Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!

Wishing you all the very best in 2015.

Resolutions?  There are many I should make.  I have this habit of looking back each year to see if I kept them. Usually I don't keep them. The main reason isn't that they are too optimistic or unreachable. Changing priorities turn me off one road onto another.

What Resolutions for the New Year?

Starting to review the year for myself. Looking back before deciding  goals always adds a bit of reality.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Writing

My writing has taken a back seat for awhile, but still doing freewrites daily to keep the practice and habit. Five hundred words is my target. Some days it is very difficult to even write five hundred words -- even nonsense. I like to think that those days are the most helpful with keeping the ease of a daily write.

One Great Way to Write Short Stories

ONE GREAT WAY TO WRITE SHORT STORIES by Ben Nyberg shows a way to write a short story.

What interested me is his view on writers. Are writers made or are they born?  Perhaps a little of both. Here are a couple of quotes from that book:

• "...writing a story requires knowing technique. If you don't have that, no amount of heart or mind will make your stories work. If you do, you can write effective, even publishable stories, even if your creative gift isn't huge."
• "...what you are learning is the technical skill to make the most of whatever storytelling gift you have, to write the best stories you can."

Chromebook

I feel I have joined the computer age. Even though I have been using personal computers since my first Apple in 1979, the feeling that the computer age had left me behind overcame me with the purchase of a Chromebook.

Chromebooks are inexpensive laptops that run Chrome OS. They update automatically and are considered virus safe. They run almost everything through the cloud. I'm not really sure what the cloud is but it seems to me to be a virtual server. It is a place where documents and programs can be stored and used.

The Chromebook works well surfing the net. My problem arose when I wanted to print out a page. I couldn't do it. It prints only from the cloud. I may have been able to save the page to a memory chip and physically take it to another computer with a printer attached, but I didn't try that.

Today I started the set up of a home wireless network through a personal hotspot. After several hours yesterday with tech support, I managed to get the hotspot up and some data paid for. Today I connected another computer to it. It was a breeze to do.

Enjoying a post Thanksgiving mellow. The crazy shopping on Red/Green Friday is not for me.

With the last few warm days of the year catching up on the ends of the Fall projects. Writing continues but with less focus and more for fun and for myself. Is that another way of saying that I have realized that being a published author may be beyond my limit? Perhaps it is.

Thanksgiving

As a kid I didn't like turkey, stuffing, cranberry anything, pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie, squash, or sweet potatoes. Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. For me it meant getting together with the cousins. The weather was warm enough to play outside -- sometimes with snow, often not.

Finished the moving

Finally emptied the storage garage, swept it out, and handed in the keys.

Monday most of my old computers go to the recycle. No longer any room for them and there doesn't seem to any good home for them. Some of them were clunkers that just got the job done. They lacked style, innovation, or mystique. Others like the Bondwell B310 portable from 1990  thrilled with  their design, capacity, blazing speed, portability, and tons of software.

My hoard goes back to my first typewriter, a graduation present from high school. I branched out into computers with the 1979 Apple II plus.

Cold

Not so cold but this year it really feels cold to me. We're somewhere around thirty degrees. Almost done with moving out of the storage garage. I can see all four walls now and have moved everything I'm keeping. Still have to move a couple of cubic yards of trash to the dump, take four or five old computers to the recycle, and donate a large piece of old furniture that had been quite good in its time (1920's or 30's?). Before that I need to take apart the last platform. I'm hoping that today it will be get warm enough for me. But whether it warms or not, after the laundry, I'm taking apart the platform.

Rockhome Garden

170 miles from Chicago, 30 miles from Champaign, IL, Rockhome Gardens is five miles west of Arcola. It is a unique garden with much unusual rockwork that caters to tourists and gives some insight into the 1800's life and the Amish. Throughout the garden are posted many 'amusing Amish Dutch' sayings. A pamphlet, "Rockhome Sayings", records many of them. Here are a few:

Suggested names for garden clubs: "Hoe and Hope", "Weeders Digest", "Plan and Ponder", and "Yard Birds".

