Detoxing a Writer’s Brain and Opening Up New Worlds

I am feeling better than I have in a very long time. No cigarettes. Minimal caffeine. Sparkling water all day. Delicious fresh salads for lunch. Minimal carbs. Feel as if I have detoxed my system.

Most significantly, my head has really opened up. My writing has taken off. I may not get thousands of words a day, but what I am writing is really, really good. Yes, I’m impressed with myself.

Clearing the fog and the crashes has allowed my creativity to blossom. My thoughts are better organized. I have focus, clarity, alertness that simply didn’t exist before.

I’m giving my attention to a suspenseful psycho thriller. My main character, Jillian, has clairvoyant nightmares. There’s a serial killer in her past and another in her present. The dreams from the past are in the victims’ POV. I know, I know, it can be hard to be inside a victim’s head, but it’s working…at least for me, now. I may rethink that later.

It’s limited omniscient POV. There’s a therapist and a Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) liaison. Jillian has an eighteen year old son and a twelve year old daughter. My psych and forensics background makes this writing relatively easy once things gel in my mind.

The dream sequences are written in first person, but the storyline is third. A bit unconventional, but it’s working out so much better than when I had it in all third person. I had to rewrite two chapters.

It’s fast paced and much happens to her that brings everything close to home. I’m excited about how things are coming along.

I still don’t have a title for this new book and it’s killing me!!!

I owe a great big “Thank You” to Sue Coletta, who has posted some very helpful info in the past couple of months. I find myself bookmarking her pages frequently. Pay her a visit, especially if you are looking at mystery/thriller/crime fiction. She’s an awesome thinker and has some really cool contacts who contribute.

I don’t have an outline yet, beyond a fish bones skeleton. I tend to get about half way through, and then need the outline fleshed out to proceed.

I’m also reading and researching much material. So, I’ve had little time online beyond my e-cig forum support group and a bit of FB.

Just thought I should pop in and let you know I am alive and well. I do skim blogs but honestly haven’t done much commenting. I wish I had more time. Don’t know how you folk who work eight hours a day do it. My hat is off to you!

Hoping you all are doing well.

Do you get as excited as I do when you get deep into a new project?

What do you think about first person victims?

Ten Qualities of an Authorpreneur and How to Become One

As authors, we’ve all been told we have to run our authorship like a business. The French word “preneur” means taker; one who takes. Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business or other organization. The entrepreneur develops a business model, acquires the human and other required resources, and is fully responsible for its success or failure. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for being an author!

A fairly new buzz word in the writing world is “authorpreneur”. What does being an entrepreneur have to do with being an author?

A Gallup study of 1000 entrepreneurs and published by Forbes listed the ten qualities of highly successful business entrepreneurs. I’ve considered this list and came up with with some ways authors and business leaders parallel and what you can do to think and act like an entrepreneur. The authorpreneur is an entrepreneur in the writing world.

1. Business Focus: They base decisions on the potential to turn a profit. Whether you are writing for a living or as a hobby, you need book sales to establish a readership.

2. Confidence: They know themselves well and can read others. Learn your strengths and weaknesses. Seek feedback. Do you write best in present tense, past tense? Do you work best with an outline? Can writing out character profiles help you with character development? Are you networking to find your audience?

3. Creative Thinker: They know how to turn an existing project or idea into something even better. Character falling flat? Give them flaws, give them a relationship. How do they handle stress? Explore them deeply. Setting not working for a story? Tweak it. Change it. Kick up the pace, twist a plot. Trust your instincts.

4. Delegator: They don’t try to do it all. Know who you can depend on. Have you beta read for people? Have they beta read for you? Who participates in blog tours? Do you have an editor you can trust? Is there a proofreader who is particularly adept? If your answer to any of these questions is no, none, or I don’t know, find your resources and delegate!

5. Determination: They battle their way through difficult obstacles. When you hit a snag do you give up or make a change? Flexibility is key. The only thing constant in life is change.

6. Independent: They will do whatever it takes to succeed in the business. Never give up. When people scoff at your decision to write, ignore them. Not everyone feels your passion like you do. Share it with those who do.

7. Knowledge-Seeker: They constantly hunt down information that will help them keep the business growing. Read and read some more. Read fiction, read craft books, read reputable blogs. Write poetry, short stories, novellas, novels. Keep writing. Keep practicing. Keep learning.

8. Promoter: They do the best job as spokesperson for the business. Become a shameless self-promoter (without becoming obnoxious). Tap all the resources you can, book signings, libraries, writer symposiums, Twitter, Facebook, the blogging community. Don’t have time for them all…pick one or two and be relentless.

