Back with a vengeance!

There is something to be said about being too busy: it sucks. There. I said it. Now I can move forward. I think I need my head examined - as I create my own too busy state. It's not enough that I am a working freelance writer, a coach, a college student, a single parent. No. My life wouldn't be complete if I were not working, albeit feverishly, on two book-length fiction works-in-progress. It's kind of like I can't allow myself to slow down for fear of losing momentum.



Unfortunately, my blog suffered for my tight schedule and the inevitable exhaustion that has plagued my evening hours - the time when I usually would have the time to update my blog. No doubt the stress of suffering a direct hit from two hurricanes within a three-week period between August and September have added to my weariness. I don't know what the main cause for my overall tiredness was; but, I suspect it was simply my pre-holiday, pre-finals workload.



Now that all of my work, holiday and education related goals have been successfully achieved, I've finally had a little time to relax before diving headlong into spring semester and new writing projects. And I mean a little time. It seems as though there is just never any real time off. I swore myself to relaxation and enjoying the two weeks of winter break. No school. No coaching. No work. Just hanging out with my kid, having fun and writing for the love of it whenever I felt like it.



But life isn't like that. No matter how I plan, there is still laundry to do, a house to clean, dogs to care for, meals to cook, the undecorating to do, and bills to pay. I've been off for a week and still haven't caught a break! In light of that fact, I had an epiphany. It went kind of like this: Update the blog dummy!



So, I have - and recognizing that I am never going to have sufficient time to do anything, not blogging, really makes no sense whatsoever. So expect to hear more from me.



I'm back.

With a vengeance.

Does Your Vote Count?

The Democratic process is in full swing across the nation, or at least, we hope so. Getting out the vote is the hot topic in the news today, as well it should be. However, some of the reports coming in are a more than just a bit disturbing. Some major issues have been brought to light, such as pencils sitting on the desks of the absentee ballot processors in Iowa. When it was discovered that a writing device made available to the processors could actually interfere with fair processing, the pencils were swiftly removed. The worry there was that an unscrupulous processor could potentially use the pencil to alter ballots. Then the legal battle waging in Ohio, with GOP watchdogs vowing to prevent voters who were registered, as they claim incorrectly, by Democrats, from being permitted to vote.



Quite frankly, whatever party affiliation a citizen subscribes to - that type of 11th hour partisan wrangling and intimidation should outrage all Americans. In Florida, Theresa LaPore, the notorious Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, has come under fire for altering the laws governing the allowable distance from polling places where reporters, campaigners, and non-partisan voter-assistance groups can gather. Should anyone have such power to change laws without any process whatsoever, to serve their own purpose?



In Philadelphia the latest reports tell of a GOP legal action, claiming that four electronic voting machines are suspect, and the 13,000 votes cast in those machines should be thrown out. Huh? Toss out votes? Is that the American way?



Perhaps the most worrisome of all the Election Day revelations is the fact that in most of the states where electronic voting is in widespread use, there is NO PAPER TRAIL.



In the wake of the 2000 election debacle is anyone really comfortable with that? How could there possibly be an accurate recount, should the need arise, without a paper trail? How could there be any argument against it? And doesn't the suggestion that 13,000 votes be nullified in Philadelphia punctuate the need for a paper trail?



Computers have been known to eat information before, and let's face it - they are susceptible to a certain degree of tampering, either via hacking or virus.



At best these partisan tactics are an annoyance; at worst, and it could easily escalate to worst, it disrupts the process utterly. How sad that in this great nation it has come to the point where partisan interference does so much to dishonor our history of democratic elections. It poses the question: Does every vote really count?



The campaign trail absolutely must be followed by an Election Day paper trail, or literally all could be lost.

What do Medusa and Pippi Longstocking Have in Common?

Well their stories are the stuff of legend - Pippi being unnaturally strong, and Medusa being so frightfully hideous that any who look directly at her are forever petrified in stone. They also happen to be the characters my daughter and I chose for our Halloween costumes. She was Pippi, of course, and a winning one: she took First place in a costume contest. I was green with envy (pun fully intended.)



