The Serendipity of Stark Tales, the Anthology

How did we get to this unique place with our Anthology - it being a Limited Edition?
A stroke of genius? Dumb Luck?
Serendipity?

Synchronicity.
When opportunity and disaster collide with intuitive creativity, you get surprising results.The creative mind is a funny thing, always seeing patterns, seeking answers to questions not yet asked, and leapfrogging over itself in a frenzy to get to that elusive idea lurking on the other side of consciousness.Sometimes things happen for a reason and events just fall into place.Sometimes disasters are gifts in disguise.And sometimes the gift is in recognizing opportunities when they present themselves.

                    ~ Mela Saylor, author of Time Flies at 8:20
in the Greater Canton Writers' Guild Anthology, Stark Tales

The Gift of Time

Whether we’re happy about it or not, most of us have been housebound for about a month. For those of us used to an active life, this is a derailment – an interruption in our lives, and as such, it can put us in an emotional tailspin. I sat on my couch and did nothing but crochet and listen to the news for  two weeks straight.  The constant news cycle was depressing and frightening. Sometimes it’s hard to get out of the dark places we find ourselves in.

But then I realized two things: 1) I’m happier when I’m busy, and 2) I was given the gift of time.  I no longer had excuses for the  things I put off. (Cleaning does not count!)

I finally had the  time to write that story I had been putting off. That story makes me happy – and in writing that, I can entertain myself for hours.

Get Out of That Funk!

We deal with stressors in many ways. Some of us sleep a lot, and some of us eat. What we really need right now is to turn off that television, get off the couch, and DO something that makes us happy. Listen to your favorite music – Loud! (If it’s not loud, what’s the point, really?)  If you’re a cook, try new dishes. Take a walk and get some sunshine and fresh air. Take your vitamins – call a friend who makes you laugh. Pass this time productively. Take care of yourself and advantage of this time of rest.

Part 2 of 4 Concerning Critique

Don’t skip the process

There is a process of natural progression to writing that shouldn’t be skipped.

Beginning writers need to learn and spend much time writing before they are ready for critique of any kind. They need to get those first (awful) stories written. They need to learn about building story arches in their work, building characters, and find out where and when backstory is appropriate. They need to find their voices and be comfortable with them. Is their tendency to narrate or write in first person? This is a different process for everyone. 

First and foremost, beginners need encouragement, direction, and much time spent actually writing and learning about writing before they are ready to move on. Going directly to critique group does no one any favors. I understand the (general?) thought prevalent – “I’ll write this (story, novel) one critique at a time.” Uh hu, sure. And after each critique, you go home and “fix” your work according to general consensus. What is left when you are done with what’s basically a cut-and-paste editing job is something completely devoid of your unique voice.

Fact: You can take your story to ten different people, which I would not advise, one right after the other and when you’re done making all their suggested changes, you will no longer recognize what you started out with.  Is this what you want? There will be enough of that if you’re lucky to get your story to an editor/publisher. Save something of yourself.

Part 1 of 4 Concerning Critique

Is Critique worth your time?  Maybe not.

People write for many reasons, and everyone is at varying degrees of education in writing, many of them self-taught. They also have many foibles, likes and dislikes about writing, which inherently, eke into their opinions of any given work handed to them.

Like the general public about art, they may not know anything, but they know what they like.  Ever heard that one before?  And chances are you’ve used that phrase one or twice.  Any given person’s opinion on anything is only valid if they have the training and experience to back it up. Opinions are not facts. Say this out loud with me: Opinions are not facts.

In order to make solid, grounded judgments on any given body of work, the person making those calls needs to know how to write well – and simply not by hearing, but they also need to know the mechanics of our language. i.e. when using colons or semi-colons is called for. Or the m-dash versus the n-dash.   New writers cannot do that. And if they were to be critiquing any work – even of other new writers, that would be a classic case of the blind leading the blind. Again, Opinions are NOT facts.   That’s the equivalent of a 12-year old critiquing someone who’s been writing for 15 years. A Waste of Time.