There's no fool like an old fool. You just can't beat experience.

Criticism is the one thing most of us think is more blessed to give than to receive.

A smile always adds to your "face value". 

Rule 10

Found in storage a 1965 Elements of Style in which "Use the active voice." is number 10 not 14 as in my 2000 Fourth Edition.

What changed?

Elementary Rules of Usage forms Part I. Part II, Elementary Principles of Composition,  continues the numbering from Part I. Part I had four less rules in 1965. Life just keep getting more complicated.

Mark Twain

Still sorting, tossing, and giving away stuff from the storage garage. I'm about 35% cleared out;  the work left is daunting. Found an old poster with Mark Twain's profile sketch and a paddle wheeler. I hung it by my desk.

Mark Twain:  "I have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened."

Rule # 14

Rule # 14 in The Elements of Style by Strunk and White: "Use the active voice."

What does it take?

I can't resist library book sales or any group's used book sale. Recently I bought FREELANCE WRITING FOR MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS --BREAKING IN WITHOUT SELLING OUT -- BY MARCIA YUDKIN. This is a 1988 copyright.

Checking on Amazon.com you will find Marcia Yudkin has pages of books, many of them recent releases.

The book I bought has lots of good insights and advice for all writers, not just freelance ones.
In the chapter called  'Succeeding as a Writer', she says:
     "I have a short and a long answer to the question what it takes to break
      into print and keep on getting published. Briefly, it takes humility,
      confidence and persistence.  Humility, so that you can accept
      criticism and improve your writing to a professional level and beyond;
      confidence, so you don't crumple at rejection letters as proof of
      stupidity or ineptitude; and persistence, so you keep on sending out
      queries and submissions that eventually result in publications."

Junk

My writing has slipped a little as I try to close out a storage garage. The old and broken holds for me as much fascination as some people hold for the old in perfect condition. An old coin that shows its wear from the thousands of hands that it has passed through is much more interesting to me than the pristine mint proof sets. The stories that a coin could tell.

Each box of old games, broken cups, and the mementos of travel, becomes a treasure chest of memories and fantasies.

Writing Well

Louis L'Amour

 Yondering:

 

 "Yet to write well one must never cease from

  learning, absorbing, observing, and sensing."

Louis L'Amour

Perhaps my favorite author is Louis L'Amour.  In search of broadening my exposure to different types of writing I walked through the large print section of the library. Only the most popular writers make it to large print. If a writer had lots of books, I sampled one. L'Amour had a shelf full.

Those authors I liked I tried some more of their books and tried some of the books in their genre. L'Amour isn't just Westerns but he has written a lot of them. So I also tried Max Brand, Zane Grey, and several others.

L'Amour sounds to me like a name that should be writing romantic westerns and Zane Grey sounds to me like a western action writer. But the opposite seems to be true.

Something kept drawing me back to his books. His books seemed more than just westerns. They seem to handle the issues of young soldiers coming to grips with fear, weapons, and killing. Would they be able to do it? Would they like it too much? What would the gentle folks at home think? Could they possibly understand? Would they notice the change? Would they sense the hardness?

Yondering has a section called 'Author's Tea' that writers will find interesting.

Style

"Style ...is the ability to say in writing, with clarity and economy and grace, precisely what you want to say."
              ---- Lucile Vaughan Payne,  The Lively Art of Writing

Freewrites

For the last couple of weeks sitting down to write has been a chore. Even words for the freewrites didn't come easily. But each day or almost every day I wrote 500 words. Most of them not worth writing and not worth reading. Except there seems to be something in that process that liberates the brain or conditions it. Today six hundred and fifty words came out smooth and easy. Time to start another writing project.

The Elements of Style

About ten years ago, I entered a writing contest sponsored by SouthWest Writers. One of the options was to enter and get a critique. Critiques help me to better see my own work as others see it.

The reviewer added a piece of advice that he had found particularly useful: every year re-read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

I have tried to do that. This year I am focusing on five of the Elementary Principles of Composition. For examples, see the book. 

#14 Use the active voice.

 

#15 Put statements in positive form.

