Make Your “Some Day” Today

It is easy for me to rack up a list of “some day” items. Some people call it long-term planning, and others call it having a “bucket list” mentality. Whatever term you use, I’m prone to have a list of “hope to/want to” things when it comes to my creative life and my personal life.

Some Day I’ll MFA

In my 20’s and early 30’s, one of the big “some day” things on my list was to get my MFA in creative writing. Even as I bounced around from classroom teacher to law school applicant to political campaign manager to public servant to church business manager to insurance professional, the idea of going off to study writing in an intensive and purposeful way was always a long-term dream.

Somewhere in the mixed up world of my “professional life,” my wife said to me: “Why some day? Why not now?”

Some Day I’ll FLA

During the last six years (or so) that we lived in Indiana, my in-laws moved into a semi-retired state of life, living in Florida for some (then later, all) of the year. Cami and I would visit at Christmas break and sometimes again during Spring Break. It was a great way to get away from the long winters of Indiana, and at the end of each trip (eight or nine over a seven-year period) it got harder and harder for us to leave. We would say, “Maybe some day we can just live here, and not have to go back to the wind and ice and snow.

Three years ago, when our lives were about to be inverted, for a series of reasons, we looked at each other and said, “Why some day? Why not now?

The Latest Some Day

Your bank may do this: When I log on to my on-line banking web page, there is a little picture and “unique identifier” that comes up beside the log-in fields to “prove” that it is really the bank’s website and not some phishing site set up to mirror the bank’s web page. The little icon beside my login is a sailboat, and the “unique identifier” printed beneath it is, “some day.”

One of the reasons we wanted to live in Florida is because we love the beach, the water, and the weather, and having a boat has always been a part of that long-term planning for us here. We have a small kayak, which we enjoy, but we thought the “real boat” was out of our reach for a while. (Anyone who’s put gas in a motor boat in the last two years knows what I mean…)

Our latest “some day” that has turned into a “today”…we are now the owners of a Columbia 7.6m (25ft) sailboat.

The ideal of sailing has always been the more reasonable (cost-wise) and the more romantic option, to me. The problem was, I didn’t know a thing about sailing, so it was always a “some day” sort of idea.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve said, “Why some day? Why not now?”

So, last weekend, Cami and I took our second “test drive” sail on the boat we’ve now officially purchased. It is a Columbia 7.6m sailboat, built around the time I was born. She’s not new and high-tech and a show-off, and that makes her just about perfect.

What Are Your Some Days?

Maybe you are a free spirit who always acts impulsively and never allows something to languish in a some day, bucket list. But, if you are like me, you have a whole host of things you want to do, or accomplish, or see, or experience, or say….some day.

I’m a firm believer in “panning your work, then working your plan” and I think having medium- and long-term goals out ahead of us is an important component of propelling us forward.

I’m also a firm believer in reviewing that list of goals on a regular basis and asking, “Why some day? Why not now?”

There are plenty of things in life that we have to put off for another day, but it never hurts to review our list and make sure that the reasons we are putting things off are valid, and then, to be ready to jump in, head first, when “some day” becomes today.

Do you have any “some day” items that could be moved up?

A Few Brief Updates

My website, WordsMatterESW.com, includes some examples of my writing, including links to several stories that have been published online.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may already know, but on Friday of last week, I received word that my story, Perhaps You Should Visit Some Day, is being accepted for the Spring 2013 issue of New Plains Review.

This prompted me to update my “Portfolio” page of my website.

If you want to read a little more of what I’ve been up to lately, that’s a great place to check in.

If you are a new reader of my blog, the Portfolio page is a place where you can read some of the short stories I’ve had published and get to know a little more about my writing. There are also pages on my website about creative writing instruction (classes) and editing or publishing services, if you are interested in those kinds of things.

So, if you’ve never stopped by my website, or if it’s been a while, now would be a swell time to come in, grab a virtual seat, and say hello.

Hope you are having a great day. Happy writing!!

That Bully, Punching Me With My Own Fist

I read a blog post earlier today (a guest post by Matt Ragland over at Jeff Goins’ blog) that featured a metaphor for art that captured a little of my creative mood right now.

Matt compared writing to that big bully from childhood who would take your hand and cause you to strike yourself in the face, all while saying, “Stop hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?”

In many ways, that’s where I was this morning: my inner critic was alive and much more juiced up on the caffeine I’d ingested than the physical, writer ME was. The self-doubt was raging and the delaying tactics began to queue up one by one.

Doubt and self-criticism can leave you feeling drained of your creativity.

