Novel Idea #2

For the second installment, this is probably best as a YA or children's book:

Using as many of the fairy tales you remember from childhood, write a story interweaving the stories into something that makes a logical whole world. Think of Shrek, only it doesn't have to be comedic, or too centered on nursery rhymes... remember, you don't have to make a whole series about it, though that worked well for several seasons, didn't it? Eh, Nick?

Feel free to go dark with this if you want to, turning the piece into horror, or selecting the more disturbing of Grimm's tales... whatever you choose to write about, even if you turn it into a modern crime novel, make it as realistic as you can, so that its fairy tale elements are woven into the fabric of the real world around us, but in surprising ways.

Or turn it into a poem, giving us enough clues so that we know who each person is, without your naming a single one of them. Let the glass slipper, the three bears, or the mirror tell us where we are and what you are drawing from.

Use the idea if you like, or leave it. I'll be back with more (let's hope I can keep this going through the whole month). 

Too Long between Posts

I really should be writing this on my Not Writing Anything Anymore Dammit blog,  but I've been just as lame updating that site as this one.

But this is going to change.

I have found--and I am not alone in this--that it is so very easy to get myself to work on my novels... and so very hard to get myself to work on anything else. Especially marketing.

It's my failing... but it has to end. The response to my book has been overwhelmingly positive, but the chances of its ever taking off and gaining a wide readership is slim to none if I don't market the book. Therefore, to fight my stupid reluctance to market the book (despite my desire to see it go places), I am making a list.

If you are a regular reader of my blog in the past, you know I am a lister. I make lists on a daily basis, and I am currently about to finish filling my fourth list book.

So here's my marketing list for JULY:

1. Make a list of potential agents using my current and prospective books.
2. Write some short stories (either for publication or contest or both) to get my name out there more and get more items published.
3. Set up at least three book signings or reading nights with local or state bookstores.
4. Build an author website.
5. Send out at least 5 agent queries.
6. Write on my blogs at least twice per week.

It's a short list, but it's one I've been ignoring for almost a year since my book came out, just like I've been ignoring my blogs. I know I'll still be revising the third Joshua book in the series, as well as working on the start of a manga version of book 1, but this stuff also needs attending to.

What tasks have you been avoiding? How might you add them to your list for July?

Publication... at Last!

My book is coming out! My book is coming out!

Thanks to Black Rose Publishing, my first fantasy novel in a series is coming out August 9, and I am prepping to begin a book tour throughout the coming academic year (and beyond).

Given how many years I've been working on this series, I'm as surprised as anyone to finally have the book come out in final form. It turns out, too, that getting one's book published is both daunting and exciting, but I'll explain all that in a future post. (Hint: It mostly involves the meaning of the series, and how much I want the books to change our thinking, especially here in the United States.)

Here's the cover:

Cover art courtesy of Black Rose Publishing

The book comes out August 9, but it's already available for pre-order (10% off) through the publisher at their website:

ORDER THE GHOST PORTAL

If you'd like a signed copy, you can pre-order those, too. Just post me your e-mail, write me at shakespeare824 at hotmail.com, or find me on Facebook (Cheryl Carvajal), and we'll make that happen. If you want more details, you can read about it on the publisher's website, but you can also email me directly, and I'll share some details with you that way.

More information about the book to come... including a few excerpts... to stay tuned.

The Audience... and My Stage Fright

As I teach in my college classes, every writing has an intended audience.

You may feel, as I sometimes do, that your writing is to weird or unfinished or crappy for anyone else but yourself, but eventually, if you are a writer, you intend for your writings to be read by someone.

And there lies the problem.

Who is our audience? Well, honestly, that depends on what we are writing, and why. I write in nearly every genre--essay, poetry, fiction (short and long), and drama (short and long). Each genre--and each work itself--has a different intended audience, and a different set of issues caused by the very audience I intend to reach.

