Riding out of site

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"

It's been a great ride, but it's time for me to bid goodbye to Riddles on the Harp. I now blog at sydneyavey.com/blog. I am grateful to those who have followed and those who have visited Riddles on the Harp.

The great folks at Writers Relief  have built a website for me and are hosting my new blog. I would be ever more grateful if you would do one of three things:

• Visit sydneyavey.com/blog and subscribe to my email list
• Follow @SydneyAvey on Twitter
• Like Sydney Avey on Facebook 

It has been a joy to explore the riddles in life in these blog posts. Thanks for going with me on the journey. 

I will turn my ear to a proverb: with the harp I will expound my riddle:" Psalm 49:4

The Night Before NaNoWriMo

‘Twas the night before NaNo, and all ‘round  the Earth

The plot lines were forming, awaiting their birth

The writers were ready, all poised with their pens

While visions of victory erased four week-ends.

The MCs were sketched and ready to speak

As villains burst forth with havoc to wreak;

And friends in support roles and we with our plan

Had finished our outlines, took a moment to scan...

And there on the ‘net there rose such distraction

We logged on, checked email and sprung into action

Away to our Facebook we flew like a fiend

Checked Twitter and newsfeeds—we thought we were weaned!

Now Pinterest, Instagram, Ask and Yahoo

Google, and eBay, Groupon and Squidoo

To the top of the rankings! to the top of the stats!

Now sign out, sign out, before we go bats!

As inspiration before the dawn comes

When it meets pure resolve, that about sums

up the challenge to us as we bravely commit

to one thousand six hundred plus words to spit

daily, and just when the clocks sound cukoos

Then lights! Camera! Action! yon comes the muse

who turns our story fair on its ear,

destroys the outline we held close and dear.

And then, in a twinkling, we know it’s no spoof

Each day we must churn out the words as the proof

That we know in our gut we’ve got something to say,

Something profound that must see light of day.

Our eyes, oh how bleary, our hair is a wreck

Our cheeks are inflamed; dirt rings our neck

A bundle of laundry lies on the floor

We feel like fungus! Our muscles are sore.

But wait—this is brilliant! Our MC takes wings!

Look here, she is saying the cleverest things!

Her speech is engaging, her actions enthrall,

Did we really write this? We cannot recall!

The end is in sight now, our joy feels no bounds

Despite the sad truth that we’ve gained twenty pounds

Rewarding ourselves when we’ve felt just plain dandy

With coffee and doughnuts and Halloween candy

Tomorrow it is we’ll go straight to our work

Filled with a fire that drives others beserk

 But now, lay your heads down, close your eyes and sleep tight,

SWEET DREAMS TO YOU WRITERS, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!

NaNoWriMo, Carbs and the Giants

A woman adopts an alternative lifestyle and walks into a Denny’s in Phoenix...no joke, it’s NaNoWriMo time and this go ‘round I’m writing in my den of creativity in Arizona instead of my bat cave in the Sierra Nevada’s. Thought it would be fun to get to know some writer types in the desert at the regional NaNoWriMo kick off, and it was. Here’s what I learned.

Writers aren’t healthy. Most identified their brain food of choice from the carbs and caffeine section of the abandoned food pyramid (guess they also retro). My favorite was fruit leather wrapped around a pickle (hmmm, is this writer planning to give birth to more than a novel?). The snack I aspire to is green peppers and crisp cherry tomatoes – the crack and pop is energizing, according to one of my new writer friends. I believe it.

Writers are overachievers. When asked what their biggest challenge was this year many trotted out new jobs, multiple children involved in activities such as competitive gymnastics and scouting, and college classes they are enrolled in  on top of their commitment to produce 1,667 words per day for 30 days toward a plot not fully fleshed out. My biggest challenge is to decide what point of view (POV) will work best for the sequel to The Sheep Walker and whether to write in first person again or switch to third person.

What I’ve learned from my 2010 participation. I’m going into this session with a full chapter by chapter outline and some experience with Scrivener, a content generation software program (I supply the content, it organizes my outline, character sketches and scenes and spits out a manuscript when I’m ready to push the button.) I have twice as many characters to get to know; we’re already living together.

I keep a 5-year diary. I checked my entry two years ago. On November 1, 2010  I wrote, “2, 409 words and the Giants won the series!” Hoping history will repeat itself.