Next time you’re at critique, take a look around the room. Do you know anything of the person beside you who you are trusting with your manuscript? How can you know if your partner(s) have the correct amount of experience to guide you with your writing? Will you learn anything in the process? Will you learn why something works or doesn’t work?

The Gift

    The art of story telling is a gift. Creativity and imagination are also gifts not everyone is given. They are given to us by our creator to enjoy.  The arts make life bearable.

    Being human, most of us are pushing our limits with everything we’ve been given, and this includes our writing. Frustration often sets in when we attempt to monetize our gift for profit.

    In a perfect world all of us would be able to make a living using those gifts – and wouldn’t it be wonderful! But think about it for a moment. Your imagination – the imagination of a writer. There’s not many people walking around with worlds inside of them.

You are a writer because you write. And your gift is no less valid than someone who is published. Who is to say those who are published are happy with their end product?  We don’t know how much they had to change their story on their editor’s advisement in order to get it published in the first place. And if they were self-published? They are on their own with the endless hustling for sales.  

    What I am trying to say is that there are many, many hoops to jump through when someone attempts to monetize their gift.  Be happy and enjoy it for what it is – a gift to you.

    Write for yourself, write for the love of writing, write to get your story and the characters you create out of your head and onto paper.

Enjoy the process, the creation of something from nothing: enjoy the creative high when you create a new story line. But whatever you do, please enjoy that gift that is uniquely yours.

Merry Christmas & a Blessed New Year

From Here to There

Time Management

Part 2 in a 2-part series

From Here to There

My dad had a by-and-by type of personality – nothing much fazed him and if he didn’t get something done today, that’s what tomorrow is for.  I take after my mother- for me, it’s all or nothing.

During a discussion with a friend, I was asked why I couldn’t just do something for its own sake, and not aim for a date of accomplishment. The words that fell out of my mouth surprised me.  I’m a goal-oriented person and if I don’t have a goal to aim for, I don’t aim for anything.

Problem #1 We Set Goals that are Intimidating

Oftentimes we envision the result without realizing that a lot of little steps lie between you and it. And sometimes maybe we sabotage ourselves with seemingly impossible goals.  At first glance “I want to write a book”.  Becomes the mountain in front of us. That goal is enormous in our minds and we end up not following through.

What we need to do is break that into smaller attainable goals. Don’t try to go from point A to point Z in a single bound. There are many smaller steps between where you are now and where you want to be.  And to get there we must ask ourselves what we need to do, arrange, or move to accomplish those goals.

-          What can I do each day that will get me closer to what I want to get done?

-          What can I do in 15 minutes a day?   30 minutes?

        Plot?     Characters?    World Building?    Outline?

-          Can I write a page a day?

-          Do I have a place to do this without interruption?

The point I am trying to make is that nothing gets done without intent.  We are not helpless characters in our lives – or are we? 

My personal go-to is the 15 minutes to an hour in bed before I turn out the lights for the night.  I have a pile of notebooks two feet high sitting on a small footstool beside my bed.  I call it my Jenga-pile.  This works for me because many of my current works-in-progress are always on my mind throughout the day, marinating in the background.

And if you are wanting to write a story or novel, ask yourself these questions:

        1)   What is your idea?  You always start with an idea.

       2)    What happens?  There is always action – that’s what makes a story.

       3)     How much happens?  It’s not one chapter, is it?

       4)     Why?  That’s probably going to be your “hook”.

5   5)      And then what?  For every action, yada, yada, yada.  And most importantly,

       6)      How does this end?

NOTE: If you don’t know how this ends before you begin, you will end up writing both yourself and your poor character(s) into a circle and your story will flounder.

Someone once told me “Know how your story ends before you begin writing – and then write toward that end. The great thing about writing it toward the ending is that then you will be able to lay a lot of groundwork throughout your story for your “ta-da” moment, your ending

Problem #2 Time

While we all have the same amount of time in our daily lives, some of us have more obligations and outside interference that consumes our downtime.