My novels are all the culmination of a set of ideas, many months (no, years) of work, and painstaking revision and effort. I have literally (yes, I do know the meaning of this word and use it correctly) have revised my first novel nearly 30 times. My third novel was stopped and almost scrapped three times, and I've overhauled it, starting the novel over from scratch, changing the main character, changing the entire genre of novel, and changing POV and verb tense (which is really, really hard to revise, it turns out). Why all the work? Because I want my novels to read seamlessly, to satisfy readers without annoying them with too much detail, too little, events which are too stupid or too preachy or too unbelievable, without "too much" anything. Of course, I cannot truly know my audience, for so much of my personal preferences in reading come out, and I know other readers will never be exactly like me. Another problem is that I am my primary reader. I've read my books far more than anyone else has, mainly because I have shown them to so few people (mainly because they rarely feel finished).

With plays, I have a different audience entirely. I have to imagine all of the play in front of a live audience. Even more importantly, I have to imagine actors and directors taking my play and making something out of it, and create ways to help them do so easily (few sets, abbreviated action, logical shifts, etc.). After all, if a director doesn't feel the play is worth doing, and actors don't enjoy it, it won't be performed. But the final judge is still the audience, and I have to consider how I can place in the meaning of the piece (the whole reason I wrote it to begin with) into the work without losing the spontaneous feeling one should have watching stage action through a fourth wall. The largest difficulty with this is probably obvious: I can never know how a play, a particular scene, or even a line works until the play is in front of an audience, live, and my writing is already public. This is rather like a comic, who doesn't know if a joke works until it does--or doesn't--in front of a real audience.

With poetry, I usually write with an audience in mind, too, but, in my case, the audience is nearly always singular. Instead of writing from a particular POV (the way that Edgar Lee Masters wrote his Spoonriver Anthology), I write TO a particular person, someone in real life. Often I write to my husband, as I can prove with a huge list of sonnets and other love poems, but I also write to others, even a few people who have passed away. I send poems to people, but often I write them only for myself, with no intent to ever share them with anyone, including their intended audience. Poems are a way for me to clear my head of some issue, to get something proverbially (not literally) off my chest. I have several to my father, for instance, but they are more like letters I write, seal, but never mail.

If you write, you know, deep down, that you have an audience for your work, an audience beyond yourself. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. If you long for a huge audience of superfans who will love your work, your task may seem quite daunting, and any lukewarm response to your writings can feel like a knife to the heart. God forbid that a reader express distaste for your writing, or you might find yourself crushed for months. I am thicker skinned than many, but only to a point. It's the reason I keep revising and not submitting my work to anybody.

It's funny that I am writing about audience here, in my old blog, since only a handful of people even read this, and I rarely get more than a response or two, nearly all from my fantastic sister. (Thanks in advance, Stephanie!) Perhaps, however, if you happen upon this page, you will see that, in the end, I am still writing to myself most of all. I am writing to understand myself better, to work through ideas, to see what is holding me back.

I would love to know what you see holding you and your writing back. What fears do you have about your audience? Who do you believe your audience to be?

Until next time, keep writing...

The Hazards of the Unforeseen

I'd ask whether life has ever handed you something you did not expect, but it would be a stupid question. Unless you are Nostradamus, it's happened today... or at least this week. My life is filled with the unexpected.

Right now my existence is permeated with it. I had eye surgery, which, unexpectedly to me but not to the eye doctor, it seems, meant I could drive in a week but would have to read large print EVERYTHING for the next 4-6 months.

My kids, only one month into school, have proven they cannot properly handle their classes without my constant nagging and looking over their shoulder. So they are behind. Again. And I have to refocus them ALL DAY to help them get caught back up.

My house is in need of its final overhaul, remodeling the last remaining ugliness. Unfortunately, that involves ripping down wallpaper and refinishing spots on the wood floor. The wallpaper alone has been a beast--the dining room alone took me FIVE DAYS to tackle.

I could whine more, but I won't. I just use these unexpected events as an excuse most of the time. An excuse not to write.

Not productive, I know. You don't have to tell me. Just as I don't have to remind you about all the unforeseen hiccups in your life. So, my vision still a bit blurry, I rip down wallpaper until my fingernails disappear, spackle, stretch my aching shoulders, and wait for NaNoWriMo.

Yet my hope is unchanged. I WILL get this remodeling done. I WILL see fine within the next few months (already I can write this without enlarging it on the screen, and that is GREAT news!). I WILL find a way to make sure my kids stay caught up AND still have time for my own pursuits. I WILL get my priorities back the way I want them, and not the way I have to place them for now.

This will pass. This is temporary. I WILL start my agent search very soon...