Neglect



Dialing up the muse

Holy muse, mother of imagination, I have neglected my blog (apologies to my Catholic friends for the inference). It’s not that my creativity has dried up, it’s been redirected. The Sheep Walker is in the capable hands of Writer’s Relief and an agent in New York is taking a look; time to start the sequel. That’s right, it’s NaNoWriMo time again!

I was surfing my blog for pithy quotes when I came across this entry Imade two years ago:

The point of this exercise is to beat my internal editor into submission; banish her to some netherworld in my brain; tame her insatiability for my words which she likes to chew on like a cow on cud.

Well that was then, this is now. I’m no longer too concerned with my internal editor. Today the point is to produce a second novel. What concerned me then was how my life would change when I bumped writing up on the priority list. What concerns me now is that The Sheep Walker spawned new generations and I have more characters to develop in the sequel, The Lyre and the Lambs.

This go ‘round I am in my new office in our desert retreat in Arizona and my guy is well trained from the last go ‘round. He knows when to disappear and when to reappear with tempting offers to dissuade me from spending too much time writing when the muse is tired.

I smell Polish sausage on the barbie and red cabbage and apples on the stove. The Giants are heading into the seventh for a shot at the series.

I’m ready.

Do not despise these small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” Zech 4:10

Twitter Block

Anthony Hathaway|Dreamstime.com

Tout is sweet, mais

c’est mute, my tweet.

Been quiet all week

I’ve nothing to speak!

Some birds announce their presence in the field with piercing, joyous cries of victory that rip through the sky and send their prey scurrying for cover. We stop and listen, enthralled. Other birds hide in trees and chirp a limited repertoire; a few notes, insistent, incessant and interminable as a car alarm or a one-radio-station small town. Annoyed, we tune them out. Then there are those that go out on a limb to deliver refreshing song on a gentle breeze. We tune our breath to their song.

I’m a new bird on the block trying to find my voice. I don’t aspire to rip the sky with awesome proclamation. I don’t want to annoy my friends. I just want to chirp a little 140 character ditty that refreshes, amuses, or inspires. Okay, truth. I also want to garner the interest of an agent, a publisher and an audience for my novel.

I’ve never suffered from writers block, but I’m developing a bad case of Twitter block (see my stats). More truth.  I’m a choral singer, happy to weave my song into the larger work.  Ask me to open my beak and emit a solo tweet and it’s not pretty.  

I don’t think I need a social media seminar. I think I need voice lessons.

Aaron Patterson's Blog: Guest Post by Bill Myers: "Writing Edgy Christian Fiction."

Aaron Patterson's Blog: Guest Post by Bill Myers: "Writing Edgy Christian Fiction."

Revise us

Steinway artist Randall Atcheson gave new flourish to old hymns at The 2012 Christian Writers Guild conference. He also sang with gusto if not giftedness and practically danced on the piano, delighting worshippers with his colorful tie and matching socks sprouting out of checkered loafers. He embodied joy.  Best of all, he rewrote the lyrics for his audience of writers.  Revive us again became Revise us again and wouldn’t we all like that?

Writer's Block

Come out of that crawl space

you formed in your head

glide past with purpose

your unmade bed.

Cut swath through the clutter

of  loved ones’ play

shrug them off kindly

lay claim to your day.

Sit down in the sunbeam

that shines on the floor

move pen across paper

behind a closed door.

             Now.

                         Write.     

Intimate Details

Corruption, depravity, desperation, sex, medical emergency – is this not the stuff of great stories? Intimacy is the common element that creates a heartwarming or chilling tale.

Today I am pondering the connections between two writers’ explanations of what inspires readers.

Roger Rosenblatt concludes in Unless it Moves the Human Heart: “The heart that you must move is corrupt, depraved and desperate for your love.”

In The Daily Writer Fred White maintains:  “Human intimacy lies at the heart of human nature.” He gives as examples of intimacy medical, sexual and spiritual experiences.

This tells me why so many of the stories that move us involve crime, life threatening medical conditions and romance.

My 1970s edition of The American Heritage Dictionary omits spiritual experiences in its list of intimacies, but in the 1930s edition of the Dictionary of the English Language(Oxford University) editor Henry Cecil Wyld defines intimacy as something that is knit together in close physical or spiritual relationship.

