Many thanks to Angie for her invitation to talk about what inspires my writing.

Short answer: the magic of words.

 I began reading early, and early discovered the power of words to transport me, to show me the world in new ways, to take me to places unknown. I didn't begin churning out stories as a kid, as many seem to do. I absorbed and observed. I read, not just for the stories, but for the magic of the words themselves.

I've always read slowly. To me, a joy of reading is in the rhythm and color of beautifully constructed sentences, of images that startle me with their clarity, that cause me to read a sentence or paragraph over again just to immerse myself in it. I always will stop to smell the roses.

My early years as the son of a Presbyterian minister whose father had been a missionary to Korea, where my father was born, exposed me to a world of music, art, and spirituality. I played piano, and later, guitar and other folk instruments. I learned the power of art in its many forms to move people. And I learned, as I grew through school, that I had a talent with words.

For a brief time, I taught high school English, and my greatest reward (maybe the only one) came from seeing my kids awaken to their own power with words. I assigned controversial topics for essays and drew stories out of them. Convince me, I said. Make me believe.

Somewhere along the way, in college (isn't that where it always happens?) I began to question dogma.  New possibilities, worlds beyond worlds, unseen forces teased me to look, to wonder.

I wrote songs. Love songs. Songs of social protest. I used the power of words to influence, to move, and to entertain. I wrote poetry, unstudied, free, spontaneous, and the world around me became a live canvas from which to draw.

I'm moved to write because I can. Because the world is a huge, fascinating, terrifying place. A place of ecstasy and sorrow, of heroism and cowardice, of generosity and love and cold, hard malice.  And I've come to feel that we who write have a power to inspire the better aspects of our humanity while seeing all the colors and shying from none. We can entertain. We can offer distraction from pain. We can paint with words. We can show the strength of love in the unlikeliest circumstances.

If, with my use of words, I can transport a reader to a new place, make her look up from the page in an "oh, wow" moment, or cringe in horror, or laugh, or cry, then I've worked a bit of magic.

The pen may well be mightier than the sword. In good hands, it's a magician's wand.

Writer, Do Your Work

Just write. Summer's over, I told myself. Get back in that saddle. Back in the literary social network groove. Engage, crit, comment. Review agents to query. Wait. Go back and look at that query again first. Maybe farther back, to the synopsis. (Or maybe just move on.) But do your work.

So I pulled out an old short I started months ago and made myself sit my ass in the chair and keep going, and I added about 700 words in an afternoon of writing. And I revised my last post here. I did write. Some. Didn't get back to that query yet, though.

Needing to re-engage in the aforementioned social network, I started again reading queries on the wonderful Agent Query Connect site. Most I couldn't comment on. If you don't have anything nice to say… Why oh why do new members (not all, mind you) come on board, say they've lurked and read and are so nervous about putting their work out there (who isn't?), and then prove in their first lines that they haven't done even the most basic research on query writing? There are SO many available resources and guides, and yeah, they often disagree and differ, but there are so many basics, it's amazing that these writers jump into what is a professional place only to prove their complete lack of professionalism.  

I have ranted about this onsite, and plenty of members added their comments. We want to be helpful, supportive, and AQC is all that and more. But what can you say to someone whose opener, the first line a prospective agent will see, is a run-on sentence? A hypothetical question that begs a sarcastic answer? A complete non-hook statement of theme. Telling what the book is about rather that showing enough of the main character to make a reader care and enough conflict to make said reader want to read more?

Querying rules? Discussions aplenty on them-- There are none. They're made to be broken. Stay in the mold and be mediocre. All true (usually.) But as with the craft of writing itself, first you have to know the rules, divergent as they are. Know the accepted conventions. Then make the piece your own, in your voice, in the voice of the novel. Be bold, be original.

 Does the hook have to open the query, or the genre/word count? I'm of the hook-first school, but many successful authors are not, and since I'm not among that group, I have no authority. But the importance of the first line comes home when you are reading through queries as they come in by email. By far the largest number lose me in the first line. If I were an agent, that's an instant rejection. Sometimes it's the subject. I'm not a huge YA reader, and while I was a horror movie freak as a kid, vampires to me are the Dracula type, not Edward Cullen. If I see one more opening with a teen werewolf, fallen angel, or demon, grab the barf bag. That said, grab me with a strong lead (lede) and I'll follow you anywhere. But if I see the writing itself is bad grammatically, why read on? I don't.

Pay attention to your craft, writers. Every phase of it is craft. Craft can and must be learned, or you can never be taken seriously. Even if you do learn the craft, the rough truth is you still may not be. But if you can't take the time to learn, to self-edit, to polish, there isn't much to offer you in the way of guidance. I'm no expert. We're all always still learning. Do your work. It will pay off.

