Experiences

So, this weekend was fabulous. It brought about the culmination of several things I've been looking forward to for a long time.

First, on Friday night, we celebrated my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. We've been planning this for almost a year now, and the event was everything we wanted it to be and more. The night couldn't have been more prefect if we had scripted the entire thing.

Secondly, NEW MOON finally came out. The long awaited next installment in the Twilight saga hit theaters on Friday. If you've read my blog before, you are familiar with my obssession. My girlfriends and I went twice...yesterday. We hit a ten o'clock show in the morning and then an 8 o'clock show later that evening.

The movie was fantastic...again, the build up and hype definitely lived up to the real thing. But the two movie-watching experiences were very different. The morning showing had an atmosphere of excitment that was palpable. The viewers really got into the story...you could almost feel the tension, feel the emotion at certain times during the movie. The evening crowd however, was completely different. This crowd was made up of mostly teenagers, which made the experience an interesting one. There were screams and shouts when the wolf-pack stripped off their shirts. There was laughter during some of the more emotional scenes. The crowd had a very "Team Jacob" feel to it, which was "difficult" for those of us in the audience who are definitely and wholey committed to "Team Edward". I was really glad we had chosen the morning showing to be our first experience with seeing the movie.

But it got me to thinking. What goes on around us shapes the way we experience things. Watching a movie, reading a book, even creating a scrapbook. When I'm reading a book, if I'm out on the porch with a glass of lemonade on a hot July day, is my experience different than if I were curled up in front of the fire with a cup of hot tea in January? If I'm reading on a crowded plane, am I experiencing the book differently than if I were curled up in my recliner at home?

When I look through the scrapbooks I've created over the years, there are some pages that evoke not only the memory of the event being preserved, but the memory of where I was and who I was with when I created it. And music can really call to mind memories of times gone by.

Our experiences shape us. In writing, our characters have those life-changing experiences as well. It's up to us as the authors, to make those experiences as real and authentic as possible, perhaps even taking note from our own real-life experiences.

So, go out today, and experience something. You'll be glad you did!

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra

www.debrastjohnromance.com

Happy Thanksgiving by Margot Justes

Between scheduled events every weekend this month and working, November slipped by and seemed to disappear.

I do want to acknowledge an incredible holiday, one where at least this time of year we give thanks, and no matter how tough it is out there, we still have something to be thankful for.

I’ve been blessed with a loving family and great friends-friends I’ve kept for many years- decades, and new friends and acquaintances I’ve made since I started writing. My world has only gotten richer, and I’m thankful. I’m not cooking on Thursday, that tradition now belongs to my older daughter, but given the special holiday, we celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday at our house as well.

On that note, I would like to wish everyone a truly happy and wonderful Thanksgiving!

Till next time,
Margot Justes
http://margotsmuse.blogspot.com
www.mjustes.com
A Hotel in Paris ISBN 978-1-59080-534-3

Writer's block - Real or Not? by Robert W. Walker

Psychiatry has weighed in on the question of creative blocks and have suggested that they have a beginning in the brain, while writers of poetry, story, and novel tell themselves they just need to get out of their own way and just write. We are at once crafting a story that must allow no wires or strings to show; we attempt to stay off stage, behind the curtain, but at times we see ourselves as did the Wizard at the pulleys and gears and we wonder if we may not simply be frauds at work. Then the doubts seep in like water through rock. It’s been done before by better men than me…TV and Film have eaten up and spit out every idea, so why bother? I can’t compete with CGI effects and CSI effects. Why bother. Who do you think you are anyway? Perhaps a man in need of a vacation, a swift kick, a well-meaning nag to thunder and rail at you at such moments? Some external force to challenge you? And if all fails? Are you left on that lonely street called Writers’ Block, and is there or isn’t there such a place?

Although it has been written about in newspapers and magazines, science journals, books on the creative geniuses of our species, books on inventors and sculptors, depicted in untold films and TV programs including Seinfeld, and although a scadfold of medical/psychological articles have been devoted to it along with entire books and a Woody Allen Play, and despite that it has its own Wikipedia page, and that Google has enough entries in it along with ten-step cures for it for hopelessly ‘blocked’ professional…in fact, enough entries to paper a writer’s walls, DOES this thing really exists…or is it all in our heads?

