FEELING UNAPPRECIATED AS A WRITER?

*
FEELING UNAPPRECIATED AS A WRITER?

Join the club.

During this month of August NaNo and the WRITE CLUB, I have been playing usually to an empty house --

my contest with its great prizes largely ignored.

And except for Siv Maria, my latest book is going unnoticed.

As I finished typing the above, the ghost of Li Yaotang (pen name : Ba Jin) rapped on top of my head as if it were a door.

"I was born on this day in 1904, Roland."

His eyes were deep with wisdom hard bought by pain. "Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future. Now my education, life and consciousness are talked about by those who cannot understand what I wrote, what I thought, what was my life."

He sighed, "They make me up from their subjective imagination. Do not be like them. Learn from the me that I was. Learn from the Bamboo Tree."

And with that, he was gone.

When he died in 2005, Ba Jin was praised as one of China’s most important novelists, and as the embodiment of a tumultuous century.

He began agitating for change as a teenager, joining the Chinese anarchist group “Company of Equals."

When the Cultural Revolution arrived, Ba Jin became a symbol of anti-social thinking and a primary target,

his public humiliation at the People’s Stadium of Shanghai televised in 1968.

The nation watched the sixty-three-year-old author, kneeling on broken glass, endure the jeers and threats with a bowed head; then they heard him speak:

"You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me."

Years of rehabilitation followed, his new work monitored, his old books and articles revised to suit the authorities.

When once again allowed to speak his mind in a public forum — the following is excerpted from a 1980 speech in Kyoto — Jin had emerged from the crucible true to himself :

"I do not write to earn a living or to build a reputation.

I write to battle enemies. Who are they?

Every outdated traditional notion, every irrational system that stands in the way of social progress and human development,

and every instance of cruelty in the face of love.

My pen is a light and my body a flame. Until both burn down to ash, my love and my hate will remain here in the world."

Feel unappreciated now? Live your own light. Fight the darkness as long as breath and light remain to you.

* Uploaded 17 October 2005 by Jiang Photo of Ba Jin taken in 1938.

This image is now in the public domain because its term of copyright has expired in China.

According to copyright laws of the People's Republic of China (currently with jurisdiction in Taiwan, the Pescadores, Quemoy, Matsu, etc.),

all photographs and cinematographic works, and all works whose copyright holder is a juristic person, enter the public domain 50 years after they were first published,

or if unpublished 50 years from creation, and all other applicable works enter the public domain 50 years after the death of the creator.

{Want to know what Ba Jin meant by "Learn from the Bamboo Tree?" Watch this video}

***

FEELING UNAPPRECIATED AS A WRITER?

FEELING UNAPPRECIATED AS A WRITER?

Join the club.

During this month of NaNoWriMo, I have been playing usually to an empty house --

my contest with its great prizes largely ignored.

And I've lost another follower.

Then, the ghost of Li Yaotang (pen name : Ba Jin) rapped on top of my head as if it were a door.

"I was born on this day in 1904, Roland. Learn from me. Learn from the Bamboo Tree."

And with that, he was gone.

When he died in 2005, Ba Jin was praised as one of China’s most important novelists, and as the embodiment of a tumultuous century.

He began agitating for change as a teenager, joining the Chinese anarchist group “Company of Equals."

When the Cultural Revolution arrived, Ba Jin became a symbol of anti-social thinking and a primary target,

his public humiliation at the People’s Stadium of Shanghai televised in 1968.

The nation watched the sixty-three-year-old author, kneeling on broken glass, endure the jeers and threats with a bowed head; then they heard him speak:

"You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me."

Years of rehabilitation followed, his new work monitored, his old books and articles revised to suit the authorities.

When once again allowed to speak his mind in a public forum — the following is excerpted from a 1980 speech in Kyoto — Jin had emerged from the crucible true to himself :

"I do not write to earn a living or to build a reputation.

I write to battle enemies. Who are they?

Every outdated traditional notion, every irrational system that stands in the way of social progress and human development,

and every instance of cruelty in the face of love.

My pen is alight and my body aflame. Until both burn down to ash, my love and my hate will remain here in the world."