Writing the Bronc

It's been a long and brutal winter, a cold, wet spring, a stifling summer, and writing was forced to the back seat. February it turns out, proved not to be the most difficult month. March brought not only more bleak cold but an unwelcome diagnosis for my partner. A hell of a birthday present for him. Consultations and decisions followed, and time moved on. It always does.

Then the rains came. Days, weeks of it. Cold rain, flooding fields until long after the sowing season. Stuck indoors, I completed another complete revision of The Guardian at the Gateway, my sidekick for longer than many marriages. At last, a few days of perfect Spring weather allowed planting of patio pots and some weeding of the bountiful crop of weeds the rains had encouraged. But before all that could be finished, swamp-like heat settled in, precluding any further outdoor activity except sitting outdoors of an evening with adult beverages, pretending that it was just lovely here on the bayou.

Meanwhile, the day job picked up ridiculously (a good thing, considering the state of real estate today) as the regimen of daily treatments proceeded for my partner, and my writing and critiquing stalled out. I haven't restarted querying since my last two revisions. I've become less confident, or more unsure, since much of my reading during this time has been the constant chatter on the Internet about the rapidly changing world of publishing. With the growing importance of e-books, e-readers (I don't have one—yet), and e-publishing, the traditional routes are being challenged, new ones being explored and developed, and fewer and fewer traditional publishers are willing to take on any but already-known authors or personalities. We unknowns must consider self-pubbing, small independent houses, going digital and going it virtually (pun intended) alone. One must dive into social media and develop their own fanbase. Blog. Tweet. Network.

I suck at it. Key factor: consistency. Every six months or so? I don't think so.

Here's the thing. I see people I "know" from writers' sites who've landed an agent (or not) almost frantically blogging and tweeting about their blog posts to drive others to friend (when did friend become a verb?) or follow them. Some are quite good, but now there are a gazillion blogging writers, agents, and other literary types all talking about the same things with slightly different angles or takes. Who could possibly read them all, get their own done, and still find the time to write? Obviously some do. But not me. At least not this Winter-Spring-Summer. Not yet.

So I question whether I really want what the writing life entails these days. No longer can a writer rely on their agent and publisher to be the primary marketer of their work, if they want it out there. Writers have always had a responsibility to promote their own work. Now they must become the primary person doing that, devoting countless hours to blogging, guest blogging, anything to build interest in them as writers and in their work, in their unique voice. Be funny. Be relevant. Be interesting. Be different. And, oh yeah, be writing that next novel. No one wants a writer who isn't writing.

Well, what fun would it all be without challenge? Do I want to have to do all that? Make myself heard above the chatter?  Do I just want to write, to express myself, to tell stories, draw images, move hearts and minds? Or do I want to be a writer? Am I up to the job? Cowboy up, bucko.

How do you ride the bronc?

Surviving February

Another month gone by, sliding into and past midwinter, and what a joy. The storm blew in, stayed a couple days, and created a deadly fairyland of ice-covered everything. After the power went out, and the heat, with all the candles lit, we sat in the quiet and listened to the craaack of huge branches, weighted down with ice, falling into yards, houses, and the streets. A house without heat, lit by candles, may look oh so romantic in a period English drawing room drama, but it's a lot less so. Still, we bundled and sat by the fireless fireplace and read. Luckily, we only had one night to imagine always living that way. Many are still without power, their homes getting colder and colder.

But, unable to stay home, disconnected from the world and freezing, we went to a local coffee house, which was full with others plugging in and escaping their own freezing homes. Quite convivial, actually, and not a bad way to spend the day. After checking my work and personal e-mail, I pulled my manuscript out of the cloud and resumed this edit. (Note previous posts about the never-ending process.) This one is going much more slowly than the last, mainly because of the astute eye and ear of a fellow writer who steered me to looking at the writing with both more distance and a sharper scalpel. In my cutting away anything that didn't drive the story forward, I'd sacrificed some motivation that remained in my head not on the page. We do need to know what's driving our characters, don't we? And knowing it, let the reader in on it as well. In short, the reader needs to care about the characters and understand them as much and as well as we do. But then the other side of that blade edge is the paring away of superfluous details, where, in our attempting to put the reader in the scene, we've felt it necessary to show every item on the breakfast plate. So, I've gone over the ever-important first paragraph, first page, first chapter, first three or four chapters, up to 50 pages (these being the order of importance in grabbing and holding the reader) and gone over them again. I had gone farther, but kept coming back and finding more honing needed.

