Perfection

A friend of mine is a perfectionist. What makes it even worse, she is a poet and a novelist. She does not live very far from me and now that I am finally home I see her slaving away in her office not far from my house trying to find the perfect word for a perfect poem everyday. The last poem she wrote took a year for her to finish. Her first and only novel took her ten years to write. The good side to her work habits is she got her book published and it did well which is a good thing because she has been working on her second book since then and it is half finished and that was ten years ago.

My problem is what is written in my head is not what ends up on the page. I go round and round trying to put down what is between my ears on the computer screen and it never matches what I know is the real story. Sometimes, I give up and turn off the computer and go out for coffee or go hiking up at the lake. In Korea, I could not do that. I also could not find a book to read. Unless I wrote it, I did not find anything to read, so I wrote it. I also could not find many people to talk with in English or any other language I could speak.

We are often trained in the west to regard ourselves as faulty and guilty. It goes along with the Christian tradition of being born in sin. No matter what some writers put down, they are convinced it is wrong and not good enough. Heaven knows, I fall into this category. Part of my writer's block consists of not being good enough to be published or putting something out there that people would hate.

Perfection is a self-imposed set of rules and beliefs that some of us put on and it is rigid and stiff and does not fit anyone. In these set of molds, no one is good enough. Remember the parable about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven? It was dreamed up by some poor scribe to help poor people feel better about themselves but made everyone think how no one was getting into heaven.

I wish I knew a magic portion that would enable writers to just put the words down and do your best and fuck everyone who don't like it. If I knew that magic portion, I would take it too. There is always going to be someone who will say this stinks and that is no good and that is not right for this publication and that is not right for this time and on and on. I wrote something the other day that made me feel like my last car, about two inches tall. My sons sold it to a wrecking yard. The only thing I could do was breath in and breath out.

A Nobel Prize winning writer stayed in his room for two weeks because of a bad review for his last book because he was convinced everyone was talking about him and how bad the book was. Then he found out from his neighbor that the magazine where it appeared never made it into the small village they lived in because of a storm in the mountains. Then the writer worried about the magazine coming in after the storm subsided. Enough is enough. I would have thought a Nobel Prize was enough to give some relief from this perfection and low self-esteem.

If I don't write the books that are in my head, they will stay in my head and die when I do. I care about my fictional characters and don't want that to happen to them. I also don't want that for stories that are in other writers' heads. Everything we as writers write has the potential of not being liked by some reader. That can't be helped. I know of another writer who wrote a book that had limited sales. It was science fiction and 14th of others he wrote and he could never give up his day job of selling suits in a large men's warehouse. Yet, he found out from his publisher that a man was going to kill himself one night but read his book instead and credited his book with saving his life and turning it around. It made a difference to him and helped him write the next one.

Try and push the keys, send that pen across the paper pad or whatever it takes to write your stories and novels. If the monkey of perfection lands on your shoulders and it will, punch it in the groin and keep going. What else are you going to do?

Writing down the sorrow

I have always kept a journal. I am one of those who love doing it. When I taught writing and English, I encouraged it and never graded the content of it. I was always hoping that people would discover the joy of writing everyday because it definitely has its advantages. I meditate every morning and long incorporated writing into my form of meditation. I adjusted it to fit me. I think that is what each of us should do.

I always felt that there were people who had inner directed lives and those who needed direction from an outer source. I am one of those who sought direction from within. It was a given when I discovered Buddhism even before I knew its name that I would follow that tradition as the Dharma or the teachings come from within and not from any official source and the same goes for Taoism. I am not saying that those who need a book such as the Bible are wrong. No, it is a different path and all paths lead to the same thing in the end.

For me, writing is a basic form of my spiritual practice. When sorrow hits as it often does each of us, I have always found my journal to be a source of great relief and comfort. The Dharma teaches me truths that helps me in this regard. The purists in these religions are forever correcting me in many of my use of terms and concepts. Again, I am comfortable in my individual practice and don't much care about getting "it right" according to certain tradition. I just don't think it is all that important. It is the effect that is important. My beliefs change over the years and I am fine with that too.

Yesterday, someone was very angry at her situation in life and to lash out at the anger that was given to her threw some on me. It hurt me very badly, but I was determined not to let the anger and sorrow that I felt, not travel any further. At least this portion stopped with me. It felt as if someone took a knife and stabbed me with it. It hurt because I care about certain people and it involved those people. I had to go over the situation and visit my part in it. In the past, I did react to her with anger so that part I was guilty. The rest I was not. I felt really bad. I felt as if my Christmas was ruined.

I took my journal out and started to write. I wrote and wrote and soon I was able to leave the emotions that I had felt on the page. I drew pictures and left more on the page. Then I began to remember the things that my own Buddhist traditions and Dharma had taught me. Soon, I was doing other things and started to enjoy the holiday. I had just gotten back from Korea and was alone. However, I really wasn't alone. Soon, I was doing what I wanted to do. It is seeing life from another perspective.

When I was in Korea, I did not have a television so I did not watch it. I could not get the programs that I followed here in this country. I love the program, Eureka. I watched a program on Hulu that I could not watch there either. It was about the sheriff not being able to leave the town of Eureka and being stuck there during Christmas. Someone had left a hydrogen crystal that seemed to be growing bigger and the scientist had disappeared. Then they looked at it from a different perspective and the crystal wasn't growing at all. The town was shrinking. Well, Sheriff Carter and his common sense yet again gets Eureka out of another mess. The program made me laugh. I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

It is amazing how much people like to control others. That includes setting up rules for other people including writers. When I started this blog for writers, I thought I was like other writers and maybe I am except I don't believe in all of those rules. I do believe in journals and in writing meditation at least for me. I never know what I feel and think about certain things until I write about it. Journals help me keep a more organized mind. When I was a social worker, I used to get in trouble all of the time from my supervisor for having a messy desk. I never cared to have one that was super clean and sterile. I cared about the people in my caseload. I never have nightmares about them as my supervisor did and had to eventually quit.

Sorrow and joy will come. They are very transitory. They never stay for long. Writing about them helps when one becomes almost unbearable and the other forgettable.

The Writing Process

I was reading a blog today about when you should use certain point of view. I thought the essay was well-written and it made a lot of sense except that I never go through that process when deciding what point of view to use. The comments at the end of the article were very positive as was mine except that I never sit down and decide what point of view I am going to use. I let my characters decide. It just depends on what story is and what the characters want to do.