Feel unappreciated now? Live your own light. Fight the darkness as long as breath and light remain to you.
***

HOW DO YOU WRITE? :THE SCRATCH OF THE CLAW

{APOLOGY - The heat in my apartment with internet access

prevents me from staying long

and keeps me from visiting the blogs of my friends.}

Now, onto my post} :

How do you write?

Do you write as if your novel were a pressurized airplane cabin?

Are your characters insulated from the truth of their environment?

Is your locale as flat as a cardboard movie backdrop?

Are there smells to your surroundings? Does the soft breeze make an airy stew of their aromas?

Or do you drag your poor reader down sterile, silent streets?

What are the prevailing winds of mindset, manners, and economic demands of your setting?

Does your main character sail against them? Or does he/she flounder in their wake?

Or does he, puppet-like, go through lifeless motions, tugged by your whims and not by motivations relate-able to your readers?

And what about you as a writer?

Do you persist? Or do you stall out when the words become lost in the mist.

Persistence. It is what separates those just playing from those dedicated to the dream.

When the writing is sluggish that is when it is most important to bull through to the end. Writing is like life in that.

Winners don't stop when they meet resistance. Weight resistance builds muscle. Blank-out resistance builds fine prose.

Persistence is the heart. The story is the soul.

For luck, Ernest Hemingway used to carry a rabbit's foot in his right pocket. The fur had long since been worn off. The bones and sinews were polished by wear.

The claws scratched in the lining of his pocket,

and by that sting he knew his luck was still there.

Why was that?

When you feel the scratch of life against you, you know that your luck as a writer is still at your back. How is that?

The sting of life makes you aware :

of your own humanity,

of others' failings and strengths,

of the precious fragility of life.

And that awareness gives your pen the gift of perception, depth, and heart.

What did Ernest put in his journal? :

Travel and writing broaden your ass, if not your mind, so I try to write standing up.
***

HOW DO YOU WRITE? :THE SCRATCH OF THE CLAW

{Thanks to all of you who visited my entry in Erin Cole's 13 DAYS OF HORROR.

If you haven't yet, here is the link :

http://erincolelive.blogspot.com/2010/10/death-in-my-veins-roland-yeomans.html Now, onto my post} :

How do you write?

Do you write as if your novel were a pressurized airplane cabin?

Are your characters insulated from the truth of their environment?

Is your locale as flat as a cardboard movie backdrop?

Are there smells to your surroundings? Does the soft breeze make an airy stew of their aromas?

Or do you drag your poor reader down sterile, silent streets?

What are the prevailing winds of mindset, manners, and economic demands of your setting?

Does your main character sail against them? Or does he/she flounder in their wake?

Or does he, puppet-like, go through lifeless motions, tugged by your whims and not by motivations relate-able to your readers?

And what about you as a writer?

Do you persist? Or do you stall out when the words become lost in the mist.

Persistence. It is what separates those just playing from those dedicated to the dream.

When the writing is sluggish that is when it is most important to bull through to the end. Writing is like life in that.

Winners don't stop when they meet resistance. Weight resistance builds muscle. Blank-out resistance builds fine prose.

Persistence is the heart. The story is the soul.

For luck, Ernest Hemingway used to carry a rabbit's foot in his right pocket. The fur had long since been worn off. The bones and sinews were polished by wear.

The claws scratched in the lining of his pocket,

and by that sting he knew his luck was still there.

Why was that?

When you feel the scratch of life against you, you know that your luck as writer is still at your back. How is that?

The sting of life makes you aware :

of your own humanity,

of others' failings and strengths,

of the precious fragility of life.

And that awareness gives your pen the gift of perception, depth, and heart.

What did Ernest put in his journal :

Travel and writing broaden your ass, if not your mind, so I try to write standing up.
***

WHAT TO DO AFTER REJECTION

{“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,

and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

- Oscar Wilde.}

I received this in my inbox this morning in reply to my query of Feb. 26th :

Dear Roland,

Thank you for your submission. Although I find that your novel has potential, it is not the type of story that I seek at this time. I wish you the best of luck, and hope to hear great things from you in the future.

Best regards,

Marisa

Not the worst form rejection I've ever received. So what to do?

Get back on that horse.

Research who wants urban fantasy. I did and found a freelance editor who is getting into the agent side of things.