Intimacy is expressed in details that are private and personal.  Our favorite detective stories, murder mysteries and medical dramas are loaded with intimate details. Examples: The murderer who strong arms a victim and plunges a knife into a vital organ; the doctor who dives his hand into a patient’s chest cavity. We get involved with the intimate details of the crime or the surgery.

Stories about love, sex and revenge penetrate the essence of our human nature. They reveal intimate knowledge. Example: The shamed child who grew up with malice in her heart and enough familiarity with her antagonist to know exactly how to hurt him.

Some of the most inspiring stories are found in the Bible, the best selling, least-read book of all time. Stories like Sampson and Delilah and Abraham and Isaac knit together the physical and the spiritual and draw connections between desperation and love.  We are moved by these stories.

Perhaps God is the greatest storyteller of all time and we are His story.  

Platforms, personas and publishing

Devout Stout
 by Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing

To distill what I learned at the FaithWriters conference is a challenge similar to describing the complex elements of a zesty brew.  To extend the metaphor, drawing an audience and attracting a publisher is an exacting process -- like pouring a Guinness with slow patience to preserve its head.  Appealing to particular tastes (bold flavor, coffee aroma, chocolate notes) requires knowing your audience and giving them what they expect. It also requires understanding the bitter reality of today’s publishing world. Determine if you can pass the acid test of excellence or be prepared to spend a lot of money for a disappointing harvest.

All writers want readers.  If you don’t know that you are expected to build your own audience you haven’t been paying attention.  Patty Wysong did a great job of connecting the dots on blogs, Facebook, and a myriad of ways to build a community of people (your platform) who might be willing to buy your book, a data point that will be of high interest to any publisher you approach.

Many writers are shy. In a brilliant display of “show, don’t tell,” self-described wallflower Patty shared how she overcame extreme shyness to offer value to the audience she built for her blog, and then for her business (helping others build blogs). She described how she created an alter-ego she could step into when she needed to step out of her comfort zone and speak before an audience.

Some of her tricks:  

1. Try out what works for others
2. Cultivate inner resources that are there but need encouragement to blossom
3. Present yourself as the person you want to be

Most writers want to be published. Deb Porter, who runs the FaithWriters Weekly Word Challenge, shared the sobering statistics that the numbers of book titles in print have jumped about 4,000 percent recently! This is not good news.  It means readers have to wade through a lot of bad writing to find good stuff and writers are rushing to print with stuff that’s not ready.

 I’d summarize Deb’s perspective this way: 

1. You can lead the market if you start from the platform of celebrity or have that rare combination of talent, timing and luck;
2. You can follow the herd and pay someone to publish your book;
3. Or, you can enter through the narrow gate. 

This third path requires writers to work really hard to hone their craft. Follow the process that leads to excellence. Seek feedback from people who will be honest with you and make the changes you need to make. Look for an agent who believes in your project and will take it to a small press when it is ready. The writer's life is for the stout of heart!

Thank you to all the wonderful presenters at this year's conference.

Watercolors

I took my first watercolor class yesterday.  Let’s put a frame around that.  I took a watercolor class at the Yosemite Art and Education Center; with my five and seven-year old grandkids (GKs); on a day when sunlight tangoed with the trees in the meadow and the falls spilled snowmelt like a bosomy matron in a bikini.

I’d spent the past two weeks observing the GKs who sponge new experiences with thirsty glee. On this year’s summer visit, they learned to keep a horse’s head up and out of a tempting salad of poison oak and swim without water wings to the platform in the middle of the lake (don’t tell their mom). The boy improved his aim with the BB gun he keeps here and the girl learned to knit. (I will make no comment on gender roles; it was their choice.)

It was interesting to see how differently we all approached the lesson as we sat in the meadow and sketched our view of Half Dome. The five-year-old drew big a teepee-shaped rock in the middle of his paper and then filled in detail around it from his imagination. After the seven-year-old pulled her attention away from the “eeuuuwww” factor of small bugs flying into her face she produced a very credible sketch. I, on the other hand, put pencil to paper and froze.

As I pulled my pencil along the pebbly paper a refrain started up in my head – I am really bad at this.  I pressed on, filling in more detail than is appropriate for a watercolor sketch and assessing my progress at intervals – the perspective is off; the scale of the tree in the foreground is wrong; this looks more like Mt. Fuji than Half Dome.    