It started early last week, when I learned that the fiction basics course I was scheduled to teach locally didn’t have enough students signed up and had been cancelled. My wife and I also found out that the hopes we had for moving (and, the related hopes I had for a dedicated office and library space to work in) were dashed in an unlikely series of unforeseen circumstances. Then, in an unusual turn of events, I was asked to substitute teach at the high school where my wife teaches on four straight days; something that rarely happens AND just happened to coincide with my “new year, new schedule” mentality. Because I subbed four days, there were four days of my writing & creativity schedule that were, for all practical purposes, off the calendar, so my “new start” barely limped along last week. Over the weekend, I watched the Facebook and Twitter feeds of my friends and fellow writers of the MFA program I graduated from last year as they gathered for the January residency and graduation, which I didn’t have a chance to attend; I felt, keenly, that loss of community and creative inspiration. Add to that a steady stream of literary rejections that have been trickling in like Chinese water torture and I find myself at a point of questioning my skill, my work, and my desire.

That bully of self-doubt and criticism has been hitting me in the face with my own hand for the last few days, and when he asks, “Why won’t you stop hitting yourself?” my only response is, “I can’t!”

I pushed through, this morning, and spent time writing the novel. Later this week, I’ll go forward with teaching my Legacy of Words writing class and debut my just-finished and published workbook for non-writers who want to begin to tell their life story in words. I’ll make a few dollars editing and coaching a few of my writing clients. I’ll absorb the next round of rejections of my short stories, and then find new markets to submit to. I’ll move forward, because that’s the only option, really.

The bully will go away, for a while. But, I know he’ll be waiting for the next opportunity. I’ll keep my milk money in my socks, just in case.

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photo credit: Alex E. Proimos via photopin cc

Let the New Year Begin

Yes, I know it is already the 7th of January, and whether or not I like it, the new year is in full swing, but when you are married to a teacher (and do a fair amount of teaching and subbing, yourself) things don’t get “back to normal” until the school year re-starts. So, today is my New Year’s Day, at least as my writing life is concerned.

Set Goals that YOU Can Control

Last week I opened a new Pages document and began listing the things I wanted to accomplish with my writing this year. Last year, I did the same thing as I graduated from my MFA program, and having that list of “Big Picture” to-dos really helped me focus and accomplish many of the things I wanted to accomplish.

One thing that I did differently this year was I stayed away from listing those goals I can’t directly control. Last year, I had a goal of 3 to 5 new published pieces from my short story collection. That was one goal that was left unfulfilled as 2012 drew to a close, but it was also a goal I have no direct control over. Ultimately, if a story is published, that is the publisher’s decision. The part of that goal that I can be in control of was the goal to submit 10 stories to 100 different publication. (That part of the goal, I kept.)

When I began making this year’s list, I did so with this in mind: Set goals that I can control, and allow the rest to fall into place. Or not.

A Stern Talking To (With Myself)

At the end of that goal setting document, I had a little heart-to-heart with myself.

Come to grips with the fact: no one…or, at the most, almost no one…will ever read the stuff I’m writing, now. I have to write it for me, and to write it for me, is to just get it done…do it, and get over it…puke it out and move on…I’ve spent a lot of time wishing, hoping, thinking I’m writing these things to change someone else’s life (or at least help inform it), but that’s not going to happen. So lets just get some of this #$!@ DONE and move on.

It is disheartening to send stories to editors and have that pile of rejections pile up, but it isn’t unexpected. It is even more disheartening to send stories to friends and loved ones who claim to want to read them, but to have them sit for months (or years) unread. But, the bottom line is this: I have to write. It’s who I am. It’s what I do. And it’s high time I stop having a pity party full of sad clowns and deflated gray balloons and just get over it. Sit my butt in the chair. And write.

Plan Your Work, and Work Your Plan

Scheduling may feel like the antithesis to artistic work, but for me, it is a necessity.

It isn’t a mystery. You can’t “have written” something until you actually sit down and write it. You can’t “have submitted” until you take the time to research the markets and actually send the work out. And, no matter how unlikely (or, ultimately, unimportant) publication is, you can’t “have published” unless you have the writing done, and the submissions sent.

For me, the way to do all those things is to make a detailed plan and stick to it. (Or, for a video version, here’s another link.)

