For the Writer In You
Someone found this online and shared it with me. This photo goes along with my previous days post. What book is inside of you that is waiting to come out?
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How to Get Started as a Writer
Start writing right? I know that is pretty lame. My good friend and editor recently asked me this question because she has thought of writing a book. How do you just start? Where does that first sentence come from?
There are a billion answers to this question because there is an opinion from every writer, English teacher, lit professor, or tech writer
Our Critique Group in Fremont, CA turned into a Writer’s Group. This is the 1 year anniversary.
turned fiction, or anyone involved in some way with the craft of penning your thoughts to paper (or keying them on Word). Here are some tips for getting you in the mood:
1. Set the space – Create a writer’s haven for yourself. Scents, candles, music; romance yourself into writing.
2. Organize yourself – Determine how many hours/day or week you will write and how much you will accomplish in this time frame. Good for tech writers turned fiction or A type personalities. It also helps if you need timelines.
3. What genre are you? Do you know what turns you on when you read or watch movies? What are you passionate about? If you typically watch/read romance that is probably what you will be into. Or maybe you are the chic lit type. If you are a high energy person you might be into adventure. Perhaps you are inquisitive – mysteries? Like futuristic things – sci-fi/fantasy?
4. Take the path you have never ventured down – I believe it is important to immerse yourself in culture and stare. People watch sounds a little less intimidating. Ideas for characters are all around you. Museums, art houses, jazz clubs, blues bars, public transportation, strip clubs, seedy bars, NYC. Anywhere that is foreign to you will begin to open your eyes to the most unimaginable things. It is like putting hot sauce on your scrambled eggs.
5. Re-read opening pages of your favorite books – When you read enough of them again, you will begin to see how a manuscript is born. Don’t assume though that your first page will always be your first page though. You can start a novel and later realize that this should be chapter three or even the finale. That’s okay, it’s a work in progress until it is published.
6. Call yourself a writer – You have to affirm your intentions aloud. Until you feel you are a writer internally, you are not one externally. When you begin to own your title and believe in yourself as an artist you begin to open up to your story. Guess what? There are no rules about this. Right now you can say “I am a writer!” There are no art police who will say “Where is your work? Show me.” If your friends do tell them some great story about it and then you have already started your book.
7. Join a Critique Group – Nothing is more stimulating for the craft of writing then to join a group of wannabe’s who are already doing this. The two groups I have joined on both sides of the coast had really amazing people involved of all different backgrounds. I learned so much about storytelling from these groups. They also hold you accountable for your actions. When it is your turn, you have to show up with something. Don’t worry you will read some really amazing manuscripts as well as some that need a lot of work. Either way if you stick to it you will come out with a great story in the end. By the way, learn to take a hint. If the sentence needs a comma, that doesn’t mean a long explanation about your storyline. It means your sentence needs a comma.
8. Join a Writer’s Club – Its pretty hard to find an area that does not have one and if you live in Timbuctoo, AR start your own. I guarantee you there is someone else in your neck of the woods who is raring to go.
9. Sit down and write – This eventually has to happen. Put paper and pen in front of you or sit in front of an empty page on Word. Stare at it for a while until you begin to hear words flowing through your head. Write whatever comes to your mind. Who cares what you just said, it needed to come out. You might get a practice session or you might begin your first novel. You can also practice writing a short story or a poem. Mental exercise or stimulation.
10. Take Writing Workshops – I can’t tell you how many workshops I have been to in my life on writing. Either they have been listening to agents, publishers, writers, police officers and even a coroner. On some level they were related to the art of writing or the topic of interest. When I started I was just beginning to own up to the fact that I was a writer. What happened is that I learned so much about writing that I didn’t realize went into the process. I met some amazing people and developed some great friendships.
These are just tips. We are all different. We have varied moods, personalities, likes/dislikes. The above list is some ideas to get you started. Use it as a nudge to think about and consider. Once you get started, you will create your own ideas on how to write. I tried the romance thing and when the music stopped playing I completely forgot about it. It was useless for me but it was fun to create the “mood.” I’ve thought I was sitting down to write a novel and ended up with a short story. I started writing my historical fiction and realized I didn’t have a clue. That meant I had to do a lot of research and then get back to writing. One book spoke to me all the way through, the other refused to help at all. At the end of the day, if you are further into your path as a writer, you have more integrity with your creative voice within.