9. Relationship-Builder: They have high social intelligence and an ability to build relationships that aid their firm’s growth. Project a positive business image. You have but a passing moment to make a positive and memorable impression on people with whom you intend to do business. Collaborate when you can, and when you can’t, make certain to offer a professional explanation.

10. Risk-Taker: They have good instincts when it comes to managing high-risk situations. Entrepreneurs exist to defy conventional wisdom. They know when to break the rules. DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

Birth of a Book Nerd

There was a time in my life when I tried to be a “normal” kid. This wasn’t an easy thing to do considering my father had three wives in four years, and none of them would have won “Mother-of-the-Year”.

Just before my sisters and I went into foster care, I signed up with the city to be a cheerleader for the pony league football team. I was eleven years old and had just started into the sixth grade. I was the only one without saddle oxfords. Already, I was different.

Our team, The Moose Club team, did very well and we eventually got to the State Championship. Yay! Go Moose. The whole community of my small town, LaGrange, GA, got behind us. There were signs everywhere cheering us on.

 

Then came the big day. We were up against Savannah, a school team. An enormous crowd showed up at the city stadium to watch the game and offer their support. The Savannah buses pulled up and a marching band came off first playing triumphant music followed by a team of boys in black and gold that made our team in blue and white look like midgets.

We knew right away that we were NOT going to be victorious.

To make matters worse for me, a cheerleader on my own team slapped me in the chest with her pom-pom, shattering my beautiful white mum corsage. All of the petals scattered and fell to the ground.  There wasn’t anything but a red, white and blue ribbon to save.

When we went over to do our H.E.L.L.O. cheer, this same cheerleader slapped me in the face with her pom-poms in the middle of our cheer. I retaliated by smacking her back across the chest, likewise destroying her flower.

When we got back to our side, the cheerleading coach benched both of us for the rest of the game…which we lost. Bad.

The following school day, my sisters and I were seated on the school steps awaiting our step-mother to pick us up. The team quarterback, Jeff McHugh, was teasing me in front of a large group of boys and spit a massive loogie into the back of my hair. Again, I retaliated by jumping up and kicking him hard in the crotch. That got us both sent to the Principal’s office.

My dad showed up to defend me. I was really proud of that. But I didn’t score any points with the guys.

After a summer of riding bikes around the neighborhood and falling “in love” with a boy down the street, I started to the all-girls junior high school. I was done with competitive sports. While my sisters and friends practiced band, drill team, tumbling, and so on…I was seated in the back of the library reading books.

I would lose myself in the stories and drift off to faraway places and meet interesting people. It was my escape from reality.

The library had a set of National Geographics that covered the entire back wall. A lady had donated it to the school and it had every copy from 1915 to 1972. I traveled all over the world through those magazines and was certain, with all of the Jacques Cousteau articles; I would someday be an oceanic photographer.

That never came to pass, but I had found refuge in those magazines and forevermore reading was my favorite pastime. I was no longer interested in competitive sports or being popular, just give me a book.

During foster care, traveling through four schools in three years in four different towns, I always had my stories to keep me company. My familiars. My love for reading and writing grew out of those days spent in the library.

Thus, a book nerd was born!

My reading and writing skills were well developed by high school and I received much encouragement, from dear teachers and fellow students, to pursue those talents.

Are you a book nerd?

How did you develop your interest in reading and writing?

Have competitive sports ever been your thing?

Were you a popular kid in school?

Writing to Make Readers Think Deeply

I have almost finished the edits on Naked Alliances and I still can’t say that I am totally satisfied with it. It’s entertaining, but there seems to be something I enjoy about writing that it is missing.

I like to make readers think deeply, to consider, contemplating an understanding of some serious subjects.

Red Clay and Roses does that.

Naked Alliances has a few moments of prose that might have someone pondering, but it is generally quite shallow. It lacks the depth of the solid reads that I most enjoy.

I have heard readers should never compare their writing to others, but I feel it is necessary to learn and to be inspired.

Anne Rice is one of my most favorite authors. Most people think of her in association to her legendary vampires, but she has written so much more.

She has erotica written under Anne Rampling, The Sleeping Beauty Quartet is a series of four novels written by American author Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure, her Seraphim Series, the Christ the Lord books, The Wolf Gift Chronicles, The Vampire Chronicles, and The Mayfair Legacy trilogy. I’ve probably left something out, but needless to say, she is a prolific author with decades of terrific writing under her belt.