My story or plot is character driven. That is how I started my writing career. I began by developing the who the main character was that I was going to write about. I formulated that person in my mind with a past and present. Usually, there was a pressing problem facing that character and in my story the character or protagonist was going to try to resolve it. How this was done by the character decided the point of view.

If my character, Tommie for example in a story that I am working on now, has a problem trying to figure out why she can't seem to get men to like her. She is attractive and intelligent and has a normal family background. It is such a mystery and the character wanted to tell the reader in detail how normal she is in every way. She went on and on about visiting therapists and asking people about it and no one had a clue except to say there was no problem. It was obvious the way Tommie kept talking to the reader that the story was a first person narrative. She wanted people to see she was normal when it was evident something was a miss. Then slowly the reader could begin to see by the way the character talked what the problem could be. The question is at this point is whether or not Tommie is going to figure it out for herself and what she is going to do about it. The layers are peeled by Tommie herself and the reader sees the truth before the protagonist does.

Another story is about two people both deep in personal tragedy can't see what is happening around them. It takes a supernatural event to knock their depressive glasses off. Both of the characters are not talking to themselves or each other. First person point of view is not what they want. They want the point of view of the third person so that the reader can see all of the events happening and how what is happening on the outside world is connected to the inside world. Again, the reader sees it before they do.

In my stories, the reader is often privy to what is happening before the characters. I just follow along and write what is happening. Sometimes, the main character can reason it out for themselves and sometimes has to be told. I like stories in which there is some transformation takes place. I guess I remember the tough times in my life when I got hints on what to do in my own tough circumstances when a character in a book went through a similar situation and what they did to survive. The stories in which one point of my wall took the hits from thrown books were ones in which a person went through all kinds of trauma and the resolution was a new romance walking or I should say waltzing through the door. How realistic is that?

I am the kind of writer that lets the inner writer loose. I also let my characters loose as well. I figure they all know what should be happening best. Of course I buttress all of this with a fairly substantial amount of reading of other writers and the daily exercise of journal writing and of course the heavy so-called indulgence of dreaming of stories in my head. I can't tell you that huge amount of training that gave me. Most of all, it all feels very comfortable to me.

I let myself tell me what is right and what is not. Maybe that puts me into the camp of the instinctive writer. I don't know. I do know that I have read many writers who often say the same. They just put the pen on the paper or the fingers on the keys and just start to write. I try not to think too much about it and make it more difficult than it has to be.

Twitter

I have been hearing about Twittering for a while but really did not know exactly what it was. Well, not wanting to be behind the times, so to speak, I looked up the web site. It was explained what Twittering was all about in a video on that site. It was free to sign up, and I did. It was also easy to do.

I thought I needed some special device, and I don't. I am using my computer. I am not going to us the phone that I am using here in Korea as it will be given back to the university that provided it to me in a few days. I will have to ask about Twittering when I get a phone in the States next week. I already know what brand I will be getting as I had a phone before I came and liked it very much. I only use a cell phone for emergencies. I will use the phone service as a land line my son has off his Internet service.

So far, it has been interesting reading all the information that is available on my Tweeter account. I am following those sites having to do with reading, writing, and other sites that looked interesting including my grandson. He is the only one from my family that has a Tweeter account. My oldest son doesn't even have Facebook. Good heavens! How retro.

When I was my grandson's age, I would have been astonished at all of the electronic devices that I use everyday. I would not have even dreamed them up. Now, it is a reality. Who knows what will exist in a few years?

As I wrote, I follow web sites having to do with writing. One gives story prompts. In creating stories, plots, and so on I just create the characters and then follow them as they jaunt through their paces. Who knows what they are going to do? I tried writing a story that was based on a story idea first and it became so boring to me that I gave it up. Everyone does their writing from a different point of view and does it according to their own tastes and methods. Those methods are all valid. Heck, as long as they work one should go for it. I never use a outline although I did for the first book that I wrote. Some writers swear by them. I say just use what works for you.

Right now, Twittering is working for me. If it stops working for me, I will give it up. If you have a lot of followers be careful what you write down and make sure it is accurate. One person that is in the news Twitters (is that capitalized?) before editing her message. I think my "pencil" is my best friend even in the Twittering game.

Writer's Block

I think every writer has had writer's block at one time or another. I know that I have had this problem through the years. Luckily, I was able to work on my journal and keep that going.

Since coming to Korea, I don't have writer's block as a whole. I discovered that if I had some issues that needed to be looked at in my inner world, I needed to take some time off from writing my book and do some journaling and then I would find that the writer's block would be gone.

In clothes, one size does not fit all. I don't expect what works for me is going to work for others. I am finding that being here in Korea is proving to be one long exploration of my inner world. That may sound egotistical but that is all part of what makes me a writer. If what is happening to me is interfering in my writing, I can't work. I have to work out the problems that life's lessons are showing me.

Because I have been able to deal with some of my memories and past experiences, I have discovered that I have room to do other things such as art. My journal is now full of drawings and far more than there were before. I am even better than I used to be. I am no grand master of the arts, but I like what I do in my journal even if the perspective is still a bit off.

I guess what I am trying to say in a long winded way is when a writer can't work on something he or she needs to look at the reason why the writing stopped. I know if I am writing a book or story and it suddenly it can't progress any further, one reason can be I took a wrong turn and have to unravel the story back to where I liked it. Maybe it is because I need to look what is happening to me at the present time. I don't want to stay away from a writing project too long or it gets "cold". Sometimes, I write in my journal what the motivations of the characters are because I get too involved in the characters and forget where I am. Sometimes, I need to go outside and draw the cat or the lake surrounded by mountains. I find dreams very important in telling me what is wrong. Waking up and grabbing a journal and recording a dream helps me too. I always put down what flashes in my mind at that point.

The most important thing a writer does is breath. Meditation is important and life is even more. Sometimes that is all I can do is watch my breath and feel pretty good I can still do it. Everything changes. Nothing stays forever including writer's block. Just keep writing in your journal. Always do that every day even if it is "whoever is a very good writer. "

Learning from fictional characters

I know that I have discussed that I have learned valuable lessons from my own fictional characters. That may sound odd, but it is the way things happen sometimes. The other day I was working out a scene in my head about a character who learns he inadvertently caused a death and he is devastated by the information. He is blaming himself. Another woman comes to the cemetery where he is and tells him that although she blamed him for the death of her best friend at first, she no longer does anymore. The waves of violence, according to that character, began many years ago and just kept going until it caused her friend's death, not him. She was in the same place too, but made up her mind that the cycle of anger and violence was going to stop with her. That included self-blame. Enough is enough.

