Our Mission Statement:

The mission of Pens & Pages Writers Guild is to facilitate and encourage writers of all genres, to share resources and tips about the writing process and, most of all, to provide a positive and productive forum that will encourage and support each writer in his or her creative endeavors.
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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Feminine Spirituality

When I signed up to write a blog in November, I thought I would write about "being thankful" because that's where my focus is in November. And I do have much to be thankful for this year! However,I've just read an interesting book called The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. It is her first novel, and all the while I was reading, I kept trying to figure out why her name seemed so familiar. I finally googled her name and found out that she used to write for Guide Post. She is now known as a contemplative, feminine spiritualist--thus the title for this blog. I found it interesting that Dr. David Jeremiah of "Turning Point" lists her along with Rick Warren and Brother Lawrence and others as "people who have discovered how we can bring real living excitement into this life".

One thing I find especially interesting about her is that her first full length publications are highly acclaimed memoirs. Regardless of what one might think of her "theology", I think The Secret Life of Bees shows a rich imagination at work. Lily, the main character will "stay with me" for awhile.

Nana

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Nano Bits

I should have known better than to sign up for a blog in November, when I planned to do NaNoWriMo. SO I am a week late. But if we're all a week late, we'll be on time, right?

The good thing about having the external motivation of Nano is that I'm getting more writing done than I think I've ever done in such a short amount of time.

The bad thing is that it is at the expense of other important things in my life, like housecleaning. Luckily I'm not expecting a lot of guests this month.

SInce I haven't had time to organize a coherent thought that doesn't involve my novel, I"m going to link to some resources I've found during the course of this month.

First, I was relieved to find this article on "Dialogue Spines", because it is something I'd been doing in my first drafts anyway. Now I know it isn't just lazy writing to let my characters yammer on and then add the scenery and flesh out the scene later.

Something that bothered me a lot in my first novel was the unwieldiness of using Word (or the shareware equivalent, Open Office, which is what I actually use)for the two-hundred page plus document that was my novel, plus the multiple smaller documents that were things like scene lists and character lists, plus my handwritten outlines and character studies and such. After I put that novel aside, I sort of forgot about it.

Last week I stumbled across a computer program specifically for novelists that has all those features and more. It's called Liquid Story Binder, and you can download it for a free month trial, which is what I've done. There are so many features that it's overkill for me, actually, but if I can at least figure out the basics that I would need and use, I think it will be just what I need. I'm going to try to master it enough to figure out if it is indeed what I want by the end of the month, as it is on sale half off for November.

The Nano Pep Talks are available online here and are good reading even if you aren't doing a Nanowrimo novel.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Whoops.

I missed my blog post deadline, but forgive me: I'm NaNoWrithing.
Yes, you read that right. I'm doin' the NaNoWriMo, and I'm at the point (it hits me late, I guess) where I'm going, "WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!" So, yeah. I'm NaNoWrithing.

For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowrimo. It's wikipedia, so not the final authority, but a pretty good start.

If you think you might want to participate (you'd be starting kind of late, this year, but it's not unheard of either) go here: www.nanowrimo.org.

It's the best thing I've ever seen other than Dr.Wicked's "Write or Die" (here: http://writeordie.drwicked.com/)for slapping those words down on the virtual paper (or real -- many people still do it old school) and turning off the crabby little internal editor.

If you wanna write, you'll write, but sometimes you have a hard time getting over that hurdle of perfection. The NaNo helps with that.

So does Dr. Wicked...but you better be prepared to suffer if you don't keep typing...

Write on!

Edited to Add: (and show I don't endorse without trying first ;-)

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Dueling in Purple

Violet Black and DJ just finished a purple prose competition.

Purple prose is over-writing. It is when a bubbly, over enthusiastic writer uses far too many exciting, colorful modifiers; sensationally sizzling verbs; and excessively dramatic hyperbole. Well... you get it!

Purple prose is bad writing.

But, purple prose has many good uses.