A great many more people believe it is just a writer’s self-serving indulgence, even sloth, that is at work—even in a writer who has penned untold full length, complex novels. Many naysayers point to any other profession and claim these other professions, say pharmacist, bookstore owner, book reviewer, bank teller, even journalist never cry “blocked” and, I presume then, they believe no person in any other profession has ever quit, given up or in, lost days or weeks due to forces within their craniums, had love and hate drive them from a full day’s work or a divorce, the birth of a child, the death of a child, the loss of a job or health..That no journalist ever missed a deadline, no bookstore owner ever closed up shop or the fight against the big box stores and Wal-Mart—forces outside one’s control.

Regardless, there is more than scant evidence and anecdotes about writer’s block that it also occurs with lyricists, poets, and any creative writing arena. If you disbelieve it, Google it. Here below are a handful of the reams of pages on the ‘malaise of the artistic mind which may actually differ from the mind of a McDonald’s worker, a journalist, a shopkeeper, or a news anchor woman; it may be the same difference one finds in a student who can and does complete an Independent Study project and one who is absolutely incapable of completing work wherein s/he has to craft the project, determine its every part and the sum of all, its every parameter from beginning to end with no guarantees of success or payment or heat for the night or pension or percentage or anything.

FROM GOOGLE – selected from hundreds of pages:

1. Writer's Block -- Practical Tips for Beating Your Writer's Block

Though some people say that writer's block doesn't actually exist, the fact remains that most writers have trouble with writer's block at some point in ...

fictionwriting.about.com/od/writingroadblocks/tp/block.htm - Cached - Similar

2. News results for writer's block


Gigwise

Pete Wentz : Pete Wentz suffered writer's block after Mowgli's birth‎ - 1 day ago

Fall Out Boy member Pete Wentz has revealed that after his son Bronx Mowgli was born last November he was unable to write a song for six months. ...

Entertainment and Showbiz! - 41 related articles »


3. Book results for writer's block

Writer's block: and other problems of the pen - by Jenna Glatzer - 250 pages

Writer's Block: The Cognitive Dimension - by Mike Rose - 160 pages

Writer's block: two one act plays - by Woody Allen - 75 pages

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Books From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For other uses, see Writer's block (disambiguation).

Writer's block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Causes of writer's block

• 2 Notable blocked writers

• 3 Writer's block in Music

• 4 Writer's block as depicted in other media

• 5 References

• 6 External links


[edit] Causes of writer's block

Writer's block may have many causes. Some are essentially creative problems that originate within an author's work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration. A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author's experience or ability. (A fictional example can be found in George Orwell's novel Keep The Aspidistra Flying, in which the hero Gordon Comstock struggles in vain to complete an epic poem describing a day in London: "It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a series of fragments.") [1]

Other blocks, especially the more serious kind, may be produced by adverse circumstances in a writer's life or career: physical illness, depression, the end of a relationship, financial pressures, a sense of failure. The pressure to produce work may in itself contribute to a writer's block, especially if he is compelled to work in ways that are against his natural inclination, i.e. too fast or in some unsuitable style or genre, and he or she is not willing to adapt. In some cases, writer's block may also come from feeling intimidated by a previous big success, the creator putting on him/herself a paralyzing pressure to find something to equate that same success again. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert, reflecting on her post-bestseller prospects, proposes that such a pressure might be released by interpreting creative writers as "having" genius rather than "being" a genius [1]. In George Gissing's New Grub Street, one of the first novels to take writer's block as a main theme, the novelist Edwin Reardon becomes completely unable to write and is shown as suffering from all those problems. [2]

Recently, the writer and neurologist Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas. [3]

[edit] Notable blocked writers

Well-known writers who have suffered from block include George Gissing, Samuel Coleridge, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Mitchell and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Writers who overcame block and published new work after a hiatus of decades include Harold Brodkey, whose novel The Runaway Soul appeared some 30 years after it was first projected, and Henry Roth, whose first novel, Call It Sleep, was published in 1934; his second, Mercy Of A Rude Stream, did not appear until 1994.

[edit] Writer's block in Music

The album Black Clouds & Silver Linings by the progressive metal band Dream Theater contains a song called "Wither", which is about the fear of having writer's block suffered by the guitar player of the band John Petrucci. It is said that the songs in this album are about personal experiences.

[edit] Writer's block as depicted in other media

In works where writers appear as characters, writer's block has often been shown as part of the story.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with sourced additions.

• 8½

• Adaptation

• Ask the Dust

• Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)

• Bag of Bones

• Barton Fink

• Californication

• Deconstructing Harry

• El Goonish Shive

• Finding Forrester

• George Lucas in Love

• I Capture the Castle

• JONAS

• Kaiyoppu

• Leaving Las Vegas

• October Road

• The Lost Weekend

• Masters of Horror: The Black Cat

• Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities

• Misery

• Quills

• Read or Die

• Secret Window

• Sex and Lucia

• Shabd

• Shakespeare in Love

• Stranger than Fiction

• Swimming Pool

• Sylvia

• The Golden Notebook

• The Shining

• Throw Momma from the Train

• Woman on the Beach

• Wonder Boys

[edit] References

1. ^ George Orwell, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Chapter 2.

2. ^ George Gissing, New Grub Street.

3. ^ Joan Acolella, "Blocked: why do writers stop writing?, The New Yorker, June 14 2004.

[edit] External links

• Psychology of Writing & Revising

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer%27s_block"

Categories: Writing

But still some will adamantly deny the existence of this nebulous gadfly of a disorder that comes and goes, and many of these same people will accept that a writer may have a Muse or may Channel some force from beyond. I leave it up to you, but it has been my experience that those who have never suffered a serious, long-running bout with the Block may well not understand J. Alfred Prufrock’s disconnect with the world either.

I invite you to leave a comment, no matter which side of the discussion you fall or stand on.

My latest e-book is 160,000 words, divides into three books in one and Children of Salem saw many years of being a blocked book and fitting it should hold a curse on it as it details the terrors of a Witch Hunt and subsequent trials, all the while a devil called Block whispering in my ear that I was incapable of crafting this complex story, and yet readers call the control of the material nothing short of genius – enough to make even a jaded old writer blush pink.

Happy Blockless Writing, and do leave a comment for me!

Rob Walker

http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/robertwwalkerbooks.com

"Dead On takes the reader's capacity for the imagination of horror to stomach turning depths, and then gives it more twists than a Georgia backroad that paves an Indian trail." - Nash Black

Are you Happy being a Writer? by DL Larson

I've never been asked such a question, but after reading an article about what makes people happy, I have to say I'm more satisfied being a writer than anything else. Maybe it's the same for you. The journey for many writers is long and grueling, but I have experienced untold hours of happiness while churning out words that twist and mesh together. To create and shape conflict, or brew trouble out of nothing but words is powerful stuff. To use my voice to enlighten the reader to my character's insight delights me as if I'm at a candy counter and have all the time in the world to decide what delectable item I need to express just the right emotion.
The process of writing makes me very happy.

Unfortunately, for some of us, what comes after the initial writing is not so fun. The rewrites or fixing technical problems becomes a burden. It's no longer as intriguing as it was when I first started. Now I must face the fact my writing is not perfect; I spent too much time at the candy counter or not enough time chosing diversified words. I left holes in the script, my point of views aren't quite right, and the plot sagged toward the end. Now's the time to get serious and fix the problems I created.

I realized long ago I needed to change my attitude when it came to rewriting and editing my work. And I found happiness once again. The idea is simple and if you like sweets as much as I do, this process might make your rewrites more enjoyable.
I generally let my work sit for awhile, I walk away from it and begin a new project. It may be for a few days or longer. The point is I focus on something else. Then, I go back. Standing before the candy counter in my mind, I re-read my work and the old feeling of excitement for my story floods back because I've allowed myself to have fun with the words once again. I'm back to picking and chosing just the right phrase, inserting whole bits of diaglogue or backdrop that was overlooked before. I think of myself as my assistant, perfecting my work with a critical eye for detail. I even laugh and poke fun of my own mistakes. What was she thinking? Can you believe she actually wrote that? It's proven to be so much more beneficial than being self-critical and beating myself up for not writing my story correctly the first time around.

Writing has so many layers to it few of us get it right the first time the words land on the paper. Finding satisfaction with the process of story telling is much healthier than demanding perfection with every sentence I write. Words flow easier if I'm not scrutinizing each as they enter my mind. I give myself permission to have fun with my writing. Afterall, the plot, the setting, the characters are only words on paper. They can be rearranged any time, over and over and over again. They can be taken away or replaced. I am the one who breathed life into them, no one but me. I have the power to form them to fit my needs.

I've never once run out of words, there's so many to chose from. When I start a new project the candy counter is over-flowing once again. I pace back and forth, wondering, pondering, thinking of all the delectable possiblities. What a wonderful dilemma. I'm a happy writer indeed!

How about you? Are you happy being a writer?

Til next time ~

DL Larson

Julie Lomoe, Morgan Mandel's Guest at Double M Today

I'm hosting Julie Lomoe today at my personal blog, http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/
Julie sent me so much wonderful information, I decided to share part of it here. If you feel so inclined, by all means hop on over to Double M at http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/ for the rest of the story and read her blog post.

About Julie Lomoe -
Julie Lomoe knows home health care from the ground up. As President of ElderSource, Inc., a Licensed Home Care Services Agency in upstate New York, she became certified as a Personal Care Aide and filled in frequently for absent aides. The experience inspired Eldercide, the first in a mystery series featuring the staff and clients of Compassionate Care, an agency in the fictional town of Kooperskill, New York.


Julie’s first published novel, Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders is set in a social club for the mentally ill on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The work was inspired by her many years of mental health experience, both as a professional and as a consumer. Both books are available online from Virtual Bookworm, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College, Julie received an MFA from Columbia University and an MA in Art Therapy from New York University. She lived in SoHo for many years, exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, and many Manhattan galleries. She showed her paintings and won a prize at the Woodstock Festival of Music and Art in 1969, an experience she blogged about in a three-part series this past August.

Julie has published poetry as well as articles on home care, mental health, aging, and women’s issues. Visit her blog, Julie Lomoe’s Musings Mysterioso (http://julielomoe.wordpress.com/) to learn more and read the first chapters of her novels.

You're invited now to hop on over to http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/ to read Julie's post and learn a little bit more about her.

Thanks,
Morgan Mandel\
http://www.morganmandel.com/
http://choiceonepublishing.com/

Namaste

I’m involved with a number of writing groups and events one of which is the Love is Murder Con (LIM CON) held during the first weekend in February. We’ve held it annually until now, taking a break in 2010 to reorganize and the decision was an appropriate one for the board, the conference and the attendees. Just wait until you see what we have planned for 2011.

We had our most recent board meeting last week to go over a variety of issues that conference boards usually discuss and I left the meeting feeling quite excited about the 2011 LIM CON. As we continue to hear of other CON’s folding or taking even longer breaks than just the one year we did, it’s becoming clearer that our 2011 LIM CON will be a well-attended and high-energy event.

We’re working on a new web page so check the website from time to time, especially in Jan 2010 for updates. The url is www.loveismurder.net.

In the meantime, I’ve been happily working and writing and cooking. I’m working on a cookbook that I’m very excited about and hope to have it available for the 2011 Holiday Season. I continue to plug away at my fiction and have started writing more poetry and short stories.

I say happily working because I do have a good job. It’s hard and challenging work, but I’m happily and gainfully employed with benefits and I have a job that is as about as guaranteed as they come. Given the cost of my daughter’s education, a recent divorce and so many other issues, I doubt I’ll retire anytime soon, but that’s okay since I do actually enjoy my work and I receive bi-annual feedback during reviews that my work is appreciated. I count my blessings each and everyday.

While I’ve hits some bumps in the road these past two years, 2010 and beyond is shaping up to be incredibly rewarding on all fronts and I have to say that I’m excited about it, especially the time I’ve been able to carve out for my writing. Interestingly enough my yoga practice has facilitated this more than anything else. I’m a yoga cheerleader these days because the yoga process and philosophy has provided me with a foundation to accomplish many things I only dreamed about, and more importantly, helped me through some difficult times.

So, as I continue to be busy with work, writing, and living my life, I’ve finally found a peacefulness that I’ve never known before and a sense of living consciously that has kept me safe from some very negative energy from people that have unpleasantly surprised me of late. To these individuals and everyone else out there I wish only good things and positive energy and will genuinely end this entry on a yoga note - Namaste.

Do The Right Thing

No, I'm not talking about the Spike Lee movie.

In addition to that movie, those four words mean a lot. Of course, Doing The Right Thing can mean different things, depending on whom you ask. Sometimes it means paying your taxes. Sometimes it means volunteering in your community in some way. To some people it means going to church and putting money in the offering plate. For others it may mean simply being fair and honest with customers and others.

Anyway, I want to talk about one more way you can Do The Right Thing. But first, a little background.