All over the world, violence is continued down generations, creating waves upon waves of anger, vengeance and fueled by more violence. No one remembers how it all began. A small child is beaten and molested by adults and grows up dysfunctional and often attacks others or in the case above attacks herself. On and on it rolls gathering additional anger as it grows like a snow ball down a hill until it is huge.

I had such a childhood and unknowingly added such karma to this world, my own versions of anger when I either correctly or incorrectly interpreted anyone's behavior towards me. I was the snow ball going down the hill and getting bigger and bigger as I grew older. I lashed out at others and of course took out the anger towards myself. Well, like the fiction person I outlined above, enough is enough. It stops with me.

Maybe or even probably the world will not notice my lack of participation in the cycle of violence. I am not laboring under the delusion that it will be noticed, but on some level somewhere it will. I believe that. It is the story of the man who picks up starfish on the beach and flings them back into the surf. When asked if he could make any difference to the huge number of starfish that die breached on the sands of this world, he replied that it made a difference to the one he just threw back into the water. Well, I am going to do this one starfish at a time. Who knows what effect I will have, but I know I will not be contributing anymore anger to this world.

Wasted time

Writers are the luckiest people in the world. Don't let anyone ever tell you different. All I have to do is close my eyes and I can hear my mother and other relatives tell me that I waste so much of my time just dreaming. Oh, those moments, hours, months, years of daydreaming taught me how to construct plots and characters. They were not wasted, not at all. We as writers are lucky in what people see as a huge waste of time such as daydreaming, is our bread and butter.

I think all writers should be able to deduct all books as a tax deduction and not just some that are directly related to the craft. Writers need to read including anything that looks interesting. We are lucky in that most of us love to read, but it is a necessity for us to do so. I wrote a story about a character who was Lithuanian-American. Luckily, I had just read a book of Lithuanian recipes and used one for the story. I won a prize for that story. Everyone asked me if I was Lithuanian. No, not at all.

I take trips and the details of my trips always end up in some way in my stories and books. I think writers should be able to deduct those trips and not just those that are directly connected to what they are working on. I took a series of trips to the deserts of California to work some archaeology digs. I used that information for years after it happened. It was something I did as a volunteer. I still use the information I obtained on those trips although I have not been there for a long time.

Writers use everything in their lives in contrast to other occupations. I used the experience of childbirth and raising children, buying and fixing a house, working in 9 to 5 jobs and those jobs that were more hours. I use everything including my walks on hiking trails. I use my experience in fixing meals both in those that worked out and those that did not. Occasionally, I go to theater parties in Ashland, Oregon and I use that too and not just the plays.

Sometimes, it is not old messages from parents that are in my brain but ones that I created for myself such as I wasted time not writing but walking in the park. I love to spend time with my grandchildren especially my youngest who loves to go to the train station and watch the trains. I am sure he doesn't think it is wasted time. I don't either, but I use those experiences too. When I do tell myself that I am wasting time, I just have to think about it and I always discover that there was something important happening then. As I said, writers are the luckiest people in the world. Nothing in our life goes into the trash bin.

Looking back on my writing and others

I worry that my grammar is not up to standard. Who doesn't? I also worry my sentence and vocabulary is too simple, too naked, too bland. When I do edit my writing as I am doing down as I enter what I wrote in a notebook into this blog, I notice that I also have the tendency to be wordy. I think I tend to use 25 words when half that number would suffice.

As so many other writers, I read other writers and marvel how well they describe a summer day, a woman in labor, a man walking alone at night or the underground tunnels under London. Some writers that I read wrote just a few years ago and others from a few hundred years ago.

I try different things when I write to see when I read it later if I can understand what I wanted to portray. I have mentioned in these posts that a pencil is a writer's best friend, but the delete key has replaced it.

There is no doubt that the computer has made my life easier as a writer as it made me a better college student. I don't think in words and often don't know what I htink on any given subject until I write about it. Other writers are this way.

Some writers when they write, ooze their personalities all over their work. One such writer is Richard Rodriquez. It is good he writes personal essays instead of fiction. Some fiction writers include themselves in the narrative of the plot. I am re-reading "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens and although I am enjoying it I am hearing Dickens loud and clear as if he is using a megaphone.

Some writers have been accused of writing in too simple prose such as John Steinbeck. When I read that a while back, I picked up a short story and looked at the writing and found it beautifully crafted. The critic that I read was totally wrong. Steinbeck's sentences and vocabulary are clear, polished and beautiful. Some writers are read in translation and the reader is never sure if the prose is the result of the writer or the translator.

I am going to continue to write, but I am also going to continue to read. I think one can always improve. I will keep the delete button close at hand. What else can I do?

Thanksgiving Day

I read a blog this morning about not giving up after the envelops carrying your work arrive in the mail with rejection slips. That is true. I have been lucky and grateful on this day of Thanksgiving that when those rejection letters came in and I could not take it anymore, I took a vacation but not from writing.

I remember the feeling of freedom when I knew the stories were not going to be sent in but would sit in the hamper so to speak. Then I could just write and not worry whether or not it sold. Every time I have seen advice to the writer, it was "study the market". I began to hate being a writer when I did. I wrote what would sell and not what I wanted to write. Writing became a chore.

Now, when I write, I write for me. If it sells, great. If it doesn't, I put it away and bring it out again. I write what I want, but I don't depend on writing to pay the bills. I have other income that comes with retirement. I am very grateful for that. I am grateful for Social Security, CalPers, and Veterans Pensions. I do sell occasionally. I now love writing again. It is fun and I write what I want. I am very grateful.

Notebooks

In Korea, I have one laptop that stays on my student desk in my apartment. It is hooked up to the Internet. I asked for wireless, but the company did not seem to have it. Others in this tech savvy country seem to have those long trailing telephone lines all over their apartments attached to their computers. The only wireless service for computers have been in some universities. I don't know why but there you are.