Here are some we discovered:

1. Purple prose is great for loosening up and overcoming writer's block.
2. It helps a writer discover colorful words.
3. It stimulates new ideas.
4. It can be used to breathe life or fun into a piece, and edited for the best portions.
5. Purple prose is fun to write, and creates momentum and energy in the writer.
6. It is great for inspiring melodrama and humor.
7. It is a fun way to explore plot twists and turns.
8. It is especially useful in November when fatigued and starving Nanowrimo competitors are gropingly desperate for words to count!

We had a competition to see which of us could create the worst (or would that be best?) purple prose in three categories. We decided to post it here and let you determine which ones are the most purple. This will get long, so feel free to skim or skip if you like. That is typical of purple prose anyway.

We hope you are inspired, or at least laughing. We challenge you to duel as well. To participate, pick a winner for each category, and leave one or more of your best efforts in the comments. (You don't have to be a member of this blog to participate.)

Category 1: Where you live

A:
She looked out her kitchen window at the miles and miles of glorious, flat, spacious, open land. Only an occasional tree or house interrupted the horizon. Nowhere else in all the remaining sphere of the earth could one find the vastness of this marvelous free ranging land!

B: The wind lashes through like a death angel: uprooting all plants except the most strong, demonic weeds. The land is saturated in brown death; the air at times putrid with rotten grain and fresh, brown pies. The sun glares, often bleaching the sky like parchment. The air is so dry you feel as though you are suffocating. Hawks circle, ravens chortle, and the doves sob. But in the midst of this desolation... a spot of green sheltered by elms, and willows, and pines. And there stands a brick house the color of sand -- the place I call home.

Category 2: Where you shop

A:
I pushed open the door, and stopped to take in the intoxicating smell. My eyes caressed the items surrounding me, longing to touch and hold everything. Colors were dancing and prancing, trying to snatch my attention. I basked in it all for a moment, taking in deep luxuriant breaths. Joy and passion swelled inside me, longing for just one piece. "Fabric! Oh, how I love you!"

B:
She entered Porky's. The grocery store was the only respectable, genteel, gracefully aging business on one side of a shabby, old, run down shopping center. The strip mall, appropriately called, had been stripped of all usefulness, beauty, and respectability. The grocery store was the one remaining spark of life and goodness in the area. Compared to the overblown parasitic commercialism of the larger supermarkets; Sandy loved the smaller, cozy size of this store, and the ever gracious, hospitable, solicitous helpfulness of the employees.

Category 3: Your transportation

A:
She climbed into the red monster of a vehicle. At her age, getting into the suburban was like climbing Mt. Everest, and about as dangerous. She furtively reached up to grasp one of the hand-holds. It seemed to be light years away from her desperately extended fingertips. Finally, with gasping, choking breaths, she stretched far enough to grasp it. She lifted her leg up to the floor of the monster, then pulled with her arm and pushed with her leg to lift herself past that vast gaping chasm between the gravel and the vehicle. She pulled and pushed with all her strength, stretching every sinew, straining every muscle, bursting capillaries and veins until at last she heaved herself onto the seat of that cavernous beast. In exhaustion, she looked out over the blood-red hood of the vehicle, imagining that it had gotten its scarlet color by slaking its thirst with her life-blood, which now flowed dripping off its vast cold side.

B: I am sleek and red as a poppy. But I am tough and dignified like an army tank. I prefer to call myself Gladiator, but the ignoramus who orders me around calls me "Suburban". What an indignation!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Sending Up a Test Balloon

Being a writer, I can't just sit back and enjoy an experience. Some part of me is always living in the third person, writing about it, looking for metaphors and interesting imagery.


Today we (Brandon, the kids, and I) are in Albuquerque for the balloon festival. Today is one of the days where the shaped balloons are highlighted. We got up at 5:30 (but it sounds more impressive if I say we got up at 4:30, which is what it was New Mexico time) in order to eat breakfast and get out there in time to see the balloons go up at sunrise.