We returned from the meadow and pulled out the paints.  At the end of the day, the children each had a drawing they were proud of and I had a soggy piece of paper. They learned the difference between poster paints and water colors.  I learned some life lessons.

Where to begin -- the sky or the grass? No, begin with the focal point. I may make that a daily practice.

A sketch is a roadmap for your painting.  It should be drawn lightly enough to be erased before you add color. It should include notes about color choices. Note to self: what in my life could benefit from an eraser and what needs color?

Blending watercolors is a delicate and mysterious art.  Who knew that gray wasn’t black dumbed down a little with white. “Try pulling in a bit of yellow into that muddy drop, or a little blue, and see what you get,” our teacher suggested. We got thrilling purplish and peachy grays. 

So much to learn – like any art, watercolor must needs be learned from a master and practiced over time.  I wish I’d started earlier. I return to my writing with a fresh perspective.  There are so many rich experiences in life to pull in.  

A Writer's Mission

A friend asked me what I was trying to do with my writing. When I didn’t say I hoped to publish the great American novel and achieve fame and fortune she released the breath she was holding and the fear in her eyes faded. Most people believe that if you are a real writer you would be published; if you call yourself a writer prematurely you must be deluded. Or worse.

What I did say was – I want to grow as a writer. What I forgot to add was – I want to encounter truth and experience 1John 1:14, “We are writing these things that our joy may be complete.”

Of course every writer needs an audience. A journal writer requires an audience of one, a blogger may target family, friends and fellow travelers, a novelist hopes to reach the hearts and minds of many more,

The path to publication has widened, but it’s weedy. It reminds me of a neighbor who sought my advice on how to get her daughter on stage because my daughter was having a measure of local success. I mentioned the years of ballet lessons and small roles on rented stages and suggested she enroll her daughter in a community theater class at the recreation center.  She gave me a withering look and spit out in frustration that she had no time for that, her daughter wanted to be famous.  I backed away, much as my friend was prepared to do if I had started pitching the draft of my novel.

Here’s the reality. Writing is a lifestyle. It requires that you plant yourself daily in a chair for hours and focus, then deal with the aftermath in a healthy way. Refuel your body by walking with a friend and breathing fresh air. (Helps you keep your friends.) Replenish your soul by seeking new vistas to rest your eyes on while you nurture the seeds of inspiration scattered in your brain. Refresh your depleted spirit in acts of appreciation.  

Ramping it up to be better than you are also requires productive downtime.   Resting and reading rather than watching C.S.I. Detectives Who’ve Moved to the Dark Side while emailing, posting and killing a bottle of wine (unless you are analyzing plot lines). 

It’s an extravagant lifestyle. Time is yours to account for and waste, Rewards are joy in discovery, hope that you will touch a heart and, let’s not kid ourselves, the possibility you might one day snag a brass ring on the go round.

Picking Paint

Picking paint colors has all the fun quotient of starting a new piece of writing. The burst of inspiration – I’m going to write a novel/redecorate my bathroom; the joy of confirmation – the theme will be regret and renewal/ relaxing at the spa; the thrill of beginning the project – the setting will be Basque regions of Spain and California/the beach and ocean. My purpose is clear.


After choosing shower and floor tile and trim I wade into the waters of choosing colors to paint the walls. Like I do in writing, I will pay attention to current trends. I’ll paint each wall a different color. So far, I’m on terra firma. The trim is small sea glass tile squares in shades of green, blue and taupe. This will dictate my color choice.

As in writing, now I hit the wall. My imagination has driven me into unknown territory. What do I know about Basque culture/tone and hue and color saturation?

In possession of the knowledge that I do have – I want to balance cool ocean tones with a warm-toned taupe accent wall – I head to the paint store. Surely someone who knows color can help me sort through the myriad chips of icy blues, grey greens and intense taupes. I know I’m sunk when the young girl behind the counter says, you mean beige? I’m on my own here.

I give silent respectful acknowledgement to the art majors and interior designers of the world and head to the section where some marketing genius has arranged colors in collections and named them things like Exuberance, Immolation, Au Natural and Zen Meditation. Now we’re talking. How wrong can I go in a bathroom painted with colors from a collection labeled Relaxation or Sea Breezes?