May I suggest that “finding” time could possibly be a matter of rearranging the time we have into manageable blocks?  If something is ON and IN my mind, I can surely sit and write for at least 15 minutes – before the evening news, or in place of the news.  Before bedtime or after lights out.  Like last night – this article was on my mind and I have this little book light clip at my bedside.  Up comes my pillow to block a lot of the light and I pull my notebook over onto the bed to keep writing.  My notebook is never too far away these days.  Even “finding” time, once the desire hits, is a multi-step process.  Small steps. 

My life has always been a bit like a Chinese puzzle: to move one thing, something else needs moved first, and on down the line.  It’s like the room over my garage. It’s been over-filled with furniture, books, canvases and art supplies – then there’s the computer desk and accoutrements - and oh, yeah – that big round work table I have stuff on and under.

I needed to be able to use that darn room – although I’ve been able and have written anywhere.  All I really need is a flat surface and a pen. Decisions were made, and I brutally went through it removing some things and completely discarding others. It was hard to let go of some perfectly good things that I no longer had any use for.  And again, it seemed that I had to move one thing before I could move another.  Now I can use that room the way it was meant – a place where I can paint and write.  But that is sometimes the way it is with our time: to do something, we really want/need, we need to move things, events, circumstances around to where it works for us.

Personal Resources

Time Management

 Part I in a 2-part series

Personal Resources

There is a billboard on Whipple Avenue that I pass almost every day that is advertising a car dealership.  While I’m not interested in buying one, it caught my attention because this dealership claimed that buying a car from them was not going to cost anyone their Saturday. Not money, but time is the resource they are claiming to save their customers.

Money is something that is always coming and going, but time, once spent, is something we cannot get back. How do we treat our time? Is it something we value or do we “kill time” surfing the internet?  I did some thinking about how much time is wasted during each day and week and came up with my list.  I am guilty of duplicating my errands – going to the grocery store and/or Marc’s several times a week. I could save at least two hours – that I could have spent writing – if I planned ahead and did ALL my shopping on one day a week.  I also spend too much time on the phone and internet games.  Then there is television at night.  If I spent even one hour writing instead of watching tv during the week, that would be another 5 hours I’d have.

I know carving out extra time in our days can be difficult. There are many things, organizations, people, and obligations that claim our time, and many times we are helpless in the face of such demands that we may feel our time is not our own. I’ve been there and I know. I know that when you are physically exhausted, your brain doesn’t want to work either.

I’ve been a member of the Writers’ Guild since 2007 and I’ve held office since 2008. That’s when my boys were in junior high and high school. It wasn’t easy, but I made my opportunities to write – because I needed to write. Everywhere I went I would take what I was working on.  I wrote in the car – in the high school parking lot, at the bowling alley, getting the car’s oil changed/serviced.  I wrote in a lot of doctors’ waiting rooms too. I didn’t let an idle moment go to waste.

Decisions, decisions

Sometimes it comes down to the choices we make and how engaged we are in our writing. As in art, there are two separate but equal sides to the writing process: the creative side (I’ve got to “feel” it!) and the work side (just buckle down and DO it!). The problem comes when we are waiting to feel like writing – for the muse to speak to us. And most of the time our muse doesn’t come until she sees us busy writing.

Before you Break the Rules

Free form crochet by definition, has no rules.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stitches and forms that need learned to do this successfully. This is a mixture of different stitches, crochet forms, and yarns that in the end look like a crazy quilt of yarns.  The catch-22 is that to do this free-for-all, one needs to know a myriad of stitches.  This is not for beginners.

Likewise, if I want to paint a picture but don’t follow artistic guidelines such as perspective, my painting would be a hot mess, and I wouldn’t (shouldn’t) want to show it to anyone.  

Patterns, directions, and rules, both grammar and composition, are like road maps: they successfully get you where you want to go.  If they didn’t matter, they wouldn’t exist.  This is something the old masters knew.  To put something together, there are directions that need followed. People who crochet and knit have patterns they follow to make beautiful afghans, artists follow rules of composition, perspective, and design, and writers use grammar rules and composition to write coherent, beautifully written pieces of work.

