Deadlines

There is an inverse relationship between an approaching deadline and the ability to write above the level of a 5th grader.

It's simple, really.  Those pesky deadlines are always far off in the distance, nothing but a glimmer on the horizon.  The editor and her needs do not exist.  Every day, every scene I experience sparks a new and original idea for articles or stories that the masses will love.  I am Tolstoy.  I am Fitzgerald.  Ideas flow from me like cool water springing forth from the fertile ground of my mind.

Then, five days before it's due, I get that friendly email reminder from the editor, and ideas evaporate like dew on a summer morning.  I can't articulate a sentence and the fertile ground of my mind is a barren wasteland.  Nothing I think of is interesting, no idea I come up with sounds remotely readable.  My ideas are passé, cliched, and overdone.  My style is weak.   I scramble, I look through old, unused articles.  Maybe I can revamp something, maybe I wrote something months ago that I forgot about.  But the well is dry.

The deadline is now.  The editor sends one more email.  I've got nothing.  Pressure, frantic pressure builds.  I write.  It's horrible.  I rewrite, it's still horrible.  I scrap the whole thing.  I email her asking for one more day.  She grants it and then I waste my time watching reruns of Gilligan's Island.  Mary Ann is hot.

I finally come up with a masterpiece!  No, that's a lie, and not even a convincing lie.  But I send it to her, anyway.  My email is apologetic.  "Sorry this sucks so bad.  Wait, I meant badly!  Or did I?  Oh hell, whatever."

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Story Segment - The Dead Thing, by Matt Neal

In this segment, I'm trying to make the reader feel both curiosity and tension.  After reading it, tell me what you felt.  Grammar isn't being graded, I wrote this in just a few minutes.  Just enjoy, and go with it.

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The Dead Thing

Wet leaves fell like sticky, silent rain over the surrounding hills.  Lizzie looked up.  The sky was grey with low hanging clouds.  She held the dead thing in her arms.  Rugart stopped too quickly and she almost ran into him.

“What the hell?” she moaned.  Her foot slipped on an algae covered rock.  But she caught herself before falling.

Rugart did not reply.  The only sound he made was a grotesque slurping as he shoved red things into his mouth.

“More damn berries!  Get going, you stupid---“  but her voice trailed away as she regained her footing.  The dead thing had fallen.  She looked down with immense sorrow.

“Beety.  Oh Jesus, my Beety.”

It lay amongst dirty leaves and scattered stones.  But there was little time for ceremony.  The dogs howled in the distance.  A gunshot whizzed over her head.  Rugart screamed like a child.  In the instant before Lizzie could push herself up, her mind flashed on a distant childhood, with a tiny boy sitting on a swing beside her.

“Lissie, I fall!” he said.  Then her mind returned to the present.  Rugart lay in a heap in front of her.  His voice was small and weak.  “Lizzie, please…help me.  They’re coming.”

Seconds later she had lifted him to his feet, but not before noticing the blood streaming from his leg.  She held the dead thing tightly, pushing her brother before her.

“Run, damn it!  Run!”

Another bullet grazed her arm, sending a shockwave of pain through her mind and body.  She did not stop.  Seconds later they were at the end of the creek.  A tiny boat was lodged among the rocks.  Water trickled slowly, and then steadily into a larger body of water that wound between trees.  In the distance was an opening into the main river, and freedom.

Rugart stared at the boat.  He turned a blank look towards his sister, who pushed him down until he tumbled into it.  She grabbed an oar and began paddling.  A distant shout, now nearer, made her muscles tense.  She quickened her strokes.  A tree obscured their pursuers.

“We made it Rug,” she said.  Far away gunshots echoed around the bayou.  “You hear?  Rug?  We made it!”

As she paddled, the dead thing lay before her in the bottom of the boat.  The open river was so close.  They would make it.  But they did not.  She let out a breath of relief only a second before staring at Rug.  Why did he look that way?  He slid sideways, and crumpled over the side.  She saw the blood streaming from the side of his head.

Lizzie’s grip tightened on the oars.  Her brother disappeared beneath the dark waters.  She watched him vanish from her sight, and from her life forever.

“I’m sorry, mama,” she muttered.  Then she continued on.  Seconds later, the river opened up before her.  A quick current took her away from the overhanging vines that had sheltered the tiny access from which she had just emerged.  Soon the barking of the dogs was lost in the fog, far behind her.  She was alone on the great river with just the fog, the sound of her oars, and the dead thing.

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Tell me what you thought the dead thing was.

Something New - Short Stories and Segments

     I'm going to add something new.  I'll start posting a few short stories here and there, as well as a few segments.  A segment is either the beginning of a story or a segment of a story.  I love to write and sometimes I'm just trying to hit a certain mood, or push a certain idea.  So a segment is an incomplete story meant to do just that.  Rarely does a segment ever evolve into a full story...but it might.

Putting Yourself Out There as a Writer

Writers put themselves out there.  I never realized I would get such hate mail, people attacking me personally, saying such horrible things, over such innocent, humorous articles in a magazine.  It takes a lot out of you.

I thought that if I avoid politics, religion, anything controversial, I could make people smile.  But that's not true.  People seem to be looking for reasons to hate, reasons to make you feel bad.

Even this blog is just about classic book reviews.  I never criticize the authors, I only discuss the books themselves.  But I get more hate mail than positive feedback.  And the hate mail always attacks me personally.  It's like I have to walk in lock-step with whoever happens to be reading me, or else they feel the right to attack me personally.  People don't live and let live anymore.  It's all about total, 100% agreement with their point of view, or else you are a despicable person who must die.

I'll have to ponder this more before I can give some philosophical, helpful insight.  At the moment, I'm still stunned.

Update:

The local woman who sent me that email is Tathata Revis.  The email was extremely vile, and made sexual references to my daughter.  I don't know this person, but the situation concerns me.  She lives in the same small town as me, and who knows what she is capable of.  Certainly I wouldn't put it past her to contact me again, or try to contact my family.  Tathata Revis is the kind of person who would probably send emails to my editor to get me (or anyone she dislikes or disagrees with) off the magazine.  Her motto must be "Reach out and hurt someone."

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Suggested Reading List

The story takes place in the mid 1930s.  F. Scott Fitzgerald was in a bad way.  He was battling alcoholism and depression.  His wife, Zelda, was admitted to the Highland Hospital of North Carolina.  While staying at the Grove Park Inn, in Asheville, NC, he fired a revolver in a suicide attempt.  After that, the Grove Park Inn wanted him to leave, but allowed him to stay if he had someone to look after him.

Enter Dorothy Richardson.  Dorothy was both his nurse and companion.  The story goes that he eventually became friends with her and wanted to help her literary growth.  So he gave her a list of 22 books that he recommended.  Richardson wrote at the top of the list the following words:

"These are books that S.F. thought should be required reading."

2013 Writers' Conferences in the Southeast

January 6-12, 2013
Blue Flower Arts Winter Writers' Conference
New Smyrna Beach, Florida

January 19-27, 2013
Eckerd College Writers’ Conference: Writers in Paradise
St. Petersburg, Florida

January 24-28, 2013
Fun in the Sun Conference
Florida

January 26-27, 2013
Cocoa Beach Writers’ Conference
Cocoa Beach, Florida

April 4-6, 2013
Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

April 5-6, 2013
Blue Ridge Writers' Conference
Blue Ridge, Georgia

April 13, 2013
NC Writers' Network Spring Conference 2013
Greensboro, North Carolina
(I assume they had this but the website link doesn't work.  Not sure if it was a conference or just workshop)

April 18, 2013
Conference on Souther Literature
Chattanooga, Tennessee
(Held every other year)

April 19-20, 2013
Kentucky Writers’ Conference and Southern Kentucky Bookfest
Bowling Green, Kentucky

May 4-5, 2013
DFW Writers Conference
Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas

May 10-12, 2013
Atlanta Writers Conference
Atlanta, Georgia

May 17-18, 2013
Tallahassee Book Festival and Writers Conference
Tallahassee, Florida

May 18, 2013
Red Clay Writers' Conference
Kennesaw, Georgia
(This may have replaced Springfest which used to be held in Kennesaw in the spring)

June 23-28, 2013
Chesapeake Writers' Conference
St. Mary's City, Maryland

July 17-20, 2013
Romance Writers of America Annual Conference
Atlanta, Georgia

July 23-Aug 4, 2013
Sewanee Writers' Conference
Sewanee, Tennessee

August 22-26, 2013
Killer Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee

August 30, 2013
The Writers' Conference at the Decatur Book Festival
Decatur, Georgia
(The Decatur Book Festival typically has a one day writers' conference at the start of the festival, but the website currently has no details about it.  Poets and Writers has this blurb)

September 25-28, 2013
Chattahoochee Valley Writers' Conference
Columbus, Georgia
(I don't have much hope for this one, they even misspelled their own name on their website, and they have no details of an event coming in a few months)

September 26-28, 2013
Scribblers Retreat and Writers' Conference
St. Simon's Island, Georgia
(This may not be happening in 2013, they have no details or schedule on their website.  But they do allow you to pay for it online right now)