So, to start this, in my opinion, dreariest, most difficult month of the year (yeah, Valentine's Day. Right), I decided to throw my first paragraph into an annual contest held by Nathan Bransford, an author, blogger, and, until recently, a literary agent at a top agency. He maintains a great blog full of incredibly useful information for writers about writing and about the publishing industry, and he has a huge following. Over 1,500 writers submitted their first paragraphs, so I thought my chances of being noticed were slim at best, but why not. Just before the storm hit, he posted his selection of finalists (the winner to be selected by vote by readers of his blog.) No, I wasn't a finalist. He chose 6 for that honor. But my paragraph was selected as one of the 11 honorable mentions. Okay, that's not going to buy me anything or even land me an agent or get me closer to selling this baby, but it sure as hell is nice to get a nod of validation from someone whose livelihood was reading queries and first paragraphs. Out of 1,500 first paragraphs. It helped get me through the storm. And, you know, they say writing is a lonely job, but I have to say that there are others out there who, in this age of electronic networking, make it far less lonely. I freely, humbly, and with gratitude, admit that my paragraph would not have been there without some really good collaborative reading and suggestions. Huge thanks to those eyes and ears (and the humans they belong to) for their comradeship and generosity.

Sometime it would fun to go back and count, through the many many revisions, how many different "first paragraphs" this story has had. It's a big number, I know. But now, while business is slow and winter is settled in, it's time to move forward, not back, with purpose. The ice outside is metling now, and the late afternoon sun is creating brilliant, dripping diamonds lining all the branches and shrubs, and I have a manuscript to get through, again. But hey, someone really cool thought my writing was worth a mention. I want to live up to that.

For anyone who cares to read that paragraph, by the way, look here:

Another Year: Moving On

Another month gone, and with it, another year. So do we pause to look back or to look forward, or just pause? (With a month between posts, pausing doesn't seem to be one of my major challenges.)

I look at the past year the way I always hope to look back at an airplane flight, that is, uneventful in a good way. We made it through what has not been the best of times for anyone relatively unscathed. We had no highlights, no trips, no vacations, but we also had no traumas, no tragedies, and all the storms that hit all around us even had the good grace to pretty much pass us by. My garden flourished and it was sweet to watch it grow (never mind the forest of weeds.)

I seem to have been on hiatus from the pursuit of the professional writing life, although not entirely. As reported, I sent out a few queries, gathered an equal number of rejections, and returned to hone the manuscript again. I said all that before. Yet, it is amazing me how going through again is showing me so many places where I read what I thought was polished and shake my head. Perhaps my destiny in this life is not to be a published author, but a constant craft-worker and mentor, reader for other writers. I find as much satisfaction helping other writers as I do in my own work. Or could it be that it's just easier? I do know I will go through the manuscript to the end, again, and then I'll send out more queries, and more. But I also know that I might never see this picked up, and that's okay, too. I'll work on something else, or not.

In the writers' community of a particular website, a question was raised about throwing in the towel--does anyone ever feel that way. Of course there were many variations on the fairly consistent answer, which is "NO, NEVER." Or "Well, I feel like it, sometimes, of course, but never could." "I'm obsessed." "I can't NOT write." Funny, but throwing in the towel, giving up, sounds to me like there's a fight involved that one might give up on. A fight to what? Get published? (Yes, for many.) To just keep writing? (Yes, for most, in the face of rejection.) Maybe I'm lacking a fighting gene, but I just don't feel that. I write because I like to, just as I read because I like to. It's a beautiful craft. Sometimes it's even art. I would paint, if I could, or compose a choral symphony. But I write, and while I've done it my entire life, and continue to do it, I don't feel I MUST, or I HAVE to. I'm not compelled (though I do take it seriously, approach it as a professional, and would be ready to meet the deadlines and commitments, should the project find a home with someone who believes in it as I do.) I can waste hours happily on TV, the Internet. And then I write. Give up? When swimming, if I stop to float on my back and look up and the clouds or stars, am I giving up on swimming? I'll turn over and do more laps, just to feel the surge, the body mechanics of the breast stroke. Or, wait, have I then given up on floating to watch the sky? No, no giving up. But no fighting, either. No towel to throw in. Just do. (Thank you, Yoda.)

Oh, and Happy New Year.

About Dinosaurs and Why We Write

A month today since my last entry. I hear many writers say they write because they must, because they can't NOT write. I don't have that problem, obviously. I write because I love to write. I love to put words together for many reasons, none of which have to do with a compulsion to write.

I like to tell stories. I like to paint pictures with words, pictures that make someone else feel a scene as I intend. I like to create (or recreate) emotions. And all that is so amazingly banal. Every writer wants those basics. Craft. No, I write because I like to influence, change or open minds, find commonality. I question and want to shake fixed beliefs and systems and get others to question, or see differently.

I write because I want to make a difference. I admit it. I want to influence people, not to think like I think--that may change from day to day--but to think, period. Not to accept anything as truth because someone has said it is. Yes, that would include priests, politicians, and ministers, imams, and rabbis (and my own father was a minister.) And that brings me to dinosaurs.