Why do I have to write this? This needs said.  Don’t scoff at the rules.  My grandmother (the artist) always told me that if anyone could read and follow directions, they could do anything.  This is true.  Many people today are under the impression that rules don’t matter; they are “mavericks” for not needing to follow rules.  They are following their own drummer -  yada, yada, yada.   And this is where we are culturally, the dissing of the rules.  This is not the sign of a maverick, making up his own rules.  This is the sign of a lazy mind.

There have been notable instances of people who broke the rules and were successful in their writing – but they knew the rules first.  The take-away here is that to SUCCESSFULLY break the rules, you must first know them. And that fact remains true across all fields, except perhaps in art, sadly. The decline of artistic standards, (thank you Jackson Pollack) however, is a subject for another column.

Osmosis and You

Many things naturally occur by osmosis, but learning isn’t one of them. In particular, good writing doesn’t happen by osmosis- it’s not a virus one can catch by sitting next to someone who writes well.  Neither can one catch it by simply coming to every guild meeting.

Good writing takes effort, time, and a willingness to learn – the ability to take instruction is key.

It is up to members what their “take-away” is for each meeting.  Up until now we have not offered any instruction on the basics other than the offered programs at various meetings through the year.  The membership as a whole is writing on many levels and we do try to offer a variety of programs to appeal to all levels.  It’s a juggling act.

The dilemma here is that beginning writers don’t know what they don’t know, and some not enough to ask for instruction.

First stories, while a celebration and milestone for the new writer are still just that - first stories, practice - and never meant for publication.  They are something to get ‘under your belt’.  They are a true learning experience.

For every writer the key is to practice.  While some people come to writing with innate talent, writing is still a craft and that means it CAN be learned.

First story, second story, drafts and prompts – no writing is ever “wasted time” as long as you are learning and growing from those.

You will get out of this exactly what you put into it.

Good writing to you all.

3' x 3' oil painting I did at my mom's this summer.  This was my first landscape painting - ever.  It was a learning experience.

Third afghan in as many months

The Last Snowflake

The Last Snowflake

Spring came early
in February;
sunny days, blue skies,
cumulous clouds abound.
Sweater weather, shorts and sandals,
daffodils were teased above ground.

That was yesterday.
Now I drive in a squall
counting the snowflakes, 
wondering when I'll see
the last snowflake  fall.

The Art of Listening

I grew up hearing my grandfather say that God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason: we should listen twice as much as we talk. There is nowhere more apparent for this need as there is in large group settings.

As writers we are often isolated in pursuit of our endeavors and need the social interaction with those of our own ilk – yes, I did say ilk!  No one understands another writer like other writers.  And when we do get together it is understandable that we are excited to talk shop.  I’ve often gone home from our meetings excited about what we’ve discussed and eager to write.  When there is an emotional connection, a coming together of the minds, we recharge creatively, and that’s a good thing.  But oftentimes during the course of the evening, our enthusiasm gets the better of us and there is less of a give-and-take in the conversation as one or a few people often end up dominating the conversation, however interesting tangents those might be. 

The part the moderator plays in any given meeting is 1) to keep the conversation going and on track,  2) make sure everyone gets a chance to speak – being sensitive to those who can’t seem to get a word in edgewise! And 3) leading with questions, but not talking about themselves and their own writing unless specifically asked.  I understand the “me-too!” quotient – this is a form of identifying with others, but this is also a form of hijacking conversations!  I’ve often been guilty of this when talking to my younger son who would then brutally respond by saying “Way to make it about you, mom!”  So with that in mind I would like to gently remind us all that when people speak, let them talk. Listen without interruptions.  This is group give-and-take.  Side conversations belong after the meeting, not in the middle of it.  If those specific comments and questions pertain to the meeting, I encourage you to take your turn and bring those questions/comments up for us all during the course of the evening.  If they have nothing to do with the meeting then those conversations definitely belong after we are adjourned.   When side conversations start occurring, this is the point of group disintegration.    

There is nothing better than being part of inspiring, stimulating group discussions where everyone has a voice and everyone is heard. As different as we are, we have a lot in common – and we have a lot to say on many subjects – we are writers, after all. Opinionated, eccentric, and garrulous – my tribe. God love us.