When you go to your favorite local bookstore (yeah I know, if there happens to be one) you will find so many wonderful writers. The next book on the shelf could be yours!
Related articles
- Writing Tips & Secrets (susancondon.wordpress.com)
- Writing Adventure (straightshit.wordpress.com)
- A Writer Blocked (viehebdomadaires.wordpress.com)
- Weekly Grammar Tip: starting a sentence with “and” or “but” (writingwithbothsidesofmybrain.wordpress.com)
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Writing to Heal the Inner Spirit
I began writing before I married my ex-husband, in the high school class that I met him in. It was a creative writing class though I can’t recall the exact name of it. Amazingly, I met him and felt compelled to write drama – BIG CLUE to me but I was only 16 at the time. What did I know? After divorcing him I wrote about the trauma of losing my son to the marriage and about domestic violence. I journaled, I wrote poetry and when I took a short story class in college and realized there was such a thing; I started writing short stories. My short stories enable me to write about the death of my Grandma – I immortalized her in a fictional tale. The suicide of an employee that my then boyfriend had hired. The impending death of my stepfather (I wrote a story about him before he died of Leukemia). The death of my 16 year old brother came up in several writings as well.
Writing about the people I loved, producing stories or poems about what they meant to me, this helped me to deal with how I was effected by them. I thought in terms of metaphors so writing non-fiction just didn’t suit me.
However, our graduate program at JFKU expected our thesis to be a reflection of how we had grown as a person by taking their Holistic training program for Counseling Psychology. I wrote “Revisiting Domestic Violence: Empathy for the Batterer can lead to Developing a Holistic Treatment Program.” I spoke about my batterer throughout the thesis.
Yet I wanted to tell my own story by the end of this paper. There was another side I needed to get off my chest.
I decided to write a memoir with the thesis in the final chapter. This book was called “Absent Hearts, Missing Pieces.” The book was about child abuse, domestic violence, dead beat dads, death, adoption, and losing the custody of my only child (this book is no longer in print). It didn’t sell because by then Oprah Winfrey had told her story as had other celebrities and we were then at the beginning stages of reality shows. No one wanted my story because I was a nobody.
Having written my memoir, the story out of my system and I still had the urge to write.
I was free to write whatever I wanted. I began to write my first novel “Little Girls Should Ride Ponies.” This book dealt with the same thing I had written about in my memoir, though now it was told as a story with fictional characters in made up stories. I also added a few diagnoses to my characters which I was now dealing with as a social worker and a psychotherapist. This book is available for download through Smashwords and in a few weeks it will be on Amazon as a paperback version.
Writing my first novel took place while living in Baltimore, Maryland and Northern California. At the same time I was involved with the now defunct Baltimore Writer’s Alliance and when I moved back West, the California Writer’s Club. The book was reviewed by two critique groups. I took many workshops on writing and began to hone in on my skills as a writer. The novel was a far cry from the memoir because I had grown as a woman and an author. That was why I took the memoir out of print. I didn’t want to re-write it (yet) and I wasn’t interested in having this story of my past floating around for sale anymore. That part of my life was over. I had let it go and moved on.
By this time I had been a social worker with Children’s Protective Services for six years. I loved my job, I loved working with the kids. I had the respect of colleagues, attorneys, judges, and para-professionals involved. I enjoyed every aspect of my job except the new administration that took over in my sixth year. As a result of this I ruffled some feathers which you aren’t allowed to do and as a result they took their revenge. I was put on Administrative Leave from my job with no explanations and no idea when it would end. It was like house arrest. At the same time I had had this idea to write about my stepfather’s journey to America after the 1956 revolution in Hungary. With no end in sight from the leave, I began utilizing my time by conducting research. I read books, watched movies: both documentary and fiction, viewed photos and studied the people’s faces. I also began talking to people online and even did an interview with a Professor from Hungary, who had written a non-fiction about 1956, using Skype. From this I was able to begin writing my second novel. Being on Administrative Leave turned out to be a blessing because I was able to see first hand the effects of the government who try to push down people’s rights. While I lived in a “free” country, I began to question freedom. I began to question the rights of workers. I began to question the need to have unions (who were no where in sight when it came time to talk to the county about why I was on leave in the first place). The reasons for putting me on Administrative Leave were completely fabricated but the advice of an attorney told me to get out of there. He had been up against this agency once and wasn’t going to do it again.