At first, when I wanted to write somewhere else I really missed not having this laptop to work on my book of short stories. Then I adjusted by buying those cute little books of blank paper they sell in Korea that are of high quality and low price. I have a bunch of them. I use them to write essays and the short stories when I am not in my apartment. I have discovered by the very act of putting them into the computer I have added one more step of editing. It has worked out. I also don't feel encumbered by carrying a laptop over my shoulder.

I had looked around where I normally sit when I am not home, drinking coffee and enjoying cheesecake or a rice burger and I did not see a plug and I am certainly not going to get wireless service. As I wrote, Koreans have it for their cell phones but not for their computers for some reason.

There is something about the act of physically writing that gives one detachment when writing about the story and characters. I don't know if it would have worked for a novel, but for a book of short stories it is working out very well. I think it would work out for a novel if I worked on a chapter at a time. Still, it is not only convenient but fun.

Then I have my journal. I am trying to deal with issues and matters before I go home in three weeks. I don't want to return to the world I was living in before I came here. I had a monster writer's block. I don't have one now. Sometimes, when writing about my dysfunctional family background, I like to be in public. I feel safer, more comfortable than writing about these things alone in my little room.

There are other reasons for the written journal. I also draw pictures in my journal and nothing trains the eye more than drawing. I have been drawing with a black pen and then filling it all in with some colored pencils that I got at Home Plus. The price of the more expensive pencils were a lot cheaper in Korea than in the US. I know there is a way of drawing on the computer, but for meditation reasons, I like doing it by hand. I am also a big believer in writing meditation and create my own way of doing it as I go along.

Many of the notebooks that I have bought here in Korea have English on the cover and some nice artwork. As mentioned before, the quality is very good and they are about one dollar or less apiece. I spent ten dollars and bought ten of them. I bought all that they had with art work featuring a zebra. I even bought an extra blank journal because I am going faster in my journal than expected. I also have one on my computer.

Of course, every writer does what he or she must do to facilitate the writing. I know writers who have to use a certain brand of pen and never use a computer. They send their stuff out to a typist. I know some that stand up and write while others sit in bed and one that loves sitting in the tub (with hot water, natch.). With notebooks, I can sit in bed if I want especially as the weather is cooling down, and it is so warm in bed.

One of my pet peeves are people who tell you how to write. I am trying to learn to keep my mouth shut. I was sitting in Home Plus and several women from a church I attend came by and one of them said as I put a sticker on the date on my journal that "I was like a girl and her diary". I like to use stickers and draw later. I was really pissed but kept my mouth shut. This is a woman who never wrote a journal and that is her choice but I have been writing non-stop since the age of 13. Another writer told me never write in bed because it was so lazy. Very famous writers wrote in bed.

Writers are the freest people on this planet. Be ready to put your hands over your ears when someone tries to tell you how you should write. Create your own system and if it works, use it without guilt. The biggest problem I had in writing was listening to other people including writers. There is only one writer you should ever listen to, and that is the writer that is sitting in your chair. That writer speaks volumes if allowed to speak.

Writing blogs and other educational projects

I read other writing blogs all of the time. I am impressed by them. I also read books by writers telling other so-called would be writers how to be writers. I look at the classes that are offered online and in the universities and colleges. I am impressed by all of them.

This blog isn't fancy and full of resources you can access such as the places I have visited. No, this is a different sort of blog. I try and put things on this blog that I think writers need to know but are not always told. Maybe that is useless information, but it is information that I found out through trial and error and have become golden for me.

For instance, many places touch upon the need to read other writers. It isn't a need. It is a necessity. If you don't do it, then you are a hack, a writer who will never rise above the waves and waves of mediocre writers out there. That is it, pure and simple. If you don't like to read, then maybe you should try another field of endeavor. There isn't a whole lot of difference between writing and reading.

You can go to all of the schools of writing in the world, but you won't learn as much as you will if you do two things every single day: read and write. You have to write every single day as if your life depends on it because your writing life does. You are the violinist that needs to practice on the violin and if you don't then your talent will wither away. Even if you can't get a story going, write in your journal about anything. I had a monster writer's block until I found out that I wanted to write about some things in my life in my journal that I was not allowing myself to do. Then when I did, I got my "groove" back.

Every day, you need to read and that does not mean you read all authors. You can read the ones you like. I suggest you give up your library card and start to buy books, second hand books or books on sale at your local Barnes and Noble. Then you can go as slow as you want with a pencil and mark the heck out of it. Let the writers that have gone before you teach you how to write and it is a heck of a lot cheaper than taking a class. Go slowly and develop your instinct for what works and what does not. You are alone and no one is saying over your shoulder how to write. Let's face, writing is a solitary affair. It will never be otherwise and you need to learn to depend on yourself.

If there is a third part to this, let yourself dream. Create stories in your head, move the parts and people around and notice what works for you and what does not. If you get bored with the story in your head, chances are others will too. Let yourself loose. Put everything in a fantasy you want and when if you decide to write it, the unrealistic parts will go away. Play around with the imagination. That is what it is for. Have some fun with it. Writing is fun if you allow it.

Lastly, have faith in your creative imagination. If no one is publishing your kind of stories, keep going. If some professor tells you that your stories stink, quit his class and do all of the above. Don't let any editor or critic tell you at the beginning level what works with your writing and what does not. If you are getting ready for publication and an editor wants to change something consider it, but at the beginning put it down the way the story comes to you. And for heavens sake, edit it. Your pencil is your best friend.

Fact and Fiction Writers

I read a while back that novelists and other writers of fiction often will tell people stories that are not totally true. They often improve the story. It's just the nature of the writer. I know I have this tendency at times. The writers that I have known seem to have this penchant.

The other day I met with a writer who was traveling through Korea after spending some time reporting on President Obama's trip here in Seoul. He is a journalist. He and I went to the same journalism school many years ago. He has relatives who live here in Korea and took advantage and paid them a visit.

He also is a novelist. We talked about this propensity to shaping and creating events and people that writers have. He told me that it was the one thing he could not do as a journalist and the opportunities were there but it was a big no-no. Some journalists who were frustrated fiction writers did give in to this temptation and forever lived to regret it when they were caught by their readers and/or editor. It is much harder to fool the reader than one's editor who often is a young man or woman who doesn't read all that much and does not have the sophistication of a seasoned reader as the readers often are. Sometimes, it was the person being written about who did not like words being put in his or her mouth even if they were better said.

