Where I've been 

It's been a long, long time since I've been on here.  I've been recuperating.  Not from an illness, but from just too, too much.  Last March I had just finished putting this book together for the Writers' Guild.  It is a compilation of our best stories and poetry from the Greater Canton Writer's Guild and the Canton Poetry Society.  That's right - the Canton Poetry Society merged with the Guild.  My husband broke his leg in February - and was housebound - no - bed bound (and we live in a two-story) for three months.  Picture me going up and down those stairs about 25 times a day.  And all summer and fall I was incessantly working on my newest hobby, crocheting.  I've a lot of afghans and stuff now.  Pictures will come later - count on it...

Now back to the book.  This is available on Amazon.  If you can't find it by title, just put my name on the search bar.  My sister in law said she found it that way.  I did the cover art work and my friend and Guild V-P did the interior images.  This was a learn-as-I went kind of thing since the original person who was supposed to have done this (and more technological) basically put this in my lap.  That's all I'm going to say about that.  I took a deep breath and kept calm with this daunting task.  Now I've got the Guild it's own account with Create Space, an Amazon Company that does print on demand.

I have two poems and a short story in this book.  I can share a portion of the story here.  It's called
                                                                 Dying for Laughs.

           The door was ajar and it creaked open when Stewart pushed on it. This was the last place he wanted to be. The request to come back as a guest lecturer was politely phrased by the committee, but held the threatening undertones of a command. Dread now filled him with every reluctant step as he heard the sound of his feet echoing and bouncing off the walls all the way down the dimly lit corridor of the old school building.  An ancient service elevator door stood open at the other end with its interior light flickering, looking more like a yawning mouth ready to consume him.  He hated being summoned like this. He hated this place. As he walked down the long silent hallway to the meeting room, Stewart felt like a school boy being called to the principal’s office. But this time he felt, in the pit of his stomach, the consequences were dire. With his footsteps echoing down the hallway in the almost deserted building, Stewart stopped by the water fountain to get a drink.  He readjusted his tie and took a deep breath. The truth was, he had forgotten about this meeting until about two hours ago. The members of the small, long-suffering writers’ group were waiting for him to give a presentation and his mind was blank. He could improvise, yes, that is what he would do.  He did that all the time at the comedy clubs where he had his gigs. He was an up-and-coming comedian. Everyone loved him. “I’ll have them eating out of my hands before this is over”, he thought.

Taking a deep breath, Stewart opened the door to find a half-filled room. There they were, the three witches, he dubbed them, huddled around the podium, whispering.  Miranda saw him enter the room and pasting on a smile, she came up to greet him.

            “Stewart! It’s good to see you – it’s been a long time.” She pursed her lips and gave him a brief smile, along with a derisive once-over, noting the beading perspiration on his forehead. He held out his hand and she looked down on it, refraining from touching him.  “Bitch” he thought.

            “We’ve missed you, Stewart.” Rowena chimed in, in her sing-song voice.  Her overly-long fingernails dug into his arms as she grabbed him for a bear hug.

“Please be seated.” Astrid was stone-faced; she raised her eyebrows as in a question clearly trying to figure out why she hadn’t seen him at all during her presidency at The Club.

            As he listened to his introduction, Stewart glanced up at the three women sitting across from him at the other end of the table. All three in a row. He caught their eyes and they smiled at him simultaneously. Forced little smiles showing no teeth. His stomach fell and his eye twitched. He walked nervously to the front of the room and scanned the small turnout. There were some new faces and they all had pens poised in hand to take notes. Uh-oh. Stewart hoped he had note-worthy advice, but did what he did best: he rambled on about nothing, throwing some jokes from his last routine into the mix. They all smiled politely, except for Rowena, who cackled when she laughed. The rest of his audience, about seven of them, sat there frowning, unimpressed. No one had taken any notes. Stewart rambled for fifteen minutes and ended his talk. There was a small, pathetic smattering of polite applause. The room went silent. Astrid stood, and made a point to check the time on her watch. She looked around the room and sighed.                                                                                                                 

            “Are there any questions for Stewart?” Someone in the back of the room snickered.  Astrid turned to Stewart and asked him to sit down while thanking the members for attending his very brief talk.  Stewart hung his head in embarrassment. He was certain he was going to get a lecture.  The polite smiles stayed on Astrid and Miranda’s faces until the room emptied. Rowena blocked the door saying goodbye to the last few people. The door closed with a thud. Stewart found himself surrounded.

