In the last post, I mentioned the way the small town of Fryeburg changed the way they thought of me due to some poems being printed in a local paper. Having grown up in a smaller town than Fryeburg, where I was always "Bob and Monique's youngest girl", I was thrilled at the thought that I was starting to develop my own tag separate from other people - especially since that tag wasn't something along the lines of "That Crazy Bag Lady" or some such moniker. Unfortunately, not everyone was thrilled by my new identity.....
My mother-in-law, at the point that I met her, was already having a hard time getting around due to the ravages of Multiple Sclerosis. For those not familiar with this disease, here is the description from the Multiple Sclerosis Society page: "Multiple sclerosis (or MS) is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system (CNS), which is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves." She was fighting, but it was a losing battle, and she was understandably bitter about not being able to get out and do things on her own, like she used to be able to do. By the time I was starting to get recognized for my poetry, she was bed ridden - and since she had never really had that "censor" button that makes people pause and think about how their words are going to affect other people before the words are out, she was usually very blunt about whatever she thought about the news she was hearing.
Judy was quite happy about me being "Judy Emmons' daughter-in-law" around town, so when she was talking to her friends, either when they were visiting in person or via the telephone, I suspect she was a little put out to have them forming an opinion of me that didn't involve what she thought about me. I already knew from my husband and my sister-in-law that there were several things about me that she didn't approve of - so I really kind of blame myself for the following scene that happened between us....
Encouraged by the kind comments from the people I was meeting at the grocery store and along the streets, I had entered one of my poems into a poetry contest sponsored by The National Library of Poetry. Expecting them to reject my piece, as it was a rather sad poem about the death of my father, I was thrilled when they wanted to print it in an anthology, "On the Threshold of a Dream" (1988), and, with my husband's encouragement, I ordered a copy of the book. After a talk over the phone with my own mother, I went to visit my mother-in-law to tell her the "good news"....and was not at all prepared for her reaction.
Instead of acting happy for me and congratulating me as my own mother had done, Judy frowned and asked me a question: "How much money are you making from this?"
When I admitted that I hadn't been in the top three prize winners, so I hadn't won any money, she rolled her eyes and sighed. "You have a child to raise, so instead of wasting your time on this, you should be paying more attention to your son." And then she said something that I considered a call to arms: "You're never going to make money from writing!"
Stinging from her rejection of a hobby that kept me sane by allowing me an outlet for my pent up emotions, I became determined to find a way to make money for doing a writing project, so I started looking at magazines, which frequently offer a modest payment for very short stories for them to use as "fillers". I found my magazine when I picked up a Playgirl magazine as a gag gift for a friend's birthday - and found that they offered $25 for a short piece to be used in their Fantasy Forum section.
Using characters based on my sister-in-law and her then boyfriend, but changing the descriptions so that my mother-in-law would recognize who I had used as the characters, but they wouldn't be recognized on the streets of town, I interviewed my "partners in crime" (the sis-in-law and her boyfriend, who were only too happy to help), typed up a few pages and sent it in. The first effort was rejected because it "was not steamy enough".
Determined to turn up the steam, I sat back down with my sis-in-law, letting her read the rejected version and getting some truly good material for the rewrite. She was particularly helpful at correcting my "Catholic upbringing" terms, as she called them, telling me that exotic dancers (which she had been for a brief time) didn't refer to their 6-inch tall shoes as "high heels", but rather they were "come-f$^k-me spikes". The romantic angle of the first effort became a one night stand, and, when writing the second draft while my young son took his nap, I actually had to turn on a fan (despite it being a cold day outside) to cool off my burning cheeks from the blush I caused myself to have. I knew I was successful when I brought the second draft to my sister-in-law, waited anxiously while she read it - and was rewarded by an evil grin that brought dancing lights into her eyes. As she handed me back the manuscript, she playfully fanned herself and said "By George, I think you've got it!"
Sending off the second effort with a cover letter, I was back to the waiting game - and as I waited, the MS took an even greater toll on my mother-in-law. When she got a cold, her body was having a harder and harder time fighting it off, and in January of 1989, she developed pneumonia. Having been hauled into the hospital several times over the past few months, she refused to allow it to happen again, and she passed away peacefully at home. In the midst of all of this, I forgot all about my short story - until the acceptance letter came a few days after my mother-in-law's funeral. I was going to be paid for something I wrote! It was going to appear in the Playgirl Fantasy Forum for the August 1989 issue! But instead of being elated, I was in shock. How could I proudly proclaim that I was a published short story writer when even I couldn't read the story without blushing??