I asked him if he always had this temperament because even W. Somerset Maugham in his book, "Summing Up", warns people that authors are not the most reliable reporters of the people around them.

"Good heavens yes. I used to get accused of telling white lies all of the time. I don't think I ever understood quite why I did this until I met another writer. He was telling me about something that happened to him forgetting that I was there too. I almost didn't recognize the incident. I have since learned all fiction writers do it. Its in our blood, so to speak. As a journalist, I can't do that. I don't have that freedom. If the subject of your story uses bad grammar, then you don't give him a direct quote. If he says something great, then you do. You never burn your bridges with someone you may want to interview again. "

I was the same way and hated the journalism part of my writing career. Sometimes, I would be sitting in front of those large typewriters and want to change things a bit, smooth it out and so forth and I would have to sit on my hands until the feeling past. Now, when I am writing, I give it full rein.

I asked him if he got tempted to change the words of President Obama. He shook his head. "No, the man is very literate and well-read. He is actually a lot easier to follow than the previous president because President Bush said a lot of things you really could not put down or people would think you were making things up. I am not saying this because I disliked the man because I didn't. I just think he has a form of dyslexia and gets mixed up in his words at times. The press is not a forgiving lot."

The one thing that writers do, is describe the shadows of human kind. It is in the stories that we write. Poets write about it as well. We look at life differently as the so-called normal people do. The everyday events of living is just fodder for us to use in our work. In accepting the shadows in others, it is best that we accept it in ourselves.

My friend said: "The best thing I ever learned as a journalist and novelist is that when people start to harp on me for this or that I remember that there is nothing wrong with me. It was one morning when I got up to go to work and I had gotten a call from my mother the night before who told me to watch those tricks of the imagination that I was so prone to. When I opened my eyes I remembered her words along with everyone else. Don't do this. Do this. Stop dreaming. Then I realized that maybe they like their world that way, but I don't. There was nothing wrong with me. I am just fine the way I am. I never looked back."

I think this is good advice.

Consider the source....

You, the writer, have something you are proud of in print and along comes a critic that slams you against the wall. Being like most writers, you are devastated. Well, before you lower the boom on yourself, please consider the critic. Many critics come from a non-writing background. That does not necessarily precludes them from passing judgment on a piece of writing; but some critics don't read and that does preclude them from giving any consideration of anyone's work.

Some writers prefer that the critic be someone who does not write for a living. I, on the other hand, prefer that the critic be someone who have put some time in writing. The best critic, I think, in the business although he is now getting too old to write much these days is Gore Vidal. His tongue could cut down a forest of trees. I love to read a writer's opinion on different writers. Some writers don't want this and they also have a point. What no one wants is a critic who does not have an educated palette. This is a critic who has no background in other writers past or present. There are some magazines that I no longer subscribe to because they have literary critics who had never read the classic writers and poets. I saw no value in their commentary. It would be like asking someone to judge different kinds of spaghetti sauce who had never ate anything but peanut butter sandwiches. It's not worth considering.

Can Your Own Writing Change You?

One of the advantage in not knowing whether I have readers is having the freedom to write what I want without hesitation. I would hope if I had lots of readers, I would do the same. However, I realized that what I wrote yesterday evening here (don't pay attention to the official date and times of when these blogs are written because I am on Korean time and these blogs are on some other time.)changed the way I view what I write about.

I was a teacher of journalism for a while and I used to tell the students that we should look look at the student newspaper as if it was the New York Times and it has to be the very best we can do. Many of the students did not respect their own newspaper that much. I did. I like to believe that my blog is right along the best in the business of blogging although in reality it may not be. Who is to say what is best and what is not? It's mine and that is what counts.

I ask myself if what I am writing will contribute something positive the world of letters and if it doesn't I don't put it down. I often go through some written articles on a few publications and sometimes I recommend them for my Facebook page. This morning, I used the same criterion. Is it mean-spirited and does no one any good or is it valid criticism that is basic information that needs to be out there?

I would never have guessed that what I have written would have changed the way I do things. It has. Of course, I quoted other people in my essay of sorts but the general scope of the ideas were mine and they changed the way I do things. They did fit my philosophy and ethical bent. I would not have accepted them so readily unless they did. Maybe, it is Jon Stewart that changed me. Still, it tickled me that I would have been an influence to myself. Here I am, sitting in Daejeon, Korea alone in my tiny apartment giggling over something that I wrote. Maybe, I need to get out of my apartment today. It is a beautiful day.

Being Critical of other Writer's Work

Since the rally at the end of October held by Jon Stewart in Washington D.C., many people have been questioning their approach to criticizing their fellow citizens regarding politics. Even the host of Countdown on MSNBC has elected to remove one segment off his show, "Worst Person in the World", because of some of the things that were said at that rally. I felt immune since I don't do politics as a rule on these blogs. Still, there was food for thought at that rally.

Then today, I watched the interview of Jon Stewart by Rachel Maddow. Much of what Stewart said was repeated during that interview. The entire interview, by the way, will be available on Dr. Maddow's blog this weekend and I plan on watching it.

So what does any of the above have to do with writing? Actually quite a bit to my mind. The tie in was provided to me by W. Somerset Maugham in the book that I am re-reading, "The Summing Up" that I have mentioned before. Many critics both the ones writers encounter in print, and other forms of the media, and those we see in our daily lives such as friends and relatives can be as mean as those on Fox.

Maugham wrote that critics sometimes write criticism "to compensate themselves for humiliations they have suffered in their early youth. Criticism affords them a means of regaining their self-esteem. Because at school, unable to adapt the self to the standards of that narrow world, they has been kicked and cuffed, they will when grown up cuff and kick in their turn in order to assuage their wounded feelings."

At first, I thought that all of the criticism voiced by Stewart and others about being mean and bad spirited had nothing to do with me. When I said something in print in other places other than these blogs, I thought of myself as clever and my writing as witty. But I was wrong. I was being mean just as much as some of the people on Fox.

I agree that I don't think the folks on MSNBC are as mean spirited and play loose with the facts as those on Fox. What I do as far as a critic is concerned, I might be like Maugham states some critics do and feel that I am righting some of the wrongs that were done to me in years past. It is a fine line between criticism and just plain expression of emotional hurt which has no part in these blogs.