She also writes full-length novels on some of her ancillary characters, like Pandora, Merrick, Armand and writes on other subjects that interest her like Egyptian lore, Servant of the Bones and others.

With all of her writing, regardless of genre, Anne has an intuitive writing style that makes us think.

I believe many readers like to be challenged in that way with fiction.

One of my most favorite scenes in one of Anne’s books comes, not from vampire legend, but a man named Ashler in her Mayfair Legacy.

He’s thousands of years old and extremely wealthy. She has him standing in his penthouse suite in Rockefeller Center surrounded by his doll collection. This eccentric modern man is a descendant of Picts and has lived in some extreme conditions in medieval times.

Here, in his contemporary form, he is thinking about capitalism, corporate America, wealth, prosperity and the Roman Catholic Church’s near poverty by comparison as he gazes out at the snow falling to cover the rooftop of St. Patrick’s Cathedral below.

There is something deeply metaphorical about that sort of writing. It takes us beyond the scene and inside ourselves.

She’s an inspiration.

It’s magical.

I want to write like that.

Do you have a particular author that you thoroughly enjoy reading? Why?

 What intrigues you about their style?

Do you have an author who is an inspiration to your writing?   

The Buzzing Bumblebee

 

There is a buzz going around the internet about content in writing. There are things some people are either offended by, or are so emotionally moved by that it becomes unhealthy for them to experience reading about it. Some psychologists actually encourage people to face their fears and pains, processing through them. But some people may not be ready to do that. Some writing stings.

 

 

 

Writers write for a variety of reason: to entertain, to educate, to share opinions, to share news.

 

 

 

 

In memoirs, most often people write to provide inspiration. Sometimes they write to share a story that does not necessarily directly offer hope, but indirectly shares how that person processed through a difficult life situation…it may not be a pretty story, but the hope is that you will see the writer’s triumph over a bad situation. The growth experience, and in the end, the hope.

 
Luanne shared a review of such a story: “I find it so hard to write a review of this book that I can’t help but wonder how Kathryn Harrison wrote it. It was a New York Times bestseller when it was originally published in 1997 and has been read by many. The Kiss is a very disturbing story. It’s about incest. And betrayal. And mental illness. And a “man of God” who was anything but. But mainly it’s Kathryn’s story* and how she negotiated growing up and learning how to be a woman.” But read the full review.

 
Incest is not a pretty topic. It’s not entertaining. I don’t know if this book is promoted with “trigger warnings” or not, but it is an example of what exactly disturbs me about this current BUZZ.

 
When you read the book description, I am certain that you will have some idea on what this memoir is about.

 
And then there is fiction.

 
Fiction is most often designed to be entertaining. But different people are entertained by different forms of fiction.

 
Some people prefer light reading. Others want to delve deeply into recesses of the mind and soul.

 
There is a current trend to avoid certain subjects that a number of people find offensive in fiction. I am not talking about murder, blood, guts, and gore. We tend to accept those things. Not only in crime fiction, but in mysteries, fantasy, vampire novels and horror.

 
But as Ginny Wiehard mystery writer tells us here: http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/genrefiction/tp/mysteryrules.htm

Certain subjects are considered absolute taboos, even in crime fiction. Mysteries should be about murder. Detectives should not be dealing less serious crimes. Or those crimes that are emotionally sensitive.

 
Rape, child molestation/incest, animal cruelty are subjects that even the most horrific writers are cautioned to avoid. These things are not “entertaining”. And in her point of view, these things can, in no way, be entertaining. They are not only politically incorrect, but they are emotionally incorrect. So now, we have to concern ourselves with emotional correctedness.

 
Crime is supposed to be bad. It is what sends people to jail. It is what makes law enforcers have to kill over. It is not supposed to be pretty.

 
Kirsten Lamb recently did a post about how we have begun to expect writers to show sensitivity.

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/something-wicked-this-way-comes-why-writers-could-be-in-great-danger/

Educators being expected to coddle the feelings of students so that nobody feels unimportant, left out, or harmed in any emotional way. University students objecting to being expected to read material that they might find offensive.

 
What?! University students should not have to learn about the atrocities of man/women in our society?

 
Another author blogger, C.S. McClellan, shares his opinions on trigger warnings and content here:

http://writingcycle.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/a-little-more-about-trigger-warnings/

 
Red Clay and Roses is a roman à clef. It is a fictionalized true story, like a biography of everyday ordinary people who lived during a time period of political upheaval in this country. Bad things happened. Progress was made. But it is not a pretty story. I did not set out to entertain when I wrote it. It does have a satisfying ending, but the subject matter could be painful to some. Someone is raped. Should it have been published? There is more than one abortion. It also deals with adoption. Should it have a trigger warning?