 

#16 Use definite, specific, concrete language.

 

#17 Omit useless words.

 

#20  Keep related words together.

 

 



William Zinsser

Thirty-eight years ago William Zinsser wrote On Writing Well. He wrote: "It's a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength." and "..the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components..."

Rain

I like rainy days. The cool breezes and overcast skies make sleeping-in easy. Less hurry, time for a book and another cup of coffee, and the soft gentleness of the light make rainy days great for reflection. After all, Mother Nature is watering the flowers and doing the yard work today.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: "The world is but a canvas to our imagination."

GOETHE, FAUST: "A man can stand anything, except a succession of ordinary days."

Agent

What a great experience! At Pima Writer's Workshop in Tucson in May, an agent read the first chapter of my novel that I had sent in. She read it and commented on it, suggesting some re-write. Very helpful for not only did it give outside eyes on my work, but also gave me an insight into the thinking of agents. I was surprised that she zoomed right in on areas that other writers and editors had told me were weak.

Next she surprised me by giving me her card; I could send her the rewrite. Which I did. I had tried to rewrite that part before and never came up with anything that I liked. This time I stayed at it until it was something I liked and completed.

She wasn't thrilled with the rewrite but said, "It grew on her."  And she requested the whole novel.

I couldn't believe it! Wow! And then I waited.

But waiting was great. I made the most of it. "An agent is looking at my novel." A wonderful time.

Then came the email saying thanks and good luck. It was full of reasons why it fell short of her expectations -- all of them good, helpful comments that I can use to make a better story.

Did I feel bad? Not in the least. It was a wonderful, helpful experience that I smile upon every time I think of it. Can you believe an agent read my novel!

What next? I'll re-read the novel with her comments in front of me and do any sprucing or rewriting that I can do quickly. Then I'll seek out another agent.

Time

Mark Twain:  "Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

The New Writers Interface

Mary Rosenblum writes science fiction and under Mary Freeman writes mysteries. At her web site www.newwritersinterface.com you can sign up for her informative newsletter.

Another place where you can find many of her articles on the writing craft is
www.longridgewritersgroup.com . These and many by other writers are free and open to the public. I have read most of them many times. For awhile I would pick one a week to read and apply to my writing.

Direction

Still cleaning my desk.

"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."

 

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Chance

"Chance favors the prepared mind."

--- Louis Pasteur

Cleaning up my work area

Post-its, taped newspaper items, and pinned pictures adorn my desk and cover its work area. I'm starting to clear them away to be ready to start again on another novel. Right now working on a variety of short story roughs.

Here are two quotes torn from magazines or newspapers without any other source reference and taped to my desk:

      "The best prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

--Theodore Roosevelt

 

 

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."

-- Shakespeare

Nostalgia

When the roads were like today's back roads with countryside, cows, and curves, long trips were longer. Burma Shaves signs made good diversions.

OLD BURMA SHAVE SIGN

 

Is he lonesome

or just blind

this guy who drives

so close behind?

Burma Shave

Perspective

"W.H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time: to understand your own century you need to come to terms with at least two others."
   ---  from The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Jan Mortimer

Truth

" ' Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' --that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
--- from Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats

Originality

C.S. Lewis:  "....in literature and art, no man who bothers with originality will ever be original; whereas, if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed."

Failure

C.S. Lewis: "Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement."

What happened?

Kazuo Ishiguro: "As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened."

Return to Paradise

The Atoll:  "To say men died in such places, engulfed in disillusion and despair, is merely to point out that on a lonely atoll, as in most cities, good men find loveliness, weak men find evil."
 -- James A. Michener, Return to Paradise, p.19

Imagination

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."  -- Lauren Bacall (actress born 1924)

Ideas

Where do writers get their stories?

Most stories have been told before in one way or another. Life and fiction repeat, but that doesn't make them any less interesting. Childhood fairy tales, family legends, classic fables, modern fiction, myths, and the newspapers all repeat stories of things that matter to people.