As soon as I get the last of this damn wallpaper down.

Killing Time? Or is Time Killing Me?

Before you read any further... bear with me. My eyes have been lased barely three weeks ago, and I have trouble seeing computer screen writing, so I will likely write with a few errors.

The thought occurred to me, yesterday, that I should be depressed because my eyes will not, at this point, allow me to work on my novels... or work on my plays... or read for more than a few minutes at a time. My goals were to get my Thomas novel #3 done in September, revise #2 in October, and write #4 in November... but I know now that such goals are impossible, at least until I can comfortably write for hours on my laptop.

Of course, since I don't tend towards the woe-is-me-whine-fest that seems a plausible notion at this point, I am making the best of the time while I wait. The hubby and I are readying our house to sell (we already put our house in Washington up for sale, and its contract is pending), so I've decided to concentrate on the activities I CAN do with my eyes as they are. Whining is such a waste of time, after all.

I've already ripped down the wallpaper in two bathrooms, leaving me wallpaper in one more bathroom and in the dining room to tear out as well. (Note to would-be wallpaper putter-uppers: DON'T DO IT!!! If you have EVER had to tear down wallpaper, you would never put ANY up again, I promise!) I have several floors to patch up as well, sanding and re-staining, and then lacquering. Each one of these will have to be done carefully, in steps. Once I've patched the de-wallpapered walls, I'll need to prime all the bathrooms and then paint these as well. If I'm too worn out from going up and down the ladder, I'll replace door hinges (most of the house uses brass, and I'll need to replaced the hinges with steel or brushed nickel--SIGH) and door knobs.

But it can't all be work. Thankfully, I can also sew at this point, too, and Halloween is close enough that I can work on costumes. Crystal wants to be a creepy broken china doll (cool!), and Brandon wants to be Lich King (I didn't know who that was, either, so here's a picture:)

Thanks to Justin Currie on Deviantart.com for this rendering of Lich King!

Even my own costume needs finishing (since I started it last October but was distracted by my kids' costumes)... I am dressing up as a woodland faerie, complete with knee-high suede boots and pink flowers. Given my eye status, I might ask Crystal to sew the pink flowers on the costume, in exchange for sewing hers... but it's all bound to be fun.

I assume, if you are reading this, that you have not just had eye surgery. but perhaps you have something else getting in the way of what you REALLY WANT TO BE DOING. So what? Shift gears, try something new instead, and just do SOMETHING. Feel free to browse through possible stuff, find a new path, and just play. You may find your next great adventure.

Now I am off to mine.

Summer Goals

New Year's Resolutions never work on me, if only because I've been on an academic calendar since I was five (perhaps even since my older sister was five). Trying something new mere days before the school semester starts up again is foolish in the extreme, so, naturally, the new things have rarely remained permanent.

Therefore, I am making a short list of SUMMER Resolutions. My son is finished with school, and my daughter has two days more before her classes close, so it looks like I will have TWO WHOLE FREAKIN' MONTHS without tons of daily obligations. What can I accomplish in two months? Hopefully I will manage to do a LOT.

Here is my short list:

1. Completely revise Thomas novel #2
2. Set up and implement an action plan to submit Thomas novel #1 to agents.
3. Sew LOTS of clothing--daily wear stuff AND costumes.
4. Re-cover all four of the dining room chairs.
5. Refinish the hardwood floors in my house.
6. Lose 20 lbs.

Now I just need to put this list up in BOLD somewhere and make sure I take steps EVERY SINGLE DAY towards each goal (I will allow myself to focus on a particular goal, too, but #6 will take daily action).

Even more important, I will NOT add more goals!

At least I think I won't.

Y tu? What are your goals for the summer? Please share if you have them!

Winning is Sometimes Everything

I've always loved goals.

Not the seemingly unobtainable goals (weigh less than 125 lbs., be famous, rule a kingdom). Not the goals that do not depend on me (be professionally published, be discovered as an actor).

I love the finite, fixed goals, the ones that come in all shapes and sizes, short-term and long-term. Goals like:

Finish the laundry today
Paint a picture for Christmas Cards

or, say

Write 50,000 words on a novel in November!!!

I write during National Novel Writing Month because it gives me a very specific, finite goal to accomplish, and it puts just enough pressure on me so that I make writing, for one month out of the year, a priority.

