Friday Rambles-No Slam Dunk

So here it is November 1. NaNoWriMo time again. National Novel Writing Month. Six or seven years ago I began this crazy thing I'd read about. Write a book in thirty days? Oh? It didn't have to be print ready? Just get 50000 words written down? If you succeeded, you'd be designated a winner. The 'book' could be revised, polished afterward. With my obsessive, compulsive, perfectionist writing nature, could I do that? But I gave it a whirl. The column below was written about my 2nd or 3rd NaNo year. And I did it. And have kept doing it ever since. Only one of those years I didn't get the number of words done. Can't remember the circumstances that interfered. Never mind, the others are either in print or awaiting their turn at revision, polishing. Some longer than others. Maybe this year won't be a slam dunk either, but I'll give it the ol' college try.

 * * *

   Readers not interested in the writing process might wish to tune out for the next couple of weeks. Not that I want to lose readers, of course! But that's where my head is right now. I'm trying to fit another major writing project into my schedule.
   November has been designated as National Novel Writing Month for several years, as I think I've mentioned here once or twice. I'd never participated though until last year. Since I enjoyed it and was able to reach my goal I figured I'd try again. This year is a totally different experience. For various reasons I haven't been able to just shove everything aside and concentrate on THE NOVEL.
   I have the general outline of it. But actually getting the words written is turning into a struggle. Uninterrupted time to pull them out of my brain and onto the page has been hard to come by. Writing all night might be an option. But the other inhabitants of my home are worse night owls than me. And I do get too tired to imagine the next big trouble to throw at my protagonist.
   During the daytime there's the dog to walk, eating, minimal personal hygiene, laundry and housework. More regularly scheduled meetings have seemed to fall into this month, too, and extra workshops and groups that I had committed to attend.
   All this does not even take into account the urge to procrastinate that is common to all writers. Any normally disliked task sings a siren song that we can’t resist.
   I hate to rake leaves. My neighbors' yards are mostly free of the crisp evidence of fall's arrival. The two trees in my yard are finally bereft of leaves. But a combination of guilt if wind sent my leaves to neighboring lawns, brain weariness and procrastination sent me to the shed for my rake and a couple of hours outside. Leaving aside the fact that exercise is good for me, I know that procrastination was the main motivator for my burst of activity.
   So here I am, fingers on keyboard again. After I send this piece to the editor, I'll be back wrestling with THE NOVEL. Since more hindrances lie in wait for me before month's end, this NaNoWriMo is obviously not going to be a slam dunk.

Friday Rambles-Writers, Actors and TV

Television is still as popular as when I wrote the column below, about six years ago. I really can't say that the quality has improved, personally it seems the opposite is true. Be that as it may, my viewing habits are still about the same, though what I watch is received via air channels, not cable or satellite. I do miss the music channels, but the two or three I listened to are not worth the annual small fortune I'd have to pay to receive them. Mostly I watch old television series hits during the still less than twenty hours a week I turn on the set. Only on Wednesdays do I indulge in a current craze-binge watching. I loved JAG when it was a prime time series for several years and still do. So I have enjoyed JAG reruns on MeTV's 'The Dayshift' this summer. Sigh. The network will probably end the series before I'm ready to let them go again.
* * *
 I seem to write about television regularly for one who, on average, watches it probably twenty hours a week, compared to the thirty-five to forty national average. Fifteen to twenty minutes of my daily tv fare is watching local news and weather. I almost always switch it off or to a music channel rather than watch the sports reports. My household was chosen recently to keep a Nielsen journal for a week. It would probably be a safe bet to say we were one of the far outliers toward the zero end of television watching.
    I attempt to keep in mind when and on which channels my favorite shows are scheduled and turn the set on at those times. I seem to have lost track of the summer replacement Rookie Blue. I watched the first couple of episodes but don't remember what day. If any reader watches it, please let me know.
    I'm also pretty set in my ways about the authors I read. One of those favorites is David Baldacci, who just happens to be a Virginian who hails from Charlottesville, I believe. Several of his books formed a series with ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, who both resigned when the persons they were assigned to protect were killed. After five books I could find no more and wondered if Baldacci was finished with the pair.
    Then I saw a commercial during my limited hours of television. King and Maxwell were coming to the home screen in a new series called King and Maxwell. I caught the first episode, almost by accident. I was and am delighted, if I can only remember when the show comes on! Part of my delight is because of the actor cast as Sean King. I've been a fan of Jon Tenney since he was Kyra Sedgwick's FBI boyfriend and later her husband on the long-running The Closer series. When Sedgwick left, by choice or not I don't know, that show morphed into one called Major Crimes. I do not watch it even though many of the same characters did stay. To me, Sedgwick was the show. Maybe because I've lived in Alabama and her character moved to California from Alabama.