In one job that I had years ago, there was an employee who used to go from one fellow employee to another telling them his troubles both on the job and what was happening at home. He wanted to be taken care of by his fellow employees. He wanted sympathy. Somehow he had grown to expect it. That is not what a good writer does. We use our anger to fuel our exploration of ourselves and others but not to ask our readers to take care our our needs. We also don't use our bully pulpit, should we be be so lucky to have one, to gain vengeance on imaginary foes who for the most part don't exist. To make sure we don't fall into this, it is good to exercise mindfulness, awareness. We are all in this world together.

Cycle of Anger

In my journal, I have been writing about my anger about people. Some people make me angry as most people do to everyone. When I am driving at home, I am often mystified by road rage because people will get angry over the most littlest details of someone else's driving. For the most part, I never see who is driving and the source of their anger is and remains a mystery to me. I make surmises that they were mad at their spouses or parents or just got a pink slip at work.

This post is not why I am angry at people but how as writers we deal with emotions in our characters in fiction. I decided to write about an angry person named Adam on my "Zebrareader's Much Ado About Nothing" Blog. I described a middle-aged Korean and why he was so angry.

One time in a writers' editing group, that I may have written about before, I asked another writer why a character wanted to quit her job and get another one. Her changing jobs was essential to the plot of the story. She said it wasn't important. I said if you could not explain the character's motivation the story would fail. All you needed was a sentence or two. She disagreed. I think the same goes for anger. If a character is angry, there has to be a reason for it. If a character in a film played by Clint Eastwood is angry, it can't be because it looks good on the screen. That's bad plot development. The film medium isn't always able to explain motivation although good films managed to do so. The same goes for print fiction.

I did not wake up angry at certain people this morning for no good reason. I had reasons for it. I have a past and a present. They are integrated and the experiences and emotions that make up who I am explain the reasons I am mad at certain people. If I am very sure of myself as a writer and an editor tells me my stuff is not right for his magazine, it would not bother me and I would just send it to someone else. If I am very unsure of myself and it took a year to get the courage to send it out because my mother was always telling me I was no good and my teachers reinforced this I would be very angry. If I am writing a story about a writer who is trying to send his or her stories out this would be important.

I don't think it is necessary to explain with huge blocks of detail on characters' emotions and reasons for being otherwise you put the reader to sleep. That is where reading other people's work comes in. You just get a sense of what keeps you interested and what generally turns you off. It is so important to read. I think, personally, that you should read what is popular now and what was popular in the past. I am reading everything I can get my hands on right now by W. Somerset Maugham. It isn't easy here in Korea but I have managed. I was also able to pick up one of his favorite authors, Charles Dickens. I am going to read "A Christmas Story" again but this time with a pencil. I have been reading current authors too.

Sometimes it is useful to read bad books so you know why they don't work. In every instance of a bad book, I don't like reading about characters who act in such ways that I can't figure out why they do and then they change and then I can't figure out why they change. Even in Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Alfred Conan Doyle, characters are consistent and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson characters in all of the stories remain the same. There are other things I don't like in some other books but those are the most outstanding criticisms.

If a character named Judy is consistently happy and never depressed, some sentence should address why this is so, such as being born and raised in a happy and satisfied family. If by reading a book about a happy character named Judy who turns out to be a serial killer, you need some kind of explanation why Judy turned out to like chopping up her boyfriends such as her family wasn't such a happy and satisfied family and that her father was a ritual satanic worshiper who practiced on his family.

In the popular series, Harry Potter Books, there is an evil character named Lord Voldemort. J. K. Rowland explains as the story progresses through the books why this evil lord is so evil. Characters do not develop in a vacuum. In this case, Lord Voldemort was a poor boy named Tom who was disowned by his father who also rejected his mother. He felt a growing sense of vengeance towards the world that rejected him. He also felt anger towards those who would oppose him including Harry Potter and his parents who Voldemort killed. Potter, on the other hand, felt anger but also felt the love and acceptance of those around him at Hogwarts. He was a gifted wizard too but had a heart willing to accept love.

Part of the magic of creating characters is making them real. Real people are not people who live only on the surface of life. They have likes and dislikes, pasts and presents. They also have emotions and ways of looking at the world. We all develop philosophies. We have hopes and aspirations. We have fears and things that makes us angry. We are not stereotypes. I am a bit overweight and many people relate to me as that. I was at a monastery once for a weekend and one monk could not tell one woman guest apart from me because we were both over-weight although we had thirty years difference in age and she was Hispanic and I was not. He never looked beneath the surface of people or he had a disability that make it impossible for him to do so.

Whenever I create a character, I always make an inventory in my mind as to where that person is from and why he or she is who they are. I may not use all of the material that is in my head but it is there. It makes it easier to keep the plot going or at least I have found that to be true. To go back to poor Judy, she gets caught because she sends notes to a reporter who looks uncannily like her first victim. Her father used to scare her with stories of ghosts as well as satanic stories of possession. The reporter working with the police never gives up and seeks her relentlessly because unknowingly to her he is the brother of that first victim and the identical twin. The brothers look like her father who is dead. She leaves clues because she wants to be caught as she is scared of the ghost of that first victim who is in her mind her father. The story is called "Cycle of Anger". The story would not have worked if motivation was not forthcoming.

There are people who express the opinion that writers would make good detectives. No, they would not. If detail is missing, we make it up. That would not work in a court of law. We make good guesses if we are therapists but I am not convinced we would make good therapists. What we are good at, is writing stories.

Support Group for Writers

I woke up this morning and had a great idea. I think there should be a group of writers who meet together and are writers who really write and send their stuff out and talk to each other for self support. I know there are somewhere but I never found them. I am certainly not going to find them here in Korea, and I have tried. Besides, I am going home soon.

I remember going to a group therapy session for women only awhile back. They were women of all ages which was good and all of us served in the military and had that in common. However, I was the only one that was self-supporting and did not have personal drug or alcohol issues. I come from a family full of people who had those problems so I barely squeaked in on that score. I was also the only one that completed college although many were in the rehabilitation program. Many lived at home and I left home permanently when I was 16 years of age. I think the level of trauma of these brave ladies were tremendous and I was able to overcome mine because my resources were sufficient to help me get through. Theirs were not. I did not belong. They knew it too.

Looking in the Internet, I found a writers' group that was active in the town I lived in. I went to that one. Many of the writers did not write full time. Many of them did not write at all. They just wanted to be writers. Very few of them actually wrote and sent their stuff in. Very few actually had things published except for the few that self-published. When they passed around their books, I was appalled at the ones that needed to be edited.

Then I tried book clubs. I was astonished at the leader who chose the books, that were for the most part, out of print. I was very suspicious she chose the books she had read years ago. Another group was a wine and cheese group for women with their husbands and since I did not have one at the time I felt out of place. When I voiced a suggestion that this book group should consider books by women authors instead of the steady stream of men writers I was told "our husbands would not put up with that."

I think I just had bad karma. I lived in a small town. I have a friend that lives in a large city and is a member of several book clubs that he finds interesting. He is also a member of a memoir writing club. If he did not live 12 hours away, I would join them. Maybe there are few clubs for working writers because most writers that I have known usually are not joiners. When I lived in a Midwestern city, I was a member of a wonderful book club. They exist.

So, what should I do to share the joy and the misery of writing. Then I look up and see this blog. I am doing it. I will continue to look for writers groups. I am returning to that small city. The writers club has collapsed. I would start my own if I live alone but my house is full of people now and I don't know any writers anymore in my town.

One of the advantages of writing is writers do very well alone. In general we like the space if it is populated with just ourselves. On the other hand, it is nice to share the fact that the world may not be ready with our brand of writing or we hit the markets at the wrong time or those brown envelops coming back in the mail can be just one envelop too many. I remember asking the Veterans Administration for help in dealing with writers block. The psychiatrist said no in no uncertain terms. He said the VA does not help with things like that. For a writer, writing is like breathing. I should have asked him why not.

So, until I have a group for dysfunctional writers, and name me one writer who is not dysfunctional, this blog is going to have to be it.

Writing on the Internet

I was reading an article yesterday that a magazine took some recipes from a blog and used them in their magazine without permission and without even giving the author credit. Since, the author thought she did her homework by copyrighting her blog and she was already a published author she demanded a retraction which included an apology and a donation to PEN. The magazine refused and said that anything published on the Internet was up for grabs and that the author should be glad that the magazine did not put someone else's name on it.

All writers steal. But we take ideas and incorporate them into our own and adapt them and make them our own. It is a different matter for a magazine to just steal from a writer and plunk it down in their publication. It is still a rare occurrence. It does happen. I was aware that everything I write on these blogs is gone forever and that is why I don't put original poetry or stories out there on the Internet. I don't feel like giving away my creative efforts.

Poets, don't put your poems on those poetry pages. You have lost them for good. You can't even give them away with your name. They are gone for good. Someone told me that getting a book of poetry published and waiting for a profit is like tossing a penny into the Grand Canyon and waiting to hear it hit bottom. Still, it is never a good idea to give it away so someone else can put their name on it because there are a huge hosts of wannabee writers and poets who would do it. Trust me it has happened to me too.

There was a well known actor who took a screen play and made a movie that was very successful and paid nothing to the screen writer. He thought he could get away with it, but the screen writer was also a well known journalist and knew a very good attorney and he sued and won.

No writer should put his sweat and effort into something and then put it on the Internet. No matter if you can't get it published some other way. Keep it in a drawer and send it out again some other way. The magazine that stole that writer's work was outed and it was a little known magazine. It got an enormous black eye. It did it to another writer and this time it lifted something that was copyrighted the correct way and before it was put on the Internet. Lawyers will get involve this time.

Character's Philosophy

Can the philosophy of our characters in our stories have a philosophy that is different from our own? Can they teach the writer there is something new in the universe? I have discovered yesterday that the answer is yes.

I used to believe that there is one reality and everyone has a different take on it. One character said that reality is different for each of us and not a different version but totally different. Her reality is full of crazy people and crazy notions. It really is that way and not a different way of looking at the world. It is as she sees it for her. I am a spiritual person and see the world as a very spiritual place but it certainly would not be a spiritual place for someone like Richard Dawkins. He sees nothing spiritual about nature, for example, while I see everything in nature as very spiritual and part of the grand spiritual scheme of things. Who is right? My character, Beth, would say we are both correct.

Of course, my son would say there was a third interpretation and that the writer is just plain nuts. Perhaps. However, until Beth came up with this idea, I never considered it. I think she makes a lot of sense especially after the last election in the US. That can be a way of looking at reality and psychiatrists and psychologists will never help with anyone achieving sanity but just living with their demons; but then isn't that what their job should be?

I have noticed that the characters that I help bring about in my stories come to life on their own but not in a scary way. I am always aware that they are made up. It is easy to just follow them and type up what they do. I have read many accounts by other writers who have the same experiences and other writers who say they never do. I have been working with made up people and stories in my head since I was a very small girl. I am comfortable with the process.

I don't have to make up people who do evil things. I meet enough of them in real life. I don't even have to buy books to read about them. They are out there in everyday life. I met my fill of them even here in Korea and I don't keep them in my head. I just use them when I need them in stories and then chuck them out when they are no longer necessary. Evil is necessary. Don't tell that to those who are waiting for the end of these times when the second coming of Jesus will happen and he will get rid of the Devil. We need Satan. We needed Satan to drive us out of Eden so we could populate the world which we did very well. Without Satan, we would not have art and even philosophy.

Well, enough of my philosophy except to say that I never know what my characters will come up with and that is the beauty of writing and the fun. When I sit down to write, I never know what is going to happen or better said what the characters are going to do. That is why I love to write.

A Dream About Writing or Shoes

I had a dream about writing. I don't remember having such a dream before. I was going to put it in my journal, but I thought I might as well put it here and it might benefit someone. Who knows?

In my dream, I was a student again in my youth going to college. I was living in San Diego and working in lower fifth Avenue. In those days, it was not the tourist place it is now but a seedy district full of bars, Chinese and Mexican restaurants vying for the business of the large number of sailors that came off the ships in the harbor. There were also pawn shops, tattoo parlors and other such businesses.

It was a bright and sunny day and I had a job selling shoes in a large store that had another business in it. The shoes that I was selling were pretty good ones although I did not have a lot to sell but I felt good about the quality. My brother came by and said hello on his way to work. He was a policeman. While I was outside taking a rest and enjoying the sunny weather, I saw the police stop a vehicle and search it. Then the police came over to me and asked if I had seen a certain person in the neighborhood. I said I was there only part of the time. I was there to watch and observe as a writer would. This was a good place to do it. The police was looking for someone with stolen shoes. I mentioned that I saw a truck with a lot of cheap shoes on it about a week ago on the street. The policeman did not seem interested. I told him that my brother was a state policeman and he wasn't interested in that either. He went into the store where I was selling shoes and I noticed the people who ran the rest of the store had packed up their stuff and left. The policeman left.

The store seemed so empty. I knew that there was a connection between the police arresting the people in the car outside and those leaving the store. They were selling cheap merchandise. Then a woman came in and wanted information about her shoes that she bought from my corner. I said they were good ones and I started to help her although I did not know if I had others in her size to sell them.

The point with all of these shoes and there are a lot of shoes here is the story about not knowing about someone until you wanted a mile in their shoes or moccasins. Shoes for me here are stories about people. I was in the lower Fifth Avenue to gather stories and that part is true. I did not sell shoes but worked in a bar and went to school. I also was there in my dream to learn. I am learning about writing again here in Korea.

I have mentioned before that I am reading "The Summing Up" by W. Somerset Maugham. In the book that I am re-reading, he said he taught himself to read by reading the authors he thought were good and the way he wanted to write. I made up to look again at the authors that I wanted to learn on how to write because I think I took a wrong turn a long time ago. I learned to write stories I did not want to write but wrote stories I thought I was supposed to write. Big difference, at least to me.

When reading Ernest Hemingway, I could taste and feel his stories. I saw clearly what was going on. He learned to write as a journalist learns to write. I liked that. I just did not want to write the kind of stories he wrote although I enjoyed them and thought "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" was one of the finest short story I ever read. I wanted more. Then I remember who was the first writer that taught me that the short story was something I could read and enjoy. It was W. Somerset Maugham and read three of them and put them in my Book Journal Blog. What was it about his stories that first made me fall in love with them?

I brought a Sony Reader that stopped working and then many of the books that I had loaded up simply disappeared off the reader. I went back to Google Books and those books disappeared too. There is a new agreement between Google Books and authors and publishers. Many of the books that were there are not there anymore. I can't get them here at all. Then I was able to get the Sony Reader working and charged up with a upgrade. I did not lose the books after all and there it was, all 132 books that I had initially loaded up. Included in those books were more short stories of Maugham and they were from the collection of the South Seas.

Maugham wrote stories about people. When you read his stories it was impossible to ignore the fact that there were emotional, breathing and sometimes people in pain or in passion. I am reading a story now about a man who is angry with another. Sometimes his characters are in deep passion about a woman or about art but the characters are not neutral about anything. Then I remembered reading John Gardner who said that readers always want to care about a character in a story. The plot, Maugham wrote, moved the story along and let the reader know what was happening to the characters. In a word, you have to care about the shoes. You have to care about the story, the people who are walking in those shoes.

I remember reading wonderfully well-written books in which I did not care one way or the other what happened to any of the characters. In Maugham's stories I care what happens to them. That is what keeps me reading. I care because the author cares. You can't let the reader see the devices in the stories to manipulate the reader, but if the author cares about the character he or she has created then the reader will care too and get carried along the same as the writer. When I write, I am a reader too. I am reading what I am writing. Sometimes, I get bored by what I write. Not good.

In the dream, the policeman does not care what is happening on the street, who is my brother and what else is in the room with me. All he cares about is what I am saying. He does not care about how I did my research. What matters is the quality of shoes that I am selling or the stories that I am creating. The store is now open and the clutter of the cheap advice that I was given in the past is gone. My inner police removed them. Now, I can expand and put in my own store what I need to produce a quality product, my own brand of shoes or stories.

Yipes, they are alive!

As I wrote earlier, I am working on a book of short stories right now. It is my first attempt to do so since I normally write novels. A curious thing happened today as I was working on one story. I was at the coffee shop I go to and came to a place in my story that was a dead-end. I had no idea where to go from there. I went and got a sandwich and a cup of coffee and thought about it. No dice. I had no idea what I was going to do. I even considered throwing out the story except I liked it.

When I worked on novels, I always knew where the book was going. I didn't always know the middle but I knew where it would end up. With the short stories I was writing, I did not. I don't read this form of fiction often. I had just finished a small book of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham that I read the first time when I was a young teen. I was surprised how much I had changed since I first read them many years ago. I still enjoyed them, but I saw different things in them than I did not the first time. I thought, for instance, that many points of irony hinged on a female character more than male characters and that during the time in the mid-twentieth century many authors did more than use women characters in their plots to move things along. They blamed them for a whole variety of things. I think I did that as well in my own stories of that time. Things have changed, thank goodness. I have too.\

Today I looked at my plot and my female protagonist and I had no idea what she was going to do. In a way, she was up against some of the same issues many women were up against in Maugham's stories. She was up against the wall and had no place, no direction that I could think she could go. I was stymied. Well, I was writing in long hand as I do when I am not in my apartment with the laptop. I just put my pen on the paper and let it go where it may because the other choice was to start another story and give up on this one.

I was astonished when the characters just took off and did their own thing. I just followed them recording what was said and what they did and in a very competent manner they finished the story in a way that I liked. In a sense, I also trusted them.

Maybe I had been trying to push the characters around and not allowing them to be who they were. That sounds a bit odd, but I have heard other writers say their fictional characters take a life of their own. I had done my job by giving them their characteristics and the setting for the story. I don't even like pit bulls but one came onto the scene and I dutifully recorded him as he walked outside through the doggie door looking for biscuits and occasionally lying in the sun.

Of course, the story was being done in my head. Who else is up there? Still, all this ability to plan, plot and create did not happen in a vacuum. It was being done effortlessly. I have been writing stories in my head since I was a little girl. Many writers have. I would watch a movie and "improve" it by rearrange the film or read a novel and change it to make it better or just write stories from scratch in my head.

My mother would call it daydreaming. It was fun to do especially on those long walks to and from school, the library, bus stops and so forth. I was a solitary person who lived in a very dysfunctional family. Walking was the only way I could get out of the house and way from the fighting that went on especially when my father had too much to drink. I thought all of that daydreaming was wasted. Not so.

Now it seems, my characters may have lives of their own. I am anxious to let them "loose" again in my next story.