I HAVE HEARD BUT NOT BELIEVED

"We are but of yesterday 

And know nothing 

Because our days upon the earth

Are but a shadow."

- Job 14th chapter, 1st and 2nd verse

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THE THING THAT TURNED ME

THE LOCUST EFFECT: IS AMERICA, THE WORLD GETTING WORSE?

Within the atomized, unraveled milieu that America has become, sociopaths thrive.

According to the American Psychological Society, one in twenty-five people you meet is a sociopath: 

4 0ut of 100.

A mother killed her daughters to make her husband suffer.  

The Taliban has taken to flaying its prisoners alive.  

Istanbul is reeling from another tragedy. 

An Orlando nightclub became a bloody nightmare.

You read the headlines.  I could go on.  But it is all too obvious: 

The world of our childhoods is no more.

I remember Mother and I leaving for town and not locking the doors to our house.

  Our culture has begun to value and exalt the very special talents of the sociopath. 

This is an unavoidable transition when people feel unmoored from a larger social family, 

and adopt a pathologically individualist “look out for #1” attitude to life 

in response to the vague but palpably ominous threat to their desires.

Russia is led by a KGB man who seeks to replace American influence with Russian influence wherever possible.

Our two leading candidates for President I would not believe 

if they said it was raining outside unless I stuck out my hand from the window to see for myself. 

I believe the world has always been cruel.  

History reveals thousands of years of betrayal, slavery, rape, pillaging, and leaders abusing power.

It is technology that has gotten better 

and therefore the possibility of nightmarish disasters has increased.

THE LOCUST EFFECT:

I read Alex's comment and yes, the world's technology has improved. 

Human nature though has remained the same.

Population has soared to staggering proportions.

Take your average short-horned grasshopper.  He is a solitary critter ...

until you cram too many of them into too small a space ...

actual physical differences occur until ...

They become locusts, swarming in clouds of destruction.  

With so many humans, aided by improved technology 

and driven by greed, hate, drug addiction, and religious/social intolerance ...

they surge through the streets of every city in a cascade effect ... a mild river transforming into a rapids ...

the Locust Effect.     

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?

THERE ARE NO ANTI-HEROES

What is an anti-hero?

A central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes.

 The above video states that heroes started out flawless and super, 

slowly sinking with civilization into more and more flawed, weakened versions of themselves.

Take Captain Jack ... 

see how despicable and flawed this modern hero is -- obviously an anti-hero!

Ah, can we say ... Sinbad the Sailor?

Go all the way back to Gilgamesh and Achilles ...

Gilgamesh's flaw is fear.

When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh grieves deeply and is horrified by the prospect of his own death.

 "Enkidu has died. Must I die too? Must Gilgamesh be like that?" "Gilgamesh felt the fear of it in his belly."

 His tragic flaw reminded me of Achilles, the valiant hero from the Iliad. 

Although Achilles possesses superhuman strength, his tragic flaw was his heel, 

which decided his fate and his death. 

 Gilgamesh is only strong because of Enkidu's faithfulness, 

and he would have never succeeded in his quest on destroying Huwawa 

or the Bull of Heaven without the help of Enkidu.

Think Sam and Frodo.

WHAT MAKES A HERO?

Not flaws, not vices ...

It is the Journey of Transformation 

from one state to another where the character sees the world in a new light 

and strives to live up to that light.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

LIES WRITERS BELIEVE

LIES

They are what drives our characters to do the things that spiral into 

foolishness and adventure and wisdom won ... 

or defeat assured.

LIES 

They do the same to us if we believe them about our writing dream.  Lies can be fought with truth talk.


LIE #1

I AM NOTHING, A FAILURE IF I DO NOT GET PUBLISHED.

Really?

Was Emily Dickinson a nothing, a failure because she never gave up writing her poems her way and was never published in her lifetime?

 Creative writing is one of the best exercises we can do for the aging brain.

Don't take my word alone for it: 

Jenni Ogden, a writer AND a neuro-psychologist has found it so.

Writing adds to the intellectual and physical exercises 

that slow down the brain’s aging process most often experienced

 by the forgetting of names and words and where you put the car keys – or the car!

Use it or lose it.


LIE #2 

IF I HAVEN'T MADE IT (GOTTEN AN AGENT, BECOME FAMOUS) BY NOW, I NEVER WILL.

Oh, come on now!

A novel is more than just sitting down and cranking out a word count. 

There are those little pesky things like plot, and character, and pacing, and dialogue and so on and so forth. 

All of those things take time to develop.

 While you’re doing all of this as a budding novelist, you are also most likely doing all the other things in your days that constitute your life: 

A day job, spouse and family, hobbies and friends, reading and television and video games and even (wait for it) sleep. 

It all adds up — and it all subtracts from the amount of time you have to write.

 Writing those three or four or five novels an average writer has to burn through 

before they write a publishable novel will likely take years.

No matter who you are as an author, you pay your dues at one end or another. 

To put it another way: it takes many years to be an overnight success. 

Maybe you haven’t “made it” yet. 

That doesn’t mean you never will.

George Elliot didn't publish 'Middlemarch' until she was 52.

Anthony Burgess (published at 39), 

Helen Dewitt published 'The Last Sumarai' at 41,

 William S. Burroughs 
("When you stop growing, you start dying.") published his first novel at 39.

 Laura Ingalls  

("There is no great loss without some small gain.”), was in her mid-60s when she published 'Little House in the Big Woods.'

 Marquis de Sade, (Ah, let's not go there!)

 Raymond Chandler (published 'The Big Sleep' at 51)

-- all gained fame older.

Bram Stoker, too (Who didn't write 'Dracula' until he was 50)  and said "We learn from failure not from success."  Gee, I must be a genius!

LIE #3

I DON'T HAVE TIME

Does Dean Koontz have a magic stopwatch that stops time to give him 30 hours a day to write?

Let me tell you about Robert Louis Stevenson --


A year after Kidnapped he left Scotland and southern England for America 

in search of adventure and a better climate for his tuberculosis.

Writing continued on land and sea at 400 pages a year for twenty years, 

reckoned his first biographer. From one letter home a year before Stevenson died:

"For fourteen years I have not had a day's real health;

I have awakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly.

I have written in bed, and written out of it, written in haemorrhages,

written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness;

 And for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove....

And the battle goes on 'ill or well.'

 It is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest."

So what is stopping you from writing?

WHAT A WRITER DOES

1) WRITES WHAT NO ONE ELSE CAN

It is not just night.  No.  

There are two full moons tonight.  

Their reflections stare balefully from the open eyes of your mother-in-law sitting in your front porch swing ... 

the mother-in-law you buried three days ago.


2) SERVES THE READER NOT THE WRITER

The reader doesn't turn the pages because of the need to applaud you.  The reader turns them to find out what happens next.


3) ASKS THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

 “What am I trying to say? 

What words will express it? 

What image or idiom will make it clearer? 

Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?


4) WRITING IS LIKE USING MAGIC

You write the words, and they altered the perceived universe. 

By merely writing you could create damage and pain, 

cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

 Good writing strives to explain, to make things a little bit clearer, to make sense of our world.

 A writer always tries to be part of the solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.


5) TELLS A FULL STORY

 There’s a name for something with a single point of view: 

It’s called a press release.

 Incorporate multiple perspectives even if you are writing in 1st Person POV.  

Your heroine must struggle in a world that cares about its own agenda not hers.


6.) SINGS A WORLD INTO BEING

Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind:

 vividly, forcefully 

 that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.


7.) IS SUBTLE

 We have to allow the sunken meanings to remain sunken, suggested, not stated.

The most horrifying monsters are the ones never quite seen.

A cop shoots a drug addict in self-defense.  Simple scene read a dozen times.  

The addict whimpers as he lays dying.  "I'm going.  I'm going.  I'm ... afraid."

The cop holsters his gun, cradles the youngster, and whispers in his ear:

"Sshh,  It is just a bad dream, a bad dream.  Go back to sleep." 

The addict dies.  The cop gets up, sighs, and leaves a bit of his soul by the still-warm corpse.
***
Hope this helps 

{Many thanks to Imani (Rehema) for this video}

TO HAVE EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

I am Day.

I am Night.

I am the World.

I am the Turquoise Woman.

And a traveler like all of you.

You walk miles. 

I spin through the vastness of space, listening to the ghost songs of the solar winds.

I awakened already spinning through space, hugged to the sun's warmth by his invisible arms of gravity.

But the sun is a distant lover and following his own path through the stars, drawn by bonds of his own.

He is caught like a glistening bead of dew in the web of the solar system.

Together, he and my sisters journey in a cluster which is itself part of a moving community of stars you call the Milky Way.

Travelers all, we can neither turn to the left nor to the right of our own volition.

We are children of gravity and explosion, cast into the darkness by forces we little understand or know.

I used to envy you your freedom of movement, of choice. 

But the longer I watched your scurrying over my surface, the more a dark truth spoke to me:

You, too, are children of the gravity of your species and the explosion of the times around you which you little understand or know.

You bristle with denial?

If you cannot understand your own heart, how can you understand another's?

Which choices are yours totally?

As gravity and momentum send me on my path, so do your DNA, location, and experience spread the pattern of the paths before you.

You are no more free than I am or the goldfish wandering the narrow confines of its bowl.

From within its bowl, the world seems so large to the goldfish. Yet, it is trapped within invisible walls.

As are you.

Freedom is an illusion to the goldfish, to me, and to you.

Do we choose or do the choices choose us?

STEER CLEAR OF THESE WRITING MISTAKES

Don't you wish there was a map to follow to find success with your writing?

Each of us must chart our own course to our novel's successful end, but there are some shoals we should avoid:


1.) TOO MANY CHARACTERS

When more than just a few characters are introduced in the first few pages of a book, 

it’s difficult to keep their names and roles straight.

Have a literal boatload of characters?  

Filter them in slowly in the first few chapters, 

linking them in the mind of the readers with vivid sketches of their personalities.


2.) STERILE CHARACTERS

 If your characters are flat, if there’s nothing to set them and their struggles apart, we won’t want to cheer for them, and might not care enough to keep reading.


3.)  EXPERIMENTAL STYLE

When a writer experiments with style or structure, the result can be refreshing or irritating. 

Your ability to pull off something out-of-the-ordinary depends on your skill as a writer, 

and your ability to connect with readers despite your unusual style.

Anyone who has read my blog for long knows that I loved Roger Zelazny's books.  

But towards the end of his career, he experimented with strange formats to his books.

In DOORWAYS IN THE SANDS, he ended the chapters with cliffhangers, 

but then started the next chapter some time later, working back to the resolution of the crisis.  

VERY, VERY irritating!  

I only stayed because I liked him.  I don't think many other of his fans did. 


4.) UNCLEAR CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS

Have you ever read a book where a character does something, and you say, 

“Why on earth did she do that?? A mother would never do that!”

 Ensure your characters’ actions are in line with their motivations, 

and if they don’t appear to be on the surface, your reader must understand why not.

 Don't lift your readers out of your novel with characters you force to be stupid to get them to make mistakes to propel your story forward.


5.) HAZY STRUCTURE

  If all the good stuff happens at the beginning, or if nothing exciting happens until the end, your reader will be frustrated with the rest of the book.


6.) WRITE FOR THE MARKET ONLY

If you start by chasing the market, you study the bestseller lists and try to identify a trend, jumping on it.

Even if the trend is still hot by the time your novel comes out, the story will be lackluster, for it didn't come out of your dreams.


7.)  NULLIFY THE DANGER OR REACH THE GOAL TOO EARLY

The point is to raise the stakes so that the readers are not only cheering your protagonist on, 

but afraid that they may fail to save whatever it is that they are trying to keep.

 Regardless of your genre, 

every novel must have a protagonist trying to accomplish or reach some kind of goal. 

The plot itself is then the character’s journey to try to reach said goal.

 In some novels, that goal may evolve along the way, 

but the important thing is that whatever the goal is, it is out of reach throughout the large majority of the novel. 

By making your characters fail, often repeatedly, to reach that goal, 

you keep your readers hooked because they’ll want to find out how your character will manage to succeed.

What do you think are some deadly mistakes to avoid in our writing?

CAN'T SEEM TO GET THERE FROM HERE

Vesper
http://chickwithaquill.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-map-of-way-forward.html

has written a timely and important post on her blog.

Sometimes we get lost in the meandering paragraphs of our novels.

Which way to go?

Vesper has struggled with how to find her way through the fog of the wisps of plot in her head she sees for her story.

Multiple POV's seem called for, 

but they almost always confuse or throw off the identification the reader has with one character.

She felt she needed a firm outline , but how to go about writing a good one?

Vesper happily stumbled upon Larry Brooks’s Story Fix.