After I had the goals for this year set, I laid out a plan to accomplish those goals. I figured out how many hours each week would be optimal for various categories, or kinds, of writing-related work, and then built a daily schedule of what the ideal writing work week would be for me. I came up with eight general categories:

1. Writing – This is pretty self-explanatory. (Hint: It’s the actual, you know, WRITING.) I write, generally, in three-hour blocks. I decided five of those blocks would make for a productive work week. 15 hours.
2. Editing – This includes editing and revising my own work, or the work of my paying writing instruction clients. Three more three-hour blocks. 9 hours.
3. Book Development – Several of this year’s goals include self-publication of some resource materials and perhaps two other short books. In order to get this accomplished, I have to devote the time to the actual development of the materials. 8 hours.
4. Teaching – I’m teaching, currently, two writing classes. 4 hours.
5. Class Prep and Editing – When you teach, only a fraction of the time is devoted to the actual teaching in class. There is also prep, and when teaching writing, critique and editing time for student work. 6 hours.
6.  Platform and Brand Building – For writers, no matter what stage, having a “branded” social media presence isn’t just a way to kill time in the evenings. It’s a basic part of marketing and relationship building. Blogging, Tweeting, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. 6 hours.
7. Non-writing Creative Rhythm tasks – I’ve blogged before about having other creative outlets (Julia Cameron calls them Artists Dates) and having a group of other artists to socialize with (either in-person or online) but the only way to assure I actually accomplish this part of maintaining my Creative Rhythm is to schedule time for it. (This year, I’m starting to play guitar again. The fingertips of my left hand are hating this idea…) 7 hours.
8. Reading and Personal Development – To write, one must be reading. This isn’t hard for me, as I am always reading two or three books at any given time. What is more challenging is keeping a balance in my reading life between “for fun” books, “for learning” books, and “for personal development” books. I am very structured in making sure I have a good balance. 9 hours.

All totaled: 64 hours of writing-related activities would make a good work week for me.

Tomorrow, I’ll share with you the method I use to both plan and track those 64 hours.

Until then, happy writing.

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photo credit: Jennuine Captures via photopin cc

There’s No More Time To Shop: Here’s a List of Books to Buy Anyway!

All of the titles mentioned in this blog post (with the exception of out-of-print books) can be found here: http://astore.amazon.com/wileymag – Look under the category, “2012 List” (I know. Some of you don’t like Amazon. That’s fine. You can buy these books anywhere you choose to buy them. Thanks.)

 

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It is Christmas Eve Day and if you haven’t finished buying gifts for the special writer in your life (or, yourself) then it’s too late!

This isn’t one of those, “Hurry, it’s your last chance to buy something!” posts. This is a, “When the dust of the commercialized Holidays has settled, you can check out this list, and see if it is helpful to you,” kind of post.

 

What List is This Which Laid to Rest on Eric’s Desk is Waiting?

At the end of my Fictions Basics and Legacy of Words classes this quarter, I passed out a list of some of the books I’ve found useful and influential the last few years. I compiled this list because I was getting a number of questions like: What have you been reading? What books do you recommend? What should I buy next? Etc.

Because the two courses are very different, in one sense, but also overlap, in another, I compiled one list for the students.

I also gathered all of the books together in my Amazon-powered, personalized electronic bookstore. You can find those links above.

If you want to buy anything from this list, you can buy it there in the online bookstore, or, you can just use the links to see product descriptions, read reviews, and decide if you want your local bookstore to order it for you. Most of the books will even let you read a few pages before you decide.

Ten Novels from MFA

I read a lot more than ten novels during my MFA years, obviously, but these were the ten that really stuck with me:

1. Hot Springs, Geoffrey Becker
2. Room, Emma Donoghue
3. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
4. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
6. The Boy, Naeem Murr
7. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
8. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Ten Novels – 2012

If you’ve been following the blog, you also know I’ve read way more than ten novels this year. These are the ten that I read in 2012 that influenced me the most, regardless of year of publication:

1. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote
2. Spartina, John Casey
3. What the Zhang Boys Know, Clifford Garstang
4. The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
5. To the End of the Land, David Grossman
6. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
7. The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey
8. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
9. The Piano Teacher, Janice YK Lee
10. Nude, Naeem Murr

Five Non-Fiction – 2012

Like the fiction list above, these are the top five non-fiction books that impacted my literary sensibilities in 2012:

1. The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, Matt Baglio
2. Life at the Bottom, Theodore Dalrymple
3. The Privileged Planet, Gonzalez and Richards
4. Subliminal, Leonard Mlodinow
5. The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1 (Various)

Five Poetry – 2012

One of my goals for this year was to read more poetry, both books about writing poetry AND actual collections. I’m really, really glad I read these beautiful books:

1. Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems, Yehuda Amichai
2. Poems of the Night, Jorge Luis Borges
3. On the Street Where We Live, Kelly Fordon
4. The Goodbye Child, Dominique Traverse Locke
5. Selected Poems, Fernando Pessoa

Three Books on Writing – 2012

I read, and have read, a lot of books about the craft and process of writing. These three stood out to me, this year:

1. Revision and Self Editing, James Scott Bell
2. Writing 21st Century Fiction, Donald Maas
3. Writing About Your Life, William Zinsser

Books With Fiction Writing Prompts

Fiction students often ask me which books I recommend for writing prompts. These are the ones I use most often:

