I’m Getting Scared About the Election

9:00 a.m. here, Friday, Halloween…I should be revising the novel, but I can’t concentrate yet. I’m about to start crying over this darned election. I can’t take the suspense of not knowing the outcome anymore! I want it to be done!

As much as I want to hope, pessimism leaches into my thoughts. Pessimism because the Republicans are better at shenanigans than the Dems. What’s going to happen in Florida this time around, eh? And the poor, why is it the poor always seem to vote for the party that doesn’t give a crap about them? Why is there so much ignorance?

Actually, “getting scared” isn’t quite right. I’ve been worried for awhile, but it’s hitting me now. But of course there’s hope, there is. The popular groundswell is amazing, isn’t it? And if my diehard Republican brother-in-law is voting for Obama, doesn’t that mean millions more like him might be doing the same?

But what about the millions of closet racists? We know they’re out there. We know they’re nice people who would NEVER say a word about race but that will never vote for a black man either.

Why can’t people think LOGICALLY for God’s sake? Uhm, when was the last time we enjoyed a surplus, great economy, and global respect…uhm, wouldn’t that be under the Democrats?

LOGIC LOGIC LOGIC…Now I’m just getting mad. So I’m going to send you off to three websites.

1. I’ve been receiving position papers from novelist Elizabeth George. She’s a smart cookie, and she’s done her research, believe me. AND, I admire that she decided to publish these papers on her official author’s website.

Please, if you’re still undecided, check her papers out. Read the last paper for an overview (hopefully it’s posted now). She includes some very interesting statistics.

2. My friend Wendy is political, smart, and funny, and I like this post — which, in fact, got me thinking about the logic-factor. Her post about game-show Palin is spot on also.

3. Then this blog, which brought a welcome smile to my face. Two 80-year-olds saying exactly what it is they believe. I want to be that feisty when I’m 80!! As these two say: If you’re still undecided, you haven’t been paying attention.

On a personal level, I fear what might become of me should things not change. I’ve already had two freelance jobs postpone themselves into the indefinite future because of the economy…I wish I had some comfort food in the house…Why the heck didn’t I buy Halloween candy this year?!?!?!?

Halloween Reading Challenge

(For those reading this looking for my free-for-all Friday post: Please check back on Saturday!)

Halloween is here, and I forgot that I’d signed up for a reading challenge called RIP III. It’s good bookish fun through Halloween, and I joined in because I had the perfect book: Elizabeth Engstrom’s The Northwoods Chronicles.

I hadn’t read a spooky book in awhile, so this was perfect.

Yet, I do have a history with scary fiction. I read my first Stephen King when I was 14, and thereafter spent the rest of adolescence terrifying myself.

I just had a memory: My mother, who was never one to give gifts outside birthday and Christmas, enters my room one night. Picture me cuddled on my waterbed (because I was diagnosed with scoliosis, I swear!) perhaps reading “The Exorcist” or the latest Peter Straub. “I thought you might like to give this book a try,” she says, and hands me a collection of humorous short stories. Humor?!?! I was so far from humor you might as well have nominated me poster-girl for hormonally induced angst, moodiness, and depression!

So, yes, I have a history with the creepy, but I don’t read them much anymore. I’m glad to say that Engstrom’s The Northwoods Chronicles led me through her haunting northwoods universe with a ton of artistry and no gratuitous shlock.

The creepy factor is enhanced by her minimalist writing style. Disappearing children, killer wax statues, murderers, and mermaids inhabit her universe with the same quiet poise as her grieving mothers and college students. It’s all the same reality, and this is a big reason for the creep-factor.

As the cover states, The Northwoods Chronicles is a “novel in stories.” I liked meeting and re-meeting her characters in different contexts. I also liked that she preferred ambiguity over perfect plot bows.

I’ve been interested in the concept of linked short stories for awhile. Reading Engstrom’s novel in stories, I realized that she made it look easy. The secret, as she told me, is to create a full-fledged universe. Her universe fascinates.

(Okay, writing this in front of the telly, Thursday night. Just flipped the channel and found “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Talk about memories: midnight showings, yes, during high school. You’re probably not surprised to know that San Francisco loved its Rocky Horror midnight showings!)

SHARING | A Quickie Post

I’ve been meaning to pass this along for awhile:

Every Monday I receive an email called “Author Minute.” It comes through the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and I don’t mind that I somehow landed on their list because sometimes the one-minute author soundbites are kinda interesting. Here, for example, are this week’s topics:

Monday: Balancing pacing and character in a suspense novel

Tuesday: Why novelist Chris Grabenstein loves mysteries

Wednesday: Elizabeth Brundage describes her writing schedule

Thursday: The joys of rewriting

Friday: The ups and downs of writing as a team

These author minutes arrive in your Inbox when you subscribe to a monthly online magazine called Author Author which also contains interesting tidbits. This week a novelist discusses how she’s given up planning her novels while another gives advice to the networking-shy.

This is also a good venue for those of you actively promoting your novels!