I told my family anyway, and my mom proudly printed off a copy of it and posted it in the back room at her workplace to share it with her co-workers. Every time I stopped in to visit her at work when we arrived in town for a visit earlier than expected, requiring me to get a key to get into her house to wait until she was finished, her co-workers would say "Oh, it's the WRITER!" - and laughed when I'd blush.
This story could have ended right there, but as Stephen King has pointed out, sometimes when you put your work away in a drawer and ignore it for a while, magic happens. For the next blog, we'll go into how this little piece, meant only to prove to my mother-in-law that I could be paid for writing, turned into a novel......
Friday, June 28, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
From my pen to the reader's eye.....
The past three posts to my blog have covered the "Big Three" rules that I learned in almost every writing class I've ever been in. There are, naturally, a lot more things that you learn in writing classes, but I'll leave it up to you to learn from those who are paid to teach you. The posts that I'll be writing from here on are some insights on my own experiences with writing, but your experiences may vary.....
During high school and college, I had a lot of angst that I began to express in the form of poetry, some of which written for my teachers/professors in response to an assignment, but some just to get my emotions out so that I could (hopefully) sleep at night.
I won't lie to you and say that I always got the best reviews of the work I passed in for assignment. Sometimes there were nice comments, other times it was things like "This poem reads like a bad rock song. I'm not sure even setting it to music would make it acceptable." Strangely enough, the poem that got that poor review from my college professor - a piece I wrote about the death of my favorite cousin and passed in when we were asked to do something "long and sad, something of a eulogy" - was published later in a small newspaper in Fryeburg, Maine (currently available at my web site: http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/poems3.html). A retired English teacher whom I had befriended called me requesting my permission to read the poem to a writing group he was leading, and when he insisted on reading the poem to me to make sure he was getting "the intended inflection of the sentence", he started to cry in the last stanza. He called me again after he'd completed the reading for the group to tell me that he had "held it together" during the reading, but everyone was passing around tissues after he finished......
So my personal "publishing rule number one" is: "Just because one person doesn't like it, it doesn't mean your writing isn't any good. Try another audience."
Reactions such as the one expressed by the retired writing teacher encouraged me to continue bringing my poetry in to the little Fryeburg paper, and 99.9 % of what I brought into The Pequawket Valley News, which had a little section they called "The North Country Bard", got published. Some of the local poetry they featured there was not to my liking, but some of it was really good stuff.
Now, for anyone who hasn't ever lived in a small town, especially one in Maine, there is a way that new people in town are labeled when they first arrive. In my case, I was "Bill Emmons' lady friend" for a while, and when we got married and briefly moved to Florida, I became "Judy Emmons' daughter-in-law". (Not always a nice thing when I was recognized as that, as my mother-in-law didn't seem to always be nice in her comments to her friends - but we'll delve further into that in my next post.)
After my poems started getting published in the little weekly paper, I started being called "The Poet Lady". At first, it was a little startling to be stopped in the middle of my grocery shopping by someone I had never met before with "Hey, I know you! You're The Poet Lady!" Once the initial shock wore off, however, it became very nice to have someone stop me to tell me how much they liked the last piece that was published - or to offer me ways that I could have improved it. This public recognition became another learning tool, as it helped me to not only hear the opinions of the people who were reading my work, but it also taught me how to gracefully take constructive criticism and grow as a writer. This would all be very important in the next step I took.....
During high school and college, I had a lot of angst that I began to express in the form of poetry, some of which written for my teachers/professors in response to an assignment, but some just to get my emotions out so that I could (hopefully) sleep at night.
I won't lie to you and say that I always got the best reviews of the work I passed in for assignment. Sometimes there were nice comments, other times it was things like "This poem reads like a bad rock song. I'm not sure even setting it to music would make it acceptable." Strangely enough, the poem that got that poor review from my college professor - a piece I wrote about the death of my favorite cousin and passed in when we were asked to do something "long and sad, something of a eulogy" - was published later in a small newspaper in Fryeburg, Maine (currently available at my web site: http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/poems3.html). A retired English teacher whom I had befriended called me requesting my permission to read the poem to a writing group he was leading, and when he insisted on reading the poem to me to make sure he was getting "the intended inflection of the sentence", he started to cry in the last stanza. He called me again after he'd completed the reading for the group to tell me that he had "held it together" during the reading, but everyone was passing around tissues after he finished......
