Category Archives: Writer

The art, craft, process, and experience of being a writer.

Death, taxes, and the necessity of routine

Death and taxes are not the only certainties for me. I can also count on the loss of routine knocking me clean off the writing wagon.

That has been the case for me over the past few weeks. My routine sank into the sea and my regular blog entries and all personal writing plans washed away like so much sand art I trudge through during my beach walks. Oh, and, of course, my beach walks suffered the same fate as my blog entries and personal writing, which in turn threw me farther off track. Vicious, vicious, circle.

What derailed my happy routine days? What upended my regular weekly cycle of write, sleep, write for work, beach, write more for work, eat, write, sleep?

Well, one of my cars broke down, my husband had surgery and recuperated at home, one business project ended with my delivery of a full report and recommendations, another business project started with my development of a huge, detailed proposal and the tax deadline arrived, all in the span of one short week. Eight days, to be precise.

Everything turned out fine, except that I failed to post weekly blog entries for two weeks straight and gained two pounds.

Coincidence? Probably not.

I am most definitely a creature of habit. I have routines for everything and when I follow them they serve as a road map to my health, happiness, and productivity. When I abandon them, look out hopes and dreams!

It wasn’t as if I didn’t do any writing during my off track days. That report and proposal didn’t create themselves. But anything that wasn’t strictly business suffered a bit and I suffered with it. Like most artistic people I’ve known or known of, I’m only fully happy when I’m creating.

And so, besides offering an excuse laden apology of sorts for not posting here for a couple of weeks, I urge you to take stock of your own routines, superstitions, and must haves. What do you need to maintain your creative endeavors?

Whatever it is, guard it with your life, especially when life gets a little crazy.

A foolish day for a walk

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Midday on a hot Sunday in Spring is not the ideal time for a walk along the beach. But I went anyway.

Jax Beach, FL - April Fool's Day 2012

Labeling it crowded would be grossly understating the scene. The beach was packed and the tide was already high and still rising, forcing everyone there to share increasingly less space. There was a lot to see, sure, but not a lot of room to do anything that involved moving from place to another along the coast.

This was when I decided to take my walk. And at first it seemed like a mistake.

I’m not one of those people who exercises at the same time or even exactly the same place each time. I procrastinate. I get bursts of energy and decide to go for it right then. I am all over the map at times and therefore wasn’t the least bit surprised to discover as I crossed over the dunes that early on a Spring Sunday afternoon was not the best time to get my walk in.

But I also didn’t let it discourage me. I switched on my pedometer and started weaving between towels, hairs, umbrellas and people toward the shore. Once there, I headed south, focusing only on the few feet of sand in front of me rather than the crowds of people ahead, behind, and surrounding me.

At first it looked like walking even a couple of feet would be impossible. Walking a couple of miles seemed out of the question. But I took that first step determined to make it work.

I had to dodge a lot of people who couldn’t care less if I walked or not. I had to stop and restart when beach balls or babies crossed my path at the last second. I had to weave around fishermen and football-throwing teens. I had to share space with squawking gulls used to having sand to land on.

I also got to watch a fisherman rescue and stingray and send it back out to sea.

Pretty soon it was time to turn around and retrace my steps, and although even more people had crammed together on the beach by then, the walk back actually seemed easier.

Maybe I’d simply adapted to the distractions and obstacles, which is what any writer has to do if they want to consistently produce.

Writers and other artists often find themselves trying to create in less than ideal situations. Crowds. Obstacles. Distractions. These don’t disappear just because we have deadlines or if we’re just not feeling “it” that day.

At those times we have to create anyway. We have to make that first move determined to get where we want to go.

Sometimes we have to get creative to be creative. And sometimes that leads to memorable results.

Part 2 of truth doesn’t have to be complicated

Truth doesn’t have to be complicated

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Once again the writing community is blathering breathlessly about the nature of truth. What are facts and why are they stubborn things? Can true stories be told without tweaking what happened to make the tale more dramatic or compelling? How much tweaking is too much tweaking? What does nonfiction really mean anyway?

This happens every so often. A journalist bends the truth or creates an imaginary friend as a “source” to get the big story to press. A memoir writer makes up events that never happened or people who never lived to help propel a life story into a best seller. An essayist publishes a book detailing an argument with a fact checker that attempts to justify stark departures from reality because those departures allegedly “sound better.”

Unfortunately the latter has led to literary minds once again wrestling with the question of truth and the role of factual accuracy in nonfiction. Thankfully, according to this source, at least one panel of writers apparently understands that the issue is not that complicated.

Truthfully, this is a topic that writers shouldn’t have to discuss. All prose writing can be divided into two categories, fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is made up, even if it’s based on real events. Nonfiction is, brace yourself, not fiction.

