Aimless (Writingwise)

Posted on August 31, 2010 by cindy

Since finishing the draft of Luke’s #1 Rule and starting school, I haven’t been working on any one writing project with any kind of dedication. Instead I’ve been working on lectures, writing morning pages, and drawing. Also dreaming on paper about what I want to happen next for my writing.

Yesterday I finally got to know my BIG class (35 people!) in Children’s Lit. More than half want to teach kindergarten, but probably six or seven of them said they want to write. A few said children’s books specifically, but most just said “I want to write.”

I decided on the spot that one of their essays can be a children’s story, and they were happy about that. So, working on rapport. It’s not easy. I’d really like to be home alone in my writing room. But venturing forth into the world is part of a writer’s work, too.

The only vaguely ambitious project I’ve taken on lately is sending a query for The Paris Notebook to The Wild Rose Press.

Posted in the paris notebook | 2 Comments

Secrets to Happiness

Posted on August 28, 2010 by cindy

“The problem was this: writing made Leonard feel anxious and ashamed. He felt, while sitting in front of his computer screen,, watching the words stack up in ways that were somehow less than he’d hoped, pressed up against his inadequaies,forced to face his creative limitations, tormented by the awareness that this was the best he could do.”

Reading Sarah Dunn’s funny and smart new novel Secrets to Happiness with its cast of angsty New Yorkers (including Leonard and his writing partner Holly) when I should be reading Beowulf. But this book is a delight, particularly but not exclusively its bits on the writing life. Also, I had four glasses of Chardonnay last night, so today I don’t feel a whole lot of ambitious.

Tomorrow, Beowulf. Today, Holly, Leonard, Betsy, and that crazy adultress Amanda. Plus the Big Buddhist.

Posted in Books Reviewed | 2 Comments

Home

Posted on August 26, 2010 by cindy

Got my blogroll back! Am I missing anyone? Let me know. Still working on things here. But at least I have ideas, finally. Been inspired by so many people: John and Lynn, who empathize with the well running dry. Sharon fearlessly posting poetry. mccabe who always makes me smile. Karen, who rocked the socks off self-publishing. Martha, who went farther faster than I ever dreamed. Janice, the voice of calm in the storm. Cindy, who became an actor as a second act. Aisha and Lucy talking about motherhood in those stages that are only memories for me now.

With one son in Seattle the other in Texas, and a dad who spends half the year in Florida, my family is scattered. Home just hasn’t felt the same since they’ve been gone. And then my home here on the web, at least as I knew it, also went bye-bye this summer. Surprise.

Nothing ever stays the same. Not home, not family, not work, and certainly not the web.

This week, home felt right again when Mike and Jessica came for a visit and my parents joined us for a barbecue. We had an early birthday celebration for Mike and my dad, and it was almost like old times, although I missed having Tim here. Still, something I hadn’t been able to name, something I’d hardly known was broken, was healed by a simple family celebration.

And incidentally Mike helped me take back control of the blog while he was here. It’s far from finished. But at least I’m starting to figure out what I’m going to do with this space. And my mom was an unexpected inspiration.

Mom’s thinking of going online. She always hated how bulky computers were, but we talked about the iPad and she loved the idea. Our family, because we are so scattered geographically, connects on Facebook now more than in real life. We post pictures of our travels and update our daily doings. Mom can’t stand the fact that Aunt Louise knows more about Mike and Tim than she does. She finally wants in on it.

After I talked up the benefits of being online, I remembered that sometimes I vent about my mom here…and it was the one reason I was glad she was NOT on the internet. This was my safe place to say some things that probably I should have kept in my private diary.

So that got me thinking about my archives. My categories are out of control, so I took them private and it feels so good to have that clutter off the public page. My original intention was to clean up and pare down the categories, but now I’m thinking I’ll go further and edit my achives (1861 posts!) down to those I feel are most helpful to writers.

There’s more to the story. Way more. This site will be 8 years old next month, and I have a super surprise I hope to have ready that will make this space feel more like home than ever. And it’s been a long time coming.