So my personal "publishing rule number one" is: "Just because one person doesn't like it, it doesn't mean your writing isn't any good. Try another audience."
Reactions such as the one expressed by the retired writing teacher encouraged me to continue bringing my poetry in to the little Fryeburg paper, and 99.9 % of what I brought into The Pequawket Valley News, which had a little section they called "The North Country Bard", got published. Some of the local poetry they featured there was not to my liking, but some of it was really good stuff.
Now, for anyone who hasn't ever lived in a small town, especially one in Maine, there is a way that new people in town are labeled when they first arrive. In my case, I was "Bill Emmons' lady friend" for a while, and when we got married and briefly moved to Florida, I became "Judy Emmons' daughter-in-law". (Not always a nice thing when I was recognized as that, as my mother-in-law didn't seem to always be nice in her comments to her friends - but we'll delve further into that in my next post.)
After my poems started getting published in the little weekly paper, I started being called "The Poet Lady". At first, it was a little startling to be stopped in the middle of my grocery shopping by someone I had never met before with "Hey, I know you! You're The Poet Lady!" Once the initial shock wore off, however, it became very nice to have someone stop me to tell me how much they liked the last piece that was published - or to offer me ways that I could have improved it. This public recognition became another learning tool, as it helped me to not only hear the opinions of the people who were reading my work, but it also taught me how to gracefully take constructive criticism and grow as a writer. This would all be very important in the next step I took.....
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
AAAANNNNNDDDD the winner is..........
The third rule. In my humble opinion, the most important rule of all, as every teacher I ever had teaching creative writing made sure this one was drilled into me.....
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW!
I like reading Stephen King because he writes about areas in Maine that I can easily picture. I've been to some of those places.
I also like reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's books, mostly set in New Orleans. It's a place I've always wanted to go, and because she describes it so well, I HAVE been there, if only in my head. (And, luckily for me, I have friends who have been exotic places and volunteer descriptions for me..)
When writing, the places I've been visit my stories. They might be a little different from real life, with a little stage dressing thrown on here and there, but if you know someplace like I'm trying to describe, you'll throw in your own stage dressing in your head, and imagine something close to what I was seeing in my head when I wrote it.
Let me give you an example of how this rule plays into a book:
In "Night of the Tiger", there is a beautiful barn house overlooking a mountain valley in Greenville, Maine. The town is real. The mountains are real. The barn, however, got moved there from Exeter, Maine. In fact, the barn, in the real world, has technically been ash for a very long time. The layout for the magnificent home in the mountains is based on the layout of the dairy farm my grandparents had, but the barn burned flat and left the house standing. In the story, I reversed the way things happened, so that the house burned and left the barn behind. How else can an eccentric character have a one of a kind home?
So there you have it. The "big three" rules of writing.
1) Read a lot, observing how others write.
2) Write properly.
3) Write what you know.
Of course, who says there are only three rules?
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW!
I like reading Stephen King because he writes about areas in Maine that I can easily picture. I've been to some of those places.
I also like reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's books, mostly set in New Orleans. It's a place I've always wanted to go, and because she describes it so well, I HAVE been there, if only in my head. (And, luckily for me, I have friends who have been exotic places and volunteer descriptions for me..)
When writing, the places I've been visit my stories. They might be a little different from real life, with a little stage dressing thrown on here and there, but if you know someplace like I'm trying to describe, you'll throw in your own stage dressing in your head, and imagine something close to what I was seeing in my head when I wrote it.
Let me give you an example of how this rule plays into a book:
In "Night of the Tiger", there is a beautiful barn house overlooking a mountain valley in Greenville, Maine. The town is real. The mountains are real. The barn, however, got moved there from Exeter, Maine. In fact, the barn, in the real world, has technically been ash for a very long time. The layout for the magnificent home in the mountains is based on the layout of the dairy farm my grandparents had, but the barn burned flat and left the house standing. In the story, I reversed the way things happened, so that the house burned and left the barn behind. How else can an eccentric character have a one of a kind home?
So there you have it. The "big three" rules of writing.
1) Read a lot, observing how others write.
2) Write properly.
3) Write what you know.
Of course, who says there are only three rules?
Monday, June 24, 2013
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” (Stephen King)
So, when stepping back into my young life, we discovered the first rule of writing: READ - a LOT!
But what about when you try to write? Is reading a lot going to teach you everything you know about sentence structure, paragraph structure, when to end a chapter? What is a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb - and even more important, might your story have been turned away by a publisher because you wrote every paragraph as one run-on sentence that took up half a page?