 
The crime novel that I am writing now deals with subject matter that could be painful to some. It has a villain, and although you don’t see a lot of her directly, you see the terrible things she does. I’m not talking graphic images, but allusions to terrible crimes. It’s a reality in our society. I want her to be bad, really bad, and horrible, worthy of death by dynamite! It’s crime. I don’t want her to get a slap on the wrist by the legal system. I want her to die. I want you to want her to die.

 

 

Do you think it should come with a trigger warning to spare potential crime novel readers the likely agony they just might feel if they are exposed to a distasteful subject?
How do you feel about trigger warnings? Is it censorship? Are there subjects so taboo that no genre should touch them?

If Lolita, written in 1955 and still listed at #785 on Amazon’s Top Sellers list,had been written today, would it have been published? The story of a girl repeatedly raped. A child. Would Vladimir Nabokov not written it because it is taboo?

 

So what are your thoughts?

(My apologies about the formatting…never could get it to behave!)

 

Sunday Synopsis: Word Counts and Retirement

I just reread this post and it came across to me as if I am very unhappy, so I want to qualify here before I push the publish button. I am very happy. Most likely the happiest person you know. I have a really good life and know that I am most fortunate to have the support that I do. I am going to post this anyway.

I have a good number of author friends who hold day jobs and have careers. Often, they speak of retirement and writing full-time.

It is a delusion that having more time will lead to more writing.

Before you attack, allow me to explain from my own personal point of view.

I was looking for my old Brother word processor, after having found a couple of boxes of floppy disks. The floppy disks hold some writing I did in the 80s that was never printed. I wanted to see if the rocket scientist could, maybe, get the Brother up and running well enough to get a screen, and perhaps print off some of the content. I have at least two packs of ribbon cartridges. Don’t know if they’ll work. They may be too dry. I know there are places that can take your floppy disks and convert the files, but I don’t even know if it is worth the bother/expense. It would be nice if I could remember what all I wrote, but I can’t.

While looking, I ran across an old plastic container and a few shoe boxes filled writing from that era. Now you have to keep in mind that was a time when I wrote during every spare minute I had. Those were far and few between, because at that same time I was going to school 40 miles away in one direction, working a full time job 20 miles away in another direction, (and sometimes a part-time job, too) raising three kids who had school, tae kwon do, softball, soccer, cheerleading, gymnastics, scouts, and so on. Granted, I had some downtime after my youngest son was born in 1985. Two years.

Yet, here’s what I found:

• 1200 pages (yes pages, not words) of the story of my life. About every memory I possessed at the time; from tossing my New Testament out the window and into the rain at the age of two (when I got my first spanking) to birthing my third child while wearing tennis shoes at age 25.
• A 300 page story about a young contemporary witch (a pharmaceutical chemist) who inherits a magical ruby ring from her grandmother and her witch family (probably influenced by reading LOTRs, or maybe Anne Rice, can’t recall the exact years I read Anne).
• Six chapters into an historical fiction about Martha Washington’s relationship with the African American mother of Washington’s mulatto children. (Perhaps based on a true story I read…most likely somebody has already done this).
• A horror story about a lady with cats I had published at age 17 years.
• I have this really cool sci-fi fantasy started about this league of aliens from different planets coming back to earth to reclaim the races…in 2020. It’s very interesting reading.
• Dozens of short stories (or at least what looks like the start of short stories). Lots of them are southern folklore I learned growing up and recorded in my own words. There’s even one where John Lennon lives. (You know, like Elvis.)
• Tons of dark poetry. (four shoe boxes) We’re talking nuclear destruction, biological and chemical warfare, death and dying, pollution and environmental catastrophe, loss, psychotic mind breaks.

I’m not saying this is good writing, but it is writing. I couldn’t recall having written so much.

Now all of this was written (either on a typewriter or a word processor, NOT a computer) in my twenties, when I had first been diagnosed with bipolar, and before I was stabilized on meds. I don’t doubt that most of this was written in the midst of some manic or depressive episode.

I first started thinking about the story in Red Clay and Roses in 1992. I wrote nothing. The nineties were filled with teenagers, professional career, and divorce. Then I was single, struggling to survive and socialize myself in another state. There was no time for writing. Life just got in the way.