Any action viewed by several people will be described and reported uniquely by each person depending on what they saw and felt. Each author retells stories in his own way.

quote for today  

"From a little spark may burst a mighty flame." -- Dante

Planning

Planning

    

     In writing what is the role of planning?

    I don't know. Some writers seem to plan everything. They write out a detailed outline before starting. Others just start with a topic or an idea and start writing.
    Usually an idea bounces around in my head for quite awhile, off and on. Then one day I take part of it and try to put it down in words. It is always horrible. Somehow the words on paper do not fit the grand idea in my mind.
    Ambrose in Undaunted Courage writes Eisenhower's favorite saying was: "...in war, before the battle is joined, plans are everything, but once the shooting begins, plans are worthless."
    Perhaps that is also true in writing and life.

Carpe Diem

Seize the Day

Today is all that is allotted to us. There is no guarantee for tomorrow. If there is something you really want to do or write, begin it today.

Erle Stanley Gardner

Public Radio's Writer's Almanac of July 17, 2014 mentions that Erle Stanley Gardner while working as a lawyer wrote at night. They quote him as writing ".....my daily stint of 4,000 words minimum..."

Daily 500

Busy with summer -- home, yard, vacation, and holidays. But still writing my daily 500 -- often just a freewrite putting down anything to get that number of words down but more recently short story roughs.

Back Home

Back Home In Wisconsin

Pima Writers' Workshop in Tucson was wonderful again. Meg Files puts together great workshops. This one at Pima Community College is her 26th one there. Every one that I have attended has been great -- a mix of presentations and exercises, of authors and agents, of poets and novelists, of fiction and non-fiction writers, of children's books and literary books, and of experienced writers and beginners. A great extra is having an author or agent reading part of your work and having a short one-on-one with you. Have your manuscript ready by the beginning of May for that. Plan to attend it around Memorial Day at the end of May.

Each year there are tough choices to make between sessions. You really can't go wrong with your choices. Mine this year included sessions by Colleen J. McElroy, Thomas Cobb, Sarah Cortez, James M. Deem, Mark Doty, Terry Fillipowicz, Dara Hyde, Laura Strachan, Johanna Skibsrud,  Matt Mendez, and Diane Glancy. All were great.

But still I missed other sessions by William Boggess, Nancy Mairs, Bruce Fulton, and a second session with some of ones above. I have no doubt they were equally as good.

One of my favorite parts this year was the evening reading put on by Cortez, Deem, and Glancy.

Pima Writers' Workshop

Just a week before the Pima Writers' Workshop in Tucson. I'm looking forward to it. For encouragement, inspiration, skills development, and a wonderful learning experience, it is tops.

Pima Writers' Workshop 2014

PIMA WRITERS' WORKSHOP

At the end of May in Tucson is the Pima Writers' Workshop. Meg Files puts together every year a wonderful workshop for writers. This year it is May 29 through June 1.

For more information:    www.pima.edu

If you want a manuscript consultation you must register and get your manuscript there by May 15, 2014.  You can register on-line, by mail, in person, or by phone (520-206-6448).

Manuscripts (up to 15 double spaced pages) can be sent by mail or electronically but must be there by May 15.

A re-read

Just sitting here doing a re-read and realized that an important scene is written wrong. Somehow a carefully worked out battle scene isn't right. The orientations of the players couldn't be. The directions are all wrong. How could I make such a mistake? How could I miss it? At least I caught it and can correct it before it is sent out.

Still Editing

Still editing. Working backward through the chapters getting the individual characters into their proper places and doing some minor edits while looking for structural problems. It is clear that I need to do some voice work on the characters. One of the characters is supposed to speak with at least a suggestion of Irish wording and phrasing. That is turning out to be difficult for me.

Still Revising

After line edits and manuscript comments have been received, I am working changes into the novel. They all take time as I am mainly using them to strengthen my writing not just the novel. For each edit, I try to understand the why and develop an ear for hearing it or an eye for catching it.

My files marked RAC tell me the files are revisions after comments. So far most of the line edits repeat themselves. Breaking up blocks of dialogue with descriptive details and identification tags is something I need to do more often. Another frequent error of mine is the use of words like certainly, only, and just. Commas, lack of and too many, are also a problem.