For my walls, I choose Early Morning Climb to grace the toilet and Crystal Geyser to surround my tub. I could make a case for doing it the other way around. The accent wall at one end will be Sea Hawk and in a moment of madness, I add a fourth color. I will paint the opposite wall Mountain Stream. I have a whole short story going in this bathroom.

The moral is this: When a project looms large and threatens to confuse you, use your words.

Truth Unplugged

I’m in Bakersfield researching the setting for several scenes in The Sheepwalker. I have some rewriting to do.

In my minds’ eye, the twin sisters who have never met are reunited at the Noriega Hotel. I’ve imagined the scene where they encounter each other in a private room off the hotel lobby. In fact, the Noriega Hotel was never a hotel, it was a boarding house for men, mostly sheepherders, mostly Basques, until the 1930s when it became more profitable to run as a restaurant and bar. This May, the owners will travel to New York to collect a prize from the James Beard Foundation for their culinary art.

Enter the Noriega from Sumner Street down by the railroad tracks. The Union Pacific brought the sheepherders to town in the early 1900s. Come in through the bar (no lobby) around 6:30 pm. Most patrons will be locals. At 7 pm a waitress will seat you at a long table for a family style dinner.

Unlabeled bottles of red wine grace the table and a succession of serving dishes pass across – listen up or you won’t know that you are supposed to add the beans and sauce to the vegetable soup after you’ve ladled it into your bowl. In the spirit of “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” I offer this list of what came after the soup:

Pickled calves tongue (I’m sorry, it was delicious)
Beets

Cottage cheese
Blue cheese
Lettuce
Beef stew
Bread
Corn
Spaghetti and red sauce
French fries
Ribs and sauce
Ice cream

I enjoyed conversation with my tablemates – a Sacramento transplant who manufactures and serves ice cream at Rosemary’s on F Street and a lady bartender who left teaching to tend bar for 25 years because if you manage to stay off drugs, alcohol and cigarettes you can pay off your house serving drunks who act like first graders, something teaching actual first graders who act like drunks won’t allow. Then I took my glass of wine down to the end of the table to talk to the sheepherders.

Okay, kill the scene where the oil company is the bad guy. The oil company and the sheep men are symbiotic – sheep keep the grass cut, which makes it easier to get to the oil. The bad blood was between the shepherds and the cowboys. Well we knew that, didn’t we?

The problem with writing a novel is that you have to amp the action. For those of us who find life’s daily routine compelling enough, this is hard. And people like my new Peruvian friend are no help. The most talkative of the bunch wasn’t one of the French Basque brothers or the Basque from Spain who spoke no English, it was the retired shepherd from Peru. He came to the U.S. because he wanted to be a veterinarian. On an exchange program, he discovered he had ambition that far exceeded what he would ever be able to do in Peru. In America, the Basques had already figured out which sheep to cultivate for meat and which strains would produce the best wool. There was so much to learn.

“It’s a lonely life,” I probed.

“Oh no! “ he said. “There is so much to think about. You have time to read books. Figuring out how you will feed and bathe yourself, how you will get exercise and stay healthy keeps you very busy. On my two week vacation, I went to night school to learn English.”

Would it surprise you if I told you he has four grown children who will never herd sheep? They are all professionals.

As I was leaving, the French Basque told me about the time the water truck came up to water the sheep he was tending.

“I stripped naked and threw myself under the stream of water to bathe before the sheep had a chance to drink,” he chuckled.

I think I can probably do something with that.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Two weeks ago, we joined the caravan of sun worshippers leaving the snow capped mountains for the desert valleys. Today I’m warming up in Arizona, watching two cottontail bunnies build a nest out back under the watchful eye of a mourning dove.


Daddy bunny appears to be helping, but I suspect his motives. “C’mon babe, the nest is perfect. Let’s make some babies!” His honey must be an interior decorator bunny; she’s choosing straw for softness and fragrance, and she’s picky.

In a bit, I’ll walk four minutes to the fitness center and choose among a number of exotic classes – Zumba, Muscle Works, PowerUp Abs, Aqua Aerobics in the indoor infinity pool. After that, Joel will go to a Cactus League baseball game with the gang and I will settle down and write.

It is Week 10 of Stanford University’s online writing class, Gripping Plots, and young Seth has hit his stride. In addition to critiquing two of my classmates’ work, I have this blog to write, questions to answer on the forum and progress to make on my novel, but it’s all good.

