Staying Honest While Reading and Writing - Guest Post from Sandra K Woodiwiss

Staying Honest While Reading and Writing
Sandra K Woodiwiss

I enjoy nothing better than to read and to write.  The problem being – I enjoy nothing better in exactly that order.  The problem?  A long, unrecognized form of conformance in my writing due to the over love I have of what and who I read.

Reading  is inspiration to write and I try very much to read what challenges me and what frightens me. My favorite subject matter – women.  The novels of the Bronte sisters’ right down to the everyday, written life of a suburban house wife, fascinates me.  I love to read words written by women, about women; George Eliot, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Barbara Pym.  I want to read the essay, short fiction, novels and poetry that challenge my belief system, challenges my comfort in Christian traditions and gender stereotyping.

It dawned on me one day – if I crave the challenge in reading, then that desire should move into my writing.  Rise to the challenge of different. Take what I know I can accomplish as a writer and move it into a genre or format that forces my ingenuity, pushes my creativity.

Easier said than done.

In reaching for a book, I take a deep breath, say a pray for an open mind and start in.  Now, I’ll be frank, reading for the cause of self-challenge rather than escapism causes problems.  I am a firm believer that only a sick mind can read alone – so when I read a well-crafted piece of work – I ask questions.  I’ve discovered that even my longest and most enduring friendships suffer when the question of why is asked too many times.  With that fact stated, anyone can imagine the inner conflict in trying something different in writing. Writing is a solitary endeavor and trying to convey to a fellow human, even a fellow writer the self-inflicted challenge of say genre jumping is difficult to convey – and lonely.

In my younger years the blank page was nemesis enough – now at the age of 48, I pick up the pen and tell my creative, writer, muse, self – write fantasy.  Write erotic.  Write what challenges your belief system, your comfortable Christian traditions, your gender stereotyping.

So I walked away from the short story and wrote flash fiction.  I stopped running from poetry and its intimidation of me and started to write poetry.  I stopped being afraid of the electronic world and started a blog…and then another…and then another…and yes then another.

No, it wasn’t that I couldn’t get my worked published (believe me I’ve had enough rejection, I’m not afraid of more) but I’ve taken this past year to fill my blogs; my poetry blog, my fantasy blog, flash fiction blog, my essay blog.  Very rarely in the past year have I submitted my work for consideration – simply because I’ve been pushing myself to write what makes me uncomfortable.  That takes practice.

There is a drawback – criticism in these venues is rarely productive.  Sure you might receive a comment or two several likes, even a following but I’ve found that what is desirable in the blogging world is not necessarily healthy for the writer.  As a writer, an editor’s rejection may become that vibrant illumination that later results in an acceptance letter.  There is no pat-on- the- back feeling from a cheering section – nice as that is - better than the job-well-done relief, when an acceptance letter appears in my inbox.

So why this frantic year of blogging?  To push myself – to try the fantasy genre, the romantic, even erotic poem and daunting as it may be the swing at essay – which right now still ends up sounding like a soap box dirge - but improving.

Will I stop?
Yes.
Will my blogs go away?
No.

The thrust and drive in the challenge of words on paper is smoldering back down to time spent, serious time spent on writing what I think may be publishable and what I love to write.  I love to write about the moment, to turn on a dime.  I love the here and now, I love to write about women from all walks of life and focus on who they are as individuals, however my horizons have widened.   The same tired woman trapped in an affair for years may now be the subject of an erotic poem.  Or the woman burdened by poverty may now be the heroin in a world of dragons and witchcraft.  The heart and soul of her must never change – yet in changing the scenery the story of her may soar beyond my own wildest imaginings.

Sandra K. Woodiwiss
http://lydiaink.com
http://skwoodiwiss2.wordpress.com/
http://skwoodiwiss.blogspot.com/
http://northwesterritory.wordpress.com/

The Rules (and Lack Thereof) of Writing - guest post from Gabriel R. Valjan

The Rules (and Lack Thereof) of Writing

by Gabriel R. Valjan

 

Write what you know. Write what you don't know. Obey the laws of grammar and syntax. Break the rules of grammar and syntax. Speech is what you hear. Dialogue is what you imagine between fictional characters. A beat is time in the corner for the boxer to rest or time for the boxer to deliver the punch. Characters live and breathe by how they act, however flawed or noble they are, and not because someone tells you they do. Point of view is a camera; change the lens and you change what you see and whence you see it. Visual is in the mind and it is also white space on the page. Edit for copy, for structure, but always have someone else do it because you won't see it. Criticism is always constructive, never personal. Voice is yours and only yours, as unique as your fingertips, your earlobes, and your handwriting.

As you can see, there are rules and there are no rules. Writing is about creation and expression; it is a function of the intangible human spirit. The act of creative expression, be it oral or written, nearly always involves the person who is doing that creating through words to be sitting down. Spoken or written, the story is created from a seated position. Tell the story that you have inside you. You have no control over whether you’ll make money (or not), be famous or forever obscure. Read widely other authors and genres to see how they “work” and why what they did did work. Should you be fortunate to meet your readers, stay until you have met every last one of them. You’ll be the better person. Don’t compete with other writers. Somebody will always be better at something than you. Just be you. Respect the time your readers spend with you and be grateful that they chose to spend that precious time with you.