1. Now Write, Sherry Ellis
2. What If? by Anne Bernays
3. 3 AM Epiphany, Brian Kiteley
4. Steering the Craft, Ursula K Leguin

Books I Used to Create My Fiction Writing Curriculum

I rely heavily on these books when I’m teaching Fiction Basics classes:

1. Creating Fiction, Leebron and Levy
2. Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway
3. Fiction Writing Workshop, Josip Novakovich
4. Becoming a Writer, Dorthea Brande

Books I Used to Create My Legacy Writing Curriculum

These are the books I rely on for my Legacy of Words classes:

1. Legacy, Linda Spencer
2. Writing About Your Life, William Zinsser
3. Your Life as Story, Tristine Rainer

Two Great Books, No Matter What You Are Writing

1. Write Tight, William Brohaugh
2. It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences, June Casagrande

I don’t know if you will find this list helpful, but I hope you do. If you have other suggestions, or just want to share some of your favorite books with readers of this blog, feel free to leave a comment or two in the “comments” section, below.

Thanks for reading, and happy writing!

A week with You Were Perfectly Fine: Wit, Wisecracking, & Calisthenics with words.

Ginger Pinholster is a writer and fellow graduate of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte.

You can connect with her on Twitter. (Or, leave her a message here in the comments section, too!)

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“When you’re 18, they call it partying. When you’re 40, they call it, like, alcoholism.”

This truism, borrowed from a comedian whose name I can’t remember, seems lost on the “pale young man” at the center of Dorothy Parker’s iconic short story, You Were Perfectly Fine. Her slickly constructed piece—an extended joke conveyed entirely through dialogue—reflects Parker’s affection for wit and “wisecracking,” which she once described as “calisthenics with words.” The pithy comebacks and tongue-in-cheek one-liners in this story also seem tailor-made for stage or radio performances. Such theatrical elements are no surprise since Parker wrote screenplays and was married to the actor Alan Campbell.

Writer Ginger Pinholster is a Georgia Native and Virginia resident.

You Were Perfectly Fine continues to be a model of tightly sewn comical fiction, and yet it seems—please don’t hate me for this—terribly dated and self-conscious, too. But then, it was released in 1929, nine years before Bill Wilson published Alcoholics Anonymous, which forever raised our awareness of addiction as a disease.

The predicament of Parker’s male lead in this story is, in fact, tragic: So hung-over he’s unable to crawl out of bed until 4 o’ clock in the afternoon, Peter is suffering from what’s clinically known as a “blackout,” a complete loss of memory caused by an alcoholic overdose. Meanwhile, Parker’s female lead, the “clear-eyed girl,” is taking advantage of Peter’s amnesia by downplaying his outrageous, friendship- and career-busting behavior, repeatedly telling him he was “perfectly fine.” As the details unfold, though, we learn the true meaning of “fine”—F*cked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.

Peter’s situation reminds me of the classic Bill Cosby routine, in which he acts out “Having a Good Time.” In the skit, a nauseous alcoholic seeks comfort by resting his face against the cool porcelain side of a toilet. “Thank you, toilet bowl,” he says. “You’re the only friend I have.”

In Parker’s story, Peter’s scheming enabler reveals how he professed his love for her. “The trees were shining in the moonlight,” she tells him the next day, “and you said you never knew before you really had a soul …. I think maybe that taxi ride was the most important thing that ever happened to us in our lives.” One could argue, of course, as Eric Wyatt has done on this very blog that the girl is only rationalizing his behavior so as to “justify Peter’s confession of love for her.” As Eric pointed out, “the nice thing about this story is that it leaves room for some of these subtle discussions to take place.” But I think the description of a “clear-eyed girl” suggests she’s deliberately exploiting Peter’s binge to trick him into marriage.

You Were Perfectly Fine demonstrates Parker’s notoriously fastidious editing. Each word counts in this precisely crafted piece, which relies on a fundamental misunderstanding between two characters. The narrative leverages outlandish events and two repeated refrains: “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear,” and “you were perfectly fine” to generate momentum. Both refrains, beginning with the story’s title and ending with its final line, are repeated four times. Parker thus lulls her readers by establishing a predictable rhythm. Then she zings us with yet another astonishing detail of Peter’s antics. The girl’s droll recitation of Peter’s drunken deeds have a cumulative effect:

• “You poured the clam-juice down her back.”
• “You wouldn’t stop singing.”
• “You said [the waiter] was your long-lost brother, changed in the cradle by a gypsy band.”
• “You took a dislike to some old man with white hair … because you didn’t like his necktie.”
• “There was that nasty stretch of ice … and you did sit down awfully hard.”
• “You said such lovely, lovely things.”