Each of these categories can then be subdivided into genres, but regardless of what flavor of the writing, readers bring certain assumptions to the table depending on which category the writing claims to be. Readers assume that nonfiction is, shockingly, not fiction.

Any nonfiction writer, creative or otherwise, who claims they can’t tell a good nonfiction story without altering verifiable facts (such as the number of businesses in a particular location, or whether two specific event took place on the same day) has three choices. One, select a story to tell that isn’t burdened with stubborn facts or inconvenient truths. Two, become a better writer, one that can weave reality into an intoxicating story without tweaking, altering, or outright fabricating. Or, three, write fiction.

It truly is that simple.

Back it up

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I am prepping for a business trip tomorrow and I have a long To Do list. Last minute emails to the client. Meeting preparation. Checking in for my flight and printing boarding passes. Packing. Checking and rechecking between now and my departure to make sure I have everything I need.

The last thing I will do today, however, will be the most important task on my list. I will back up my computer files.

This is a lesson I have learned the hard way. Repeatedly. In the last 15 years I have lost 3 full book length manuscripts and countless business writing files including presentations, procedures, instructions and forms. One of the book manuscripts was never printed and is gone for good. Ditto for the countless business files.

It doesn’t matter how I lost them. Lightning strikes. Hard drives fail. Networks crash at the worst possible times.

There is one way to insure that all is not lost. Save often and back up your files on a regular basis.

It’s easier than ever to back up your work these days, with programs and apps designed to let you click your way to peace of mind. Many of these apps provide the added bonus of allowing file access and sharing among many devices which makes business communication and travel easier and lighter. But bells and whistles aside the key is maintaining a back up of your work on a separate device or cloud.

I’m not going to promote any particular program here because it doesn’t matter what you choose to use as long as it works for you. What’s important is that those of us who work and create electronically regularly take the time to back it up.

Unlock your observation skills

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Once upon a time I taught a Beginning Creative Nonfiction Writing class to adults through a local arts council. My students ranged in age from late teens and twenty-somethings through retirees, and their writing experience ranged from hey I think I’ll give this a try to multiple academic publishings. What they shared was a desire to create art from truth and a willingness to let me guide them.

The course ran from 8-10 weeks depending on which semester we were in and I taught it for several semesters using the same curriculum, expanding and contracting as needed to span the time alloted.

My first class lesson plan was always the same. I opened with reading aloud an excerpt from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I then provided an introduction to creative nonfiction and its various forms (essay, memoir, family history, journalism, biography, etc.), and ended with a homework assignment designed to get students to look at the world around them with fresh eyes.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a book that I reread at least once a year. Written by a man who had Locked In Syndrome following a stroke, and who dictated his story by blinking one eye, it reminds me that no matter how hard I think my life is at any point, it’s not THAT hard.

It also reminds me that much of our lives goes unnoticed. Our senses are bombarded with information as we make our way through our days and we tend to overlook or simply miss quite a lot of what happens around us, and even to us.

To help writers tune in to more of what happens around them every day I developed the Locked In Essay homework assignment. I think it works for all types of writers. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Here are the details…

Locked In Essay— Sit or stand quietly in a public place (college campus, park, beach, mall, bus stop, food stand, busy street corner, etc.) for 15 minutes, and observe. Do not interact with your surroundings. Write a page or two about that experience. What did you see? Smell? Hear? Think? Feel? Were you inspired? Were you bored? Was it 15 minutes of your life you’ll never get back? What?

Sunshine State of Mind

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Ahh, sunshine. It lifts spirits, warms hearts, and helps everything grow. Thanks to Word Flows it now also graces my blog page.

Thank you, Word Flows, for thinking of me and my love of the spotlight, but especially for your kind words about my blog!

Of course these things come with customs, so let’s get right to them.

The Rules:

Thank the person who gave you the award.
Write a post about it.
Answer a few deeply personal and revealing questions.
Pass it along to ten people and let them know they received the award.

The Deeply Personal and Revealing Questions:

Favorite colour: Blue
Favorite animal: Labrador Retrievers
Favorite number: 27
Favorite non-alcoholic drink: Tea
Facebook or Twitter? Facebook
My passion: Writing. It’s always been writing. It will always be writing. Unfortunately for my fitness level, my passion has provoked hours of sitting down indoors. Thanks to my relocation, I have taken to following my passion sitting down outdoors, in the sand near the surf. I am working on writing via dictation while walking on the beach.
Getting or giving presents? Giving
Favorite pattern: I’m a solid girl
Favorite day of the week: Friday, because on that day the weekend still holds all the promise and possibility I can imagine
Favorite flower: Lilies…all makes and models.