Wasp's Nest, the second novel in the Roma series, will be out in late November 2012 from Winter Goose Publishing. A renegade accountant, hacker in hiding, Alabaster as Bianca is in Boston this time to investigate Nasonia Pharmaceutical for her former employer, Rendition, a covert government agency. She'll discover a conspiracy that spans two continents and learn that there's an assassin following her. Catch up with the Roma series if you like a strong female protagonist, food and culture, unique humor, and riveting suspense. Don’t miss this sequel to the first installment, Roma, Underground. The third installment in the series, Threading the Needle, will be out in summer 2013. The Roma series is available in trade paperback or in digital format at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Interested reviewers can request a copy through Net Galley.

My blog is at gabrielswharf.wordpress.com

My Winter Goose page is at wintergoosepublishing.com/authors/gabriel-valjan

Follow me on Twitter @GValjan

WHETHER THEY WORK TOGETHER OR APART - Guest post from Scott Owens

WHETHER THEY WORK TOGETHER OR APART

By Scott Owens

So I had this character named Norman, an abused child who despite his best efforts had grown up to be an abuser himself, horribly self-conscious, well-intentioned but incapable of redirecting his fate. He had been around for more than 15 years and had figured into a couple dozen poems and been the "centerpiece" of The Fractured World, in which the only resolution to his problem is his own death.

I had no intention of letting Norman slither his way into the psyche of another writer, but then I ran across a poem online by Pris Campbell. It was very nearly a good poem, and more than 3 dozen people had commented on it, but they all missed the mark and merely proclaimed how wonderful it was. I took a chance and left a comment suggesting a couple of significant changes that would make it better. Pris liked the suggestions and wrote back to tell me so.

We began to exchange poems online, and we grew comfortable being honest with each other. She read several of my Norman poems, and I read several of her poems on her character, Sara, a sexually-abused child who despite her best efforts never learned how to love herself or to see intimacy as anything other than a tool.

Unexpectedly, as Pris and I grew closer together as writers, Sara and Norman grew closer together as characters. Pris, or perhaps Sara, made the first advance, writing a response to my earliest Norman poem, "Norman’s Enormous Thing." That response, which became "Resizing Norman," humanized Norman in a way I had never envisioned. It was as if Pris, by imagining the influence Sara could have on Norman, was able to see the potential for good in Norman.

Similarly, by thinking about how Norman could help Sara, I felt I understood potentials in her character that Pris had not yet become aware of. So, I wrote a response to her response. We continued this way for about a month, one or both of us writing a new poem each day to expand upon the story of this surprising relationship between characters that had been created without any knowledge of each other.

Initially I wrote the Norman poems, and Pris wrote the Sara poems. As we also helped each other revise, however, it became easier to cross characters, such that after the first couple of weeks, I was just as likely to begin a Sara poem, or Pris to begin a Norman poem. The revision process had also become so dynamic that often neither of us was comfortable claiming authorship of particular poems.

By the end of the month we had about 2 dozen poems that taken together formed a pretty tight narrative of this relationship. For the first time, we consciously saw these poems as a unit and this process as a collaboration. We decided to work on a few more poems to fill in the empty spaces. Upon completion of those poems, we sent off the manuscript to Scott Douglass at Main Street Rag, and a few months later, in 2010, the collaborative chapbook The Nature of Attraction with its 28 poems was published.

Norman and Sara were not, however, finished with the poets who created them. They found our record of their relationship too incomplete to be satisfied. Thus, over the course of the next two years, Pris and I continued to write and revise new Norman and Sara poems, occasionally to fill in a specific void in the story one of us had noticed, but more often just to record some nuance one of the characters revealed to us without any specific authorial intention.

The end (at least for now) result is Shadows Trail Them Home (Clemson University Press, 2012), a novel told in 71 poems about the relationship of two characters created by two different writers who have themselves never met, nor even spoken on the phone.

Scott Owens

So I had this character named Norman, an abused child who despite his best efforts had grown up to be an abuser himself, horribly self-conscious, well-intentioned but incapable of redirecting his fate. He had been around for more than 15 years and had figured into a couple dozen poems and been the "centerpiece" of The Fractured World, in which the only resolution to his problem is his own death.

I had no intention of letting Norman slither his way into the psyche of another writer, but then I ran across a poem online by Pris Campbell. It was very nearly a good poem, and more than 3 dozen people had commented on it, but they all missed the mark and merely proclaimed how wonderful it was. I took a chance and left a comment suggesting a couple of significant changes that would make it better. Pris liked the suggestions and wrote back to tell me so.

We began to exchange poems online, and we grew comfortable being honest with each other. She read several of my Norman poems, and I read several of her poems on her character, Sara, a sexually-abused child who despite her best efforts never learned how to love herself or to see intimacy as anything other than a tool.

Unexpectedly, as Pris and I grew closer together as writers, Sara and Norman grew closer together as characters. Pris, or perhaps Sara, made the first advance, writing a response to my earliest Norman poem, "Norman’s Enormous Thing." That response, which became "Resizing Norman," humanized Norman in a way I had never envisioned. It was as if Pris, by imagining the influence Sara could have on Norman, was able to see the potential for good in Norman.