We come to 2012. I’m stable. I’m retired. I have nothing but time and support. Perhaps coming off of a manic episode that followed suddenly stopping a thirty year career; I wrote Red Clay and Roses. Not as a novel, not that formally. It was a story in my head that I had wanted to write since 1992. A visit to Georgia that included reuniting with a cousin whose life intersected with that story in ways I had never known about inspired me to write. In my newfound serenity of retirement I pounded that story out in four months.  I researched and wrote during every waking moment for four months.

98,362 words.  Writing Monday through Friday, that’s roughly 88 days, which comes to 1118 words per day. That’s if I wrote every day like a 9-5 job. That includes research time, which is something I spent a lot of time on.

So I set myself what I considered a reasonable word count goal with my current WIP, 500 words per day.

I thought surely I could at least write 500 words per day. Most certainly I could get my next first draft written in a year.

I was also blogging, so I put myself on blogging restriction for a couple of reasons.

1. I was getting too intimidated by rules. Writing rules, rules, rules and more rules. Every post I read explained these rules, and advice. I’m capable of learning. I wanted to improve my writing. Seriously. The rules suck. They have thwarted my creativity beyond belief. The perfectionist in me, my internal editor, is too damned concerned about following the rules to get anything much accomplished.
2. Time. Blogging takes time.

Now I think. I spend the minutes thinking. Hours, days, weeks, I spend thinking. I think all the time. I think about writing. I wake up thinking about writing. I think all day about writing. I think about writing hours after I have laid myself down at night. I think about the rules. I think about the story I am trying to tell. I think about the characters, their motivations, emotions, behaviors, words. I think about the plot, the hook, the pace, the development. I think about the right words, the right phrases, and the right prose. I think about backstory, information dumps, showing, not telling.

Sometimes I’ll have a thought, a really good one, and I can’t hold it. I lose it almost as quickly as the thought occurred. I have no memory. I used to recall phone numbers two weeks after I was given them without ever having written them down, and now, I can’t seem to be able to hold a creative thought from my mind to the screen.

I’m overthinking. Yet I can’t recall my thoughts.

Screw the rules and I can sit down and pump out 3000 words in one day.

Then I spend hours and hours rewriting, revising.

Other days I am lucky to write one sentence.

Many, many days I spend thinking.

Word counts? Pfft!

So what is it that stifles my creativity and cripples my mind? My word count?

Rules, too many years on psychotropic drugs, old age?

I have nothing but time, and yet the clock ticks.

Retirement plans. Word counts. Discipline. Stability. Too many stories in my head.

I just want to effectively tell a story.

I have been working on this since November and don’t have 20,000 words.

http://forlackofabettercomic.com/                                       Jacob Andrews

Happy Birthday Red Clay and Roses!

 

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the day that Red Clay and Roses went live for the whole world to see.

I want to express my appreciation to all of the people who gave me an opportunity to share this story. Thank you most sincerely for the decision to invest in me and the time you spent reading; perhaps reviewing, my work.

Tomorrow I will put on my lab coat and go to work on an assignment that will pay me more in eight hours than I have earned in sales on this book this year. Yes, nurses often earn more than writers. Does this mean my sales are bad? No, it means my earnings in nursing are better. Most of you know I stepped out of career nursing to write. “You must be crazy!” some people have said to me.

Though I can’t refute that I am crazy, what they don’t understand is this: It is not about the money. Not for me, anyway. It’s about having the time and the peace of mind to dedicate myself to a life that I love. To do what I most enjoy. To spend my time pleasing myself and my readers.

I don’t write genre fiction. I don’t cater to trends. I don’t even write to fit into any specific category.

I write American life drama. Maybe some would call it historical fiction; maybe some would call it literary fiction. There is even a little romance in there. It wasn’t written about the last ten years, so it doesn’t qualify as contemporary fiction, but there are issues explored in it that are contemporary issues. I cannot even claim to know what it is by Amazon or Goodreads definitions.

I cannot claim to to know anything except that I am a perpetual student.

I have learned so very much this year and there is so much for me yet to learn.

Red Clay and Roses was written between April and July of 2012. I spent four months doing nothing but writing. It was not written as a novel to be published. It was a creative writing project that I devoted myself to out of a passion to record a story.

After I wrote it, I placed it on a shelf for about a year. I took it down, read it, and made a few changes. After sharing it with others, which took immeasurable courage, we (my support group and I) decided to publish. It was published March 27, 2013.

I did not know what the hell I was doing. (Not sure if I know now.)

I liked to read. I liked to read stories about life in America. I liked to write stories about life in America.

I liked history. I liked reading about history. I liked writing about history.