For those who are still in school when you find this blog, my advice to you is to pay attention during your English classes. No matter how boring you may think the exercises that your teacher wants you to do are, they are the building blocks you need in order to write.
If you've graduated from school and are out on your own before the writing bug bites, let me introduce you to a book that I was introduced to way back in the dark ages, when I went to college with the Marquis de Sade: "Steps to Writing Well" by Jean Wyrick.
Ms. Wyrick, at least in the edition I still have in my possession, was mostly concerned with the short essay or thesis. If I was trying to keep myself to a specific number of pages or wanted to make sure that I stayed on a specific topic in order to pass in a paper for a class, I would follow her instructions to a "t". Unfortunately, trying to write an outline and stick to a specific topic when you're writing a tale that has a bunch of crazy characters who are busily changing the story the moment you turn your back.......
Yeah, I don't do outlines for my novels.
However, if I'm questioning my punctuation, or the grammar checker on my computer brings up a "rule" that I no longer remember, it's always good to have Ms. Wyrick sitting on my bookshelf, ready to remind me about the rules that I was taught in the many classes I took over the years.
Now, all of this may sound like I'm just being picky for the sake of being picky, but publishing houses aren't going to read your work if the query letter comes off like a 4-year-old child's letter to Santa Claus. Of course, if they DO decide to take a chance with your writing and ask you to submit a manuscript, they will expect you to follow their submissions guidelines - which means they will be expecting you to send them a file with proper spelling, proper grammar, and proper punctuation. Cross your "t", dot your "i", and make sure that this would be a writing effort that would have given you an "A" in your English class.
But what about when you try to write? Is reading a lot going to teach you everything you know about sentence structure, paragraph structure, when to end a chapter? What is a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb - and even more important, might your story have been turned away by a publisher because you wrote every paragraph as one run-on sentence that took up half a page?
For those who are still in school when you find this blog, my advice to you is to pay attention during your English classes. No matter how boring you may think the exercises that your teacher wants you to do are, they are the building blocks you need in order to write.
If you've graduated from school and are out on your own before the writing bug bites, let me introduce you to a book that I was introduced to way back in the dark ages, when I went to college with the Marquis de Sade: "Steps to Writing Well" by Jean Wyrick.
Ms. Wyrick, at least in the edition I still have in my possession, was mostly concerned with the short essay or thesis. If I was trying to keep myself to a specific number of pages or wanted to make sure that I stayed on a specific topic in order to pass in a paper for a class, I would follow her instructions to a "t". Unfortunately, trying to write an outline and stick to a specific topic when you're writing a tale that has a bunch of crazy characters who are busily changing the story the moment you turn your back.......
Yeah, I don't do outlines for my novels.
However, if I'm questioning my punctuation, or the grammar checker on my computer brings up a "rule" that I no longer remember, it's always good to have Ms. Wyrick sitting on my bookshelf, ready to remind me about the rules that I was taught in the many classes I took over the years.
Now, all of this may sound like I'm just being picky for the sake of being picky, but publishing houses aren't going to read your work if the query letter comes off like a 4-year-old child's letter to Santa Claus. Of course, if they DO decide to take a chance with your writing and ask you to submit a manuscript, they will expect you to follow their submissions guidelines - which means they will be expecting you to send them a file with proper spelling, proper grammar, and proper punctuation. Cross your "t", dot your "i", and make sure that this would be a writing effort that would have given you an "A" in your English class.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Looking into history back...
"I'm looking behind us now, across the count of time, down the long haul into history back. I sees the end, what were the start..." (Savannah Nix in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome")
The very start, the little Debi (then spelled "Debbie" by my mom, as I changed it in late high school/early college). Mom tells anyone who'll care to listen that I'm her "different child", the one who didn't behave like a normal child. The one who was always making up stories to tell......
Before I learned to read and write, she would check on my three siblings, happily watching cartoons or Captain Kangaroo in the living room, and then come out to check on her "other" little girl, the one who had tipped all the chairs over in the kitchen and put them together to form an enclosure. I would be crawling on my knees, "pacing" my enclosure, growling when she came into view. Later, I would tell her that I was pretending I was a tiger - or a lion - or some other wild animal. I was never able to tell her back in those days where I had seen a wild animal in a cage, as there were no zoos in our area, and I really can't tell you now where I ever saw such a thing. (We're talking early 60's in a small Maine town. Black and white television. Three channels that came in on an antenna - unless the weather was bad.)
Then my older sister, playing "teacher" when she came home from school, taught me to read and write before I was old enough to start school....