Pass It Along:
This is where the rule breaking begins, or, to put it in terms relevant to writers, where the taking of creative liberties begins.

I am not picking 10. I am not picking any arbitrary number. Instead, I have decided to pick according to a theme, which, when applied, led to me picking five.

Indulge me an explanation. When I think of sunshine, I think of creativity. And when I thought of handing out Sunshine Award nominations, I decided that I wanted to let that be an opportunity to give a shout out to the creative people who inspire me the most.

At first I thought of calling them my Algonquin Round Table, which in many ways they are. But that would imply that we all interact and fuel creativity in each other, when in reality not everyone on this list knows each other. Nevertheless, each of the people who write the blogs I’ve listed below are creative people who inspire me to write, and to keep writing when my own enthusiasm is running low. I don’t get to interact with most of them offline much anymore, but thanks to social media I get to banter with them from time to time, sneak a peak into their worlds and keep them caught up with mine.

I have known each of these bloggers for many years, a couple going back to my college days and the rest from my former life as a newspaper publisher. In the interest of full disclosure I will say that one is my husband, and the rest are friends who continually inspire me with their writing, sculpting, photography and offbeat perspectives of our world. Their blogs brighten my day, and hopefully will brighten yours.

Oh Goody, another iPhone Photo Blog - I listed my husband’s blog first because, well, I do have to live with him. And because he is #1 of course! Jeff takes pictures of things we walk past together, and then shows me what I failed to see.
Rabbitville Road - Rita is the queen of creativity as a sculptor, fellow writer, and Nana extraordinaire. She not only inspires me to build my career upon my creativity, but is also an excellent role model for blending personal and professional in a way that enhances both while maintaining the boundaries of each.
Life, Times & Memories - Small town journalists have to stick together to survive, even if they write for competing publications, because they all answer to the same readers. That’s how I met Krystal, and though I still enjoy reading her news stories occasionally, I love her blog about daily small town living even more.
Classic Film and TV Cafe - Kent knows what I should be watching, even before I do. Just this morning he posted the cure for my Downton Abbey withdrawal. He’s so thoughtful that way!
Coyote Watches - When I met Bryan at college he was prince of the city. Then and now he reminds me that life is a game we are compelled to play, so why not revel in the wonder of it all?

Note to recipients above: You are not obligated to accept this award. Yes, I know it resembles a chain letter. You can break the chain, or cheat as I have done. The world won’t end and you still get to add the pretty flower graphic to your blog page…but only if you want to.

Small talk your way to a good interview

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I often conduct interviews to gather the information I need to write. As a former journalist I interviewed politicians, police officers, athletes, award winners, and experts on various topics too numerous to clog this blog with, in order to write articles ranging from feel good features to front page news. As a technical writer I have interviewed company officers and directors, engineers, and workers on the plant floor in order to write manuals, procedures and work instructions. Some of the fiction I’ve written required interviewing someone experienced with the topic I was writing about.

Whatever the reason for needing to conduct an interview, writers sometimes find themselves looking for a blueprint, a plan, any advice at all to make it as painless as possible for both interviewer and interviewee.

The web is awash in advice for interviewing. Naturally some of it is great, some good, and some barely adequate. Many seem to focus on making the interviewer more comfortable by feeling in control. But the best advice, I believe, is to focus instead on putting the interviewee at ease.

How can you do that?

Treat the interviewee like a person you’ve been wanting to meet and get to know. Start off with small talk. From there move the discussion to issues of comfort (where they’ll sit, if they want something to drink, etc.). Continue talking about anything but the interview subject until it’s time to begin, working in a discussion of the ground rules (such as on vs off the record, how to stop the interview if either party is uncomfortable, or a review of the purpose of the interview) alongside talking about the weather or bad traffic, or the funny sign you saw on the way there. It doesn’t matter what you talk about as long as it isn’t the topic of the interview. What’s important is establishing a connection by treating the interviewee as a person first, and an interviewee a distant second.

By the time you get to the interview itself, both interviewer and interviewee should be feeling at ease and ready to discuss the topic at hand.

There’s a reason why they’re called The Basics

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I frequently read ridiculously funny things on professional writing forums, most of which, sadly, weren’t intended as a joke. Since I live in a creative household, I tend to share these little gems with my husband and adult offspring so that we can all enjoy. But sometimes I read and share something so outrageous that we skip the laughter and land on righteous indignation.

“Seriously? Somebody posted a question asking How important is grammar and punctuation (i.e., subject verb agreement, conditonl clause, etc.) for a technical writer? Unbelievable!”

Believe it. The bold portion is word for word, complete with the misspelling of conditional.