I made all of the mistakes it is possible to make. I published Red Clay and Roses in its rawest form. I was clueless. I didn’t know a damned thing. I did not know about blogs, platforms, branding, writing rules, beta readers, editing, blurbs, book cover images, marketing, sales. I didn’t know shit. I won’t claim to be an expert now either. I am learning every day and I am writing and reading every day.  I will say this: I have mentors, trusted confidants, other authors, a reader audience, friends, colleagues, valuable associates that I did not have a year ago.

As I learned from these people, and continue to learn, I made improvements on my product, my book, my novel, Red Clay and Roses. I know now that it is not the best that it could have been, but it is what it is, features, flaws and faults included.  I know that my next product will be even better, because you are who you are. Most significantly, I have the capacity to keep learning from YOU!

I was going to end this post right here with my eternal gratitude, but I think this is a good place to tell you the rest of the story if you will bear with me. I want to tell you how I feel about the concept of success. Success is measured many ways through different perspectives.

I have read numerous posts declaring success is measured by numbers sold, dollars earned, an ability to make a living at the craft, and I suppose that may be true for some, but it isn’t for me. Success is measured by starting a project and seeing it through.

Red Clay and Roses is a success.

After we (I say we because I had support people around me at the time.) pushed the publish button, there was a celebration. Of course, nothing much happened.

For weeks, nothing much happened. I think a few friends and family bought the book, nobody posted any reviews. On the advice of a friend, I started a blog. I didn’t know much about that either, but I learned. (Am still learning.)

Not knowing anything about how to find readers, I went to the library. Surely there would be readers there. I met a reading group, strangers, people I did not know, and they expressed interest in reading my book. So they bought it and read it. This was in May of last year.

They were eight people, a nurse, a middle school teacher, a college professor, an IBM corporate executive, and so on. Ordinary people, strangers who became acquaintances. Four of the eight wrote my first reviews on Amazon. Five star reviews. I was excited, overjoyed. That was enough for me. My confidence was stoked, but they did not stop there.

These eight people, whom I barely knew, were so very impressed with my literary work that they entered me in a contest. It was a surprise to me when they shared the news. What grand support is that?

My book deals with American life during an era of conflict and political strife. It is about everyday people who made tremendous sacrifices to promote social progress, whether they knew it at the time, or not.

The Pulitzer is awarded: “For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.”

This group of eight people had pooled their resources to pay the fifty dollars necessary to submit Red Clay and Roses as an entry for the Pulitzer. Eight people thought my literary work was distinguished.

Now, I chuckle, and you may be laughing out loud as you read this. But I thought it was an amazing honor that they bothered to do this.

I have no unrealistic expectations to win a Pulitzer, or to even become a nominated finalist.

They discourage anyone from claiming nomination simply because an entry has been submitted, so there are no grandiose expectations here. I did not know how simple it was to be entered. It takes fifty dollars and four copies of your book in physical form. That’s all!

I am not trying to belittle the Pulitzer award, I am just saying that I did not know.

Anyone can enter. An author or publisher can submit their own work. Self-published works are accepted, but not in eversion. It is easy to do online. Then you mail in your proofs or your books. I have only sold one paperback copy, but four of them were mailed off by this group of readers, and passed through the hands of Pulitzer judges. Whether or not they felt the book had any merit I may never know, but it has been an exciting adventure in writing.

The Pulitzer winner and nominated finalists are to be announced on April 14, 2014.

They receive approximately 2400 entries, and there are 21 awards. In 2012 there were three nominated finalists in fiction, but no one was awarded. How they determine finalists and award winners is a mystery. The judges have the final say.

I have read many Pulitzer Prize winners, some I thought had merit and some I did not like. So, at least in my mind, it is all relative to personal opinion…a subjective analysis like it is for any reader. I am not holding my breath or anything like that, but I am honored by these readers who thought my work worthy.

I only mention it to say this; DO NOT GIVE UP ON YOURSELF!

Whether they are Pulitzer judges, a library group, hundreds of strangers found through a marketing campaign, or a few blogger friends, all of your readers are what makes doing this worthwhile. They are the measure of your success.

It is not a finished project until it is read, so keep writing! I love you all!

I am not doing any special promotions or running any sales or ads for this birthday, but if you would like to pick up a copy of Red Clay and Roses you can find it here on Amazon, where you can also find the paperback. You can also find it on Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble and smashwords.

Sunday Synopsis

This is the first Sunday Synopsis in a couple of weeks. It has been a busy and a not so busy couple of weeks.