So began my devouring of books, and my subconscious adherence to one of the golden rules of creative writing: If you want to be a good writer, you must READ and absorb the nuances of the author's voice.
So also began the writing, for whole storylines danced in my head after finishing a good book, and I just HAD to write the stories down. Characters whispered in my ear and showed me their lives in my mind's eye, and I wrote their stories down.......
It took me a long time before I realized that not everyone had characters living in their heads and not everyone was driven to write. I really was Mom's "different child".
The very start, the little Debi (then spelled "Debbie" by my mom, as I changed it in late high school/early college). Mom tells anyone who'll care to listen that I'm her "different child", the one who didn't behave like a normal child. The one who was always making up stories to tell......
Before I learned to read and write, she would check on my three siblings, happily watching cartoons or Captain Kangaroo in the living room, and then come out to check on her "other" little girl, the one who had tipped all the chairs over in the kitchen and put them together to form an enclosure. I would be crawling on my knees, "pacing" my enclosure, growling when she came into view. Later, I would tell her that I was pretending I was a tiger - or a lion - or some other wild animal. I was never able to tell her back in those days where I had seen a wild animal in a cage, as there were no zoos in our area, and I really can't tell you now where I ever saw such a thing. (We're talking early 60's in a small Maine town. Black and white television. Three channels that came in on an antenna - unless the weather was bad.)
Then my older sister, playing "teacher" when she came home from school, taught me to read and write before I was old enough to start school....
So began my devouring of books, and my subconscious adherence to one of the golden rules of creative writing: If you want to be a good writer, you must READ and absorb the nuances of the author's voice.
So also began the writing, for whole storylines danced in my head after finishing a good book, and I just HAD to write the stories down. Characters whispered in my ear and showed me their lives in my mind's eye, and I wrote their stories down.......
It took me a long time before I realized that not everyone had characters living in their heads and not everyone was driven to write. I really was Mom's "different child".
Saturday, June 22, 2013
One for the money, two for the show.....
For many years now, I've had a web site, The Northern Bard, which basically showcases the end product of the creative process of writing. Most of what appears there as my own writing has been previously published in one place or another, some of it is in the process of being published, and some of it is still in the beginning stages of the creative process, hopefully to be published at some future time.
In my travels, as I've spoken to friends, family and co-workers about "my latest project", I've found that there are many people who have the same dream that I do: of becoming a writer who makes enough from the writing to stay at home and not have to work outside the house. I'm still working to attain that dream, but since so many have been asking for suggestions about their own writing projects and how to get published....
Well, that's who I'm writing this for.
As this blog progresses, I'm going to try to delve back into the foggy hallways of the past, to chronicle what classes one should take and what needs to be learned in order to cover the basics that all publishers want to see in a good piece of writing.
I'll share the stories of what happened in my life that caused me to be "wired differently" than my siblings, so that others who have the same wiring as I do can understand that they aren't going insane - they just need to harness the energy and direct it to a creative outlet.
And as my latest project begins to unfold, I'll share how this process works in my world, even though I know that it doesn't necessarily work the same for all writers, and that I may just be an amusing anecdote for some of those who read this blog. So welcome to my blog, feel free to contribute your two cents when you feel the need, and if you have questions, please ask them.
I look forward to sharing the inside of my head with you.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some cobwebs that need to be dusted out if I'm going to have company in here.....
In my travels, as I've spoken to friends, family and co-workers about "my latest project", I've found that there are many people who have the same dream that I do: of becoming a writer who makes enough from the writing to stay at home and not have to work outside the house. I'm still working to attain that dream, but since so many have been asking for suggestions about their own writing projects and how to get published....
Well, that's who I'm writing this for.
As this blog progresses, I'm going to try to delve back into the foggy hallways of the past, to chronicle what classes one should take and what needs to be learned in order to cover the basics that all publishers want to see in a good piece of writing.
I'll share the stories of what happened in my life that caused me to be "wired differently" than my siblings, so that others who have the same wiring as I do can understand that they aren't going insane - they just need to harness the energy and direct it to a creative outlet.
And as my latest project begins to unfold, I'll share how this process works in my world, even though I know that it doesn't necessarily work the same for all writers, and that I may just be an amusing anecdote for some of those who read this blog. So welcome to my blog, feel free to contribute your two cents when you feel the need, and if you have questions, please ask them.
I look forward to sharing the inside of my head with you.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some cobwebs that need to be dusted out if I'm going to have company in here.....
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