The Uprisers: A Hungarian Historical Fiction was written and is now available on ebook format through Smashwords and is already available on Amazon as a paperback.
Writing about the 1956 revolution served two purposes. It helped me to grow as a professional and as a writer. I was then able to understand what my stepfather had been through as a young man. What our family friends had been through – of course these people, whom I had grown up with, had mostly died of cancer before they reached their 60′s. Now they were gone and this book was in honor of them. The story of the revolution touched me on so many levels. I cried while reading a non-fiction – which I generally don’t like to read – so I definitely do not cry over them.
A healing process of my inner spirit, the trauma of the past, I felt ready to move forward. The writing journey I had been on for over thirty years had enabled me to feel strong enough to come back to Ohio. I had gone away in 1980 with what I would come to learn was an abusive husband to rid myself from the abuse of my childhood. I stayed away because every time I came home, I faced the wrath of my stepfather and the continued emotional abuse of my narcissistic mother. I couldn’t be here in Ohio as an adult. I didn’t want to be in California either because I was like a fish out of water there. But I had no where to turn. My writing played a huge part, as an adjunct to years of therapy and a master’s program that became an advanced course in self-awareness.
Returning home has presented fresh obstacles to career and family yet I was ready to take them on. These challenges took me away from my writing (other than via blogging) for a bit but now I am back in the saddle again. Currently I am focusing on myself as a business. That of a psychotherapist and an author. I am planning to teach a course on writing to heal the inner spirit and as I began to design the class today, I realized I needed to put it here first as I had so much to say about the need to write.
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The Publishing Nightmare
As a writer I have found the process of getting to publication a difficult and painful experience. I have tried the normal route of writing query letters and receive rejection after rejection. My thoughts on this are that unless you write a cookie cutter genre or theme of the moment book, or are the minority of the month, you will get rejected. I understand that agents and publishers need to make money but why is it that the books being published seem to be less and less interesting. And why is it that I find the books in production that I have read in my writer’s critique group (while living in CA) were much more fascinating than the junk I see on shelves. How many “Someone’s Daughter” titles do we need? Why are we interested in reading a sex book from a self-professed alcoholic? Wouldn’t any book from a self-help guru, after the first few be redundant? Especially if it is on the same topic?
In the olden days things weren’t any better which is why some started their own publishing houses. Women had to use a male pseudonym. Does it ever get better?
Then there is the self-publishing industry. Everyone is happy to publish your book for a fee. This would be great if you could work with them personally and oversee production. The first self-publishing house I worked with it took several takes before they could get one single graph at the back of my book going in the right direction. Just one. Imagine if it were a math book or a book of blueprints.
Currently I am working with another house where it is free if you do it yourself. They give you a format but unless your book fits their cookie-cutter image of a book, your book won’t go in properly. Mine didn’t. Then I found that it was not set up to understand headers don’t belong on chapter pages and neither headers nor footers should be in sections or on the opening pages at the front of the book. When I asked if I could pay for them to alter just this one aspect they said “NO!” You had to pay for the whole thing or nothing at all. Considering I had spent several hours getting into the format, I opted out. Though I did ask what it would look like if they did it. Evidently they weren’t clear what a book should look like when it is published professionally.
So I met a woman through a meetup.com group and as we were talking one evening amongst friends, I learned that she was interested in working with me. She had some publishing experience and wanted to take on my project to get back in the game again with the latest in software gadgets. As she had In Design, she was able to take my book and tell it exactly where headers and footers should be. She also had Photoshop and was able to create a cover for the book. So we spent several hours together working on the formatting and then put it into the self-publishing website. Ta DA! Now the fireworks begin.