Past two weeks:

• I am not doing any promos/ads in particular anywhere, but my Kirkus review and my Reader’s Favorite reviews posted. I am picking up new readers every day or two, which is WAAAY cool. It is so very exciting to me to think of folk passing on my writing through word of mouth. That’s the nicest compliment ever!

• I am finally satisfied with my chapter one in my WIP. So I feel like I can now move forward. I have the first five chapters done already, but kept going back to the first one. That has resulted in a couple of edits with subsequent chapters. Who knows, maybe I will change it again after a beta reading? We will see. For now, I am leaving it alone.

• My Writers’ Group has added a daytime meeting that gives me more options.

• I am seriously reading much more than usual. Got a couple of book reviews done. Reading for another couple of authors. I put my writing on hold when I am reading because the styles, in my mind, sometimes conflict.  I also concentrate and focus better if I am not trying to do both reading and writing at the same time.

• My grandson had his first birthday party! He is also just taking his first steps. It is an odd thing that he was born on my mother’s birthday and my granddaughter was born on the anniversary of my mother’s death. Do you have any weird dates like that in your family? It’s quite common.

• Along with his first birthday celebration came a gathering that included the outlaws. I say outlaws instead of in-laws because they are not in-laws anymore. They are the former spouse’s family, whom I divorced eighteen years ago. These are folk I have not been in the company of for eighteen more years. Aunt Leann and Uncle Phil were fun.  I am glad the baby had his Great Oma and Opa there, and his Pappy. Sorry that my son, the baby’s Uncle Daniel, could not join us, but somebody had to hold down the farm. Glad my husband braved the crowd with me.

Allamanda is blooming!

Colorful Pentas are always pretty. They bloom all year, unless it freezes.

Happy Birthday Sebastian!

Had to slip this one in of the grandson with his smash cake.

This is a thirty year old hibiscus tree (not bush). Few leaves yet, but just started putting out blooms. It will be covered in leaves and blooms in a couple of weeks. The blossoms are doubled.

Bright red double hibiscus blossom. I love how frilly they are.

Next two weeks:

• I have work days scheduled. I don’t work often anymore, but when old nursing friends call with assignments they need help with I can’t say no. So I have a couple of days scheduled for wellness clinics the end of this month and a few scheduled for the first of next month.

• Writing, writing and more writing. I am at a point with my WIP where things can really begin to move quickly, I think. Excited about that. We will see how things pan out over the next few weeks.

• The rocket scientist has to be out of town this upcoming week on business, so I won’t be obliged to have meals or laundry prepared…lots of “me time”.

• Some of our snowbird friends will be heading north soon, so trying to enjoy their company while we can.

• Black algae appeared in little spots in the pool, so that has to be treated immediately or we will get into serious trouble fast…so I already have the chemicals to deal with that.

What are you up to?

Creative Expression to Collectively Open Minds

My soon-to-be four year old granddaughter refuses to try to color in the lines. She hates coloring books, but loves to draw and paint freehand. These are birds flying in the air:

Her daddy is an artist and these are a few of his works:

Misha Burnett did a post today that got me thinking about art, music and writing….mostly creativity, whether traditionally or independently produced.

Take art.

Jackson Pollock, Picasso and Rembrandt. All three different styles. All three with their own audience…all styles that were copied.

There are those who swear only their preferred style of art is worthy. Yet there are those art critics who can appreciate the variety of all three.  It is the unique expression of creativity from the soul that makes them worthy.

Take music.

Again, tastes vary tremendously. The people who enjoyed this:

Often Detested This:

And many who loved this:

Thought this was absurd:

Yet they all have had an audience. Many can appreciate all forms of music.

It’s all good. Influential artistry.
It demonstrates our collective creativity.

Now, more than ever, writers have an opportunity to express their creativity.

Dare to be Different!

Writing is like art and music. Along with specific genre choices, people develop an expectation of what is acceptable to them regarding writing style, content, voice, person, POV, execution techniques, formatting choices. When we deviate from that which is expected, we break out of a traditional mold and become creative. Breaking from tradition always carries risks. But, is creativity a bad thing or a good thing? I personally believe creativity is an awesome thing, a powerfully liberating thing…provided the artist, in this case the writer, can attract the right audience. Find your audience.

There are always going to be critics who don’t like your work. It is written in the “wrong” person, the prose is too flowery, the characters didn’t develop “properly”, and the ending was not satisfying. I have been reading reviews of great classics and people are making the same complaints about them as they are contemporary works, because everyone is a master in their own mind.

Industry standards are often creativity killers.

Be your own master.

Don’t be an industrial slave unless you choose to be.

