What Do You Think About at the End of the Year?

The end of 2011 is approaching, and as usual this time of year, I find myself reflecting on the good and bad (or as my friend, Kris, says, "the challenges and the changes"), and I am already planning on starting off the new year on a new note.


I had my good this year. I made some new writer friends, I was elected President of my writers' group, and I've been able to do some much needed home improvements. I even stepped out of my comfort zone and learned belly dancing!


The challenges came too, as you know, if you know me or follow my blog. My mother passed away in February and I passed through my first Mother's Day, her birthday, my birthday, Thanksgiving and now Christmas without her wildly cheerful inviting presence.

Hmmm...what will the new year bring? Or rather, what will I take to it?

Next year, I want to be more involved in charity work. I want to write more. I want to worry less. I want to appreciate my blessings more.

What about you? What are your year-end thoughts?

Why Keep a Journal

Do you keep a journal? As a writer, do you believe it is important to do so?

I have kept a journal since I was a teenager. Of course, in the teenage years my ramblings were more of a "Does that boy in English class like me" type of thing, but the point is, I was memorializing my instant thoughts and experiences. That is important for a writer to do.

There will never be another moment of clarity like the moment right now. Memories grow dim, circumstances become enmeshed with other circumstances, we forget half of what we mean to keep and so on. You get the picture.

One reason I started a serious journal several years ago was to leave my sons some idea of the people they come from. So much of my family's history, particularly on my father's side, has been lost to anquity. I can't do much about that now but I can leave them with what I know. It is important that they know their heritage.

As time goes by, I find I journal about practically everything in my life. Why and who cares? Well, I do. I suppose many people step away from journaling for fear that something they've written will be read by someone who might judge them, and that could happen, of course. But don't discard journaling due to the fear of someone else perceiving you as human. I think you might be a most unsuccessful writer if you did that!

Journaling releases tension. I no longer have to carry the turmoil of the day or the situation or the heartache with me. Once I commit it to paper, it is outside of me, sort of like a good belly-aching cry. I can then move on to more positive things.

Journaling also builds writing skills and don't think it doesn't. The more you engage in it, the higher your writing skills become. What better place to work than in your journal where you can write about anything at any time, raw, uncensored, no reservations. You can even write about writing. Journaling builds discipline, and writers need to be disciplined about the craft.

Also, within journaling, you may discover a germ of an idea, something that has legs and can breathe and explode into a successful story. There is no doubt in my mind that this is entirely possible.

These are just a few reasons why keeping a journal is important. What are the reasons you keep one?

A Sweet Melody Lingers

My mother gave me a piano years ago, before son #1 was born. The piano is a beautiful antique, heavy wooden carving, real ivory keys, brass foot pedals. Once it belonged to her aunt, and my mother bought it for $50 dollars after I was born and kept it all those years.

And then she gave it to me.

My mother was a musician first, above every other role she took on during her lifetime. I can't tell you how many nights I fell asleep to her accordion or organ music swelling the house. She was part of every choir in any church she went to or belonged to. When she and her brothers were young, they formed a guitar-playing singing trio and they traveled to county fairs around Wisconsin singing gospel songs. She was an avid pianist and violinist, and played the ukulele.

She required my sister and I to take piano lessons and one other musical instrument as well. My other instrument was the flute.

Back in the day, we, as a family, mother, father, sister and brother, formed a singing group and we also did a little bit of "touring." Mostly to neighboring churches and the occasional family reunion. Nothing big, but she would have liked it to be.

I remember, after her first stroke, how she struggled to relearn the piano skills she once had, and she eventually regained every bit of skill she had always had and played her piano up until the second stroke that ultimately took her life.

About six months before she passed, she asked me, "do you play that piano anymore?"

I shamefully said, "no, I haven't played in years."

Yesterday, I saw the sheet music she liked to play ("Sonatina No. 2") still sat in the same spot, the spot where she left it last Thanksgiving when she came to my house for dinner and played her old piano. I raised the lid, and sat down to the keys and began to play for the first time in way too many years. Haltingly at first, slowly, but with a little more skill when I closed the lid again than when I started.

Sweet memories, sweet melody. Bone of my bone, heart of my heart.

My mother left me with a sweet melody, one that I will always treasure.

What are your treasured memories?

The Importance of Social Networking

Sometimes, I feel behooved to stop and prop up a small building, in my spare time of course. Just kidding.

I've been back from the Ozarks Creative Writers' Conference in Eureka Springs, Arkansas now for ten days. So, I've had ten days to let it all gel, absorb it all, reflect. Eureka Springs in October is gorgeous. The view from my hotel room was of the woods, autumn leaves hanging heavy on the trees, dappled sunlight spotting the woods in the morning. I had a wonderful time, met amazing people. Ate far too much. But.