And she handles, among other things, urban fantasy. Go here to see if she handles your genre :

http://caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/2010/09/agent-spotlight-cari-foulk.html

And here is my sparkling, revised query : (No applause please -- just throw money.)

Dear Ms. Foulk :

Long before Man. Long before Light. Darkness reigned.

Light pierces its flesh. It hates the light. It hates even more Man who casts light like a garment over this world.

A man with the blood of Death in his veins. A revenant priest. Both thought their lives couldn't get any worse. Hurricane Katrina proved them wrong.

FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE is the 90,000 word urban fantasy detailing their struggles to keep the survivors alive and the Darkness at bay in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Here are the first few paragraphs :

It rained lies and death today.

I stood knee-deep in water outside my French Quarter jazz club, Meilori’s. My soul stretched tight across my chest. Everything I saw and heard in the shadows spoke to me ... in threats.

The sudden, short explosion of an unseen gun. A quick, sharp scream in the distance. And the blue spurt of a lighted match at the far end of the street. My city bled slowly in the ripples of the flooded streets.

I leaned back against the door to my club as if for reassurance that something solid still remained to me. That it survived Katrina was a mixed blessing. It was all that was left to me of my wife.

Staying here was both penance and purgatory. Meilori’s was the kind of place in which almost anything was likely to happen and in which almost everything had.

Inside, fifty-one survivors of Katrina were huddled in shivering, too quiet clusters. Words have no meaning when a city dies. Nothing much does.

Somewhere distant in the hot, red darkness a shot rang out. Another called out to it like a wolf. But it came from a different direction. I smiled bitterly. The predators had crawled out from their boarded shelters. They knew the restraint of law had died this day. Soon they would come for me.

You see, I had enemies in the night. And not all of them were human.

***

To get a better idea of my writing voice, you may want to visit my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/


I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a blood courier. The last a result of being evacuated from Lake Charles due to Hurricane Rita and having to support myself any way I could.

I found I liked the job and the people with whom I worked. And it gives me more time to write. Thank you for reading my query.

Two other agents are considering the first 50 pages of my novel. I would be happy to send you further sample chapters or the full manuscript May the rest of this year hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.
rxena77@yahoo.com

I wish all of us luck in finding success in our publication dreams, Roland
And here's wishing us all a day without rain :

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

I recieved another rejection this morning. A "Dear Author" impersonal rejection. Ouch. Not surprising considering the odds against me, an unknown. The odds.

The odds are against all of us. Worse. Look at the headlines of suicide bombers, murdering parents, thugs in the shadows. We are against us.

There is no director to yell "Cut!" No stunt double to take our place. And no new movie to star in when death swallows our person.

We must be our own hero. Wear our own spandex. And, if Kate Beckinsale of UNDERWORLD is to be believed, spandex pinches. And so it should. Pinches remind us that pain befalls us all, to be kinder to someone whose pinched face shows us that the spandex of his/her life is less than comfortable.

The picture of this post comes from Cassandra. She is a hero, a woman who could have surrendered to bitterness and defeat. But instead she has decided to choose life, healing others, and going forward. Though she would deny the heroism of her new life, I consider her a hero. Her trauma is hers to tell. I am just tipping my hat to her heroism.

And in a fashion, all we authors struggling to be published have to be our own heroes. The odds are against us in this harsh market. It seems that the motto of agents we approach is : "If I don't want your autograph, I don't want your manuscript."

But giving up can become an addiction, a way of life. Never surrender. Never yield to despair. Stumble, yes. Fall, of course. But gather your strength, your wits and get up. You can do it. Others have before you. Fling the blood and sweat from your eyes and smile wide. You can use those acid feelings searing your will and heart in your writing, becoming a deeper, more perceptive writer.

And more importantly : if you refuse to give in to bitter hopelessness, you will become a deeper, more compassionate human being. When you succeed, and you will succeed, you'll be able to thrust out a helping hand and word to someone, down and hurting, who needs a boost back onto the path. You'll be able to give them a pat on the back to lend strength to their steps. The pats lower leave to the agents and publishers.

And my favorite scene of all the STAR WARS films highlights my thinking {sorry about the foreign subtitles} :