Write what you are passionate about. Write how you feel it. Write in the way that is comfortable to you. Write what comes naturally. Don’t force your writing into a mold.

Sure, edit properly. Follow the rules that govern language and grammar, but don’t be afraid to deviate. Don’t be afraid to be creative. Sing your own song. Color outside the lines if it pleases you.

Can you think of books that opened your mind that were written differently than the traditional novel?

“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winner, comes to mind.

Ursula K. Le Guin challenged the world with her mix of fantasy and sci-fi at a time when to deviate was simply unacceptable.

“The Book Theif” by Markus-Zusak, published by Random House, is an historical fiction that was narrated by Death, and is a book for teens and adults, with nearly 8000 positive reviews.

Retirement Plans

I retired early for a couple of significant reasons; stress and drama at work becoming too intense, and a desire to pursue my passions before I was too old to enjoy them.

I didn’t want to wait until I had crippling arthritis to tap the keyboard.

The healthcare industry (at least here in Florida) needs a lot of work from the inside out.

So here I am.

I am reading, researching and writing. I love what I do. I am happier than I have ever been in my life.

I was looking through some articles on retirement and I find two persistent themes.

1)      There are a hundreds of articles telling you how to financially retire early.

2)      Most people are working longer due to improved health and financial need.

So what is it; retire early or retire later?

Here’s the deal. The books that I write are for a mature audience. My audience, like me when I was working, has little time to sit and read. They are busy working and earning money so they can retire…maybe early. Many boomers are just now beginning to retire, at least that’s what I am seeing in the articles I am reading.

One thing that people are saying they want when they retire is, “MORE TIME TO PLEASURE READ.” Yes, they want to travel, pursue their hobbies, but they also want more time to read!

That is a great thing for writers in ANY genre. 

The books that I most enjoy writing are about an era that most young people can’t really relate to.

I don’t write Twilight fan fiction, contemporary romance, or YA anything.

I write literary fiction and historical fiction. The real lives of people who have carved the paths others walk, with hope that new travelers will make those paths broader, safer, cleaner…keep them up and use them as roadways to a better future. It isn’t boring the way history sounds. It is real life drama in the best of times and the worst of times.

I hope that any of you who are looking to retire early to pursue your passions are able to do so.

For those of you that have already begun to pursue your passions, I applaud you for being true to your spirit.

When I was in high school, I had teachers encouraging me to major in journalism in college. I had a $17,000.00 scholarship to go to Wesleyan (a lot of money in the seventies). I was anti-establishment back then. I turned it down to get married, start a family, and work at McDonalds. Divorced and remarried at 19, I think I must have moved twenty times in two years. I was precocious, as many were in that era. Yet, I had no clue where I was going.

A year later, when I realized that the establishment was about the only way anyone could really support themselves and increase their standard of living, I returned to school. I had a desire to become a psych nurse so I could help people like my mother who committed suicide at the age of 26, and others whom I had known with addiction problems. I went to L.P.N. school first, but you needed an RN license to work psych. I lucked out when a hospital, based on merit earned in vocational school, offered me a scholarship for RN school. So off to University I went. I did have a passion for nursing, a calling.

It wasn’t an easy road to raise three children and go to school in-between pregnancies and nursing children. It took me eleven years to obtain a four year degree despite having excellent grades. I have no regrets, as it was what I needed to do and becoming a nurse, the career experiences, have given me a perspective that I will forever treasure.

Divorced again and single in Florida, with my kids off at college, I had opportunity to live young, but with means. I was glad to have had my children early in life while I could still do cartwheels with them and chase them around the trees. We literally grew up together. We went through some really tough times together. We experienced a lot of joy together. While I am not advocating anyone to live their lives that way, I am saying that there is hope if you find yourself in dire circumstances and feel that things will never change for the better.

Although I have worked all of the high energy, fast paced areas; like ER and CCU, and did get in a few years of psychiatry, the area I am most fond of in retrospect is geriatrics. Why?  Some have told me that it is too depressing…but I never saw it that way. The old people with their stories fascinated me. Often, I would work the night shift when the old timers, who could not sleep, would get up and come to the nursing station between our rounds just to chat.

What fodder for writing! What fuel for my fire!

Years ago, I had regrets that I was not following my dreams to write, regrets that I chose a passion for nursing over journalism.

I have no regrets now.

With three beautiful grown children and two adorable grandchildren, I have had a thirty year plus career in health care, fifty three years of life experiences. God willing and the creeks don’t rise, I have time.

I am retired and living well. I am writing.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau