of Literature. It's all there, the clues rising above the waves but the gist of it all floating just beneath the surface.

First lesson in working in groups: Learn to kill your darlings, a phrase often used by the Big Dawg. Keep it in mind. What you love in your work might very well be what's standing in the way of the story, and the story is the thing to grab the conscience of the .... in this case, agent!

Just Doing the Best I Can

2008-10-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm a "newbie," or at least that's what my friends tell me. A "newbie" writer. I started my (ur-um) career as a writer rather late in life, but I'm looking forward to the future. Okay. So it won't be the future from a twenty-one-year-old's perspective, but the future I expected to live when I was that age never panned out anyway.

First, I wanted to join the Peace Corps. They denied my application, saying I had no marketable skills to offer. I was eighteen then and I thought all you had to do was show up. Not. Then I decided to become a special education teacher, but I was too much the professional mother to force anyone to reach their full potential. Then....I got married....to a cop...Need I say anymore? He was from the north. I was from the south, and our own private civil war raged within a tiny New Jersey apartment.

THEN...I decided to become a businesswoman. I did okay, I guess. Paid the bills, albeit sometimes later than my creditors requested. I did the so-so businesswoman thing for a while. Next, I became a medical professional. A dental assistant to be exact. Not my cup of tea as it turned out, although I did meet some very interesting people.

Jobs came and went until I became the domestic traffic controller for an international chemical trading firm. Big title, not so big paycheck. I sold burglar alarms, waited tables, worked a while for Loreal of Paris, and finally went back to my eighteen-year-old missionary bent. I started running not-for-profit agencies. I was pretty good at it. Even won some state recognition.

I earned accreditation as a rehab provider, but I burned out after a few years. The problem? The majority of people who seek rehabilitation do so because some court somewhere forced them to. They're not really interested in getting off the booze or working through the drug issues. Mostly, they want that completion of program certificate. This unfortunate circumstance means that rehabilitation providers, such as myself, seldom really see any success for their efforts. After a multitude of failures, I just threw up my hands and said, "The hell with it."

Then it happened. I suffered the worst personal tragedy imaginable. My ten-year-old daugher was killed. I lost all passion for work of any kind, but I needed to do something, something productive, something that wouldn't cause her to hang her head in shame as she viewed this life from the next. I went back to college, earned my MA in English, and I became a teacher. I kind of like that. In fact, I'm still doing it!

While I slaved away in graduate school, I came to the sudden realization that what I really wanted, wanted more than chocolate or a lottery win (maybe that last thing is an exaggeration), was to become a writer. I started with poetry. You can even google my name and find a few pieces floating around the web. There's more. I found myself longing to tell stories. Big stories. Little stories. All kinds of stories, and I wanted to tell them in print.

I became a "newbie," a wannabe writer looking for guidance and, of course, representation. I've done what ninety percent of wannabe writers never actually do. I've finished my first novel. Okay. So it's not published...YET. But wonders of wonders, I'm now cracking away at my second book. At this point, I figure I've got maybe twenty thousand or so words to go until I can write the two words that really mean something to a book: THE END.