More Than One Dream - Part 3

I continued to be active in the writing group and have been instrumental in the production of three anthologies of members’ work. I joined another writer’s guild and now serve on its board of directors. The guild has partnered with a regional community college and we will host our fourth Writers Symposium this year. Along with several other board members I’ve served on the planning committee for the Symposium all four years.

As might be expected involvement with these activities takes time away from writing itself. I have managed a few more publication credits and did actually finish a novel, though not the first one I began. Fulfillment of my writing dreams gave me a feeling of validation as a person, something I could stand on. I am very sure God knew I would need that a few years down the road.

Less than a month after celebrating our fiftieth anniversary my husband suffered a massive stroke. He never regained use of the left side of his body and his condition steadily deteriorated over the next three years. The toll on my own health and mental state was heavy as I watched the strong young man I married become a shadow of himself until his final release.

I had managed to keep up some writing activities even while caring for my husband. But after his death it took about eight months before I could get my head back into writing seriously. An essay was accepted for a literary journal. I worked on another novel.

The first Christmas after my husband passed away I decided (a nudge from God? I think so.) to work on several short essays and pitch them to a local newspaper for a weekly column. A few days after I sent a dozen to the editor he emailed me to ask for a headshot to run with my column.

When the column first appeared in print I, trying for nonchalance, posted the news to my Facebook page. The paper has a website and my column is (edit: was) published on it as well, but I didn’t think to post the link. I signed off and took a shower. When I later signed back in to Facebook I was bowled over by the comments and congratulations from family and friends. A cousin had looked for the website and not found it. My sister-in-law found it and put it up for them. I am so grateful for the family God gave me and their unfailing support. Never once have any of them even hinted that I have some nerve calling myself a writer. That, too, I consider part of God’s gift in fulfilling my writing dreams.
(edit/update) The Writers Symposium I mention was quite successful and was an annual event for nine years, tho after the 4th or 5th, I resigned from the Planning Committee because it was going well and I tired of the long drive. This current year the Lost State Writers Guild, my local group, sponsored a one-day writing workshop (another long-held dream of mine) and many attendees requested that another be held next year.) 

More Than One Dream - Part 2

The acceptance of my story encouraged me to keep trying. I wrote essays and stories, submitted them, read books about writing. and attended my first writing conference. That conference helped me begin to think of myself as a writer, which even that first publication didn’t do.

I had bought my first personal computer when my company gave employees the opportunity. I was sure it would make writing easier and it did. I upgraded to a better computer and then the Internet opened up the cornucopia of instant knowledge and communication. Internet magazines, ezines, sprouted. A few accepted my stories, and then another print magazine accepted one.

I wanted very much to be among other ‘real’ writers, even though I still didn’t feel comfortable calling myself a writer. But something – God? – kept pushing me until I found a group and found the courage to go to a meeting. At first I didn’t tell them about my writing acceptances, the magazines were not mass circulation, who would care? Finally I did tell them and was amazed that they were impressed.

I learned of another larger writing group and joined it. The leader of the group and a few members had published books. I loved being associated with them and they actually accepted me as a writer. Several of us attended a writing conference out-of-state and the workshops galvanized me.

The first novel I had begun years before languished in a file folder. I began thinking of writing a book about my family, a memoir. But if I did how would I get it printed? Most vanity/self-publishing companies were very expensive. Eventually through the Internet I found a new self-publishing website that would format and publish one’s book and charged no upfront fees. Authors could buy as many or few of their books as they could afford instead of thousands.