My Love Affair With Bookshops

I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening…like a light in the midst of the darkness.
                                                                                       –Vincent van Gogh

I’m lucky, living in Portland. This little-big city is alive with culture — food and music and art and fashion (believe or not, we have fashion week) and one of the best independent bookstores in the country: Powell’s.

I’m fond of Powell’s, don’t get me wrong, but my favorite bookshop is my neighborhood venue: Annie Bloom’s Books. It’s small and intimate with handwritten signage all over the place: Staff Favorites, New and Notable, Recommended. Unlike Powell’s, which is a tourist attraction and multi-level warehouse with a kazillion ever-changing college-student employees, the Annie Bloom’s staff knows books and welcomes us readers in with smiles and hellos. Since space is at a premium, they choose their books carefully. There’s even a shop cat.

On Saturday night, I went to Annie Bloom’s’ (there’s a punctuation question for you — add another possessive apostrophe?) 30th anniversary reception.

THIRTY years! A neighborhood bookstore that’s still alive after 30 years!

I wore my name tag and spoke to the curly-haired bookseller who organizes the readings. And, of course, I had to buy a book. I picked up a most appropriate and pretty little paperback called The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee, opened to a random page, and read this:

“Decades ahead of other book retailers, Upstart Crow’s owners had created something of a theme park, where the atmosphere…was as much a draw as the merchandise…and summoning the tradition of the English coffeehouse–shades of Dr. Johnson, The Tatler, those who made the eighteenth-century coffeehouse an institution–Upstart Crow brought the first espresso bar to our neck of the woods.”

Talk about a serendipitous moment. The “our neck of the woods” was my hometown of Mill Valley, California, and I remembered Upstart Crow. In fact, my love of bookshops (not to mention coffeehouses) started with Upstart Crow back in high school. I thought I was so sophisticated and intellectual hanging out there. That’s where I discovered the smell of new books. I’d crack open the spines and sniff away. If anything, all that inadvertent glue-sniffing solidified my love of books.

Where did your love affair with bookshops start?

I’ll end on another quote from Buzbee:

“Books, I knew then and now, give body to our ideas and imaginations, make them flesh in the world; a bookstore is the city where our fleshed-out inner selves reside.”

Free-For-All Friday

(What is this? My very own meme, which could take the form of other Friday memes out there — random five or ‘fessing up — or non-Friday memes, or anything! Point being to have a little fun and get a little interactive. Feel free to snitch my logo at left and do your Friday thing!)

 

Today I’m ‘fessing up for my Friday. It’s about time I held myself accountable for flailing around with this revision. I’m taking far too long. This is ridiculous.

So, I hereby set my new goal in writing — hopefully publicizing it on this blog will keep me honest – along with the prize I’ll win for reaching this goal. Because prizes are good, and prizes help enforce arbitrary deadlines, right? Right (again hopefully).

Which brings up a question: Do you give yourself writing prizes? If so, what? I need ideas!

The goal: I have 12, count them, 12, chapters left to revise. So, I hereby promise to revise one chapter a day, including weekends, until I am done.

This doesn’t sound like an onerous goal, but one chapter each day can be tough. Some of the chapters are in horrible shape.

The prize: Thirteen or 14 days from now I’m going to the coast to a fancier lodge than usual for me — one that allows dogs, by the way. This lodge is offering a three-nights-for-the-price-of-two deal, which helps.

How’s that for a prize?

Admittedly, I’ll still be working. I’ll bring the printed copy of the manuscript with me and read through it for fine-tunes. Fun!

How much of a writing-geek am I that I’ll have loads, I mean, TONS, of fun reading through a manuscript at a fancy lodge on the beach with my dog as companion? Gotta love it. I’ll use any excuse for a writing retreat.

Have a great weekend. I’ll be working, but enthusiastically. In fact, the enthusiasm starts now with chapter 36 (woo-hoo).

Sidenote question: We writers need a patron saint of revisions. Who’s a good candidate for this position?

How’s This For Funny?

Here is an up-to-the-minute moment in my writer’s life:

This time of year the sun beams into my office around midafternoon. I love it. Unfortunately, today Luna the Loony Dog discovered the warmth also.

On my lap, of course.

Lovely for her. And cutesy for me for about two minutes. On the ground again (in the shade), she wouldn’t leave me alone. In the name of the writing god called revision, I decided to let her have her sun.

On my desk, of course.

I’m whipped. I am SO whipped.

(Thanks goodness she’s smaller than my cat. And thank goodness the cat’s outdoors. He also likes to sunbathe on my desk…)

Quick Question For You

This is not deep, not even about writing, but can someone tell me what the deal is with the comment I received on yesterday’s post?

For one thing, it states that “Porteus” wrote the post…For another, what’s with the ads? Or, is that what it is, a nifty strategy to get me, the writer, and maybe you, the reader, to click over to a page of ads? Is WordPress in cahoots with Ads by Google?

Is it called “best webBlogs reView” to get me to think I’ve won some kind of prize and thereby click over? Who are those people on the blogroll, and what do they have to do with it?

I’ve gotten a few of these, usually I spam or delete them, thought I’d ask this time around. Have you received these? They’re highly annoying.