            “Fifteen minutes? What was that?” Astrid poked her index finger into Stewart’s chest. Stewart watched her sharp red nails pecking him. In and out. He backed into the closed door and the women followed each jabbing him with their fingers. Astrid looked at Stewart in disgust. “Did you prepare for this meeting at all?” 

He whimpered.  “Hey, I’ve been busy – ouch! You know how it is – work, kids – and I’ve had a lot of gigs – watch it, you’re drawing blood!” Astrid raised her eyebrows in response.

            “Oh really?” Sarcasm dripped from her. Stewart broke out into a cold sweat. Rowena glared at him.

            “Oh Stewart, this was such a disappointment. And to think we gave you your start. Look at you – You’ve been on Oprah! Tell me, did you prepare for that?” Miranda, still pissed, poked him, just to see him squirm. She narrowed her eyes.

            “So you’re telling us you do your best work on a stage? You like a big audience, don’t you? Well, I’ve got news for you: we’re all busy; Stewart, but I know how it is.  LIFE just gets in the way, doesn’t it?” She poked him again and gave him that little smirk he always despised. She grabbed his tie and gave it a tug, drawing it closer around his neck.  She got in his face and hissed “Maybe that’s something we can fix for you, huh?”

            “You’re moving up in the world. Stewart. And we’re proud of you.” There was a furrow in Rowena’s brow and voice as she stared at Stewart. “But you need to remember where you came from”.

            “Of course I do!” Stewart’s voice was shrill.  He cleared his throat and loosened his tie. Looking at Rowena, he realized he had misjudged these women’s intentions. This meeting was not a random request. His heart sped up.

            “I’ll be at the next meeting, I promise” he squeaked out as the women backed away. Astrid threw her arms up in disgust. “Let him go – he won’t get far!”  They all knew, especially Stewart that he was lying. He saw it in their eyes as he backed out of the room, heart pounding in his ears. Astrid waved her arms again and the door shut violently in his face. He turned and ran down the endless hallway. 

With the door shut, the three women looked at each other. They shook their heads and silently agreed. Astrid went to her valise and retrieved the ancient pen she kept in a locked case. Rowena produced the inkwell that she kept in her possession. The pen and the inkwell were given to Miranda who opened her hands and a worn membership book instantly appeared.

            “Write him out.” Was the simple command from Astrid.  Miranda sat down at the table.

“He thinks he’s a comedian, so his exit should be funny, right?” Miranda smiled at the others. Laughing softly, the three women sat down and put their heads together… 

MUSE

March's column for The Greater Canton Writers’ Guild Newsletter

Content can be contentious

I drive my husband batty when I “eyeball” things. I trust my eyes, but he trusts his yardstick more. Our eyes can deceive us, no matter how we feel about something. Thirty-four inches is not a yard no matter how I feel about it, or how it looks at a distance.  This is a unit of measure. We all use it. Architects, builders, designers, mechanics, engineers, cooks and artists. This list could go on. As writers we use the dictionary (or dictionary.com), and grammar rules. Editors and publishers use another unit of measure upon which they base their decisions.  A standard is a unit of measure, however much they vary from publisher to publisher. They have a bar by which all submissions must reach in order to be considered for publication by them. Depending upon publication (and their readership), some standards are higher while others are much lower.  And for many writers there is an emotional attachment to our work that keeps us from seeing clearly any necessary corrections we need to make in order to make our work commercially appealing in order to sell it.  And selling it will get our work into more hands. 

            We cannot base the rightness or wrongness of our writing based upon how we feel about it, for we all feel differently. Some writers use content to shock their readers for attention.  When an overuse of expletives is used, the reader’s focus unintentionally shifts to the words used rather than the story line.

Not all words are created equal

            Words have the power to lift us up, comfort us, and give hope and encouragement.  They also have the power to tear us down.  As writers, we want our words to reach as many people as possible and in order to do that, we need to appeal to as large an audience as possible.  What market and what audience, you ask?  First one must determine who their audience is, then write accordingly.  For example, if you are submitting to a family, educational or public service type publication, one wouldn’t want to write erotica, would you?  To do so would just be asking for rejection.  One needs to be conscious of the words one uses.  Writers can write about almost anything to fit in any genre simply by changing the words they use in their writing.  How’s that for a fluid medium?