Posted in About a Blog | 2 Comments

Trouble 101

Posted on August 25, 2010 by cindy

Every semester I have a nemesis. I am not sure this person knows they will be my scourge for the term. In some cases, I suspect their purpose in life is to annoy adults who give them homework. Some are simply clueless, and to them I try my best to be kind. 

I have learned to spot these troublesome souls early. First day, first five minutes. They are the ones who talk in a whisper to their neighbor over whatever I am saying. Or they make an unkind remark about some part of my plan for the term. Or roll their eyes. Or hold me 15 after class asking searching questions about obvious stuff and make me late for my next session. 

Meanwhile, the net has trouble spots of its own. Mike gave me advice on dealing with a few problems I’ve run into lately. I had a whole list, but here are just a few: the “Amazon” email in my work inbox that said I’d run up $888 for books even though I had not ordered any. Mike’s advice there was to put it in the spam folder and forget it.

What “Amazon” and other fake businesses do is hope to get someone anyone to click and then they’ll go for your financial info. It’s the Internet version of a phone call where they say they’re your bank and they need to verify your account number.  Online, if you just put the email into spam without clicking anything, that’s enough to stop them.

Another sort of new and troubling email has been popping up in my Gmail account. In this one, the writer seems like a real person who has read my blog. They call me by name, say they love my writing, site a particular post, and mention that they have a link I might like to use in relation to the post. Sometimes they offer to pay me $100 for the link.

I showed one of these to Mike and told him about the others. I said they all seemed connected to the same online degree program. He did a quick check & said they probably are not even people writing to me. Just a program that generates friendly emails. Again, just file in spam was his recommendation.

The $100 was offered to be paid through PayPal, which is how I receive legit payment for online work, so this one seemed a little more above-board than fake “Amazon.” Except I don’t do commercials here. If I link to an author, book, or website, it’s because I like them, not because they offered me money to insert a line of text and a link into my post.

Now I have to get ready for class and especially for that student I can’t put into a spam folder.

Posted in Teachers & Teaching | 5 Comments

Something New

Posted on August 23, 2010 by cindy

Have no idea what is going to happen here tomorrow. All I know is that something is …

Posted in About a Blog | 4 Comments

Mentor

Posted on August 20, 2010 by cindy

“The act of writing about writing should carry with it a bright flashing neon warning sign that reads Danger: Potential Self-Absorption Ahead.”

The quote is the first line of a review in EW by Keith Staskiewicz. (The pink neon is mine; I couldn’t figure out how to get it to flash.) It reminded me of yesterday’s post, but also made me buy the book, particularly when Staskiewicz went on to praise it. 

Other people might think writing about writing is self-absorbed, but it endlessly fascinates me. Especially when other people do it.

 This memoir, about Tom Grimes’ relationship with his mentor, Frank Conroy, is not for writers with a tendency toward literary jealousy, as early in the book, Conroy, who heads up the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the time Grimes recounts, tells Grimes he’s writing the great American novel. He clearly dotes on Grimes above all the other Iowa students, offering almost immediately to introduce him to one of the top literary agents in the country.

That kind of thing never happens to me. My first mentor stuck his hand down my blouse when my little boys were in the next room. I was so shocked and appalled it almost put me off poetry forever. Then my next mentor, after publishing more than a hundred poems, developed severe writer’s block soon after we met and wrote no more than a dozen poems for the rest of her life. Then there was the mentor who offered me a golden opportunity that somehow went all to hell. Wait. I had three of those.

As a teacher, I’ve been a mentor myself. I’ve been stalked and disdained, adored and ignored, hounded and hated. It’s not an easy gig, although Conroy and Grimes make the whole thing look charmed. At least so far. I haven’t finished the book yet, although I fell asleep last night reading into the wee hours.

Posted in Books Reviewed | 2 Comments

Bored?