Donning a Medusa costume brought forth an alarming number of people who had no earthly idea what the Medusa character is. So I would explain that she is actually a rather popular character in the Greek mythologies. Which would be met with a blank stare that practically screamed Huh? The whole experience really caused me to wonder how these folks ever managed to graduate high school, let alone college. Two of the clueless are acquaintances of mine and I know for a fact they both attended universities.



Alternately, there were many who immediately recognized Medusa, and commented on the creativity of my costume, but only after they gushed over my adorable Pippi counterpart. My serpent headpiece was a conversation starter and had strangers at a local fair coming up to me specifically to touch my head and see what it was I made the snakes with.



To their credit, a great many children recognized Medusa. That heartened me. I took comfort that at least some of the younger generation were being taught the Greek tales in school, until one little ten-year-old boy looked at me and exclaimed, "Medusa rocks! She's a creature in a lot of games." Be still my heart.



I fear the tales of antiquity shall be told only in excerpts of freshly made-for-gaming plots, and the rich characters stretched so thinly across the cyber-world, that their literary significance will be lost forever.



In the immortal words of the Wicked Witch of the West, "What a world, what a world."

Into The Great Unknown

Writing is a lot like gambling; if you play at it long enough you might just get lucky. That is what I tell myself every time I write a query, develop a proposal or send a completed manuscript out into the great unknown. It's hard to send your work out there. I mean, it's your work and in a great many ways, it is part of you. A representative of your creative self. An extension of yourself through the interpretation of your art. You baby it, fight with it, love it, hate it... and after you've picked apart all of its weaknesses, toyed with it, tweaked it and polished it - then you love it again. And after all of that, you diligently research possible markets for your work, your baby, and dutifully send it off to vie for publication and you wait.



And wait. And... well, you wait some more. You tell yourself that no news is good news. Your friends say things like, "Well, at least it hasn't been rejected"reminding you that rejection is the most probable outcome and it is only a matter of time before the rejection notices start pouring in. After all, it is the most probable outcome.



Suffice to say that landing an acceptance from a traditional publisher is a long shot, even if your work is excellent. Which is a good part of the reason so many writers have opted to self publish via Print on Demand companies. But even that isn't quite so simple and often P.O.D. contracts saddle the writer with the burden of high fees with very few, if any benefits.



Publication is the side of writing that is absolutely the most frustrating. Everything must be perfect if the writer hopes to attract the attention of an editor. Queries must light the fire of interest without being too long, or too wordy. It has to be perfect.



So you wait and as you wait you start to wonder if you did a good enough job. You start to doubt. And if, or rather when rejections roll in - you start to doubt your work. You pick apart the possible reasons why your query wasn't effective. You rewrite it. Edit it. Polish it and send it out into the great unknown again.



The fact is, you have to have a thick skin in this business. Critiques can be harsh, editors are usually quite demanding and rejections can sometimes be hard to swallow. But it is the way it is, and knowing that, the writer writes some more and dutifully sends their work, their baby, out into the great unknown hoping this time they'll hit the publishing jackpot - their name in print and a check with their name on it for their efforts.

Invasion of the "What if's"

Here I sit. Keyboard literally in hand... poised to bash my head into my computer monitor. I've had the same blank page in my "Word" program staring me down for about an hour. I had every intention of continuing my novel length work-in-progress (A.k.a wip) from my most recent stopping point. Actually, I ended a chapter and undecided on the direction I want to go, I opted to line edit and execute minor rewrites on all the chapters that led to this point. It was a good idea. Took a few days. Got a lot done.



It was a good idea... or at least, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I realize that in taking that pause rather than working through the stopping point, I failed to address the issue of direction. I didn't solve my dilemma rather, I sought to avoid it for as long as possible.



So now I'm left wondering why I allowed myself to duck for cover behind line edits. What stopped me. What made the end of this chapter a stopping point. Why was I so willing to pull away?



Could it be that my story really has no where to go? Is it dead? No, in fact I'm sure it is not. This story has taken on a life of it's own. It feels almost sentient to me. The characters breath and think and feel; they are perfect and flawed and in the world I've created in my wip, they are real. Okay, so the story isn't dead. So what's the problem?



Clearly, I'm at a transitive crossroads in my story. I could go in any one of several directions. But how to choose? What if I make the wrong choice? What if the idea sucks? What if...



What if I had sat down in my plot outline and ironed out my plot objectives rather than excuse myself by hiding in edits? Then perhaps I would not have found myself staring blankly at a blank Word document. I let the fear of the "What if's" distract me to the point of inaction. Duh! Didn't I see it coming?



Of course I did! I knew I was avoiding tough choices. I knew, I knew and I know better. I could kick myself for allowing the "What if's" to get to me. Plot transition needs to be addressed rather than avoided. Ugh. There is probably nothing as frustrating as being the cause of your own frustration.



Now I need to dig in and push through my own insecurities, so my wip can continue on it's intended path. And it has an intended path - I just need to figure out the twists and turns along the way.

Time Bandits

It seems like nary a day goes by in which some misinformed individual passes a judgment as to the flexibility of my writing schedule. People automatically assume that because I am a freelance writer my cup must certainly runneth over with scads of free time. After all, I work when I want. Therefore, I am endlessly called upon to run here, go there, be available at such and such a time... blah, blah, blah. And you know, for a while there - even I fell for it.



I figured, well, sure I'll do this for so and so. After all it'll really help them, seeing as they have to work and all. I can spare a few hours. If they needed me to come in a bit early to coach at the gym, they could count on me. I'd be there. It only meant going in an hour early, it was okay.



A chunk of time here. A smidgen of time there. No big. I could deal. I could work around it; I create my own schedule you know.



Yeah, I was in deep alright.



The worst part about it was that I was permitting my own work to be compromised and devalued by failing to demand that anyone, anyone at all, respect my time. Even myself. And it was nearly fatal to my creative works. The more time I spent pursuing the tasks everyone else prescribed me, resulted in completing my paying assignments during the hours I would have spent on my creative works had I held to my own schedule.



Finally, it was up to me to undo the damage. I had to start saying no. And it wasn't easy. People weren't very receptive to my sudden inclination to decline their requests of my time. Their response when I asserted my need to adhere to a writing schedule I likened to how I imagine a thirsty dog would react to the sudden removal of his water-bowl while he is smack-dab in the middle of drinking. Dogs don't like going thirsty, and people don't like hearing the word no. Unfailingly both respond with the same surprised sideways tilt of the head, wearing an expression that asks "Huh?" Some even growl. So be it.



It had to be done or my creative work would literally die of neglect. Robbed of its sustenance, its value, and ultimately its right to exist by the time bandits who would continue to raid my creative itinerary, unless I stood to defend it.



That's not to claim that my reclaimed writing agenda is without interruption. Life happens. Business need to get done, kids need tending, dogs need to be walked, house needs to be cleaned and, in my case, gymnasts need to be coached. It's like a smooth walk across a balance beam just before tossing a back Handspring that lands a little wobbly; sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and hang on, or the amazing thing you were doing has lost all its value.

What's It Matter?

A couple of months ago while at a networking mixer a new acquaintance asked what it is I do for a living. I'll never forget the response I got when I said I'm a freelance writer. He looked at me blankly and blurted "Yeah, well everyone's a writer if you give them a pen." Of course, I wasn't about to just let that go. So I sucked in a deep breath and calmly countered with, "True enough; but not everyone can write well." He poked the olive drowning at the bottom of his martini and said "What's it matter? Half the population can't read anyway." When he said that, I knew I had him. I quickly flashed my best and brightest wise-ass grin and asked "So, who's your favorite author?"



He didn't have one. He doesn't read much. Muttered something about not having enough time and reading makes him tired anyway, before he excused himself to hit the bar for a refill. I shrugged his comments off and moved on, secure in the fact that I'd successfully one-upped him.



On the drive home I found myself thinking about what he said. Everyone's a writer if you give them a pen. It irritated me. The whole next day his comments assaulted my concentration to the point that I actually stopped writing midday. Instead I started to examine why in the world I was allowing what this guy said to bother me, even a little.