 

No explanation needed

                                                                   Muse

                                                 January 2015 column for the 
                                                Greater Canton Writers' Guild


     I guess I'm just going to "go on" about some thoughts I've been having lately.  My dad wasn't artistic in the least - and he had no clue as to what was "good art".  And I've a whole rant on the nail on chalkboard shudder I experience when I hear people say "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like". 

    All that said, there was one thing that he always said that made sense.  It was "if a painting needs a whole book written about it in order to explain it, it's not art".  I get that.  Paintings, sculpture, and any other piece of artwork should be able to stand alone without explanation.  Nothing needs said or explained for the viewer to appreciate the beauty before them.  And the same can be said for our writing.  I understand the need to explain ourselves, but shouldn't our writing stand on its' own?  We deal in words – and that’s all any writer needs.  And if there's something ambiguous about what we've written, we either need to be more concise or we just need to let the reader use their imagination over what we could possibly have meant.  Some writers have actually killed their story with over explanation.  The readers’ imaginations are a tool we often forget about when we write.  Your writing should end climatically with a BOOM, not anticlimactically with an overabundance of explanation.  I hate that.

Paperholics

Paperholics

I am drowning in a sea of paper, the edges swim around me like sharks in water.  Sometimes the sheer numbers of papers I live with overwhelm me – like the stack of books, notebooks, and sketchbooks

that loiter on every flat surface and teeters precariously on the footstool beside my bed.  I am a self-confessed paperholic; I love paper in all its forms. 

During a conversation with a fellow artist/writer, she confessed that she was a near-hoarder in the amount of “stuff” she had accumulated and was not looking forward to packing for a move overseas. That started me thinking about the massive quantities of books, notebooks, journals and sketchbooks that I live with.  When I decided to count only the books in my possession, I came to a startling realization: there are books in every single room of my home.  There are Celtic warriors in the hallway and mostly romance in my bedroom. And although I counted only 75 books in my room, I just know that some of those scoundrels crept further under the bed when I went looking for them. I have to hide the newer books around here for obvious reasons…

I did not count the books in storage – nor did I count the five boxes of Guild books I’m currently holding.  Neither did I count the textbooks that are tucked away in closets or wedged under dressers.  Or the myriad of sketchbooks and half-filled notebooks, or magazines and art instruction booklets that lay around.  I did count 781 hard-back books. (I am a book snob. If I purchase a book, it is going to be in hardback). Yet despite that number, I know where each book is lovingly kept.  I know the people that reside within each one and have committed their stories to memory.

The good news is that not all the books are mine: the bad news is that I may have passed the hoarding gene on to my two boys. Jordan, my oldest, has all the history, political science and books of wars and weaponry. Ryan, my youngest, has most of the science fiction and fantasy books. Jordan gets his passion for history from my father the history teacher, and Ryan, my engineering major, is a study in contrasts.  While he is well-grounded in math and the sciences, his head is in the clouds during his down-time with science fiction and fantasy novels.

The smell of paper is like catnip to me and many times I have found myself giddy, standing in the middle of a stationery aisle just taking in all that beautiful paper.  The last thing I touch at night is paper, whether it is my need to write, doodle, or read, that compulsion has developed slowly over the years.  That is also the reason I have a towering stack of books, and writing and drawing paraphernalia by my bedside. Artistically speaking, nothing excites me more than the blank pages of a notebook, sketchbook, or a blank canvas.  They scream of new beginnings and endless possibilities.

And while I have kept up with technology in other areas of my life, I will never be reading from a hand held device.  I understand that in the truest sense of the word, writers will write anywhere with any media available.  Writers are more cerebral; their sole medium is words and as such, words matter more than form or format.  Artists are both visual and textural.  So as both an artist and writer that puts me and others like me somewhere in the middle. I even kept my first library card. It was made from orange oak tag and had a metal code bar inserted on the front of it.  Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still smell on that library card the particular scent of unopened books and the dust of kings that linger in the still air of libraries. 

I will use the computer and all its resources available to write, but I believe reading should be a sensory experience.  I want to feel the book in my hands and turn the pages myself.  I want to hear the sound of the pages as they turn.  Kindle?  To me that’s firewood. 