And I won! I did it! I set out, worked hard, and accomplished my goal! Yay!

But it's not over. Now I have new goals, for the month of December:

1. Write at least once per week on each blog.
2. Write a new verse each day for the advent calendar (did that last year and the year before).
3. FINISH the mermaid novel rough draft.
4. Revise my play from a 45-minute one-act to a 2-hour full-length play.

Notice how each one of these is a WRITING goal. That means, for the month of December, I will STILL keep writing a priority. And I will make sure I have writing goals set up for January, too, so that writing stays a priority all year round.

If I don't set goals, I will let the rest of my life take over, and I won't write. I can't let that happen.

What are your short-term and long-term goals? What have you won at lately?

Just Keep Writing (or Painting) (or Playing) (or Whatever)

If you've been checking out my word count on the left hand side (and why would you?) you would have seen that my count is steadily going up, up, up. I'm almost halfway through NaNoWriMo, and I'm buzzing along, working on the novel almost every single day.

But I have a friend who is not so lucky. She's a painter, but she has not painted anything in months. This week, trying to put a fire under her, I told her we were going to eat lunch Friday, and if both of us paint on a given week, we go Dutch. If one paints and the other does not, the one who didn't paint pays for lunch. If neither of us paint, we don't get to go to lunch at all.

I had really hoped she would paint on Wednesday, her one day off this week… but she didn't. I haven't painted either, but I was hoping to paint my Christmas watercolor for my Christmas cards. I have to get it done VERY soon so that I can scan the artwork in, order cards on Vistaprint, and get them back in time to send out for Christmas.

I've also been diligently working on the costume for my friend's role in A Christmas Carol, and it should be finished this weekend. And I'm also probably going to hit 30,000 words on my novel by Saturday afternoon.

I'm no better than my poor non-painting friend, but we have an inherent difference, and it's one I've changed just recently: I am no longer willing to put off all the things I love so that I can finish all the mundane, boring have-tos of my life. I am putting my loves ahead of other crap.

My beleaguered friend is the opposite, finding all sorts of mundane crap to pile onto her work desk so that she never gets to paint the way she really wants to. So she's miserable.

Even as I keep sewing, and writing, and painting, I will keep working on my friend. And one of these days, very soon, we'll go Dutch. I can't wait until that happens!

Don't Forget NaNoWriMo--or Find Your Goal

Although I'm going through a BUNCH of unplanned stuff this year, I am also planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month (November 1-30)! And you should too!

Even if you don't write novels, sign up for it. It's FREE, and you can use the e-mails and inspirational articles from the Office of Letters and Light to use for any of your efforts--from painting to music to drawing to reading to weight loss to pretty much any goal for anything you have in mind. Just sign up, and everything comes to your e-mail… and it's more helpful than you might realize.

I have found it hard to keep going without goals, without a plan for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year. Without goals, I am unsure what to do next. With goals, I have specific tasks automatically ahead for me.

Remember, too, that we are 2 1/2 months away from the new year. Why wait until January 1 to set a goal? Why not begin that resolution soon?

My resolutions (BEFORE January 1):

1. Finish my mermaid novel.
2. Lose the weight I've needed to lose for more than a year.
3. Find a happy place with Richard's cancer treatments.
4. Sew several costumes (three planned so far--Elsa from Frozen, Queen Elizabeth I, Antebellum dress)

Not a lot, but one of these would probably keep me busy. What are YOUR resolutions before January 1?

Time to Focus

I have not been able to focus in some time.

Wow, one sentence in, and I'm already lying. OF COURSE I can focus… I can give fifteen minutes to loading the dishwasher, without losing focus. I can sweep the house (takes about 30 minutes) and only lose focus when I find a piece of trash too big to sweep up. 

I can watch a TV show for 45 minutes (that's skipping the commercials, since I rarely ever watch shows live). I can even manage to read the kids a story at night, which might run 10 minutes, or might go as long as an hour. And I can read, too, late at night, before sleeping.

But so many of the things I love DON'T happen because focusing on them for 15 minutes doesn't get me anywhere. 