I’m learning to be a more careful and critical reader – to post encouraging and helpful comments on my fellow writer’s work that go beyond, “I liked your story”. I labor to add value, like “Bob’s facial tics were a brilliant way of showing us he’s a nervous guy, but he went out for a smoke on page three and never came back. What’s up with that?”

I’m discovering my own lapses: “You didn’t get that Henry is Dee’s husband who died in Korea, not the father she never knew?” I better fix that.

I’ve work shopped the first few chapters of the Sheepwalker and gotten useful critique and encouraging response.

From Elisa, “There is a slow beauty that comes through in the lyricism of your writing.” I hope when she gets famous she’ll do a blurb on my book jacket.

From Terry, “It’s got secrets, romance, exotic and colorful places, generational issues and a very satisfying ending.” I’d want to read that book, wouldn’t you?

From Seth, a call for more clarity and better management of the information flow. So, I have my work cut out for me.

Revising the first draft of a novel is like putting together a 5,000 piece puzzle. Some of the pieces that appeared to fit where you first placed them actually don’t. You have to pull them out and refit them, and then more pieces will fall into place. Or you may determine they don’t belong in this puzzle at all and set them aside.

Perhaps the most fun I’ve had in the last ten weeks, besides getting to know some talented writers, is learning to kill adverbs. I may offer a contest when I send out review copies of my book: find an adverb, get a free autographed copy of the first edition. Adverbs seem to proliferate, like bunnies.

NaNoWriMo Fever

Writing a novel in a month is like taking a lover – it creates a buzz in your community and it makes your husband jealous. My husband retaliated by getting very cozy with his metal lathe down in his shop, so it worked out well.

I learned a lot in the NaNoWriMo adventure:

Keeping to a vigorous writing schedule; pushing your story out of the weeds – the boring stuff like endless description and interior musing – out to the middle of the lake where the action is; it’s hard work so it must be worth it, right?

I learned to push my characters overboard and leave the in the wake of danger to see what they would do. One day I had this conversation with myself:

Me: This story is boring.
Self: Burn her house down.
Me: I can’t do that! I love that house!
Self: Burn it down NOW! I’ll get the gas can. You light the match.
Me: Gulp. Okay.

Boy, was that ever fun! There’s nothing like a house on fire to get a story moving again. Creating mayhem for my main character to deal with was so entertaining that I mugged her daughter in a subsequent chapter.

I learned that good friends will tolerate conversation about your plots characters far longer than they will listen to stories about your grandchildren. They offer ideas on plots, you steal their ideas and put them in your novel, they are delighted and everyone wins.

It’s fun to open up your email see a message of encouragement from Lemony Snickett.

Writing a novel on a deadline gives you a perfect excuse to stop grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning the house, doing laundry, all the chores that sustain life, because you no longer have a life. It’s a terrific time management tool:

Me: Okay, where do I have 4 to 6 hours in my day today to write my 1,667 words?
My Calendar: Sorry toots, you have 3 meetings scheduled today. Not happening today.
Me: Reaching for a red pen: That one goes, that one goes, Ah there’s the time.

The only downer is the inevitable question from people who don’t write novels. Right up there with the “I’m sorry your baby died, but you can have another one” response is this: “Do you have a publisher?” I wrote a decent draft in a month. It takes about three years to get a book published I’m told, but we’ll see. That’s the polite answer.

I finished the first draft of my book last night. I promised myself I would wrap Christmas presents today. But here I am. Like an alcoholic who has to have a drink to face the day, I am compelled to exorcise my demons and darlings before I’ve even combed my hair. If you don’t get a Christmas present from me, that’s why.

Story board

The Sheepwalker

Does family history matter? It is 1953 and it matters to recently widowed Dolores Moraga – Dee for short. Dee has just lost her mother, Leora, who took secrets to her grave about her daughter’s identity – secrets her granddaughter Valerie guessed at and wrote about in a novel she has just published overseas, a story she hopes her mother will never read.

Set in a bucolic town near emerging Silicon Valley – and across the world in the hills and valleys of Narvarre – Dee sheds her rigid self-control as she searches for answers about her shadow family, Iban, Alfonso and Alaya. When Valerie’s book becomes a bestseller and is scheduled for publication in the U.S., Val will have to come clean with Dee about what she knows, but not before Dee discovers the truth about the one person who is the source of her yearning. Ever dispassionate, Dee will discover a new path and a new passion -- in work and in love.