Does the fulfillment of a dream always feel like you’re still dreaming? Did Joseph feel like that when he was finally released from his prison dungeon and made second in command under Pharaoh? Even when I held the first copy of Eight Miles of Muddy Road in my hand it felt as unreal as that first magazine publication. Later I found another company where my computer skills enabled me to have my books printed even more economically and have published two more.
(update)As of last count, 12 paperbacks and ebooks. Several more in pipeline.)

 

More Than One Dream - part 1

This post is the first part of a longer piece I wrote about my life and dreams. It was too long for one of my newspaper columns and I chose not to publish it in three parts at that time. I'm going to do so today and Friday this week and the last part next Tuesday. Just in case someone's interest is strong enough to want to read all of it! Most of the events in it have appeared in one form or another in my memoir, Eight Miles of Muddy Road or in other columns and posts.

* * *

    I always knew God gives dreams. The Bible is full of examples. In the Old Testament there is Abraham, told in a dream to leave his home country; his son, Joseph, dreaming his brothers would bow down to him; and the dream God gave Pharaoh and Joseph’s fellow prisoners. Jacob, who dreamed of a ladder to heaven. In the New Testament as well we find Joseph, Mary’s husband and his dream of an angel telling him to take his family to Egypt and then again when they could return.

     Are dreams from God today? If He gives us dreams while we sleep, are the dreams and longings in our hearts when we’re awake also from Him, too? I think the answer to both is – yes. Not all, of course. Sometimes it might be the cheese and pepperoni on the pizza we ate late in the evening. If we’re granted one dream, is that it? Or will God bless us with others? In my own life the answer to that question is also ‘yes.’

     A mother, grandmother and great grandmother now and can look back at a life filled with dream fulfillments, even though at the time I might not have fully realized it. We humans are so prone to attribute the realization of our deeply held desires as due to good luck, hard work, or just the way things worked out.

     I grew up dirt poor in rural Georgia. That I would ever fly in one of the airplanes I saw high above the cotton field was not a possibility even in my constant daydreams. But fifty years later my younger sister and I flew across the ocean as part of a group which toured Israel and also spent two nights in Rome, Italy. Forced early retirement from the job God provided twenty years earlier and a generous severance pay package made the dream trip possible.

     I dreamed that I’d grow up, strike out on my own, marry, become a mother. Time passed, I met a young man from Tennessee, we married, and God blessed us with a beautiful daughter. Amid the ups and downs of marriage, family, and job I always knew God was the Giver of answers to my dreams. But I didn’t consciously turn my dreams over to Him. And I had several that I never, ever mentioned to anybody.

     My older sister had dropped out of school and worked to help provide for our family of ten. I longed for college after high school graduation, but instead I found a job and also contributed to the family. Many years later came an opportunity for college, though I finished the last class needed for my degree after retirement.

     My husband loved to tell of my reaction when he told friends I’d earned my college ‘diploma.’

     I’d quickly correct him. “It’s a college degree.” God is indeed the fulfiller of dreams, but not necessarily on our timetable.

     I learned to read when I started school at five years old and immediately fell in love with books. That love only grew stronger as I grew up. Sometimes a fleeting thought that I might write something myself that would be published crept into my mind. No, too far-fetched. What did I have to say that anyone would want to publish? Or read.

     Over the years the thoughts of writing didn’t go away and I finally bought a used Underwood typewriter. I sent out a few things. Which were rejected. I worked on a novel, still unfinished.

     Sometime before my trip to Israel I had submitted a story to a small magazine. When we returned to the States we landed in Atlanta and I called my husband in Tennessee.

     We chatted a few minutes and then he told me, “A woman called, an editor. Something about wanting to publish your story.”

     It didn’t actually seem real to me until a couple of months later I held the magazine in my hand, my name and story title listed in the table of contents.