Call me a snob. Call me an elitist. But I simply don’t understand how someone can call themselves a writer, or worse a professional writer, if they can’t or don’t understand and follow the most basic grammar and spelling rules.

They got it right the first time, and then failed to duplicate their efforts on the second line

That’s like getting paid to be a plumber and not being able to tighten a sink faucet. It’s like calling yourself an artist, a painter, but not knowing the difference between watercolors and acrylics. It’s akin to claiming to be a mechanic without knowing how to open the hood of a car, or how to jump-start the battery. Or it’s the same as getting paid to run a multi-billion dollar corporation without understanding that failing to serve your largest customers will erode your profits and eventually cost you your job.

Ok, wait, that does happen an awful lot lately. But it doesn’t make it right. And it isn’t right to call yourself a writer, personally or professionally, if you don’t know the basics.

By basics, I mean [bey-siks], the fundamentals of using the language (English for our purposes) to communicate information to a reader.

I’m not going to teach a grammar lesson with this entry. I’m not even going to provide links to those who do, although I likely will add those on a resources page here eventually. What I am going to do, however, is indulge my desire to list my personal basic pet peeves.

These are the tools I expect professional writers using the English language to have mastered.

The fact that every sentence requires a subject and a verb. The subject can be implied. The verb cannot.
Punctuation–what it is and why it’s necessary, even in a text message, or a Facebook or Twitter post
The difference between and appropriate use of:

its and it’s
there, their and they’re
to and too
your and you’re
effect and affect
except and accept

Subject verb agreement–what it is and why it should be second nature if you make your living, or hope to make your mark with words

It’s ok if you can’t explain what a gerund phrase is or diagram a sentence. But you should have an ear, or an eye, for sentence structure and paragraph flow. And you MUST know the basics.

If you don’t, you’re not a professional, regardless of how long you’ve been writing or how much you get paid.

A word about an award

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I want to thank The writer, the reviser, the visualizer at Write Or Revise Daily (WORD!) for choosing me for a Versatile Blogger award (http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/)! Write or Revise Daily is one of my favorite blogs and it’s a treat as well as an honor to be recognized by a fellow blogger!

For those of you who, like me, aren’t familiar with how this works, there are rules. Rule #1, don’t talk about Versatile Blogger award. Wait, that is definitely not right!

The real rules are as follows.

Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.

Done and Done. But thanks again! I appreciate the recognition and encouragement.

Share 7 things about yourself.

1. I don’t handle praise or recognition well. It’s not that I don’t welcome or appreciate it. I do! But although I often come across as an extrovert, I am actually shy about being in a spotlight not of my own making.

2. Although I have been a writer all of my life, I was first published as a photojournalist when I was a teenager. I put away my camera professionally in favor of a keyboard long ago, but this blog is allowing me the chance to revisit my photographic roots a bit.

3. Speaking of journalism, I once owned and published a weekly newspaper.

4. I was born and lived most of my life in the incredibly, landlocked, ocean-free Midwest.

5. In 2011 I decided it was a good time to have a mid-life crisis and rather than buy a sports car I relocated from snowy winters to a southern city with a beach.

6. I live in an all-creative household. My husband is a poet, photographer and writer. My son is an artist, lapsed poet, and master of puns. My daughter is a dancer and writer.

7. My favorite food is sushi.

Pass this award along to 15 others.

I am nominating blogs I always look forward to reading. Each of them has something that draws me back post after post no matter how busy I think I am. Hope you enjoy them as well! They are, of course, in no particular order.

1. Fibromy-Awesome
2. Cerridwen’s Cauldren
3. 1 Story A Week
4. Terribly Write
5. Wordsmith Six
6. Writers Write Daily
7. Susie Lindau’s Wild Ride
8. Robotic Rhetoric
9. Word Flows
10. David Gaughran
11. Savvy Writing Careers
12. Outside the Box
13. Villanova Junction
14. Cdeminski’s Blog
15. Alice Dusenberry

I also want to link to one more blog that would have made this list if he hadn’t been the one to nominate The writer, the reviser, the visualizer...Pete Denton – Writer. Maybe now I’ll get around to adding each of these to my blogroll?

Contact your chosen bloggers.

In process!

Thanks again to Write Or Revise Daily for the vote of confidence and to everyone for reading.

The Beach Writer

sun, sand, water and words

Category Archives: Writer

Death, taxes, and the necessity of routine

A foolish day for a walk

Part 2 of truth doesn’t have to be complicated

Truth doesn’t have to be complicated

Back it up

Unlock your observation skills

Sunshine State of Mind

Small talk your way to a good interview

There’s a reason why they’re called The Basics

A word about an award

Follow “The Beach Writer”