Row by row, the balloons billowed as they filled with hot air and slowly rose. The shape and colors of each balloon weren't fully discernible until they were completely full and ready to take off. What is that black and white one? Felix the Cat? No, Mickey Mouse. It turned out to be Pepe le Pew.

Then, amid cheers from the crowd, they would rise and float away, seemingly as effortlessly as soap bubbles (and there were vendors, coincidentally, selling soap bubble guns).

A couple of unflattering comparisons arose in my mind about writers, ego, and hot air, but I discarded them in favor of this:

An idea is like an empty hot air balloon. In fact, for me, it's like a balloon that someone else has given me, that I didn't work for at all. I have a lot of ideas, more ideas than I have time or energy. I don't know where they come from, and I don't take full credit for them.

The hard part isn't the idea (for me, but that may vary from person to person, I'm sure), it's making something of it. A hot air balloon isn't much to look at until a lot of energy has been expended to fill it up and flesh it out. Features become obvious that were previously hidden. Finally, the work is finished, waiting to be set free like the balloons bobbing, tethered to the ground.

Then a pilot and some other crew members are needed to make sure it gets up in the air. The final completed work, published, looks as effortless as a soap bubble, but in truth it took a lot of work and guidance by various individuals along the way, more than any casual observer could understand.

There was also something particularly appropriate about this metaphor since many of the balloons that we saw this morning were completely fantastic­--a gargoyle, a goldfish, a steam locomotive, a witch, a haunted house—imaginations set loose in reality.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Out of Time...

I started to read a book by that ^ title (or one very like it) but I just couldn't finish it. It's at the Book Shoppe, now, probably ;-) The subject was time travel -- apropos, yeah? -- a subject, I think, which is very hard to tackle. (I've only ever read one that I really liked -- The Time Traveler's Wife -- so, so good! (Sigh!) I'll lend it, but I must have it back)

Anyway, I'm way off the beaten path, here. So, back on track, here.

Do you ever feel that you are just out of step with time? Like everyone around you is moving on one scale and you're just a half-beat off? That's how I feel sometimes.

I remember seeing a sketch on Saturday Night Live once using that premise. It starred the host, Rob Morrow (Doc. Joel Fleishman on Northern Exposure) as a guy who, while lunching with his friends, attempted to engage in the conversation and interject jokes or funny anecdotes...but his attempts kept falling flat. Like they were just a hair off, one half-step too late. The friends at his table kept looking at him in that uncomfortable way, trying to muster a genuine laugh, yet only managing half-hearted, embarassed chuckles. After several failed attempts, he finally excuses himself to the restroom and instead goes into a time machine sort of booth, resets his time, steps out and rejoins his friends at the table. Now, magically, everything he says just...fits right. And the sketch fades out.

That's how I feel about my writing... like my perspective is just...a hair off; not needed... out of sequence. Like my observations and viewpoint are just...out of time. Almost as if the time for my writing/ viewpoint/ perspective has, sadly, passed.

Now I sound like I feel sorry for myself. That's not true. I can't see anything other than how I see it, so there's no use in lamenting the fact, yeah? Maybe ...my viewpoint isn't commercially viable. So what? One could make the argument that Jane Austen's small worldview didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Her writing was critiqued by the Bronte's (blech. Can't stand them.) as being too naive and innocent. She was criticised for not venturing beyond her limited country upbringing for subject matter. Yet look at the impact her little world -- with the limited society and restricting manners -- has had on the larger literary world.

Now, I'm not saying I'm a Jane Austen, my ego will never be healthy enough to make that claim. What I am saying is this... if Jane Austen hadn't shared her talent with the people in her life -- because she shared her writing with her family and a few select close friends, at least for the most part -- if Cassandra had burnt all her stories in addition to most of her personal letters...imagine what we would have lost! Thank God, Austen showed her stuff to her family. Thank God they thought enough of her writing to seek publication on her behalf posthumously. Thank God her little world and her way of processing it has a treasure trove of interests for those of us who read and reread her works...treasuring them as the priceless legacy they are.

