TO BE A CHILD AT HEART

Remember when you had the wonder and curiosity of a child ... 

before the prosaic poisons of adulthood gave you wisdom and snatched away your innocence?

Most children are swept up by a voracious and indiscriminate curiosity, 

which transforms them into masters of observation, 

far surpassing adults whose perceptions have been dulled with a crushing number of responsibilities. 

E. B. White wrote:


“Children … are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.”

He also wrote:

 “Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.”

Which is pretty good advice to writers no matter to whom their books are aimed.

What impresses us as children often stays with us for the rest of our lives ...

Pablo Neruda's memory of the hand through a fence:

One time, investigating in the backyard of our house in Temuco the tiny objects and minuscule beings of my world,

 

I came upon a hole in one of the boards of the fence.

I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, uncared for, and wild.

I moved back a few steps, because I sensed vaguely that something was about to happen. All of a sudden a hand appeared — a tiny hand of a boy about my own age.

By the time I came close again, the hand was gone, and in its place there was a marvelous white sheep.

The sheep’s wool was faded. Its wheels had escaped. All of this only made it more authentic.

I had never seen such a wonderful sheep. I looked back through the hole, but the boy had disappeared.

I went into the house and brought out a treasure of my own: a pine-cone, opened, full of odor and resin, which I adored. I set it down in the same spot and went off with the sheep. 

To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life.

To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.

But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know,

from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses —

that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

That exchange brought home to me for the first time a precious idea: that all of humanity is somehow together…

 Patti Smith's memory of the swan:

When I was very young, my mother took me for walks in Humboldt Park, along the edge of the Prairie River.

I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates,

of an old boathouse, a circular band shell, an arched stone bridge.

The narrows of the river emptied into a wide lagoon and I saw upon its surface a singular miracle.

A long curving neck rose from a dress of white plumage.

Swan, my mother said, sensing my excitement. It pattered the bright water, flapping its great wings, and lifted into the sky.

The word alone hardly attested to its magnificence nor conveyed the emotion it produced.

The sight of it generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan,

to say something of its whiteness, the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.

The swan became one with the sky. I struggled to find words to describe my own sense of it.

Swan, I repeated, not entirely satisfied, and I felt a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passersby, my mother, the trees, or the clouds.

And Patti Smith has been trying to put the intangible into words ever since.

Albert Einstein's childhood meeting with a compass:

 The development of the world of thought is in a certain sense a continuous flight from “wonder,”he believed:

A wonder of this kind I experienced as a child of four or five years when my father showed me a compass. 

That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit 

in the kind of occurrences that could find a place in the unconscious world of concepts (efficacy produced by direct “touch”). I can still remember

 — or at least believe I can remember — 

that this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
  

Behind the cotton wool of life is hidden a pattern.  

The whole world is a work of art 

if you have but 

the child's sense of wonder 

to see it.

What do you think?

COMING IN FEBRUARY!

Great news!  At least for the lovers of Neil Gaiman's prose and Norse Mythology.

Hear it from Neil himself:

"I've been writing a book of retellings of Norse Mythology since about 2012. 

Writing it slowly, between other things. Reading and reading my prose Eddas and my poetic Eddas, in any editions I could find.

 Now the book is done, and will be coming out in February. 

All the stories I loved, all the myth, many of the contradictions. 

Loki and Thor and Odin and Freyr and Sif and the rest, from the beginning of things through to Ragnarok and after."


His book even ties in with my short story that I submitted to IWSG Anthology recently.  

I may not win, but it is not the winning that counts ...

It is the refusing to give up.  

The heroes, heroines, and gods of Norse Mythology would understand.

Do any of you like Neil Gaiman?

I am giving away a free Neil Gaiman audiobook to each person who reviews THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD by the way.

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUFRKKI/

WHAT YOU KNOW THAT JUST AINT SO!

THE BANE OF THE ALARM CLOCK

"Some mornings it is just not worth chewing through the leather straps." 

 - Hannibal Lector

 You don't need to be a doctor to appreciate that the sudden shrill of an alarm could be bad for your heart. 

But scientists have now proved this is true. 

In a study conducted by the National Institute of Industrial Health in Japan,

participants who were forced awake by a loud alarm clock had higher blood pressure and heart rate,

increased levels of stress hormones which stayed with them most of the day which hurt their immune system.

THE EARLY WORM GETS EATEN!

 "Early to rise and early to bed makes a male 

healthy, wealthy, and dead!" 

 - James Thurber

 Ever had the Sunday Night Blues?  Sure we all have.

But the end of the weekend might just be more than depressing!