Ah, yes, an alcoholic blackout and romantic entrapment probably seemed much funnier to pre-Depression Era readers of The New Yorker, where You Were Perfectly Fine originally appeared. We’re much more sensitive and sophisticated nowadays. We laugh uncontrollably at amateur videos of people falling head-first down the stairs or getting their privates clobbered.

With all this said, I should hasten to emphasize that Parker’s technical mastery is a given. As Belinda Nicoll wrote in 2010, “The real joyride of this short story … is the circuitous unfolding of the scope of the protagonist’s dilemma in a guarded conversation between the two main characters.” Parker (1893-1967) remains a pioneer of comic fiction.

Back It Up, Baby

No. I’ve not started writing hip-hop lyrics.

I did, however, spend most of this week dealing with some computer issues.

Thankfully, none of my “real work” was compromised. I did have two external hard drives crash, though, which caused me some logistical headaches, and, some expense of both time and money.

Backing up your data is important, but the best backup plan is one that you don’t have to think about on a regular basis.

My writing was safe, but what was lost was a significantly sized portion of my digital life. Mostly, thousands of songs, thousands of digital photos, about one hundred videos, and all of my “Time Machine” backups of my entire computer. Again, my main computer hard drive (where I keep my various writing files and all of the class files I use when teaching) was un-touched. And, in addition, because I use the CrashPlan off-line backup system, none of the files were gone for good. I did have to buy a new external, networked drive where I could resume my Time Machine backups and tell CrashPlan to restore the files from their “cloud” server to my new drive.

The restoration process took four days, but everything is back, and I’m again running on all cylinders.

I do, occasionally, field questions though about how I back up and secure my writing files, so I thought maybe this was a good time to not only remind you that you can (and will) lose digital data, and gently encourage you to make sure your most important files are backed up regularly.

Ideally, the best back ups are those we don’t have to think about. They just happen. Also ideally, our backups aren’t ONLY stored on local devices that could be wiped out in the case of a fire, hurricane, or other disaster.

Below, I’ll lay out my triple-redundant backup plan for my most important files, and explain some of my thoughts about securing my data.

Secure Your Data

1. The baseline, most important backup of my stories and class files is Dropbox. If you aren’t familiar with Dropbox, you should be. Dropbox basic is free, and you get 2GB of storage space, which is great for documents, spreadsheets, and PDF files you just can’t do with out. For me, this includes all of my writing files, my teaching files, and things like PDFs of my tax returns and scans of other important documents that would be great to have if suddenly my apartment were GONE and my computer, etc, gone with it. When you install Dropbox, you will have a new folder called Dropbox on your computer, and everything in that folder (up to the free limit) will be automatically backed up (or synched) to the Dropbox cloud storage on the Dropbox server. I have many sub-folders in the main Dropbox folder, such as Fiction, Non-Fiction, Tax Forms, and so on. I also set the default “save” location for programs like Word/Pages, Scrivener, etc so they are all pointing to sub-folders within the main Dropbox folder. This is great because those “cloud” files are not only backed up, they are available to me from any computer or mobile device with internet access. If my local backups and my computer are destroyed, I can still access those files. You can get a free 2GB of Dropbox storage here, and you can increase the free storage by referring friends, and you can buy more storage if you need it. (I currently have over 5GB of space on Dropbox, and all of my most important documents fit in less than half of that space.) The free storage from Dropbox isn’t the best for backing up your photos and music, especially if you have a LOT of those things, but it is invaluable for those items that are most important to you.
2. My next level of defense is my Time Machine backup. You can use many other such products, but the idea of this “full computer” back up is to allow me to restore my entire computer set up if my main, internal hard drive fails. Yes, it is possible to restore my most important files from DropBox, and, in a pinch, I could do a full restore from the CrashPlan backup I detail in step three, but having a local backup is still an important step for me. The local, “full system” backup (stored on a networked, standalone hard drive like the 2TB Seagate GoFlex Home I recently purchased to replace my two failed drives from Iomega and Western Digital) is much faster and easier to restore from, should my internal hard drive fail. I also use the external drive to store all of the media files I don’t want hogging storage space on my desktop computer. Video, audio, and photo files can slurp up a ton of hard drive space, so I keep them segregated on the external drive. I have Time Machine set to do hourly, incremental backups of anything that’s changed on my computer. Ideally, if my iMac drive crashes, I can replace the drive and then restore my computer as if nothing had happened. Of course, I hope to never have to find out for sure if this works, but millions of people have to restore their computer every year, so the odds are against us.
3. CrashPlan is the third tier of protection. CrashPlan is continuous, off-sight, cloud storage. I have the “Unlimited” plan, which runs about $50 a year. This plan allows me to back up all of the files on my internal hard drive as well as all of the files (including media files AND the Time Machine back ups of both my computer and my wife’s laptop) I store on the external hard drive. If something happens (like when my external drives failed) I can choose which files to restore. This week, I told CrashPlan to restore all of the video and audio files I had stored on my failed external hard drive, and CrashPlan began the process of copying each of those files onto the new Seagate hard drive. This morning, I’m listening to the music files, all of which were restored. Now, there is one caution here: Backing up and restoring huge chunks of data over your internet connection can be very slow. The initial back up took weeks, and the restore of all that missing data took, literally, almost a week. But, all of that backing up and restoring took place in the back ground, so I could use my computer normally. Most of it happened over night, while I was asleep. It took a lot of time, but very little effort, and I could go about my life as the program restored the data.