See, it wasn't really what he said that nagged at me, but that there is really some truth to it - a basis in fact. Not that I think him right, no... not for a moment. But after close consideration I do think him rather, well, average.



Let's face it; there's a large percentage of folks out there who do not regard writing as an art, or even a skill. He's one of them. With the world gone e-mail and the art of the letter all but dead, most people are not what could be characterized as practiced writers. I'm sure the fella was not altogether off base in his assumption that half the population can't read. Now I don't mean that literally. I'm certain that a greater percentage of the industrialized world can and do read, I'm just not convinced that they are practiced readers.  If we're not writing letters (I don't know about you, but the majority of e-mails I receive are not by a long shot well constructed so I won't count them as letters) and not adhering to basic writing and language principals will we recognize mistakes while reading books, magazines or the newspaper? Does it matter if I strive to write well, or will my efforts simply go unnoticed?



After much deliberation I've concluded that yes, it does matter if I write well and yes, my efforts will probably go unnoticed... and they should. By all. No one should take note of smooth, accurate writing. If it reads in such a way that not one person notices a thing about the writing other than the story itself, then I have done my job well.



I suppose it is true that everyone with a pen, or these days, a keyboard can write. Not everyone is going to appreciate a well written and compelling story. Not everyone reads or reads often enough. My martini sipping acquaintance got that right, and he'll probably never become aware of what he got wrong. So, what's it matter?



Maybe it's not for him to know, or even worry about. But as a writer, it is my job to contemplate such things. To elevate my work  - whether it is writing the copy for an advertisement, etching an article, scribbling an essay or immersing myself in constructing novel length fiction. It may never matter to any other person who reads my writings, but it means everything to me.



What's it matter? It matters plenty.

Integrity

Whatever happened to the simple premise of holding oneself to a standard of personal and professional integrity? In the recent past this question has arisen ad nauseam. We've all been inundated with news stories and commentary that highlight the decline of seemingly any standard - even low standards - for personal, governmental, and corporate conduct. The Enron debacle, Martha Stewart insider trading, Prisoner abuse in Iraq, The New York Times reporting inaccurate and even utterly false stories! You KNOW there is a downward spiral of integrity when even the exalted New York Times can't be trusted.



The abuses seem to be running rampant, that is, if we are to believe the media who are ever-ready to gleefully saturate the evening news and morning paper with such reports. No one seems to be immune to the lure of dishonesty. Why pay when you can steal it? Why be honest when lies are so much juicier than the truth? Heck, even our nations Presidents bend the truth or outright lie to suit their needs, lest we forget the lurid Clinton/Lewinsky scandal or the notorious yet still missing weapons of mass destruction.



Lack of moral code spills over into everyday life, well... everyday. I have a client who owes me a substantial amount of money. It's been months. Think she cares? Then there's the mechanic who tried to convince me I needed an $1100.00 repair, when all I really needed was a shot of Freon in my air conditioner. Thankfully one of the gentlemen he works with "Figured out the problem" when I let them know there was no way I could afford such a repair at this time. Amazing.



All of this has caused me to examine how writers approach integrity in creative writing. It's so subjective. Characters, plots, motivations all drive the creative work, but how do we define creative? Hasn't everything been done before? Realistically, we all give our characters different names but hasn't every personality - every divisive flaw been already written? Our plots and stories may not be as fresh and unique as we'd like to think they are. Chances are examples can be found throughout literature of similar works that precede even what's currently on the fiction best seller list.



Is it okay to borrow so long as you are not actually stealing? I struggled with this question, and finally came to the conclusion that in the world of creative writing - you bet it is.



As long as there have been stories there have been new slants. Redirection of plots, reinventing character "types" and expanding or narrowing motivations all bring the writer as close as possible to originality. It is not a lack of integrity to borrow from what has come before so long as in the process the writer creates something that can stand on it's own as an original work.



Each of us must define for ourselves our creative standard of integrity. New stories simply could not be written with out it. Perhaps creativity is the last bastion yet to be corrupted by dishonesty. Curious that in a world dominated by the lie, what creative writers find most engaging is the truth.