WRITING: I really need a good HOUR to work on my novel. Microsoft Word has an awesome button on it, though--down at the bottom left. It looks like a black screen with white corner bars, and it's called, of all things, "Focus View." Click on it, and everything on my screen disappears except for the page I'm working on--no icons at the bottom, no distracting stuff, not even the toolbar. Just text, as if I'm reading the novel page by page in real life. But it only works if I have the TIME to focus.

PLAYING PIANO: Time is not my real enemy here, for my hands ache if I practice more than 45 minutes at a time… but it's been hard to do lately for other reasons. The hubby's been home recovering from major surgery, so he's been sleeping a lot, and when he's not sleeping, he's vegging in front of the television. And the piano gets in the way of his sleeping, AND it drowns out the television (if you don't have a piano, you may not realize how loud an instrument it is). Besides, I usually don't have time to play until late at night, when the kids are in bed and trying to sleep (or looking for any excuse not to sleep). Fitting it in while not annoying everyone is the challenge here. And this activity invites interruptions like talking on the phone. Suddenly people sit next to me, ask me questions, ring the doorbell, call, hug, and otherwise keep me from focusing on the sheet music in front of me. 

SEWING: This one is hard, for I can sew for days at a time, but I always have a ton of repairs and alterations stacked up, which I have to address before the fun sewing can begin. Right now it's altering the hubby's new suits when what I really want to do is make my Halloween costume. I'm slowly getting the alterations and repairs out of the way. Another problem is that the sewing machine is portable, and I don't have a dedicated sewing room, so I always have a big mess on my hands when I'm sewing things, and the mess makes me feel guilty and stresses me out.

PAINTING: The hardest to focus on time-wise. Set up alone can be complicated, especially if I'm working on more than one canvas at a time (I'm painting a five-canvas panorama right now). Stopping is hard, too, for paint dries, brushes might get ruined, water cups need to be dumped and refilled, etc. At least my kids know to leave it all alone--such was not the case when they were younger. 

So there they are… all my stupid excuses. I've put them all here, and now I need to get started on something despite them. Time to focus on projects, not excuses. 

Would love to know what gets in the way of your focus… what excuses you make… 

Fighting On

I'm here! It's been nearly a full year since I've posted on this page--and I'm sure all sorts of friend bloggers have assumed I've given it up for good--but I'm here.

I posted on my Not Writing Anything Anymore blog a few weeks ago, resolving to make blogging on both blogs a priority. But then life threw in the biggest of big wrenches, and I had no choice but to switch to what is more important: my husband's welfare.

My husband, on his way to run an Olympic length triathlon in Arkansas, ended up in an emergency room in Alabama with acute pancreatitis. Three weeks later, after a CT scan, tons of blood tests, and two ultrasounds, doctors concluded its cause was a 3 cm cancer tumor in the pancreas. Filled with anxiety (for the prognosis for pancreatic cancer sufferers is extremely bad), we went to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, where they determined his cancer was operable (thank God!), and where, a little over a week ago, he underwent the Whipple procedure. (It's a BIG surgery--look it up online, and you'll see how serious it is). Through his fight, he's adopted the mantra of his favorite college football team: Fight On! I've even ordered shirts and hats with the saying on them, for him, his friends, and our relatives to wear.

A week later, we were heading home from Jacksonville when the doctors called, and the news is now much more positive. The cancer was caught far earlier than it usually is, and after six months of chemotherapy, Richard will most likely live a long life without pancreatic cancer ever returning. Yay!

Our lives have been turned upside-down, though, and I found that even reading was impossible while I watched over him in the hospital. It was only when tests of the tumor were complete and we were given the great news that I could even concentrate on reading a book again. Now it's time to put my focus back on writing.

Richard was told by a friend who had beaten ovarian cancer that he had to concentrate on more than the cancer, and she told me the same--I had to have more to do than support him and rehash the cancer stories over and over. So that is what I am doing. I'm getting back to my mermaid novel, back to painting (I have accumulated several castles I want to paint), and back to playing piano. All three will soothe my soul through this, making it easier for me to soothe Richard's.

If you've read through this whole thing, thanks for visiting! Hopefully I'll have worthwhile stuff to share with you in the future!

Revisions! Revisions! REVISIONS!

I am in the midst of revising my ghost story set on Puget Sound…

No, I'm still near the beginning. And I just had a breakthrough that dictates revising will take even longer. I've decided the whole thing needs to be present tense.