New research shows the transition of sleeping in on off days to 

rising early on work ones to an early morning alarm

increases the risk for diabetes and heart disease.  Ouch!


DIE IS THE FIRST SYLLABLE IN DIET!

"No one wakes up in the morning and says: 

'I want to gain 150 pounds, and I want to do it now!'" 

- Orson Welles

Repeated crash dieting increases metabolic hormones 
such as insulin and elevates sex hormones such as estrogen.

These changes cause you to start putting weight around your middle. insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

Double Ouch!!

YOU TALKING TO ME?

“Courage isn't having the strength to go on - 

it is going on when you don't have strength.”

- Napoleon

Napoleon at 5' 7" was actually taller than the average man of that time. 

AH, ARE YOU LOST? 

 “Sometimes when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.” 

 - Mandy Hale

The Earth does NOT revolve around the sun but around the solar system's center of mass!

The center of mass in the solar system is called the Barycenter. 

Usually it’s contained within the mass of the sun, but not always. 

When it’s outside the mass of the sun, the Earth is just orbiting around empty space!

DO YOU KNOW ANY OTHER 

FALSE "FACTS"?

 

WHAt FAMOUS WRITERS DID WHILE WRITING

I'm a writer so I can say this:

Writers can be strange sometimes.  Take Charles Dickens and his deaf cat, Bob.  

Bob would watch Dickens as he read by candlelight.  

If he felt in need of play time, 

he would put out the candle with his paw repeatedly until the author got the idea.

Like Macak did with Nicola Tesla as a child, 

Bob would follow Dickens about like a dog.

Dickens loved Bob.  So much so that when Bob died, the master turned him into a letter opener!!

Not the whole cat, actually. Just a single paw, 

which the author had stuffed and attached to an ivory blade. 

The blade is engraved “C.D. In Memory of Bob 1862″ 

which is more grave marker than most pussycats can hope for.

LYING DOWN ON THE JOB

 Among the successful novelists who wrote lying down are Mark Twain, George Orwell, Edith Wharton, Woody Allen and Marcel Proust. 

They were all known for churning out pages while lying in bed or lounged on a sofa. 

American author and playwright Truman Capote even claimed to be a 

“completely horizontal author” because he couldn’t think and write unless he was lying down.

LET ME TAKE A STAND ON THAT

 Writers like Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, and Philip Roth all liked writing standing up. 

These great thinkers have been inspired to pen their finest pieces at their standing desk. 

For health-conscious writers, this technique might work for you because standing desks offer many proven benefits.

LOOK IN THE INDEX!!

 Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, was very particular about his writing instruments. 

He composed all his works on index cards, which he kept in slim boxes. 

This odd method enabled him to write scenes non-sequentially and re-order the cards any time he wanted.

 Nabokov also stored some of his lined Bristol cards underneath his pillow. 

This way, if an idea popped into his head, he could quickly write it down. 

You can use index cards when doing your note-taking or plotting too.

 It’s a different way to construct your story that can knock fun things loose.

BLUE IS THE COLOR OF MY TRUE LOVE'S ... FICTION? 

For decades, Dumas used various colors to indicate his type of writing.

 Blue was the color for his fiction novels, 

 pink for non-fiction or articles and yellow for poetry.

And you thought writing to music was strange when you did it?!

And we won't even get into Dan Brown hanging upside down to stir up his muse!

WHAT DO YOU CALL ...

On my early morning work break, 

I was trying to conjure the word which described a woman who had contempt for men for my latest story.

My supervisor passed by, and I asked him, 

"A misogynist is one who has contempt for women.  What is a woman who hates men called?"

Without missing a beat, he said, "A feminist."  

The speed with which he responded plus the look on his face when he did so me laugh.

Misandry is the word if you are wondering.

The word misandry may not be in everyone's computer dictionary, 

but the reality is out there. A reality without a name, however, is largely invisible.

Hard to deal with an invisible enemy.

Most of the major villains of the last century have been male.  

And misogynists both on the world scene and in the private lives of women are not helping any.

But I am not talking of Misandry today.  I will in the future if any of you are interested.

No, I am talking genre.

Despite my last experience with anthologies being ugly and sad, I decided to enter the contest above.  I will not win, of course.  But suffering builds character, right?

I was three-fourths finished with my Native American ghost short story 

when it hit me that the judges might not consider ghosts, even Lakota ones, fantasy.

The genre for the contest is fantasy, and the theme is Hero Lost.

Send your polished, previously unpublished story to admin @ insecurewriterssupportgroup.com before the deadline passes if you, too, are interested.

So I stopped writing LOST SOULS.  Sigh.  

A lot of work went into it.  I may eventually finish it.

I came to the decision to stop writing it last night, going to bed feeling blue for a variety of silly reasons.