The education continues. Finished chapter 15 and have ten more to go.

Finished

Finished revisions before comment on the complete novel and have sent it off for manuscript and line edits.

RBC

RBC Revised Before Comments

Have now completed RBC files for chapters 1-20. Only five more to go before I send them out for comments.

Word reduction is only part of editing and isn't the most important part but it may be an indication of how well done the edit. I don't really know. I may have been writing better in the later chapters or I may just be getting tired of editing and getting sloppy, but the first 16 chapters averaged about a 12% reduction in words while the next four only averaged around a 2% reduction.

Chapter 16

Just completed the editing for chapter 16.

Editing continues

Finished the revisions-before-comment for chapter twelve. The novel has twenty-five chapters. Also have been working on sets of three chapters to do the revisions. This allows me to do more. Sometimes it doesn't seem to be the time put in on a chapter but the time between looks at it that produces the most polish. With this in mind, I also have started the preliminary views of all the chapters.

It is probably a good idea for me to read again Elements of Style. In 2003, one of the reviewers for the Southwest Writers group suggested that I read it once a year. Good advice but I have been remiss, reading it only about once every three years.

Editing

For a great posting on editing go to www.nettiesramblings.blogspot.com to see Putting Those Pesky Edits to Bed.

Lynette Rees wrote  It Happened One Summer, Return to Winter, A Taste of Honey, and Watching You. She has written numerous articles and an excellent ebook Crafting the Romance Story. You can find out more about her at her blog or at the web site www.lynetterees.com .

The Fourteenth Pass

By the fourteenth pass through a story to edit or revise it, I find it very easy to cut out excess. By that time any love affair with cute phrasing or delicious words has expired or been replaced with hate.

Finished with the revisions before comment on chapters six and seven and getting close to finishing on chapter eight.

Sheer stubbornness keeps me going now as I am convinced that even at my very best, this novel will not make the market place.

Editing

Working on editing the novel. Anxious to get it done. At the rate I have been going I figured it would take me until June to get it finished. Tried doing three chapters at a time. Then worked all the way through every chapter opening up an edit file with the first pass edit. Story flow, repetition of back story, and name changes became easier to spot, but I didn't cut and change as well. 

Now I am putting in more work periods doing a pass of one chapter at each. Working in groups of three chapters to allow more time between passes of the same chapter. I expect at least ten passes and probably a dozen or more for each. It'll take me about the same time to finish one chapter but will finish three in that time. I hope.

Synopsis

Working on a synopsis. Much more difficult than I imagined. Either I get too few words or too many. Up to chapter five for the revisions. Not quite done with five although my word count chain is up to twenty. The last time through I looked for repeated words. One of my weaknesses is to grab hold of a word and use it many many times in a few sentences. Usually I do not notice this and do a special reading just for these repetitions.

Some of the revisions focus on: passive voice, too many words, repeated words, color words, use of senses, advancing the story line, the sound of the words, where I fall asleep on the re-reading, verbs verses adverbs, tense, person, and point of view.

Starting Point

Finished the rough for my first novel and have been diligently working on revising it. Revising teaches me the most. King mentioned in his book on writing that good things started to happen with his work when he started using a revision formula calling for deleting ten percent of the words.

To revise I start with a complete copy. That leaves the original untouched in case I go too far in cutting. Then I revise the copy. Each time through at the bottom of the page I keep a word count. When I get done after a dozen or more times through the chapter, at the bottom is a chain of word counts. At first it is difficult to cut words but my counts show that as I go along it gets easier.

Unlike many people, I had no burning desire to write a novel. No story in mind that I had been turning over in my mind for years. Although I am happy that the novel is done and take pride in having completed it, no amount of revising will make it anything more than a beginning. Right now with a little more research, I will be ready to tell the story, to start writing the novel. After revising all the chapters, will I start on writing it again? Not until it rests for awhile and I walk the ground of the story and ride its waters.

Every morning the creative writing is a short story rough, about one a week. Out of the best, one will be chosen to revise.