I have no such hope for my own stuff, because I'm 1) realistic and 2) ridiculously unintuitive. Austen had a grasp, in her short life, on the motivations and idiosyncracies of the people who populated her world. I am not sure I have either her intuitiveness nor her fearlessness in portraying, faithfully, the people who populated her world.

It takes courage to write what you know; to be true -- especially if you think it's uninspiring or uninventive or lacking in creative initiative -- to your own viewpoint, world view, 'limited' experience. Yet, you are the ONLY "You" in existence. No one else can have your unique viewpoint, no one else can inhabit your specific time/space continuum, no one else can hold the exact opinions and insights you hold.

Share that "You" in whatever way you can. Someone will find their life enriched by your gift.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Harry's New Book

Saturday I attended the Panhandle Professional Writer's meeting. It was good to see Harry Haines again. I was also looking forward to attending his book singing later in the day. Unfortunately, his books will not be ready until October 15th. Still, it is exciting to know that he will soon see the completion of his second book of a three book series.

It is hard to believe that we had him as a guest speaker just last February. Then he was singing copies of Orphan, the first book of the series.

Orphan tells the story of a colt that is the only survivor of a fatal accident. The colt is taken to Dr. James Robert Masterson, a local veterinarian, for care. They name the horse Orphan. It seems that the horse will become another member of the family, and Masterson's daughter finds Orphan to be the therapy she needs to help her face a deadly bout with cancer. Then it is discovered that Orphan was sired by a valuable race horse. Soon the Masterson's are embroiled in troubles they never dreamed of.

Harry has a talent for keeping a reader in the story -- wondering what is going to happen next. In his upcoming book, Texas Panic!, he again has Dr. Masterson embroiled in more trouble than any of us would want. Here is a brief quote from Harry's web site:
This is the health scare with everything -- a gruesomely exotic disease, unknown dangers, bungling bureaucrats, and a common food item found in virtually every home. ...the sensation-hungry American press finds the story irresistible.
But we don't have to deal with it. Instead, we can settle into our favorite chair to enjoy another adventure as we see how Dr. Masterson deals with this new set of trials and tribulations.

You can find out more about his newest book here, or look at his schedule for book signings and speaking engagements here.

I look forward to reading his new book when it comes out. If you get a chance, send him an email of congratulations!

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Twilight

I believe in twilight
The end of day beginning of night
When most of creation sleeps
Resting for a new day tomorrow
Rain is washing away this day
Refreshing the streams and flowers
Before bedtime
The sounds I hear sing a lullaby
Putting me to sleep.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Submitted for mcj by Solard...

It's a humpty dumpty fence - a wall fence
I've been intrigued with it these days
Looking out the sunporch windows
It is held together, the mountain rocks
With red mortar - a standout scene
And I picture humpty dumpty sitting there
Watching the cars and trucks go by
Until one day he turned too quickly
And lost his balance and fell
Being an egg or egghead
And needing glue and reconstruction
We all took turns trying to match
His parts - just like a puzzle
Well, (deep subject) one piece was
Missing when we finished
And we hunted everywheree
In all the grass and under the rocks
Where bugs hide
But the missing piece has never
Been found
So humpty dumpty won't sit on the wall
Without that piece to balance him.

Can you find it?

prose poem by mcj

Friday, September 11, 2009

Life's Interruptions

I've heard somewhere that--life is what happens when you're waiting for it to happen--or something like that. Anyway that's how I often find myself --waiting for "real life" when "real life" is right now. Then along comes something unplanned and takes me out of my routine and leaves me floundering for awhile. Ordinarily I'm a person of plans and habits, and I feel secure when routines are established. And then I ask, "What is real life?"

Anyway, since my husband had a couple of bypasses and spent six days in the hospital, I was forced to get out of my routine. It's been good for him to need me in a new and different way, and it's been good for me to focus on him. And although it's been difficult to focus on a specific writing project, journaling has again been my "salvation" and caused me to think about LIFE and it's many blessings.

I also found a "new and right spirit" within...

Nana