I awoke with the idea for a short story that could not be considered anything but fantasy, its title, and its first sentence.

 {Image purchased from Pixabay}

FIRST SENTENCE:

I am the Caretaker.

Like I said: I will not win.  Still, I will give it my all.  

I would say it will keep me off the streets, but I am a rare blood courier!

Anyway, even though I am two-fifths through with this story, tell me: 

Do you think ghost stories fall in the fantasy or supernatural/horror genre?  

Just wondering.  :-)

WE TOO SOON FORGET and so tragedy's lesson is never learned_Ghost of Mark Twain

"It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man,

all unprepared,

can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.

There is but one reasonable explanation of it.

The intellect is stunned by the shock

and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words.

The power to realize their full import is mercifully lacking." 
- Mark Twain.

All the talking plastic faces from your fancy television screens seem to want to have their say on September 11th today. 

I ... I almost could not bring myself to speak on it. Not on this day.

The dark winds of the Shadowlands are filled with the wailing of the lost souls remembering the horror, panic, and fear of their dying.

The shadows will soon be quiet. 

I look about the land of the living and know most will have shrugged off the remembrance aside by tomorrow ... if it has even occurred to them today.

Old news. Bills to pay. Lives to live.

There is too much tragedy each heartbeat of each day for us to hold onto any one moment of keening for long ... especially if it is not our own pain.

No pain is so easy to bear as the other fellow's.

Yet the world is drowning in tragedy.

The rain forests are still burning, and our attention span has turned off the smoke detectors.

An African child's emancipated face wails on our TV screen, and we change the channel.

The Twin Towers were gutted by planes filled with screaming passengers.

And into today's camera lenses, faces are screwed and fists are shaken in hate, 

as America is berated for its bigotry by those whose faith was shared by those terrorists.  

We have learned nothing.

Each day we pass individuals who are struggling with their own private 9-11, 

and we hurry by, perhaps irritated by their slow pace or distant, inward directed eyes.

We honor the valiant, the orphaned, and the murdered of 9-11 when we remember that tragedy has a very long shelf-life

and act with compassion towards each person we meet, knowing that everyone is having a harder time than they appear.
***

THE LEGAL SIDE OF WRITING FOR ANTHOLOGIES

Anthologies offer writers an excellent platform for shorter works and create opportunities for reader cross-pollination. 

As always, authors should look before they leap.


1.) CONTRACTS ARE FLUFFY KITTENS IN THE AWE OF BEING INVITED

But even kittens have claws and sharp teeth ... and make sure that contract is not a TIGER kitten! 

Every anthology should use a professional, written publishing contract (or release) 

containing industry-standard terms for anthology publication. 

If the publisher is taking only non-exclusive rights, and not limiting the author’s right to reprint and re-use the work in any way, 

a simple release will often suffice, but even this should be in WRITING.  

My latest anthology contracts reads in part: 

This contract may be terminated by either The Author or The Publisher within a thirty day written notice, 

and all rights granted to The Publisher will revert to The Author at that time.



2.) NEVER SIGN AWAY COPYRIGHT TO WORK 

Anthology publishers do NOT need, and should not ask for, ownership of copyright in the individual works that make up the anthology.

 Anthology publishers need only a limited license to publish the contributed works as part of the anthology –

 and the contract should expressly limit the publisher’s use of the work to its inclusion in the relevant anthology or collective work.


3.) DYNAMITE AT THE END OF YOUR FINGERTIPS!

What if your anthology seems log-jammed, never to be published?  You can pull your story out, right?

Did you have an attorney read the contract before you signed it?  I hope you did.  

As mine told me: 

"You have dynamite at the end of your fingers, Roland.  Make sure your contract is not a lit fuse." 

If contracts have been signed, authors' rights could be tied up for an indefinite period of time while the publisher tries to figure out what to do. 

Not to mention, whatever payment structure may initially have been promised may now not be possible.


4.) CONSIDER THE SOURCE

 Before submitting your work or signing a contract for anthology publication, consider the experience level and reputation of the publisher (or anthology sponsor), 

the editor (if one is named), the terms of the publishing contract, 

and all other relevant aspects of the deal. Select anthologies that match your plans for your work and also offer appropriate contract terms.


5.) FINAL WORD FROM THE GHOST OF MARK TWAIN

"Trust everybody, children, but cut the cards yourself.

Read that darn contract!  And then have a lawyer you trust read it for to explain those long, legal-like puzzles of words!" 

HOPE THIS HELPS A FEW OF YOU OUT THERE.

For myself:

I never loan money
nor
submit a story to an anthology
that I cannot afford to lose.