(next-part 2)

Friday Rambles-Rememberies

This post speaks for itself pretty much. It might be titled 'Path of a Writer.' I'm certainly not a famous writer, but I am a writer. Not a young, or even younger, writer and sometimes I think about giving it up but the feeling passes. My writing gives me a focus, a beacon, to follow along my mystery lane rambles. Before I began to try seriously to write I was a voracious reader, I'd read any printed matter my gaze fell across. And I still enjoy reading just about more than writing. The world is full of books just waiting to be read. But something keeps pushing me to write 'one more thing,' then maybe I'll quit. Or maybe not.

Rememberies

A clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk. I've crammed into it various mementoes that mark significant moments in my life.

Visible through the glass is an address label with my mother's name and last apartment address. More than twenty-five years after her death the ache of loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as well as she.

Next to the label is my grandson's name tag from the family reunion Holston Valley Medical Center provided for babies who spent the first few days or weeks of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit. I remember my fear at first sight of his tiny, mottled body after long, anxious moments waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. Or his Lilliputian form as his Mom held him for brief moments, IV tube in a matchstick arm, feeding tube in his button nose. Now a strapping father of two himself, he bears little resemblance to that preemie in the NICU incubator.

Among the jumble of mementoes is a round piece of molded plastic which covered an indicator lamp on the old cordboard where I worked as a telephone operator. The job that gave me not only independence, but the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife, mother, caretaker of an aged parent.

A parking permit from the local community college symbolizes my long-delayed college degree. An Allen wrench I used to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which began another major turn for my life. A red and gold enameled key ring fob with a menorah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside of the US, to Israel.

A name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, seeking realism for my writing. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study. And finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North Carolina.

I found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself through essays and columns for personal gratification and, occasionally, money. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.

sylvia@sylvianickels.com

 

Friday Ramble - Free Stuff

The telephone rang before I was ready to get up this morning. Unknown caller. I rolled over and in a few minutes it rang again. Another unknown caller. I didn't answer either one, but I did get up. I don't answer calls from numbers I don't know. Sure, I might miss out on something good, but at least I've saved some aggravation. This may partly explain the popularity of texting. Even telemarkets have learned that the person who owns my number is just not answering. I know this because yesterday I was engrossed in working on a webpage and accidentally answered a call on my landline. It's a corded phone so I don't have to press a button. The guy must have been one who'd been calling, because the first thing he said was, "You're a hard person to get hold of." I laughed, thinking it must be someone I knew, tho I didn't recognize the voice. But no, he was a caller for a fundraiser.
When I do by chance answer a telemarker, I try to be nice. Life is too short to be gratuitously unkind. And the Good Book does say "Be kind to strangers, they could be angels unaware." Why not on the phone, too? This tidbit neatly segues into my ramble into the past on this Friday, a column I wrote about four years ago. Understand this was a hypothetical situation!

Completely (Risk) Free 

Riiiight! How many times are we taken in by that phrase? I know I have been too many times to count. And its cousin, ‘If dissatisfied, cancel anytime.’ Uh huh. Just try calling the number you’re supposed to call to cancel your Clutter-Free Living subscription after six unread issues clutter your coffee table. If you persevere through half a dozen pass-the-buck call transfers, or manage not to be disconnected, you might get to talk to a live person. You very calmly explain that you wish to cancel your subscription and receive a refund on unused issues. The person oh-so-sweetly wants you to tell them why you could possibly be dissatisfied with such a stellar periodical. When you remind them you were told you could cancel for any or no reason, you get more circular talk. And to please hold while the representative confers with the ‘circulation manager.’ 
‘Circulation manager’ comes on the line to persuade you how much you need the magazine. You yell and scream and finally are told that yes, of course, your subscription will be cancelled. Relieved, gullible you hang up. Only to have to go through the same thing for the next two months when the magazines keep piling up. By the time the next-to-last issue is due to ship, your subscription might be cancelled. Three months pass and eventually a check for five dollars arrives in your mailbox.
Once upon a time we only got into these predicaments if we unwisely allowed a door-to-door salesman – or an earnest student ‘working his or her way through college’ - inside our front door. Now telephone solicitors calling from huge boiler room operations, and online offers too good to pass up, lie in wait for us multiple times daily. Online websites which charge for information are masters of this sleight-of-hand scam. Sign up and browse for free. Only once an account is created a credit card number is required before any useful information can be accessed. Humans are so constructed that once they’ve invested time in a project, they are more willing to invest money. Thereby are cyber millionaires created, from ‘free’ stuff. 