Bill Manville on falling in love with writing

My friend and writing teacher Bill Manville has requested guest space. (He tried to post this is the comment section to one of my blogs on writing and wasn't able to...some of my friends have difficulty posting comments and others don't, I don't understand why; it happens to me too.) From Bill:

What do New York editors, publishers and agents look for in new writers? I'm Bill Manville; my last thriller, “Goodbye,” published by Simon & Schuster, was a BOM Alternate; my last non-fiction, "Cool, Hip & Sober," was published by Forge New York. I also write a weekly column for the New York Daily News, and teach "Writing to Get Published" online for both writers.com and Temple University. The principal text for both courses is, “The WTGP Student Handbook.” I give it to my students at the beginning of each course, Here's a passage I hope other writers will find relevant to what they may be trying to do:

How early as kids do we develop a sense of justice? As yet unwilling to accommodate selfishness and greed, “It isn’t fair!” we cry out to each other at some petty instance of bias;-- one of the most powerful arguments childhood can summon. Commenting on the Peloponnesian War at the end of the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Thucydides noted:

The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.

Not only does he record a fact of war but does it with an irony of language that says to us, Oh, no—it isn’t fair, it isn’t just. And the noble child who lives in us still – the one who reads a lot and may even aspire to be a writer --resonates to the unspoken message: Amen! we answer back—which is why Thucydides is still read 25 centuries later.

What I try to teach my students is that good writing starts with that community of values between writer and reader, an unspoken meeting of souls between-the-lines. A feeling very much like falling in love.

From "Writing to Get Published." If you’d like a free copy – over 150 digital pages, email whmanville@yahoo.com and ask. No strings; results do not vary; yes it’s free.

Postscript from Sydney:  Thank you Bill. And, gentle reader, if you can shed some light on how to leave a comment that doesn't disappear into cyberspace, please do.  Let's have a comment blitz to this entry. No advertiser will call, I promise.

Slam Poetry

More for my writer friends – Slam Poetry is a poem that reads like a story. I took a Turn Your Prose into Poetry workshop from Sarah Zale. The value of turning your prose into poetry is that you can give your story more power. Challenge yourself to tell a lot in as few words as possible. Here are some tips:

1. Tell family stories or make observations, with a twist
2. Line breaks are important
3. Use techniques such as lists, rhythm and music, but not necessarily rhyme – try slant rhyme or close rhyme such as assonance (rhyming vowels within a word)
4. Bring your readers into your story by letting them make choices as to what it all means; let your reader figure out the feelings
5. Repetition is effective in poetry
6. Make sure your language matches the voice. If you write from a child’s perspective, use a child’s words.
7. Build a poem around a quote or write from a persona

Here is a short poem I wrote in the seminar, based on words I carry in my heart.

Bad News

After midnight phone calls come

at all hours of the day:

Mom, my life is over

Mom? He’s still alive

Sydney, I can’t get up anymore

alarms go off that have not been set

noise clangs silently in ears

dark closes the shades on eyes

bellows suck air from lungs

ribs press painfully into a heart grown huge

with an infusion of bad news.

Weekend Writer Warrior

I had an inspired weekend at Write on the Sound in Edmonds, WA and I want to share some of my treats with my writing friends. Remember Natalie Goldberg? Writing down the Bones; Wild Mind – she started a creative writing movement back in the day when people started movements (what movement would you like to start today?) Natalie’s thoughts on writing:

Writers care about something that the rest of society doesn’t care much about.

A timed writing practice gives you a chance to say what you really want to say and find out what your true obsessions are.

Writing is an athletic activity.

All those journals you have? Re-read them; then throw them away. They aren’t precious.

And from Paula Coomer, English professor at University of Washington. Her thoughts on writing in the absence of commercial success:

The devil trades in immediate gratification, not eternal consequences. Writing has eternal consequences.

Writing is about Mystery – not knowing what is going to come out of the end of your pen, being amazed at the grace of it.

Writing is the act of setting down your thinking as clearly as possible.
Walk softly and carry a pen and a big notebook.

And from Robert J. Ray, teacher, author and Goldberg convert:

Now write. Go.