Conferences are social networking at the very least. They are a book contract and representation at the very most. Why is social networking important? Why pursue it?

Here is my take on the importance of social networking for the writer. As writers, we spend a lot of time in solitude. We spend a terrific amount of time in our own brains, moving all the boxes around. To stay on the cutting edge, to keep up on the industry, you simply must network. The best place to do that is not on Facebook. Facebook can help on a minor level but what I am talking about is the face to face, eye to eye, contact, the stimulation of a conference. It's the year after year recognition of "hey, it's you, how're you doing, what have you written since we last met?" I saw plenty of that at OCW. I should explain this was my first year there so nobody said that to me, but maybe next year.

You know, hunting enthusiasts hang out with other hunters. Surfers hang out with other surfers. Writers hang out with other writers. Isn't that a revelation? It's not weird. It's not ego-mania. It's simply making a connection that a writer won't make anywhere else. You will find it refreshes you, enthuses you, puts a new fire in your pen or your keyboard.

There is typically something for everyone at a writers' conference. Whether you are traditionally published (or wish to be), or self-published, into e-books, or some other publishing medium, there will be something for you to learn and absorb. You will learn invaluable information from your peers at these gatherings. And, you'll make some truly amazing friends. The downside? Well, eventually, you have to leave and go home.

Check into a writers' conference for 2012. Go, and come back refreshed and enthused about your craft.

Blessings!

Yesteryear

My dad tells me of a time when, if you had something to discuss with someone, you simply got up on the tractor, or the horse, or got into the car if you were lucky enough to have one, and you traveled to that person and discussed your business over coffee at the kitchen table or sitting on the porch. How many deals were made under an oak tree, I wonder? How much family news was delivered at a formica table in a sunny-yellow kitchen, red-checked curtains waving in the breeze? You looked your friend in the eye in those days.

With the advent of the telephone, there was no longer any need to meet face to face. It was easy, convenient; just dial him up, have your conversation, hang up. How simple is that. It was no longer necessary to have that personal touch, to look your fellow man in the eye.

I remember reed-thin letters in envelopes with postage stamps, a voice in handwriting. Back when I could leave an unstamped envelope and eleven cents in the mailbox and the postman would affix a stamp to my missive and send it out, and then some weeks later, much to my delight, a letter would come to me from my cousin or my grandmother. Oh, those days. Yesteryear. Oh, how I miss that.

Yes, I confess. Sometimes, I long for yesteryear.

I am not a texter. I don't carry a cell phone. I would say it has been probably twenty-five years since I've recieved a handwritten letter from anyone or written one for that matter.

Aren't we missing something personal these days? Aren't we missing that special touch of humanity? Do you miss it?

What Would You Do?

Sometimes I think of the damndest things.

Monday morning, I was sitting at a stoplight, on my way to work, and an image of a suitcase came into my mind. The suitcase was one of those old, battered, brown cases with the straps and locks, cast away or maybe just lost, lying on the side of the road.

Curious.

I my mind's eye, I'm stretching out a finger to touch the lock, to caress the old leather. Ah...it's unlocked! I could open it right now, see what's inside, feel its history. My pulse skips a little bit.

Would I? Should I? What would you do?

How do you relate this to your writing? What treasures are we missing because we don't open the trove lying at the side of the road?

Come, Let's Go on Journey

Come on a journey with me. You, yes you, follow my beckoning fingers. Let's part the tree boughs to reveal the road beyond..close your eyes....come on with me....let's explore.

You as a writer know that writing is all about mental visualization, if such a term exists. You know that scenes and dialogues and plots are created in your head and once it all stirs around in there enough, the happenings find their way to the paper. The tree limbs fall away, and look, the babbling brook, or the peach-tinted sunset, is revealed. It is a thing of beauty, an entrancing story. Don't you think so?

So, as we explore this path, tell me, how do you think about your plot? How do you visualize your characters? Who do you love? Who, not so much? Why?

Why?

Well, that's why I asked you to come on this road with me in the first place. I want you, the writer, to dig deeper, go farther, push the envelope, really feel those characters, the ones you love, the ones you don't love so much. Know them. See if you can pick them out at a restaurant, at the grocery store, at a car garage, at your job. Listen, watch, absorb.

Have you ever read a story that had no dimension? I guarantee you, the characters were flat. They had no personality. There was no tension, no story arc introduced to challenge those characters, and therefore, they lay flat on the page, dull, uninspiring, not memorable. Sorta like cold steak, congealed gravy. Hunh.

Think about this the next time you sit down to write. What are these people who live in your head all about anyway? Who are they?

Wander down the road, let them meet you, really meet you. Come back and tell me what you learned.