THAT makes the whole thing harder. Not because the revision will take longer. It's because I will now need to go through the novel at least twice. Fully?

Why? Because I cannot possibly revise it if I'm concentrating on changing all the verb tenses. That in itself is a HUGE task. I use lots of verbs. At least one a sentence, unless it's a fragment. Even if it is a fragment.

So now, hopefully only through the next few weeks, I need to change every verb in the entire 80,000-word document.

Only then can I start really revising. And revising. And revising.

I won't gripe about it, though, not if it works. I'm sure, some day, it will work. Some day, if I keep revising, ONE of my novels will be worth publishing.

I hope.

Something is Just Not Right

You've heard the metaphors before… about the "shoe" fitting and such.

Imagine, if you will, poor Prince Charming. Start the action before the ball: He's feeling pressure to get married. Dad's overweight and old, the old man has gout and diabetes, and time is wasting. Charming needs to get married soon, and have kids soon, so that the line of rulers can continue without wrangling over succession once he gets too old to rule.

He has a vision of the right girl--not a purely physical image, for he needs more than looks if he can make it through years of marriage and still be able to stand her. He also has a fear: what if she doesn't like him back?

So he goes to the ball, his hands sweating from nerves. Most of the women just feel wrong. Some fawn over him, and he knows a month of marriage to any number of these would either give him a big fat head or make him gag. But then the image he hopes for steps into the ballroom. She's maybe a little shorter than he'd imagined, but still pretty. Her hands are graceful, and she looks so out of place and timid. She's perfect.

Two hours of absolute bliss follow. She seems to like him, they dance together, they talk together like old friends, and he somehow finds himself sharing his innermost thoughts with her. But then his world is shattered--at the first stroke of midnight, she starts hyperventilating, grabs her purse off the table next to them, and runs off.

He chases after her, but she's in far better shape, and suddenly she's gone, leaving behind a mere slipper.

And now he's stuck. He knows what his ideal is, but she's gone, and he doesn't have a clue how to find her. So he takes the slipper around, spending weeks searching the whole kingdom to find that perfect person for him. Sure, he meets all sorts of other ladies, some of them quite pretty, some of them who even sort of or almost fit the shoe. But he keeps searching, willing to keep looking because he wants the right person, the perfect fit.

So goes the search for a writer's group. There may be any number of groups in your neighborhood. You might have a next door neighbor who belongs to one. But ANY writers group won't work. They are all different, and a writers group that isn't the right fit won't do you any good.

(BTW, this discussion could represent ANY creative group, whether painting, sewing, drawing, manga lovers, etc. I once joined a sewing group, but I was the only one who was sewing clothing--everyone else was quilting. It was not a fit.)

I realized last night, as I visited a local writers group for the fourth or fifth time, that though it was a great group of people, it wasn't the right fit for me. I could attend every single meeting from here to eternity, but it would be like dating the same person week after week, knowing our relationship would not work in the long run.

What do I want in a writer's group? I'm pretty picky, so here's my list:

1. I need other serious writers to attend. By serious, I mean that they write all the time, revise what they write, develop their writing beyond short vignettes. I am perfectly happy if they are better writers than I, so long as they are writing. It's kind of like tennis. It's far more fun to play with others who are at or near your skill and commitment level than play with people who are far more or far less skilled. Mismatches are no fun for anybody (except for writers in number 2, below).

2. The writers need to be there for both themselves AND others. Some of the more serious writers are only there as a ego boost, to flaunt their writing in front of other people. These writers take criticism and questions very poorly, and are nearly always silent about other writers' works (unless they open their mouth to say something outright mean). The other writers should be there for feedback, but also be there to help other writers grow. I find that feeling my way through the writings of others makes me better, and I want other members to be just as committed.

3. The group needs to do more than clap. I've been in groups that are only encouraging. And I certainly know that many writers, especially those on the beginning of their writing journey, need encouragement most of all. I don't. I need criticism. I need honesty. I need tough love. If a piece is not good, I need the writer of it to have some clue, and to ask for help. And the others in the group should be honest, without hurting feelings.

4. The group needs to actively encourage further writing. Perhaps it's an assignment for next time. Even better, it's an individual thing--"Now that we've read scenes 1 & 2 of this play, can you bring in scene 3 next time?"--the writers need a reason to come back, some level of continuity. The activity is what matters. I don't need a social group, I need one that inspires me to write more.