Posted on August 19, 2010 by cindy

I have really felt the need to change some things here at A Writer’s Diary. I’ve been bored by writing about writing for awhile now, probably about the time I realized I’ve blogged myself through several books.

I’m not sure what to do about this, but I recognize boredom or indifference or acedia or whatever you want to call it is a writerly kind of feeling. Indeed, according to Kathleen Norris in Acedia and Me, this syndrome strikes anyone “whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value.”

Norris found her ”vocation as a writer” and ten minutes or so later began the “struggle to maintain the boring work habits necessary to nourish it.” The silver lining here is that “just when the work seems most hopeless, and I am hard pressed to care if I ever write another word or not, the most valuable breakthroughs are most likely to come.”

So here’s hoping for a breakthough soon with this blog.

Posted in About a Blog, Gossip & Inspiration | Tagged | 2 Comments

Finished First Draft!

Posted on August 17, 2010 by cindy

This is hard to believe, even for  me, because I had that revision interruption, but my first draft of the current WIP is finished! I may add one more chapter at the end, but I’m not sure…it would be like an epilogue, and I don’t know if I want to do it, or if the book really needs it, so I’m going to wait, let the pages cool off, and then decide when I read through them again.

If I didn’t have to go back to school next week, I’d start revising right away. As it is, I’ll be busy getting my classes up and running for at least a week, more like two. And Mike’s coming to town next week as well, and we plan to work on the website, so that’s another project that will keep me busy.

Then it will be Tim’s birthday. He’s my baby, and he’s turning 30! Plus he lives in Texas. So I’m going to visit. After that, somewhere like mid-September, I’ll start revising. Until then, it’s back to morning pages for awhile.

Posted in WIP | 4 Comments

And They’re Off

Posted on August 16, 2010 by cindy

After one final read-through, and a few tiny edits, sent the proposal to Canada today. Now it is up to fate. And of course my revision skill or lack thereof. I expect this will take awhile. RWA just had their national conference and editors across North America are receiving “requested material” by the boat load.

Posted in Chasing Publication | 3 Comments

The Ultimate No

Posted on August 13, 2010 by cindy

Yesterday, I posted about my experience with bending the “no internal monologue” rule I’d  been following with these past two books. What I didn’t say, that in breaking that rule, I also broke the cardinal rule of writing fiction: show don’t tell.

The thing with rules is, they’re like the English language, there’s always an exception. And I’ve read lots of writers talk about how and when to effectively break the “show don’t tell” rule.  

It made sense to me, especially in summarzing, but I never really applied it mindfully to my own work until this past week. For me, illuminating character motivation in a short sentence or phrase during an active scene is one time when I found that I had to tell instead of show.

I can hear my critique partners shrieking even as I write this.

But the trick is, and this is why I’m waiting to review my revisions another day or two, I have to make sure I didn’t fall into the trap of doing both. You don’t want to show then tell where the showing is obvious. Like she’s crying and then you say she felt sad. Just to show crying is fine in that situation.

Telling can be useful in some scenes because character actions don’t always match their motivation. You really have to set that up. To use a simplistic example, if every time a character is stressed they put their hand on the back of their neck and rub it, well, that action doesn’t automatically indicate stress. (It could mean they’re tired, or they have an injury or whatever.) So with some gestures, you have to tell what they mean. Not every time she rubs her neck, just the first time.

“She rubbed her neck, a reflex she’d noticed happening whenever her body signaled stress.” 

That’s telling. It gives some added info that illuminates why the character does whatever she does next. Something happens that moves the plot forward, and it happens because she’s stressed. That’s motivation.

We might forgive her for acting like an idiot if we know she’s stressed. Especially if she tries to get her stress level under control but someone keeps pushing her buttons. If we don’t know she’s stressed, we might think, man, she’s an idiot. Why does she not even react to that jerk who keeps pushing her buttons? Why did she do X instead of Z? I can’t figure her out and I’m not so interested in trying…

And then, the writer has lost the reader, who is pulled out of the vivid, continuous dream.

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