The boxes in which we put ourselves

MUSE

September's  column for The Greater Canton Writers’ Guild Newsletter

The boxes in which we put ourselves

     First time writers are always told, “write what you know” and they dive into their pool of knowledge head first, taking their first tentative strokes with their pens.  But after a few years and many laps of swimming in that subject matter, writers  may feel the need to expand.  To be brave, writers must get out of the pool and take a dive into the ocean.  

 

Explore new topics, learn new things. 

     The world of writing is vast and I find that exciting – and there’s no need to stay on the same topic all the time. To be honest, your readers might be bored hearing the same topic all the time.  Understandably, writers may discover they have a tendency to stay within certain comfort zones.  But it is always good to take a step out of what we so often  find ourselves  writing.   Learn something new and play with ideas – push them around, see how far they’ll stretch.  We do need to keep in mind that there is,a difference between having a re-current theme and redundancy.

 

     Writers may wish to ask themselves what they have learned as a writer this past year – your writing needs to grow right along with you.  If  your writing doesn't grow, if it stays the same, it becomes stale. Make a promise to yourself to take a chance or two with your writing style and subject matter, explore and reach out into new horizons.  Starting something new - topic, idea or story line - is exciting and keeping to what you’ve done before is limiting. Take a chance. Who knows where you’ll go.

 

Who is your Audience?

MUSE

August's column for The Greater Canton Writers’ Guild Newsletter

          Writers write for many reasons, all of them valid.  And those writings – what we produce – and the words we use to express our thoughts and ideas -are a measure of ourselves.  They tell the world who we are and what lies within our minds and hearts. 

          Many times the act of writing is therapeutic: it exorcises the demons that plague us. That’s personal. That’s also between the writer and his therapist.  There’s’ something called too much information that your readers don’t need to know.

          When we write for publication, it is necessary to connect with your readers and in order to do that, we need to know who our targeted audience is. Shared experiences and common interests are a way to do this.  When you write about nature, you would want to share it with someone who loves the outdoors – and you would submit it to a nature magazine.

          A few years ago I attended a poetry writing workshop taught by Jeff Gundy. One of the women in the class asked him if she was writing for herself, why would she need to observe form, punctuation and the like since it would seem that “anything goes”.  His response was perfect.  He said that “the minute you give your work to someone to look at, asking for their time and opinion, you are immediately then bound by the rules of grammar and composition.”  Meaning that if you write for yourself (or therapy), chances are you should probably keep it to yourself. But go ahead and rant on paper. Then burn it – or in my case, hit delete.

          Writers face rejection enough without submitting their work to the wrong audience. Knowing our audience when we submit (and I’m not talking about writing for the judges) makes a big difference in whether our writing is accepted or rejected.

Pottery

"I wonder if your father would notice if I were to dig a hole in the back yard for a raku kiln?" I glanced at my son as we were driving home.  He looked a me with a puzzled expression
   "kill"? 
   "No, kiln.  The 'N' is silent." I smiled. "You don't know what raku means, either, do you?"
   "That depends...are there like five letters in that word that are silent, too?"

The Perfect Time to Write

MUSE

July column for The Greater Canton Writers’ Guild Newsletter

            Yesterday was a great day for writing, but before I could begin, I wanted to get the laundry started and put some things away. After that was done I could really devote some time to that story I had started in my head.  Then I thought perhaps I could work better if I straightened the house first and vacuumed. At that point I started thinking maybe if I started dinner early, I could sit down for the rest of the afternoon at the computer with a cup of tea.. The dogs needed out and then on my way back in I picked up the mail and had to sit down to write out a few bills, sort the rest of the mail, and do some shredding. Soon I found myself sorting and folding laundry.  After the dinner dishes were done I ended up doing some much needed ironing.  By 9 pm my favorite show was on and by ten that evening I wondered where the day went. Wow.

            Do you ever find yourself in situations like this? Perhaps you find yourself in other obligatory meetings, running too many errands, constantly over-scheduled and at the beck-and-call of family members and well-meaning acquaintances. I get it.  But I’ve got to tell you something I’ve learned (unfortunately) from experience: It is possible to lose yourself in obligations and relationships to people who 1: don’t get you and, 2: don’t care.  And once lost, it can take years to find yourself again and regain your voice.

            There is no perfect time to write. You either write in the midst of your life as it is happening, because it is happening or in spite of it happening around you, or you don’t write at all. You either make the time or you don’t.  It’s your call.

            But if you wait – it’s not going to happen and sometimes hard decisions need to be made. I urge you to seek out relationships with other writers – people who get you, people who encourage your writing. Maybe, if you find your life in a turmoil, with needy people surrounding you all clamoring for attention, you especially then, need to carve out some time just for yourself to write. You do this for your sanity.

We Need Each Other

MUSE

June column for The Greater Canton Writers’ Guild Newsletter

We need each other. The act of writing is a solitary endeavor and in that process we have a tendency to cut ourselves off from the world in order to pursue that which drives us. Do we have support networks at home? Some of us may but if I may hazard a guess, I would say that they are tentative at best if your spouse or significant other is not a writer or another creative. No one understands a writer like another writer. To others around us we may seem a little “off” marching to our own drummer..  But that’s okay, for we’re all weird in our own way here at the Guild.  Really.  This is your support network. Right here.

No matter our different personalities, backgrounds, genres or whether we’re writing novels, short stories or poetry, we all have one thing in common: the written word. And that unifies us.  There’s a sense of kindred spirits when we all come together and many, many times after our meetings, I come home energized and on a creative high simply by being with other writers and sharing ideas. You understand that. Most people would have no clue about creative highs. Writers’ think differently and that sets us apart from the rest of the people in our lives.  Because of that, being different in our own spheres, we do need each other for support.   Many, months ago I was told that the Guild didn't meet often enough.   Critique night meetings are a definite plus.  There’s no program on those nights, instead it is face to face writing, and talking about your writing.  It’s a great support system.  This is where you will get feedback on your writing and where we help each other.  Hope to see you all there this month!

Happy writing.

Eureka!
I finally figured out why I detest that trite saying "I may not know anything about art but I know what I like."  A few weeks ago I was with my parents as they went to an art exhibit. And then my dad had to say that. I cringed. The person who uses that phrase proudly admits that they don't know anything about art; they are claiming ignorance.  And then in the very same breath, they are announcing to the world that in their ignorance, they like what they're seeing.  Please...never, ever make a value judgement on something while at the same time tell a person you don't know enough to make that very judgement.

I'm glad I got that cleared up in my head.

Writing is a lot like exercising - something I feel good about once it is done, but finding the time to do it is another story.  I’m a procrastinator and the more anxiety I feel toward my writing, the more I tend to put it off. Everything else comes first: the laundry, errands, cooking. And after all that I end up exhausted and the last thing I want to do is exercise or write. I’ve discovered something: there is no perfect time to write and if I wait until that time presents itself I’ll never get anything done. Sometimes we have to make choices about how we use our time. Do we watch television or chat on the phone or do we sit down and work on something that’s been problematic for us within our writing? I’m sure I can find all kinds of excuses to not write, but the need to write is still there, the characters gnawing away inside my head, all trying to get out at once. Yes, I’m fairly certain that I need to write more than I need to watch tv.  My mother always called that inner urge to create a “fire in the belly”.

Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project, has suggested that rather than write in bed (of which I am guilty), that the writer be “hospitable” to their writing, meaning that one makes an appointment, a set time to sit down every day at a table or computer and write free of distractions

Writing in Layers

Exuberance in Blues      

 in acrylics and fabric  18" x 24"  (not finished, I'm just getting started here.)

When I paint, I do the entire canvas first with an undercoated background, let it dry, then go back over it with an enlarged drawing, adding lines, painting the composition, then finally adding details.  That's me painting in layers.  I also have the same tendency when I write.

And that tendency is to be a "meat and potatoes" writer.  I can tell you a great skeleton story: this is what happens, why it happens and this is how it ends - but that's not much of a story, is it?  The real story comes out in the details and the finesse in which it is told.  The reader wants to really be there in the story with real characters, not paper cut outs.  And the writer also needs to give his characters LIFE, with all its foibles.  Set the scene - hear the crunch of the dry grasses as they are walked upon, the feel of the hot breeze upon one's face.  Uncertainty and fear.  How does that physically feel?

Usually after I beat a story to death (by continually gong back over it ad nauseum, filling in more details each time), I quickly lose interest in it.  This is truly the "work" part of writing.  Don't let anyone fool you; writing - the constant editing and revising - is hard work, just as perspective, drawing and graphing is the work part of art.  Creativity carried out to its end is a lesson in perseverance and commitment.