Obviously, there are many ways you can protect your data, but I get asked this question often enough, that I thought it might be worth mentioning how I tackle this beast of making sure I don’t lose my work, and that if a data disaster strikes, I can be back up and running in short order.

If you have specific questions, or if something above isn’t clear, feel free to pick my brain. I’m not a computer expert, but I’ve spent most of my life poking and prodding among the digital devices we’ve all come to depend on, and I’m happy to either offer helpful advice, or point you in a direction where such answers can be found.

I hope you are protecting your work. If you are like me, it would be devastating to lose your writing work. I would start over, from scratch, if I have to, but I do sleep better knowing how unlikely that scenario would be.

Happy writing! And happy backing up, too!

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photo credit: Marco Crupi Visual Artist via photopin cc

Blogging Blues: Tell Me Stats Aren’t Everything

December is here, and it’s a big month for me. Obviously, the holiday season is here, which means lots of Advent activities, followed by Christmas and the New Year. My grandfather is coming for a visit, followed soon thereafter by my mom and step-father. The three of them will be snow-birding here in Florida this year, so we’ll get to see them a lot. December also marks my birthday (one of the BIG ones) and my wedding anniversary (which are all BIG ones) and lots of opportunities to have food and drinks and laughs with local friends and family.

So, when I sat down at my computer this morning, on this first day of December, I fully expected to be energized and happy and festive.

Then, I logged into my WordPress account and looked at my blog stats for November.

Sadly, November was one of the worst months I’ve ever had on the blog, based on the number of unique visitors who stopped by. Sure, there were months when I was just starting out, almost three years ago, when the actual NUMBER of visitors was lower, but that was before I had any followers, before I had any exposure on other social media sites, and when I had very little content for people to stumble across.

Yes, this was a blow to my blogging self-esteem. But, even more, I was disappointed because when I look back over the blog posts this month, there were some interesting and engaging posts. I tried to mix things up. I attempted to provide some more variety and different perspectives. I thought some of these posts would be much more popular and stir up at least some discussion:

• Four great guest post essays on Flannery O’Connor’s brilliant short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.
• Links and information about a cover story article in Better Living magazine about some of my Legacy Writing students.
• An announcement of the publication of a book I was asked to contribute to, and an “unboxing video” when the books arrived.
• Even had what I thought was an interesting post about balancing writing with the “non-writing tasks” of an author’s life.

Now, I realize this isn’t a general interest blog, and I don’t expect to ever be listed on some year-end “blogs you have to read” kind of list. But I think all of us who blog hope that what we are putting “out there” for our readers is something they can use.

So, it is back to the drawing board, looking for inspiration.

Let’s see what December brings.

Have a great weekend, and happy writing!

Friday Thoughts: My “To Read” Shelf Keeps Growing

Sometimes, I don’t even have room for all the books I want to read on my “to read” shelves.

There are two shelves built into my desk space where I keep the books I plan to read next. There are, as of this morning, thirty-six books waiting for my attention. There are new novels and classics, poetry and non-fiction, books on the craft of writing. Each of these books called out to me, “Read me!” or “How have you lived this long and not read me?”

And then, there’s the quandary of the short-story writer: I also need to be reading, widely, from literary magazines, short fiction journals, and online literary outlets in order to “keep up” with current trends and know “what we are looking for” when I submit my own work to editors.

I’m on track to read somewhere between 80 and 90 books this year, not counting most of the short fiction I read. At that pace, my current “to read” shelf ought to get me at least 1/3 of the way through 2013.

The reality is, though, that I’m planning to scale back my reading next year, and increase the time for actually, you know…writing. It’s hard, though. There are so many books I want to read, and new ones join that list every day. Striking a balance between input and output is an important thing, though, and I plan to adjust.