Blake Synder's SAVE THE CAT, though talking about movie scripts, is another great aid.

 https://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Blake-Snyder-ebook/dp/B00340ESIS/

I wrote a post on a Three Stage Blueprint for a good story outline:
http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2014/03/your-car-whats-under-hood.html

 {Image of the werewolf, Higgins, courtesy of the genius of Leonora Roy}

If you are of a mind, take a peek at it.  It might help a bit.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I am not having to swim against the currents with my latest Steampunk, 
THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE.

How to make a Texas Ranger taking on the Sidhe in 1836 Avalon 

and fighting dragons atop the flying Xanadu seem riveting and real has proven to be a real challenge.

I hope your Strawberry Moon went well and your WIP progresses smoothly.

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to settle antitrust lawsuits brought by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of electronic books (eBooks).

 As a result of this Settlement, qualifying eBook purchases from any retailer are eligible for a credit at Amazon. 

Check your Amazon account to see how much has been credited to your account.

Great news, huh?

Think about spending some of your credit on some of my books, will you?

Check my sidebar or my Author's Page for a roster of my books to choose from!

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STRAWBERRY MOON & THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

The Moons of the various months have been given many names in differing cultures.  

All with some supernatural significance. 

The Strawberry Moon comes from Native Americans, and the short season of the strawberry harvest. 

 We’re about to see an astrological phenomenon that hasn’t happened since 1967: 

the joining of the Strawberry Moon and the summer solstice.

Shades of the Age of Aquarius!  

We won't see this again until 2062!

This moon will be visible while the dying light of the day is still illuminating the world.

 The full moon will be hanging low the entire time. Around 8:00pm ET, it rose fully.

 It was dubbed “Strawberry Moon” by the Algonquins Native Americans 

because they knew that when this moon rose,

 it would finally be time to gather ripened fruit. Like strawberries!

 In Europe, the moon is also called the Rose Moon, Mead Moon, and Honey Moon.

 Did you know?

 On June 21 (the day after a Strawberry Moon), we’ll probably be swept up in a large storm.

 It may work out for the best, though, because according to folklore, 

crabbing and shrimping are best during this time, too. 

Shellfish and strawberries anyone?

Oh, and though it is called the Strawberry Moon, 

it glows golden like the sun.  Cool, huh? 

IN A WORLD OF TEMPORARY TREASURES

Actor Anton Yelchin, 27, who played Chekov in recent "Star Trek" movies, was killed in a freak accident early Sunday morning, police told CNN.


 A little more than a week after the shooting rampage at Pulse, an Orlando nightclub, 

key details remain unknown about what exactly happened during the violent episode and the hostage standoff that followed.


What can we learn from these two seemingly unrelated events?

Life is uncertain.

 We shouldn’t have to face a pivotal, life-threatening moment to truly appreciate what he have.

 Unfortunately, most of us forget what we have and how grateful we should be for it all.
 
In fact, usually we tend to count our misfortunes instead of counting our blessings. 

We take life for granted and forget to live our lives the way we should: with peace and contentment.

Nothing lasts forever. 

And before our fleeting life takes away from us what we fail to appreciate, we need to change our mindsets.

 Instead of attaching ourselves to the thinking that we need to keep adding to our life, 

we need to embrace the mindset that what we already have is quite enough.

LIVE IN THE PRESENT

For many the past is full of tears and the future is full of fears.

 The happiest of souls make it a point to “live in the present.” Only then can we truly started noticing the things around us and appreciating what we have.

TRULY SEE YOUR SURROUNDINGS 

As I wrote two posts ago, thanks to technology and media we have naturally forgotten to notice our surroundings.

 We notice what’s displayed on our screens more than we notice our surroundings.


As a result we lose sight of what’s important; the work we do, the people we love, the good things we experience, and the things we have.

Even a simple chirp of a bird is a blessing, because we are able to hear and understand what is in our surroundings.

HELP OTHERS

 Helping others will make you realize that there is so much that you should be grateful. Get in touch with your altruistic side and give back to the community.

This weekend, I worked 25 of the 48 hours.

True, I am exhausted, but I am uplifted as I realize that because of my efforts, 

ill patients are receiving much needed blood that saves lives and eases pain. 

What we burnt, broke, and tore is still in our hearts. 

Our minds hold the echo of fragile things,  

and they keeps the part of us that is indissoluble.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS 

ON THIS?