5. Writers need to attend consistently. Attendance shows commitment, and it allows writers to bring in novel excerpts, submit plays in chunks, and get feedback on a whole larger work.

Remember, though, these are my stipulations. You may need something completely different. Your slipper might not resemble mine at all. And that is fine. I have only found my perfect kind of group twice, and I would still be attending if these two groups if they weren't thousands of miles away. I have hope, though, that I will find such a group closer to home. I am willing to drive if it means I can find the perfect fit for my slipper.

So I will keep looking, shoe in hand.

In Search of Writer's Group

I am in the midst of a LOVELY book right now. It's a collection of short stories by three women, called The Curiosities. And it is absolutely delightful. Below I have posted what the cover looks like.

Even more than the lovely vignettes provided by these three authors is their obvious time spent working together on their writing, reading each other's stories, offering advice, giving prompts, mentoring each other, encouraging each other's writing. The stories have little handwritten comments and drawings in the margins, capturing the sense of these works in process.

The book is well worth reading, but it makes me long for the writing groups I once had. The group I started in Independence, Kansas, which is still going strong thanks to the efforts of Cherilyn Fienen and other fantastic people. The playwrights' group north of Seattle, who were such an ideal group of intelligent writers, who were willing to ask hard questions, who managed to weed out the weaknesses in my writing in minutes, when all I could sense was that something was wrong.

Brilliant.

Only I don't have any of that now. The local writer's group is not really a critiquing group. I need some writers on a similar journey to mine. Writers who see the worth in my writing--who can grasp the kernels of truth in it--but who also see what isn't working, who can tell me where I falter, where the prose or dialogue doesn't work, who can help me be better.

Worse still, I need them in person. Online simply won't work for me. I need to see their faces, interact with them in real space, in real time. I haven't met anyone like that here yet. Painters, yes. But not writers.

So I'll keep looking. These people may be here, waiting for the opportunity to find someone just like me… and we will find each other. I know it. And we will help each other create our own collection of "curiosities."

It's Six O'Clock--Do You Know Where Your Writing Is?

I think I'm going to just make a habit of waking up early.

The whole house is sleeping, and the only noise invading drifting through the early morning is the chime of the grandfather clock every fifteen minutes. It's the most luscious sound, full of calm and promise. The perfect time for writing.

I thought today was packed, but items have mysteriously slipped off my to-do list. And I have hopes that homeschooling will soon get easier. Perhaps not this week, but soon.

So it's time to write. Right now. Write now.

I wish you the same leisure... at least an hour to write/paint/sing/listen to music/dance/or whatever suits your soul.

Absence Makes the Fingers Fearful

Halloween is the perfect time to face my fears. But what could I possibly be afraid of? What have I been most afraid of lately?

It isn't wrinkles. I have plenty of those, and they don't bother me. It isn't really any physical feature. I'm pretty content with all that, and even if I weren't, what am I supposed to do about it? Go under the knife. Please.

Courtesy of Freepik.com

I'm not afraid of teaching. I've been doing that all over my house lately, teaching my kids Latin and other stuff, working them hard, lecturing, writing lesson plans, creating projects for my kids to tackle. It's time-consuming, but still worth it.

No, what I've feared lately is writing. That thing I once loved to do passionately, but which, for a variety of reasons, I haven't done in months. I've considered it millions of times. I've even briefly felt my heart pitter patter with excitement at the thought of starting a new project. But my fear has always overcome me. I would have gone absolutely mad except I threw myself into reading with the same level of passion.

But reading can only tide me over so long. And its effectiveness has passed. I've stopped reading at least a dozen books over the last few weeks, dissatisfied with the characters, the plot development, or even the narrative voice of them. I've suddenly become a listless reader. And that can mean only one thing: Fearful or not, I need to return to my writing, or I will go off the deep end, so to speak. (You see, it's been so long since I've written that I'm using all sorts of bad cliches. AAK!)

It's fear-facing time. Time to face the scary blank white Microsoft Word screen and type something into it. Time to make blogging, playwriting, noveling, and poetry writing one of my four big priorities (FINALLY it will take precedence over "cleaning"!) Time to venture into the web-covered old haunted house that was my writing life. Time to sweep out the cobwebs, the spiders, the red-eyed rats, and clean up the place so that I can fill its walls with some new artwork.