In the meantime, here is the list of books I read in November:

• Twelve Times Blessed, by Jacquelyn Mitchard – Didn’t hate it, but man, this book meandered in some very frustrating ways, and ultimately, I didn’t particularly resonate with the characters. Educational, for me, though, in considering revisions for my own novel.
• Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, by Beth Hoffman – I read this on the recommendation of one of my Legacy Writing students. She touted it as her favorite book, and I can see why she liked it. For me, though, the main character – while likable – was so even that she wasn’t that interesting. Mostly, CeeCee was an observer, not an actor, and that left this feeling flat to me.
• Writing 21st Century Fiction, by Donald Maass – Another intriguing book by Maass, who has also written Writing the Breakout Novel and The Fire in Fiction, which I also recommend.
• The Privileged Planet, by Gonzalez and Richards – This book argues that not only is sentient life in the universe likely very rare, but that our point of view as residents of Earth in the Milkyway Galaxy gives us a nearly unique perspective for studying and comprehending the mysteries of creation. Much of the actual science was beyond me, but it was an eye-opening read, regardless.
• Scars from a Memoir, by Marni Mann – The follow-up novel to Mann’s Memoirs Aren’t Fairytales. Another rapid, compelling story of addiction and loss. Search for Marni Mann here on the blog to learn more about the author and her books.
• Selected Poems, by Fernando Pessoa – Full of lovely images and well-executed poetry. The edition I read is a British version, and may no longer be in print, but there are several options for you if you want to read Pessoa’s poems.
• How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp, by Shawn Smucker – I read an advanced copy of this upcoming book. Keep your eyes open here…I will be telling you more about it in the coming weeks.
• Gulf Coast (Vol. 25, Iss. 1), a literary journal – 250 pages of new fiction, poetry, and essays.

As always, you can review the books I’ve read in earlier months by following the links below. Next month, as the year draws to a close, I’ll not only feature an exhaustive list of all the books I’ve featured this year, but also pick my favorites and demand you read them. (Haha!!)

• January
• February
• March
• April
• May
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October

A Good Man…We’re All Misfits.

This is the (belated) final installment of the series of guest contributions focused on Flannery O’Connor’s story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

This post comes from a wonderful writer friend who I had the honor to spend two weeks with in a quiet, out-of-the-way place in Wyoming. (See more about our time at the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in earlier blog posts.) David is a talented, warm, and giving writer. He was at his desk before me, and stayed at the task after me, almost every single day of our two-week residency, and his dedication to the craft comes through in his writing.

I’m happy to host his thoughts on this story here on my blog. I hope you enjoy.

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One of the many brilliant craft elements in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (besides the Most Ironic Title Ever, and the build-up of tension about the Misfit from the very first sentence, something that is sorely lacking in today’s cut-to-the-chase stories and films) is her characterization of the Misfit. Bloggers before me have commented on the names (or lack thereof) in O’Connor’s story, but this one takes the cake. The serial killer’s name is . . . The Misfit? You’re kidding me, right? Not “The Killer,” not “The Phantom Menace,” not “Mr. Big” or “Goldfinger” or “Dr. No” (sorry, I just saw the latest James Bond film), and not even a normal name like Jake or Daryl or Hannibal Lecter? The Misfit. O’Connor seems to be saying, he’s not really evil; he just doesn’t fit in. And immediately (probably subconsciously) we feel sorry for the guy. Think about it: are there any movie characters more pathetic than those found on the Island of Misfit Toys?
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Author David Hicks considers how we are all Misfits, in our own way.

Just as O’Connor portrays her villain as at least somewhat sympathetic from the get-go, she refuses to portray the family as likeable. These people are as slipshod and cartoonish as Gary Larson’s “Far Side” characters. (Indeed I would be stunned if Mr. Larson never read Flannery O’Connor.) And none more annoying than the racist grandmother, whose picky, prideful righteousness is what gets them all killed. Yet she is the last to be shot by the Misfit and his merry gang, and it is she who draws out the Misfit’s personal philosophy, she who shakes the Misfit, however momentarily, out of his customary reserve.

In short, O’Connor does the opposite of what bad writers do. (And I should know: I used to be a really bad writer.) Bad writers create good people and bad people, and ramp up the good in the good and exaggerate the bad in the bad. Bad writers characterize people simplistically (the funny way, the dumb blonde, the geek, the whore with a golden heart, etc.) But O’Connor knows that bad people aren’t all bad, and good people (especially the piously good, whom O’Connor lovingly lampoons again and again in her fiction) aren’t all good. So she mocks the family while still depicting their humanity (so that it is still chillingly tragic when they are taken off-stage to be shot), and she takes care to show glimpses of The Misfit’s humanity (he comes from “nice people,” the “finest people in the world”) while still depicting him as the quintessential loner, an iconic serial killer. And even the most superficially pious among them, the Grandmother, who like many people is most earnestly so when faced with imminent death (“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”), is the one character who is able to break through The Misfit’s cool with genuine sympathy-she’s the only one he shoots himself, and the only one who is killed not coolly, out of The Misfit’s sight, but with passion (instinctively reacting to her motherly touch on his shoulder). Even she, in other words, is capable of genuine warmth. (And wasn’t she, after all, the smartest of them all, the one who warned them from the very beginning not to head south because of the killer on the loose?)