I live within driving distance of The Creation Museum. Someday I will go see it, when I think I can keep a straight face, because my experience with the people who might frequent the place is that they often have little sense of humor. But come on, folks. Given the abundance of scientific data, how can these people actually believe that dinosaurs and humans (homo sapiens, of course, since there can't have been any other types of humanoid bipeds in earth's history) existed side by side? Did Noah just forget to take them on the ark? Or did he simply, defiantly disobey God's direct command? Or, wait...might there not have been dinosaurs on the planet at the time of the flood?

It was in the paper today that the creator of the Creation Museum is going to build a life-sized replica of the ark. I wonder where he got the plans and specs? I mean, of course, other than the Biblical cubits of length, breadth, etc. Been a while since I've looked at the specs. But damn, it's going to be tight for the brontosauruses.

And yet, as the military's report on Don't Ask Don't Tell has finally been released, saying what most knew it would say, one man refuses to listen, and he is in a position to allow the change that will happen to move forward. No, he says. It doesn't matter what the people think, what the soldiers think (except those who agree with him), this is wrong because, because, because he believes it is.

Dinosaurs do live among us. I stand corrected.

Now, I don't want my blog to be about politics. I want it to be fun and interesting. But I realize that I don't necessarily agree with the mogul who said, to paraphrase, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." I don't want to preach or be preached to. I don't want to write polemics. And yet, I do want to influence. I admit it. Pry minds open. Offer questions. Question every assumption. I believe that people with talent to write should use it for the betterment of this small world. Sure, mysteries are great, and comedies, and horror stories, and romance, and dystopian literary journeys into a bleak future. Entertainment for the sake of entertainment is pure wonder and joy. I'm all for it. But between the jokes and the twists and the unique turns of phrase, we need to speak out.

Where are we going, when all movement stops while we each obstruct the other? We'll never all agree. How boring would that be? But must we fight? Must we live in fear? Do we tell stories only to distract? To allay the fear? Or do we look for some truths? Not the ones fed to us. Imagine no religion, John Lennon said. Imagine. Imagine all the people...  Well, we all know. I think that's why I write.

Why do you?

Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?

I have absolutely no idea. Go ask Alice.

But I can tell you why a garden is.

It was a hideously hot and humid summer here in the Midwest, and didn't we let our gardens languish and the weeds grew out of control? Oh, the area immediately visible from the deck where, of an evening, we sit and sip and enjoy the small, controlled back yard stayed well maintained and lush. But the areas not immediately visible (to us..the hell with the neighbors) began, by summer's end, to look as though no one lived in the house. The once beautiful clumps of black-eyed Susan and hardy ageratum spread their mats of roots and choked out most everything else. The walkway disappeared as the overgrowth flopped over. But it couldn't be left that way going into winter, or spring would be a disaster. So we go back to what was once a clean slate and begin, foot by foot, day by day, to dig up the intruders, throw away the invaders, carry huge clumps of matted soil to the curb for pickup. Then there's the trimming back of shrubs, some now, some that wait until spring. And, when the beds are cleaned up and the perennials cut back, we remember the ones that were too crowded and cramped and needed digging up and dividing, so we dig up and split them, and replant them in new places. And, while the back aches, and there's more, still, to do, there's satisfaction in the doing, of seeing things that didn't work in one place, that were dug up and moved years ago, thriving now, creating structure and bones. And being able to see how pieces that were out of place are now filling in a space that needed them. Oh, and the immense pleasure of giving the heave-ho to what was once beautiful, but no longer belonged in the total picture.

So it is with a manuscript in progress--and I've come to believe, having "finished" my novel several times, only to go back, when I (or another pair of eyes) step back and see it as a whole, what is working and what isn't, that every manuscript is a work in progress. At least until a publisher says it's done, or we give up, shelve it, and move on. As "they" say, writing is rewriting. No garden is static. If left alone, it takes on its own dynamic, reverting to what nature prefers. But we tease it, pluck it, move one thing here, remove one there, and when it looks just right, we sit back and enjoy it. Until we see that this shrub would do better over there with more sun, and that one is going to get too big for where it is, so will be better moved to the back. Oh, and what was back there will get more water and flourish in the space the other moved from. Editing can be like pruning a shrub, getting rid of extraneous words, words with the wrong tone, unnecessary phrases. But the real rewriting, revising (re-vision-ing) comes with digging up the huge clumps that, while lovely at first, no longer fit or belong, taking the scene that broke up another scene and moving it later, or earlier, combining it with another, and stepping back to see the shape as the elements relate to each other.

A garden is never finished. Even if it has periods where it can be just tended, eventually things will outgrow their space or die, and there are always new temptations to include. Books will, at some point, be finished, whether by publisher's decree or banishment. Another will be begun, and the process begins again. A different structure, or a variation. A new bed to plant. A new story to tell. And then the digging, moving, replanting, and pruning that goes into telling it.