First, UPS dumped my proof copy at the back of my house (even though my front door is on a main street). It happened to be a day of tornadoes and thunderstorms and for some reason the book was not packaged in plastic (like Amazon does). Since I do not use the back of my house, I did not know this for several days. It came early, which was unexpected. When I finally found the soggy wet mess I brought it in and looked at the book. I could still find mistakes even with a very wet and dirty book. And yes I got my money back!
Second, we fixed the mistakes and then re-sent it in. It was approved. After several “contact us” help emails I finally got them to change the paper color to cream. I had accidentally clicked white (not realizing this is only for non-fiction) and they would not let you change it once clicked. Then they made me re-submit for approval. Now mind you only the color of the paper was changed on this take. So imagine my surprise when I get an email saying everything was approved but my cover photo? A couple of “contact us” help emails later and they realized they had made a mistake.
When is the online world going to realize that “contact us” customer service lines do not work? It is inexperienced young people who know nothing about their product answering questions. Of course the term answering questions is sort of a joke. Basically it is a cut and paste job where they click on a response and fill in blanks with words from your email. Since they don’t really understand their product, they often click the wrong responses. In some cases the contact us – helper (or should I say annoying, frustrating, employee who enjoys wasting peoples time for $7/hour) does not even live in this country nor do they speak English properly. In a time when we are all still striving to return to more prosperous times, this is one more reason that we aren’t. Thus the hassle of using online services means you waste precious time thanks to people who don’t know what they are doing.
Finally I am online and published in ebook and paperback formats. I am not too worried about getting my books in hardback until I reach the level of J.K. R. or Steven King. While I hope to achieve this someday I am not sure that at this moment people will be lining up to get collector’s editions. It has been quite a task of getting to this point and once again I feel confident and satisfied with the title Author.
So if you too are hoping to see yourself in print and are someone who has the guts to write something really deep, entertaining, that hasn’t been done before and someone who has a catchy title that is unique. Try to do it through the normal publishing channels and if all else fails – self-publish. However, if you are going to self-publish, spare us all in that world to get your book properly edited, formatted and professionally presentable. Anyone can self-publish. Don’t keep us down with that motto. The Celestine Prophecy was self-published and I would prefer to be on this side of the bookshelf than the side with all the unknowns for a reason. Keep in mind though that anyone can be published through a publishing house too. All you need is money and to show up on some carpet for an opening somewhere and suddenly everyone wants to buy your book. Why? I really couldn’t say.
Related articles
- Learning the Literary Ropes (answers.com)
- Self-Publishing Pet Peeves (briggsblogs.wordpress.com)
- Publishing is no longer a job or an industry – it’s a button (gigaom.com)
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Meet the Author
Save the date, Sunday, April 15th from 11:30am – 12:30 pm. Hungarian Author’s Jeannine Vegh and Karl Jeney will be speaking at a **Soup and Learn hosted by the Hungarian Cultural Association. The even will be located in the basement of the Hungarian church at 365 Woodrow Avenue, Columbus, OH. Both authors hope to have enough paperback copies available for purchase at a special price! They will also autograph your copies personally. Looking forward to meeting you. (**RSVP erzsiwagner at sbcglobal.net There is a donation for the soup and this is the main reason needed for an rsvp.)
Jeannine Vegh will be discussing her latest novel “The Uprisers,” A Hungarian Historical Fiction based on the 1956 Revolution.
In The Uprisers, After eleven years of brutal communist leadership, a young girl and her brother join a grass roots campaign to end oppression in Hungary. Followed by thousands of other students, professors, and local workers, what begins as a peaceful march ends in a brutal massacre. One will perish and the other will make it safely to America. In the U.S., the battle is not over and our protagonist is put in the middle of yet one more fight to save the honor of the ‘Old Country.’
Ten years later the hero returns home on a job assignment, immediately impacted by the communist regime, and a detective of Russian heritage. The story ends as the Iron Curtain is lifted and the second generation feels the impact of its past. One of them becomes determined to share the family legacy.
Karl Jeney will be discussing his first novel entitled “Meus Insomnium: My Dream/My Nightmare.”