So: the good man is hard to find, yes, but the good man is also easy to find (if you think, as Christ did, that everyone’s got a little good in them), and bad men are easy to find, and bad men are hard to find (if you’re like Christ). Nothing is simple; everything (and everyone) is complicated. Whereas every “normal” character thinks, acts, and speaks superficially, The Misfit is the only one who has examined life and found it lacking. (“An unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates, and those of us who teach at universities embrace that as our credo. But is it really true? Sometimes examining life makes us miserable-“to think” in this world, said Keats, “is to be full of sorrow”-and you need only look at the personal philosophy of Ted Kaczinski, the infamous Unibomber from the ’80s, for evidence: his examination of the evils of modern technology made a lot of sense, if you could look past the fact that the only reason we know about it is that he killed a lot of innocent people.)

As a result, the story is at once hilarious (We’ve been in an ACCIDENT!”) and chilling (“Lady,” he asked, “would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?” “Yes, thank you,” the mother said faintly.) How many stories can we say that about? Bad writers think that a story needs to be either comic or tragic, either “literary” or “light”; good writers know that everything is ambiguous and complicated, that there is light and dark in almost everything, that there is humor in tragedy and meanness in comedy. And all this comes to a head in what is, for me, the best moment of the story: At the end, The Misfit, literally and figuratively touched by the Grandmother, blows a few holes in her chest, leaving the (suddenly very sympathetic) old woman in a puddle of blood. And then O’Connor, in a story full of brilliant small moments (the monkey biting his fleas between his teeth, June Star’s disappointment that none of them was killed in the accident), she gives us this: “Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.”

That’s it. That’s our denouement. He cleans his glasses. No evil chortle, no thumping of the chest, no spitting on the ground, no cursing. He cleans his glasses. And we suddenly notice that without his glasses on, The Misfit’s eyes are “red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking.” It’s hard, this business of killing people. It wears on one. Something about this old woman has rattled him. He’s human, after all, as are all of O’Connor’s characters. Painfully, hilariously, tragically human.

And then you realize: they’re all misfits. And so are we-we’re all misfits too. As The Misfit says, Jesus “shown everything off balance,” and since nobody on this earth can ever live up to Christ’s stellar example, whether real or mythologized, we all end up feeling inept, inferior, and out of place. And whether it’s The Misfit killing people or us taking pleasure in a well-wrought story featuring him (or for that matter being fascinated by news reports of arbitrary shootings, or laughing at someone else’s misfortune in a high-school hallway, or standing up and cheering during a hockey fight, or roaring with pleasure when a boxer is pummeled in the ring, or feeling secretly glad when our ex-husband or ex-wife is hurt, or gleefully writing a blog post about a story that describes the brutal murders of five innocents), there’s “no pleasure but meanness,” as The Misfit says, and the simultaneous affirmation, questioning, and then denial (at the end, by The Misfit himself) of that idea is what makes this story so enduring, and why it is such a good example of what writing looks like when it’s done well.

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David Hicks has published short stories in Glimmer Train, Colorado Review, Specs, Trachodon, Saranac Review, South Dakota Review, and GSU Review (now New South). He has completed a novel, The Ruins, about a young man from the Bronx visiting his family in Italy and coming to terms with his sister’s death, and a novel-in-stories, White Plains, about a down-and-out professor who runs his life into the ground before finding redemption as a gardener. He is represented by Victoria Skurnick of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.

David is a Colorado Council on the Arts Fiction Award winner, a Pushcart nominee, a 2010 New Letters Fiction Contest finalist, and was writer-in-residence at the Jentel Arts Foundation and Brush Creek Arts Foundation, both in Wyoming. The Ruins was a 2011 New Rivers MVP Fiction finalist, a 2012 New American Press Fiction Award finalist, and a 2012 Engine Books Fiction Contest finalist.

David lives with his wonderful wife Cynthia Kolanowski in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and enjoys being a professor at Regis University in Denver. His daughter Caitlin is a sophomore at Regis, and his son Stephen lives and works nearby, and all of that makes David extremely happy.

Visit with David online.

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You can find the earlier entries into this discussion about this wonderful short story, here:

• A brief introduction and links to A Good Man resources.
• Heather Magruder writes: A Good Man…What’s in a Name?
• Kelly Fordon considers Good and Evil.
• Andrea Cumbo goes beyond the names we know.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed these wonderful guest posts. Let me know. I’m planning to do more in the future, but knowing they are of value to you, dear reader, would be a wonderful incentive.

Happy writing!