When I was a kid, my parents didn’t have a heck of a lot. Seriously. My dad and mom both worked in textile mills in the South, and neither had a high school diploma. When I came along, it meant mom couldn’t work for a while, but finally she was able to get back into harness and let my grandparents watch me.

We had a string of bad luck there for about a year when I was five. First of all, our house burned down with just about everything we had in it. At that time, there was no county fire department, and the city limits ended about a half-mile away. The city firetruck stopped at the city limits and watched to make sure the fire didn’t spread to any homes in the city limits, while the house burned to the ground.

During the months following that, we were living with my grandparents, and late one night we were involved in an accident that totaled the car and put all three of us in the hospital. That meant neither my mom nor my dad could work for several weeks.

The years before that had not been easy, but that Christmas was a really tough one. Minimal insurance and being out of work meant that there simply was no money for gifts. That’s the way it was.

But relatives and friends of the family came through. Though I neither knew nor understood until much later, all my gifts that year, and many the following year, came from outside the family. We were lucky… no, blessed… to have a support structure of people who both cared and were able to help a five-year-old boy have a Christmas that was not a disappointment. And a disappointment like that, on top of losing everything in the fire and being on crutches from a broken hip, would have been pretty rough on any kid.

Fast forward 48 years. Times are hard now--probably a lot harder for many more people now than they were in 1961 when we had our series of catastrophes. And because of the way families have dispersed across the country now (due to job moves or joblessness, ease of travel, etc.), many hurting families don’t have the kind of support structure that helped us through that rough time. These families need help, and the most vulnerable members of these families are the children.

No, I’m not trying to turn on your tear glands. I’m trying to make you think a little about how you might be able to help someone. There are lots of ways, really, for you to Do The Right Thing. But I want to talk about one specific way you can Do The Right Thing and even enjoy it.

This is the fourth year that Wolfmont Press has published an anthology of holiday-themed crime stories with the intent of helping kids, and its title is The Gift of Murder. The first year Wolfmont was able to contribute $1,365 to Toys for Tots. The next year, we got it up to $2,000. Last year, with Dying In a Winter Wonderland, we managed to raise $3,300 for Toys for Tots. This year, we’re shooting for $3,400 so we can hit our target of $10,000 in toto over those four years.

The nineteen authors in this year’s anthology have donated their stories, and much of their time to promoting the book. The editor, John M. Floyd, did an awesome job of choosing from the approximately sixty submissions and in editing the book as well. The publisher is not making any money from the sale of this anthology. All the money over and above the cost of producing and selling the book goes to Toys for Tots, just as it has for the three previous books.

Your purchase of a copy of The Gift of Murder will help us to donate more to the Toys for Tots. Oh, I did say enjoy it, too, didn’t I? Well, this 278-page book has some awesome stories in it--stories that range from hilariously funny to darkly macabre, from day-to-day realism to extreme fantasy--but all crime stories that revolve around the winter holidays of Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa.

And remember: one thing it will NOT do is to put a cent into the pockets of the publisher. I want to reiterate that all publisher profits from the sales of the 2009 anthology go to Toys for Tots. And I'll tell you the truth right now: at this point we're not even close to our goal.

The nineteen authors are: J.F. Benedetto, Stefanie Lazer, Stephen D. Rogers, Anita Page, Randy Rawls, Earl Staggs, Peg Herring, Deborah Elliott-Upton, Bill Crider, Carolyn J. Rose, Elizabeth Zelvin, Barb Goffman, Austin S. Camacho, Sandra Seamans, Steve Shrott, Gail Farrelly, Herschel Cozine, Kris Neri, and Marian Allen. These folks are talented, and generous, since they contributed their stories AND their time in promoting the book in various ways.

How do you buy a copy?

1. Get with one of the authors--some of them have a few copies left.

2. Order from The Digital Bookshop, which partners with Wolfmont to maximize the profits from the book, and thus increase the money that goes to Toys for Tots.

3. Order from your favorite independent bookseller.

4. Order online through Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

5. Oh! If you prefer an ebook version, it's available at The Digital Bookshop in ebook form, too, as well as in Kindle version on Amazon.

And if you don’t need another book, or don't want to do any of those things, how about this? Go by your local toy store, buy a couple of toys, and take them by the Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots collection center. It’s relatively painless, and you’ll feel better after you do it.

Copyright ©2009 Tony Burton