Meus Insomnium (Latin with a dual meaning: My Dream or My Nightmare) chronicles the struggles of handsome 49-year-old Ohio psychiatrist Dr. Jonas Reddington and his two most troubled patients: Wesley, 57, an African-American postman who as a child hiding in a Georgia cornfield witnessed the brutal Klan murder of his grandfather; and Jacob, 74, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp wrestling with the loss of his sister there many years ago. Soon an unusual relic – a petrified box – enters their lives. Embellished with inscriptions and an enigmatic woodcut, it tantalizes them with its peculiar properties and its sordid past; a past that’s taken it from its creation during the Renaissance, through the hands of Adolf Hitler, and finally to Dr. Reddington who decides to utilize it as a therapy tool during his counseling sessions. That fateful decision thrusts him and his wife Katherine on a spiritual quest with startling consequences.
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Read an Ebook Week March 4-10, 2012
Have an e-Reader (Kindle, Sony, Nook, etc…) but haven’t used it yet? Now is your chance. This week many e-books are on sale and some are even free! Take an opportunity to try your device out and save money at the same time! Shop at Smashwords.com today!
My two novels are now on sale for 1/2 price! Little Girls Should Ride Ponies and The Uprisers.
India’s Billion dollar man doesn’t know what to do with his money
Oh woe is me! I have so much money and I haven’t a thing to do with it. Really? This article I read on yahoo the
Oh Woe is Me, What should I do with my billions of dollars? There is nothing for me here in India.
other day has to be almost as dumb as the title “Little Gloria, Happy at Last.” Feeling sorry for filthy rich people is about as pathetic as one would have to stoop. It only goes to show that money does not buy intelligence or happiness. It only buys money, more money, and even more money.
The comments made on Yahoo, after this article warmed my heart however. People were noting that this rich man could invest in a decent water treatment system in India – a place not known for clean and safe water. Would you drink the water in the photo I have shown here? Me either, but in India, do they have a choice? I am sure they could use a social services system, non-profits, housing for the poor, surely there are plenty of things one could do to make India a safer, healthier, and richer place for all to live in.
Greece is falling apart, perhaps he could buy out the county – just a joke – but I am sure they could use an investor to help turn them around. Why have them borrow from other countries when this man has plenty to spare. I am sure he could take care of Greece’s problem and still have some money left over.
But back to India. Many of the jobs in the US were taken by Indians. Is that fair? Is it fair that even at a decent clothing store all you can buy is “Made in India,” “Made in China,” “Made in Thailand,” and all you get is very poorly constructed materials that last only for a few fittings. Nothing like the clothes you used to buy in better stores that you could wear for years. Perhaps this billionaire could clean up the sweat shops in India so that they would be treated fairly, paid a living wage, learn how to sew properly, use better materials/thread/buttons/zippers/snaps, so that we can get good quality clothes once again.
I think it is interesting when you look at the qualities of a filthy rich person vs. that of a very poor person. The poor person knows exactly what is needed to turn this country around. They are without a job, a house, food to put on the table from their own earnings, and any dignity. Whereas the filthy rich person is so far removed from reality, all they can think of is gimme more, gimme more, gimme more. At this stage in life you can’t really be satisfied when your every wish is granted. How can you have pride in yourself when you are not accomplishing anything anymore? When you are just sitting on the couch clapping your hands. How sad this billionaire must be that he has no clue what is going on the world and how desperately his money is needed to turn things around. How sad that he has no clue that he could change the world for the better – with his other filthy rich billionaire friends and he might find some peace of mind for a change. Of course with an attitude like his “Oh what do I do with all my billions?” Do we want him having a hand in changing the world? Especially in a country still caught up in letting go of the caste system? You have to be careful what you ask for. Maybe we should all just feel sorry for him. He really has nothing. Nothing at all.
Related articles
- The Sad Reason Why This Indian Billionaire Refuses To Invest In India (businessinsider.com)
- Indian tycoon has tons of cash, nowhere to invest (goerie.com)
- In Indian Slum, Misery, Work, Politics and Hope – Jim Yardley via NYTimes.com (underpaidgenius.com)
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.