October 4-5, 2013
Moonlight and Magnolia's 2013
Norcross, Georgia

October 18-20, 2013
Florida Writers Conference
Lake Mary, Florida

October 19-20, 2013
James River Writers' Conference
Richmond, Virginia

November 7-10, 2013
Sanibel Island Writers' Conference
Sanibel Island, Florida

November 15-17, 2013
NC Writers' Network Fall Conference 2013
Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina
(No website for this yet, and not sure if it's a true conference or just a workshop)

November 16, 2013
Baltimore Writer's Conference
Baltimore, Maryland
(Website has info from 2011 conference, no details on anything newer except a "save the date" message)

January 5-10, 2014
Blue Flower Arts Winter Writers' Conference
New Smyrna Beach, Florida

January 18-25, 2014

Eckerd College Writers’ Conference: Writers in Paradise
St. Petersburg, Florida



sources: Poets and Writers, Stacey O'Neale, Google

Finding a Writers' Conference

Finding a comprehensive list of writers' conferences was no easy task.  There was no single place I found that had all the ones I came up with for my list, 2013 Writers' Conferences in the Southeast.

Writers' conferences in New York are different.  You can expect everyone in the writing and publishing industry to poke their heads in at some point.  But Georgia?  Sure, we've got a lot of talented writers, but several conferences seem to be either defunct or not well advertised.

Inferno, by Dan Brown - Predictions

I'm not planning to read this book, not for a while.  Based on his last book, The Lost Symbol, which had a plethora of plot holes, Dan Brown seems to have lost steam.  I don't know anything about Inferno, all I did was glance at the cover on Amazon without even reading the blurb.  So here are my predictions.

Music is Feeling with Sound

I don't usually post videos on this site, but this one deserves to be enjoyed.  The quote, "Music is Feelings with Sound" comes to mind when I watch this.

Audible for Audiobooks

Is audible a good deal?  That's what you want to know.  The answer is a mixed bag, so here's what I found out.

Audible sells audiobooks, but not on CD.  You download them from their website.  The problem is they are in a special format.  It ends with ".aa".  What this means is you have to use special Audible software to play these files.  That's the problem people have with using Audible.

I'll start with the good.

Summer of '84

Think of palm trees, sea shells, pina coladas, and endless summer days.  Remember when you were about 19, hanging out at the beach or the lake with friends, throwing a frisbee or just laying on a towel?  Somewhere nearby, that familiar summer song comes on the radio.  Those are the memories I'm pulling out of my own past.

It's All in the Details

We can accept a book about vampires.  Or how about a search for Atlantis?  Or better yet, the Holy Grail?  From Dracula to dinosaurs, we don't mind reading these books.  We take them at face value.

But what we can't accept is poor research into the real world.  You'd better know your stuff, and make it believable.

Lessons on Writing from Downton Abbey

Raise your hand if you thought it was Downtown Abbey.  Yeah, me too.

If you like that show, you may have something in particular about either the format or storyline that keeps you watching.  I noticed something that is so obvious yet so subtle that many people might have overlooked it.  It's something that's well worth remembering, and is worth applying to my own writing style.

A Book's Beginnings

It happened again.

The first time was on March 6, 2009.  I woke up from a dream.  It was wonderful and terrible.  It consumed me as I lay in bed, thinking about it over and over.  I relived it as I drove in to work.  I pored over the details again and again while sitting at my desk.  During my lunch break I began writing.  I continued writing when I got home.  I wrote 10,000 words that day.  I wrote 10,000 words the next day as well.  And the next.  In fact, for 16 days I wrote 10,000 words every day.  On days 17 and 18 I wrote 5,000 words each.  That included editing and rewriting.  After 18 days I was staring at the completed first draft of a 170,000 word novel.

Ripping the Heart Out of Your Book

Step one, spend an untold amount of time pouring your soul into your book.

Step two, reach in with both hands, grab a big hunk of words, then yank them out and throw them away.

When your novel is 112,000 words and no one will read it over 100,000, you can either leave it as is, your pride and joy, your child, and keep art for art's sake.  Or you can strip it down, sell out to "the man", give in to commercialism, trade in your artistic roots and make the darn thing salable.

That is your choice.  Good luck!

The Perfect Pitch

That's what I'm doing.  Working on that perfect pitch letter.  You may write a great novel, but unless you can play salesman and convince someone to publish it, no one will know.  I can't believe how much time I'm spending on this.  Draft after draft, just trying to get the wording right.

There are actually entire books about how to write a "query letter".  The query letter contains your pitch.  You send it to an agent or publisher.  If it's stupid, or doesn't follow the exact format, they won't read your book.

Plus, I have this terrible fear of rejection so I've never submitted anything to anyone, ever.  And guess what?  I've never been rejected.  How many other writers can say that?