EVERY OPEN EYE

*

 

EVERY OPEN EYE DOES NOT SEE ...

EVERY CLOSED EYE DOES NOT SLEEP

- Bill Cosby

Do you see the world around you? Does what you see impact your writing?

FIVE STEPS TO LIFT THE BLINDERS FROM YOUR WRITING EYES:

1.) ASK WHAT MAKES YOU AFRAID:

The answers to that will tell you who you are, what areas in which you need to grow. The answers will give you a renewed sense of why your characters seem alive or just cardboard.

What makes your soul sing? Ask why? Think how your novel would be fun for others to read.

And if it isn't, why would a reader bother with your novel at all?

2.) KEEP AN EYE PEELED FOR WAYS TO GROW:

Weight resistance builds muscle mass.  Thinking outside the box stimulates the brain to grow. 

When presented with a question for you to do something, and you give a knee-jerk NO.  Consider saying YES.  Or at least ponder why the quick refusal.

Reflect on what makes you afraid.  Would learning more about the subject change your writing? 

Fear snakes? 

Ask a snake owner if you could touch and handle hers or his.  The whole gauntlet of sensations and emotions that triggers will deepen your prose.

3.) STOP SNORKELING THROUGH THE SEA OF LIFE:

Knock on doors physical and emotional that say STAY OUT. 

Ask a policeman who's standing in line with you at the bank

why he joined the force or what things about daily life as a police officer make him smile ... or bother him.

Wander into a newspaper staff room and ask the most junior staff member what drew him or her into this life. 

 Go to an ambulance center with a puppy dog look on your face and ask to talk to any EMT that is not busy. 

Do the same for your local fire station.  Firemen endure long hours of boredom at times.

Say you are writing a novel from a fireman's wife point of view.  Ask if he can share any pointers.  If there are women fire fighters talk to them about their jobs and concerns.

4.) CHALLENGE YOUR MIND:

Take a self-defense class.  Learn how to dance.  Take a few lessons in judo. 

Challenge both your mind and body to act in ways unfamilar.

Take evening college classes on anything that interests you or daunts you.  You will find experiences and sensations that will enrich your writing.

Feeling adventurous after those self-defense classes?

Bring an escort of several friends (and maybe pepper spray, too) to a strip club and watch the faces of the men,

of the dancers,

of the bartenders tending the drinks. 

5.) MIND YOUR SURROUNDINGS:

Like coffee?  Go to STARBUCKS or BOOKSAMILLION and listen to the people at the tables around you. 

Study their conversations, their gestures, the interplay between speakers.

Standing in line for a movie? 

Watch how a single woman gets out of the car, how a married woman does the same thing. 

See if you can tell without looking at rings who is married and who is dating.  Ask yourself if a couple has become intimate yet.  And give reasons why you say YES or NO.

William Faulkner once wrote,

“A writer needs three things:

experience,
observation
and imagination.

Any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

I feel that it was no accident that experience is first on his list.

Can you think of other ways to "open" your writer's eyes?
*
{Eyes of Rose Red courtesy of the fabled Leonora Roy}
***
And for the laughs:


AND FOR ALEX:

WILL AUTHORS BECOME LIKE THE SLIDE RULE?

A post should be like a mini-skirt:

*

Long enough to cover everything.  Short enough to be interesting.

So here goes:

WILL AUTHORS BECOME LIKE THE SLIDE RULE?

The Associated Press reported a survey that says there is a generation gap in e-readers:

Readers under 30 prefer cellphones and computers. Those over 30 like dedicated devices such as the Kindle.

The Pew Research Center's latest study focuses on young readers.

Among e-book users surveyed, between ages 16-29, more than half read one on a desktop or laptop and around 40 percent use a cellphone. Around 25 percent used an e-reader.

Among respondents 30 and older, 46 percent preferred e-readers, just 25 percent cellphones.

According to the report released Tuesday, teen readers were less likely to read an e-book than those immediately older.

 Around 12 percent of respondents aged 16-17 read an e-book over the past year, compared to 21 percent for ages 18-24 and 25 percent for ages 30-39.

Did you get that?

Only 12% of teens had read an e-book this past year!  Only 25% of those over 30 had read an e-book this past year!

That leaves a whopping 75% that had not read an e-book!

Of those who do read e-books, the vast majority are female.  Are writers in danger of providing a service few want?

What do you think?

Donna Hole emailed me last week, inquiring:

"How do you get the most of your Kindle Fire?" and "Do you use other computer for your author needs also?"

She also wrote:

When I want to read, I want to just read. No phone, no e-mail, no blogger updates. I hope to get lost in a story and think of nothing else. So, I'm having a problem giving up my dedicated e-book reader for More, even though it is the same price. I also have this little Acer Netbook; and I love it.

Donna added:

So, can you give me some insights on how you use your Kindle Fire? 

Can you update your blog from it? Read any Kindle formatted books? Can you edit/write from it?

  How easy is the touch keypad to access? Is it more for movie watching and game playing than word processing? How portable is the Kindle Fire?

My answer?

I use my laptop to write my blog and my novels.

 It is small enough to take anywhere in my apartment. AND IT HAS AN ACTUAL KEYBOARD. My fingers hate writing for any length by touchpad.

But I can update my blog, reply to comments.  I can read Kindle formatted books.  I can send my current WIP to my Kindle and edit/write my WIP from my Kindle Fire.

The touch keypad is easy to access for anyone who doesn't have ten thumbs like me.  :-) 

I subscribe to several magazines that come directly to my Kindle Fire.  Reading them from it is a breeze.  I am child enough to love even the ads in W magazine.

I do not have cable so I download my favorite TV episodes for $1.99 each and they are stored in the unlimited capacity of the Cloud.

You can piggy-back your internet access from your smartphone to your Kindle Fire.  It is portable enough to put in my mini-back pack ... or in your purse.

It would easily accomodate your life as a writer.  It would also let you carry a small library for research or for fun reading whenever you find yourself unexpectedly with free time during the day.

I answered Donna here because I thought some other of my friends might have similar questions.  Donna, I hope I have helped in some small way.  :-)

*
© Raimond Spekking / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minirock_(Lack)_Model_Dani_2_crop.jpg
**
My new favorite movie is SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD:


AND OF COURSE THIS UPCOMING SUMMER:

RAINFOREST FRIEND

D.G. Hudson has been gracious enough to write fabulous reviews of GHOST OF A CHANCE and BURNT OFFERINGS.

I have driven nearly 2000 miles these past eight days as a rare blood courier so I missed her fantastic post:
http://dghudson-rainwriting.blogspot.ca/2012/10/new-orleans-dark-fantasy-roland-yoemans.html

PLEASE do NOT miss the evocative prose of her reviews. I read them and was blown away by her grasp of style and atmosphere.

Is it just me, or has time become a harsh mistress of late for you, too?

{It is no surprise that currently in my writing THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT, Victor Standish is imprisoned by the goddess Tyme and held in a cell, sandwiched between the cells of the entities, SARCASM and MERCY.}
***
D.G. seems to love the many beautiful facets of France.  Here is a tune by Jesse Cook, who was born to Canadian parents in Paris:

SHORTER IS BETTER?



{Freshman college girls between classes. By standards of the time, they would have been considered very "dressed up." Memphis, Tennessee, 1973

photo by Ed Uthman, Houston Texas}

{Karmen Pedaru, model, at Anna Sui 2011

photo: Christopher Macsurak}

ARE WE HERD ANIMALS?

Rachelle Gardner, agent extraordinaire, has posted "SHOULD ALL AUTHORS BLOG?"

http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/10/should-all-authors-blog/

In essence, the blog is no longer "novel" and we should reflect on whether we should blog or continue to do so. 

For those of us who write novels to not be "novel" apparently is the kiss of death.

Talli Roland (love her last name in her pen name) posted today SHOULD NOVELISTS  BLOG?

http://talliroland.blogspot.com/

Talli wrote:

"I know many of you ( like me) have cut down on the amount of time you spend blogging, turning to Facebook and Twitter."

The Cliff Notes summation of both posts seems to be that Twitter and Facebook posts are shorter and easier to read and keep up with.

But is shorter necessarily better?