Time to write, write, write every day. Without fail.

And no more cliches! (Okay, maybe a couple. I'm sure you'll see them here and there when you come back.)

Itchy

I woke with an edge inside me this morning, a call to do something more today. It's a lovely call, really, a voice in my brain bent on creating.

Will I listen? I haven't listened to the call much of late. I've filled my world with dishes, trips to the store, paper sorting, and other inane activities. It's as if I wish the voice to just go away, to leave me alone in mundane world and go off to call to somebody else. 

That is what separates an artist from one who is not. I write this, not to chastise you, but to goad myself into action. I'm not a writer if I don't write. I'm not a painter if I don't paint. I'm not a pianist if I don't play. Artists create. If they don't, they aren't artists.

I recently met an painter who, even at a young age, was compelled to paint. Any chance he got, with any medium at hand, on any surface, if given any free time. He listened to that urgent voice early on. And he painted, and painted, and painted. And he's still listening, still heeding, still painting. 

I've been going at this all wrong all my life. I've been locking this voice in a closet, letting it out only when I have a bunch of free time, when all my chores are done (which is not often). I've said I will write/paint/dance/sing/go to the ball only if I get all my work done. I've been my own evil stepmother.

That ends today. Permanently. I'm kicking my evil stepmother to the curb. I'm getting what I have to do done, but the rest of the time is mine. To paint. To create. To play. To turn my ideas into tangible, beautiful reality. I will not die regretting all things I never got around to creating. I am a Maker (as Orson Scott Card would term it), and it's about damned time I made something.

I have 14 hours until bedtime. Plenty of time to make something. 

What's Your Soundtrack?

I brought my Zumba cd's to camp last week. I run an art camp, and the schedule gives the kids a half hour between art classes--for snack. My experience in the public school system means I know that 30 minutes is WAY too long. The kids are going to eat their snacks in about five minutes, and the rest of the time they will be running around, falling and hurting themselves, stealing each other's hats, etc.

So I came prepared. The first time I turned on the music, only seven kids danced with me. The next day, pretty much EVERYBODY did (except for a few hold-outs who insisted on running around, falling and hurting themselves, and stealing each other's hats, etc.). Nearly everybody wanted to join in, to move around the room to a fun song.

We use music to exercise all the time. We use it in the car, sometimes singing at the top of our lungs. We have it at parties, watch it in concerts, and infuse it into several finite parts of our lives. We hum songs when we don't have any playing.

But what are the songs of our lives? We had a wedding song, if we got married. We might have even shared a song with each person we dated. And then hated that song when we broke up. But what songs determine how we think? What songs run through us and fit the way we walk, the way we interact with the world around us?

Here are some songs on my personal soundtrack:

Wake-up song: "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" from Oklahoma
Song to sing with kids: "La-La-La-La-La-La-La" from Nightmare before Christmas
Song to vacuum to: "Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge (great for tango dancing, too--or tango vacuuming)
Song to sing when all alone: "Gethsemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar or "Wishing You were Somehow Here Again" from Phantom of the Opera (actually, I have LOTS of songs I like to sing along--all of them kind of eerie--love the minor key)
Song to sing in the car with the windows down: "Love Shack"
Song for writing a gripping climax: "Night on Bald Mountain"
Song for writing a romantic climax: "Seduces Me"
Song for exercising: "Rocky Theme"--or "Flashdance" or "Faith" or any Irish dance music (I know, weird, right?)

I'm still toying with the idea of writing a book with an accompanying playlist--each chapter gets a song to go with it, and you can choose to listen to the song as you read the chapter. It would mean writing some rather short chapters, but it would be an adventure trying to get it right.

I don't yet have a theme song for my life. Do you? What music would you have as your soundtrack?

Shadows

Shadows follow me
Gliding with soft whispers
Along the walls

I hear their calling
When they reach out
But I pull back

I float through the months
Fearing to touch
What I do not understand

But
Then
I
Choose
To
Embrace
Shadow

And the world opens to me
As I open to it
To the shadow of it
Of me

I see everything
Vividly
And it is more beautiful
Than I imagined.