EPIPHANY | The Bench and Dead Squirrels

It’s 3:00 p.m. on Monday. I’m sitting here with sun shining in on my desk, cold coffee next to my mouse, revising a chapter. No biggie. Pretty typical.

Various bits and pieces have been flitting through my head lately. Like that short-story idea that’s not an idea yet, the one with a title and that’s it (this post). Also, the notion that my creative-brain feels tight. Clenched. Constipated. I need to loosen up.

I’ve been thinking about posting one of my photos as a writing prompt for you and for me. Once a week, loosen myself up with an hour’s worth of writing play.

All this, somewhere in my head. Meanwhile, just now I took a wee revision break to, what else, flit through the Internet. Low and behold, came upon a blog with photographic writing prompts, and I thought, Huh, fancy this, already out there; still, which photo would I post for my first writing prompt?

I remembered the photo posted here. It’s a memorial bench for Phillip, aged four. Someone had set flowers on the memorial plaque (too bad they’re not in focus). That bench has been bugging me lately, but in a good way: creatively.

I thought, What about that photo? and returned to my revision, la-di-da, and I was in the middle of deciding what to do about this pesky sentence–

I fingered the pill in my pocket, picturing our intermittent and rushed sojourns in the library, the way Jasper’s hands tapped a tune out on my stomach with fingers delicate and precise as spider’s limbs.

–when it hit me that the bench and all the sorrow it symbolizes is the crux of the unknown story entitled “The Season of Dead Squirrels.”

I could be excited.  !!!!! <–yes, exclamation points–> !!!!! Maybe I am!

The randomness and wonderfulness of creativity. Don’t we writers love that?

Okay, back to revisions!

(Not promising I’ll do the photographic writing prompts, just saying. Check out A Thousand Words if you’re curious.)

Plotdog Press

Plotdog Press is a cool website for writers. Every week the creator hosts a W.O.O.F. (Writers Offering Our Finest) contest. 

 

WOOF Contest – Top 5 Picks:

About Writing
Lisa Alber – “What I Will NOT Do in the Next Few Days” – How I met an anthology deadline in under four days.

Poetry
Chungyen Chang – “when birds breathe” – Visual verse on flight and despair. Please read from the bottom-up.
Robert Bourne – “The Middle years and My Paradoxical Soul” – An inner reflective poem,

Fiction/Prose/Artistry/Monologue
Puneet Kaur – “Standing still…” – The post is a simple painting that has many colours, many shades… time, music, ecstasy, hope…. life in general…. the course that life would take….. and much more!!
Jennifer M Scott – “495 to Baltimore” – Two monologues about illicit love.

Brought to you by PlotDog Press with the Serial Thriller “Dead Play“

Free-For-All Friday

(What is this? My very own meme, which could take the form of other Friday memes out there — random five or ‘fessing up — or non-Friday memes, or anything! Point being to have a little fun and get a little interactive.)

 

Two items I ran across that made me uneasy: This goes to the state of the publishing biz and our lot as novelists within it.

The Independent carried a piece about how novelists are under pressure to “dumb down” so as to appeal to a wider readership. It could be that publishers are rebranding certain authors more commercially — I call this the cult of personality in action — rather than let their work stand on its own.

Granted, these novelists stand to gain in the moulah-department if the publishers succeed in the marketing “remarketing.” But, I ask you, would you really want to see Cormac McCarthy rebranded as a thriller or action writer?

Simiilarly, The Guardian ran a piece about authors as “branding machines.” I’m going to quote a portion, because, for me, it says it all:

“…the obsession with “branding” authors is threatening to hamper new talent. Writing a book a year is the absolute minimum for an aspiring genre novelist, and this treadmill approach allows no let-up. Will new crime writers get the freedom of say, Dennis LeHane, Thomas Harris and James Ellroy to write the books they want, when they want? Or will they be squeezed out by rivals willing to fire off three or four books a year to establish themselves?”

Seems to me this scenario is pertinent to most novelists, not only crime writers. What are your thoughts?

An item that made me think: Sometimes another blogger’s pearl of wisdom takes me by surprise. One wee sentence on Quantum Storytelling’s blog was a welcome slap in the face: “Procrastination is caused by indecision.”

We could discuss whether procrastination is always caused by indecision, but, in point of fact, when I read that statement I realized that my procrastination of past weeks had indeed been caused by indecisiveness! Yowza. I outlined my tangled thoughts in a post last week. This week I decided to tackle point number one from that post (finish a revision). Low and behold, this week my work routines settled back into their good groove.

And, an item that made me smile: A writers-retreat-friend is doing well for himself these days. His name is Eldon Thompson, and he writes epic fantasy. I enjoyed perusing his website this week — and I’m happy for him. The bit that made me smile came out of an interview. He said this:

“…Most importantly, perhaps, it has taught me to simplify things—to toss out ideas that are too complex and to really focus on the emotional response of characters to whatever obstacles are thrown at them.”

I smiled because I tend toward too much complexity in my first drafts. Glad to know that I’m not the only one that’s learned a few lessons around this!