Take the mini-skirt

(yes, there was actually a reason for those pictures):

You can only get so short before it gets impossible (and ridiculous) to get shorter.

Twitter and Facebook are the new fads authors just have to join to be with the herd.  But do you want to be a "herd author?"

Pinterest was the new craze until the danger of lawsuits for copyright infringement dampened the fun of that site.

If something is important to say, it is hard to twitter it in so few characters. 

Facebook is the new scrapbook of the eternally popular ME. 

But as authors, don't we blog to communicate, to reach out and INTERACT with other dreamers?  Listening and replying to the hurts and thoughts of others ... not merely to talk about our own?

Do we let the diminishing attention span of most people turn us into strange WALKING DEAD, aware of only our own needs while we stumble blind beside one another, hungering only for sales?

What do you think?

WEEP NOT FOR THE UNDEAD

*

 

So many ask if I know I resemble the actress Cate Blanchett.

It would be more accurate to say she resembles me since I was born long before she was a gleam in her grandmother's eye.

Reporters, after gushing over my last Pulitzer prize, ask if I am related to the fabled Margaret Fuller.  I ask them,

"What makes you think I am not that Margaret Fuller?"

They laugh.  I laugh.  Each for different reasons.

You may recognize my name from the adventures of Samuel McCord and that scamp, Victor Standish:

http://www.amazon.com/THE-LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-ebook/dp/B005NCUTAG

History has me drowned upon this date in 1850 aged forty. In 1853, when Captain Samuel McCord met me aboard the cursed DEMETER, I was still all too alive:

http://www.amazon.com/RITES-OF-PASSAGE-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM

Shortly thereafter, I became a unique form of undead. But then, I have always been unique -- alive or undead.

My beliefs (feminist and Transcendentalist), accomplishments and fervent personality put me in the spotlight throughout my life,

but my "last" years, spent in Rome supporting the short-lived Roman Republic, reached an operatic level of passion and poignancy.

As foreign correspondent of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, I argued the cause of the Italian revolutionists in the dispatches sent home. In Rome, I assisted on the Republican ramparts and in their field hospitals.

I also married an Italian nobleman who was prominent in the Republican cause, and had a son by him. With the ramparts fallen and my husband in jeopardy, I reluctantly decided to return to America,

despite premonitions of disaster and warnings from Emerson and other Concord friends that my socialist leanings and doubtful marriage would provoke public disfavor.

As if I have ever cared what the rabble thought.

When my boat ran aground just off the New York coast, I chose to stay with my husband, who could not swim. Both of us were washed to sea and never found, (so history reports).

But Henry (David Thoreau) found me washed upon the shore not far from my young son’s body.

The memorial to me put up by my family reads,

“Born a child of New England, / By adoption a citizen of Rome, / By genius belonging to the World.”

My genius has never been in question.

Edgar Allan Poe thought me such. He believed that the fallacy in my lobby for women's rights was that

"She judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there are not more than one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth."

Poe’s evaluation is echoed in comments by Emerson and Hawthorne — though they let slip that their attraction might be more than intellectual (as it was)

when they both referred to me in print as “Margaret Fuller, the Sexy Muse.”

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own except for dear Ada

(Byron, Lady Loveless - author of the first computer language a 100 years before the invention of the computer itself.)

McCord has his moments, but he is restrained by his Victorian ideals and code that he will not cast aside. I love him for his nobility. It will be the death of him.

What will be the death of you? I wager your friends know even if you do not. I leave you with a bit of my own verse :

“Let me gather from the Earth,
one full grown fragrant flower,
Let it bloom within my bosom
through its one fragile hour….”

Of my past, I neither rejoice nor grieve, for bad or good, I acted out my character.
*{Cate Blanchett as Hedda Gabler; photo courtesy Steven Siewert}
***

UNUSED GEARS (NUDITY ALERT)

 

 {The goddess, Tyme, courtesy of the fabulous Leonora Roy}

 

QUIT YOUR JOB TO WRITE FULL TIME!   I DID.  YOU SHOULD, TOO.

So said one post I recently visited.  Ah, I really like to eat and sleep out of the rain so that advice was just silly.

Oh, she also said Americans were too fat,

were possessed by their possessions,

and usually had loveless relationships ...

and beans were bad for you.