Similarly, by thinking about how Norman could help Sara, I felt I understood potentials in her character that Pris had not yet become aware of. So, I wrote a response to her response. We continued this way for about a month, one or both of us writing a new poem each day to expand upon the story of this surprising relationship between characters that had been created without any knowledge of each other.

Initially I wrote the Norman poems, and Pris wrote the Sara poems. As we also helped each other revise, however, it became easier to cross characters, such that after the first couple of weeks, I was just as likely to begin a Sara poem, or Pris to begin a Norman poem. The revision process had also become so dynamic that often neither of us was comfortable claiming authorship of particular poems.

By the end of the month we had about 2 dozen poems that taken together formed a pretty tight narrative of this relationship. For the first time, we consciously saw these poems as a unit and this process as a collaboration. We decided to work on a few more poems to fill in the empty spaces. Upon completion of those poems, we sent off the manuscript to Scott Douglass at Main Street Rag, and a few months later, in 2010, the collaborative chapbook The Nature of Attraction with its 28 poems was published.

Norman and Sara were not, however, finished with the poets who created them. They found our record of their relationship too incomplete to be satisfied. Thus, over the course of the next two years, Pris and I continued to write and revise new Norman and Sara poems, occasionally to fill in a specific void in the story one of us had noticed, but more often just to record some nuance one of the characters revealed to us without any specific authorial intention.

The end (at least for now) result is Shadows Trail Them Home (Clemson University Press, 2012), a novel told in 71 poems about the relationship of two characters created by two different writers who have themselves never met, nor even spoken on the phone.

TO BOLDLY ALLUDE… Guest Post from Alex Woolf

TO BOLDLY ALLUDE…

by Alex Woolf

Last year I was writing a horror story called ‘Soul Shadows’ and I needed a couple of characters whose purpose was essentially to provide fodder for the monster. As well as furnishing my sacrificial lambs with rudimentary personalities (to give their deaths some level of meaning in readers’ minds), I had to come up with names for them. To help me in this task, I started thinking about the role of these two characters in my story, and I was immediately reminded of those 1960s Star Trek episodes, when, if you wore a red shirt and were beamed onto a planet, your death was pretty much a foregone conclusion. It occurred to me that there would have had to be a whole stable of bit-part actors in those days whose sole purpose was to get blasted, vaporised or eaten within ten minutes of materialising on the surface of Exma III (or whatever the planet happened to be called). It was the work of just a few minutes on Wikipedia to dig out the names of a couple of these extras, and guarantee their immortality by affixing them to my own pair of bit players. As well as enjoying this arcane nominal coupling for its own sake, I also felt I was, in my own small way, honouring these young actors of yore for their gallant, unheralded contributions to my Saturday evening entertainment all those years ago.

I love planting obscure references and allusions in my fiction – the obscurer the better. I don’t know if anyone will pick up on them and that’s not really the point. In fact, that may be the opposite of the point. I actually like the fact that I may be the only person in the world who knows why Character A happened to be honeymooning in Hotel B in the summer of 19XX. Many of my allusions are to other works of mine. A major character from one story may make a cameo appearance in another. She may not even be named, but I know it’s her, and that’s enough to give me a tingle of satisfaction. As it happens, quite a few of my stories, when they’re not set in an alternative London, are located in the fictional county of Wintershire – though I rarely mention the fact in the text. With this in mind, it’s less surprising, I suppose, that characters from different stories sometimes run into each other.

There’s no name for this disease of obsessive cross-referencing. Some may view it as unhealthily incestuous, maybe even cannibalistic – but I simply can’t (or don’t want to) help it. And occcasionally it can prove useful. Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of middle-grade stories about a pair of young time travellers. Right at the start of the first story, a German World War II fighter plane crashes into an English church in August 1940. The incident had no bearing on the plot, and seemed pointless at the time, even to me, except that it served to give the story a dramatic opening. The publisher was fine with it, but I wasn’t. I was determined to find some significance in this event, and eventually I did – in the second story. It turned out that the entire motivation of the second story’s main antagonist hinged on the plane crash. A trivial incident in the first story became a pivotal one in the second. So sometimes this disease of mine bears unexpected, creative fruit.

Incidentally, ‘Soul Shadows’ (mentioned above) is due to be published in paperback in April 2013 by Curious Fox. It got brilliant reviews from readers during its first incarnation on the web last year. Here’s a little flavour of what it’s about…

Estelle’s therapist has prescribed her a dose of solitude. So she’s staying in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, trying to come to terms with her traumatic past. But there’s more going on in the quiet nearby woods than she knows.

An army of unnatural shadows lurks among the trees. Unlike those that harmlessly follow our footsteps, these shadows can rise up, they can touch … and they can kill.

Estelle and her old friend Sandor must battle this shape-shifting army and the sinister forces that have called them into being. But how can you defeat your enemies when you’re afraid of your own shadow?

You can read more about me and my work on my website: http://alexwoolf.co.uk