Lists

I make lists. I like to read lists. Evidently many people do since almost any magazine a person might pick up probably has an article with a list of something. Either a list of things to get done before Christmas or a list of items to never forget when leaving for a trip to the beach, like sunscreen.

The personal lists I make are usually practical, you might say. Things I need to get done around the house. Things I'm thankful for or lists of potential gifts for friends and family. But the lists I like to read are sometimes just interesting and not especially useful.

For instance some time ago I received an email with a list of these United States and what each is famous for. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the list. But diamond lovers and fans of the old Marilyn Monroe movie, Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend, might find the first one interesting.

Arkansas – only state with an active diamond mine.

Arizona – only state in the Continental US that does not follow Daylight Savings Time.

California – state whose economy is so large that if it were a country it would rank 7^th in the entire world. (Aside: also in about the same condition as some of those countries.)

Connecticut – home of Yale University, where the Frisbee was invented.

Georgia – State where Coca-Cola was invented

Iowa – Winnebago campers get their name from Winnebago County. And also the only state name that begins with two vowels.

Louisiana – has parishes instead of counties because they were originally Spanish church units.

Maine – so big it covers as many square miles as the other five New England States combined.

Michigan – home of Gerber, is the baby food capital of the world.

Missouri – birthplace of the ice cream cone. (personal aside: Hail to Missouri!)

Montana – a sapphire from Montana is in the Crown Jewels of England.

That's a dozen, only thirty-eight to go, despite the confusion of some officials in high places.

Sylvia's 2014 Retrospective

By the time this column is read, if indeed it is, another Christmas Day will have passed. Children will be playing with or breaking new toys. Thumbs of slightly older youngsters, of all ages, will be flying over keys of new smart phones. The strange spelling of their texts appearing on screens of their friends' phones faster than Santa disappearing over the rooftops.

The countdown will have begun to the beginning of another year. I think we all hope that 2015 will bring better things, though few may expect that hope to manifest. Television networks used to broadcast retrospectives of important events of the year just past on New Year's Eve. Whether they still do or not I won't know since I cut the cord of cable and satellite TV reception. Surprisingly, after having lived almost my whole (long) life with television as a constant, I have missed it very little.

So I'll do my own retrospective. In many ways this has been a sad year for me. The deaths of friends sounded a refrain of my own mortality. Death of a friend's husband reminded me that the coming January will mark four years since I lost my own husband of over fifty years. And just before Thanksgiving the loss of my youngest brother's wife at a much too young age was a blow.

 A close family. A member of my immediate family went through the trauma endemic to these times, divorce. The disruption has been hard on my adored great grandsons, even with all working to create a smooth transition. I trust that the power of unconditional love will heal any damage to their precious spirits. This is the gift we yearn to find during the Christmas season. Would that we all found much of that healing to take as our 'shield and buckler' in the New Year.

But the year brought good things to me also. A successful year as leader of a writing group. The continued presence of many long-time great friends. A long-sought book contract with a traditional publisher. These are the things I hope to build on and make 2015 a good year. May it be so for all who might read this.

Get It In Gear

As the title says, I'm trying to 'get it in gear' (again) as far as my writing goes. Got a volume of my newspaper columns published, Life Slices, a Medley of Musings After Three Score and More. It's available in print or ebook versions.

Produced a video trailer for one of the two mystery novels I'll publish in April, Disguise for Death,  a Royce Thorne Mystery. The trailer is up on YouTube. Check it out here. Trying to get other publicity going for the books. Stay tuned.

Have not forgotten the two other writing help books I was going to talk about. I will get to them. Another by a favorite author will be out in May, Story Trumps Structure, by Steven James. Anxious to get my hands on a copy.