(Mostly true ... except for the beans ... beans are bad for those around you.)

I've written this some tongue-in-cheek (but not much).

  Here is her post to provide her side of things:
http://www.kseniaanske.com/blog/2012/10/17/you-can-write-full-time-quit-your-job.html#comments

Tammy Theriault wrote an amusing, insightful post on how she made use of the time she had

to write whenever, wherever she could:
http://tammybr2.blogspot.com/2012/10/you-can-do-it-anywherea-car-bowling.html

So what about my title: UNUSED GEARS?

When Victor Standish's age, I had a bike with one gear for everything:

 outracing Old Ones,

smacking evil trolls who were assaulting the head cheerleader of my school,

and other assorted heroics that swirled in my head as I rode to and back from school.

When I became an adult (at least in years), I bought a bike with more gears than a Swiss Army knife has doo-hickies.

Not that I used them all.  Who knew what they all were for?

I used basically three out of the army of gears available to me.

But the gears were there waiting for me to use.  The same with time.  All of us are given the same quota.

Some just use it more effieciently than others.

We all stand in too many lines, scrub in the great echo chamber of our shower, sit in too many doctor offices.

Carry a notebook.  You balk about writing a whole page of your novel in such settings.

Write bits of dialogues.  They're short.  And you get to borrow from the snatches of conversation going on around you.

Or write splashes of descriptions of exotic locales or the characters in your novel.  Dialogue and descriptions don't demand you put down a beginning, middle, and end.

Carry a mini-tape recorder.  Leave it by your bed to speak into it on a vivid dream you just had that would be perfect for your novel.

(That saves you from having to make out the senseless scribblings scrawled on a notebook page in the dark!)

The recorder is great for when you are stuck in traffic. 

Do not use it while actually driving.  Distracted driving kills, and I want you around to visit my cyber-home!

HOUSE OF HORROR_FRIDAY'S CHALLENGE

 

It's Halloween! Another FW/RU Challenge

http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html

They’re looking for chilling stories of ghosts and haunted locations – and maybe even love from beyond the grave.

A romantic element is essential, but they’re looking for stories with a thrilling edge of fear to add to the romantic tension building between our Hero/Heroine.

Have fun with this one! Don't forget the Romantic Element! Let your head go!

You can write up to 1,000 words of prose/prosetry!

I wrote 1007 words. 007 words extra in honor of the latest James Bond SKYFALL!

HOUSE OF HORROR is an excerpt from THE RIVAL:
http://www.amazon.com/THE-RIVAL-chapter-STANDISH-ebook/dp/B007JOUJ60

An April night in 1834 New Orleans finds Victor Standish and Alice Wentworth being invited by the insane Dr. LaLaurie and his psychotic wife, Delphine, to the house that will forever live in whispers of horror from this night forward:

The LaLaurie mansion towered over us like the House of Usher.  It was a sprawling shrine to death.  Three stories, an attic, and stuccoed front.  On the plant-strewn front porch, hollow-eyed slaves waited for their dreaded masters.

DayStar had sneered at my words about the lenient attitude in old New Orleans towards slaves.  I sighed.  I just hate it when the bad guys are right.

That cruel torturers lived in such splendor made me furious. 

Alice touched my arm.  “Delphine’s father built this mansion on the site of two other homes.  It has only recently come into her possession with her marriage to the not-so-good doctor.”

Delphine frowned, “You know a great deal about me for one from the future,”

“The future, yes, Madame LaLaurie.  But I was born only six years from now.  I know of you and of your two other marriages.”

“Poison, right, your viciousness?” I laughed.

Her face going pale proved my guess had been, ah, dead on.  “Hey, Doc.  I’d watch what I ate if I were you.”

His face was cruelty given life.  “You are not me.”

I said, “That’s good news.”

The LaLauries huffed and walked up the stairs to the front door which was hurriedly opened by a butler stiff from beatings.  I knew that feeling.  I ground my teeth. 

Alice and I walked into the front lobby, and she whispered, “Oh, my!”

I didn’t blame her. We were greeted by a pair of brass gates, etched with tentacled things reaching for the on-looker.  Within the marble hallway was a wide door high enough for the entrance of something terribly big like … like

“An Old One,” Alice whispered softly.

Beside us there was a wrought-iron staircase that wound like a spiral column to …

“The drawing rooms, Standish,” laughed Delphine.

Alice and I climbed behind them.  I looked for hidden buttons and trap doors in the steps.  I didn’t trust these two any further than I could throw Pittsburg. 

The drawing room was modest, about the size of the National Debt.  The folding doors that led to other drawing rooms were ornamented with beautifully carved images of flowers and terrified human faces.

All around the great room there extended a frieze covered with rail work, representing fallen angels with folded wings, holding screaming skulls.  On the walls were mounted swords of every kind.  They even had a katana at a time when they were rarer than an honest politician.  I looked up.  Sfumato!

The ceilings were so high the painters must have gotten nose bleeds.  They were carved with stars and tentacled creatures flying by them.  Six fancy, diamond and crystal chandeliers slowly spun in arcs of bright color. The fireplaces were wide and covered in flowing runes. 

A hesitant knock tapped on the door behind us.  I turned.  Little Angelique, her right arm all bent out of shape.  But unlike in 2005, this Angelique was alive and not a ghost. The way she held her arm when she looked at her father suggested something terrible.

“Step-mama, I know you said ….  Oh, you have company.”

She looked terrified, and I smiled, “Don’t worry, Angelique.  I’m just folks.”

Angelique jerked as her father rumbled, “You have been warned about coming here.  Now, I shall have to attend to that other arm.”

“No!” whimpered Angelique.

I snapped, “No is right, Angelique.”

He glowered.  “You cannot interfere with a father’s discipline!”

“Watch me.”

Delphine started for the girl.  Alice flowed between them.  Her face scared me.  I remembered how her mother had tortured Alice for years.

Delphine raised her right hand, black energies sizzling at her fingertips.  “You cannot stop me.”

Alice flicked her eyes to me, then back to her.  “Watch me.”

Black lightning flew from Delphine.  Alice countered it with a misty hand. My jaw dropped.  Alice laughed.

“You have seen much of what I can do, Victor, but not everything.”

Showing that the insane can’t learn, Delphine tried again, only to be blocked by Alice.  The two deflected energy balls started a fire in the room, making it look like the Hell it had been for too many tortured slaves.  Dr. LaLaurie raised his own hands.  I nodded to the swords on the walls, their blades gleaming in the firelight.

“You any good with those pig-stickers?”

He barked a laugh.  “I am the best swordsman in New Orleans.”

I snorted, “New Orleans must be hard up.”

I sprinted to the closest corner, tic tac’ed up it, and snatched the katana from its housing.  Twirling in a Full Arabian Cartwheel, I did a Parkour roll and popped to my feet.  I ducked another deflected energy bolt, keeping my eyes on the insane physician.

“Know Kendo?”

“No Westerner does, fool.”

I smiled wider.  “I’m not a Westerner, psycho.  I’m Victor Standish and the student of Bruce Lee’s ghost.”

Angelique cried, “Watch out!  Papa is ….”

Sfumato!  What he was … was fast.  He raced to the wall, grabbed two swords, and was back where he had been in one heartbeat.  He even sped through the growing flames without getting burned. I smiled.  Well, hey, this might actually be a challenge.

“You are a dead man,” husked Dr. LaLaurie.

He lunged in a blur.  I slipped through the seconds, spun on the ball of my right foot, and brought the katana down two-handed across his fencer’s tight butt.  The blood spurted nicely.  I sneezed at the reams of smoke from the burning furniture.

He howled.  I laughed.  I spun on the ball of my right foot, holding the katana high above my head with both hands.

“How does it feel to fight someone who can fight back?”

He spat, “Fight back?  I was holding back.  Mine is the speed primeval.”

“Make that evil, and I’ll agree.”

“You’ll die!”

He funneled a strange scream at me.  He could do what I feared to?  I tumbled on my shoulder and popped to my feet.  The paint was blistered off the one unburned wall behind me.

“Hey, you cheat!  My kind of guy!”

The truth behind the LaLaurie Mansion and its horrors:

OLD ONES YOU ASK?