#writechat, How do I love thee?

If you're familiar with Twitter, you recognize the # symbol at the beginning of the title of this piece as the start of a "hashtag". If you're not, don't worry, this isn't a love letter to Twitter, and you don't have to be a part of Twitter to appreciate what that "#writechat" has come to mean to me. What you do have to understand is how important group interactions can be to someone who practices a craft as solitary as writing.

First, what is #writechat? It's a very open group discussion every Sunday, 2-5pm CDT, on Twitter. Twitter, with the limiting aspect of 140 words (130 for this discussion, because each post must include the phrase #writechat if you want others taking part to see it) doesn't encourage lengthy discourses. With its free for all membership, a lot of people can take part very quickly, and it's very hard to keep up any discussion going more than a few sentences. Then there's the technology of Twitter, which may slow down, or even prohibit, a participant's responses, effectively taking them out of the chat. So how could something so disorganized, so superficial, so inclusive be of any benefit to an aspiring writer? Wouldn't those three hours be better spent actually writing? No, they wouldn't, at least not for me.

#writechat is the discussion group equivalent of speed dating. Like speed dating, you don't go in with too high of expectations, but an open mind to the possibility of something clicking. In speed dating, you might not meet the person of your dreams, but you could learn a bit about yourself through the quickfire conversations. You definitely discover a lot more of the things you aren't looking for in a mate. In #writechat, while looking for the secret that removes every obstacle to a successful writing career you'll find kernels of advice that chip away at those obstacles. You'll also have a few of those private superiority moments, when you realize you have progressed as a writer. And finally, like speed dating, you might "meet" someone who you engages you in a way that you want to carry the conversation further. Twitter's follow feature is only one click away.

What did I gain from this past Sunday's #writechat? The two questions that started the whole thing roiling (and nearly stayed on point the whole three hours!) were posed by this week's guest moderator, @markdavidgerson, "How do you define success as a writer?" and "Are you okay calling yourself a writer if you're not published?". I've always been pretty clear on my answer to the first, but the second question, which so many other writers had no problem answering in the affirmative, has always been one of my inner demons. I know that if I don't call myself a writer, if I have some sort of inner shame or inferiority about my work, it will never be as good as it can be. If I don't respect my work, who will? #writechat, with all its crazy side conversations, occasionally spamming, and pure off topic discourse, taught me one thing yesterday. I AM A WRITER.  Thank you to all who participate in #writechat, and especially to WritingSpirit ,the founder of #writechat.

"....'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.”

The quote is from Mary Pickford and the sentiment is that although it's been four weeks since I last worked on the exercises laid out in The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance" by Eric Maisel, I am not quitting. I am back at Week 6, and it is all about forgiveness. My "enemies list" has been made (and will stay private, for obvious reasons). What I have learned from listing the 24 people that came to mind in 10 minutes is that there are a few people who I harbor ill will against for a variety of reasons, and several who have only done one thing that I haven't gotten past. I've also learned that my dip into the Middle Way has left me unable to only see the negative. As I made the list, I started thinking of ways each of these people had helped me. As the exercise proceeds, I am to forgive each person (mentally, as this is NOT a 12 step program) and become a healthier person. A healthier person is a more creative person, right? My mind boggles at what Van Gogh could have done if this is true.

I'm actually doing 750, but there was no badge for that....

There's no half glass full - fewer people are reading fiction.

I've seen a quote attributed to Steven Jobs several times over the last week, concerning how few Americans read books. I traced it back to an interview with the NY Times in January of this year. Yes, he did say that “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.". As an aspiring writer, I find that depressing as all hell. Please, let him have his facts wrong. Searching further, I can't find what his source for that number was, but I did find a study published in 2004 with data from 2002 by the National Endowments for the Arts. Maybe Mr. Jobs has slightly more recent numbers, because it turns out that 56% had read a book, but that's only if you include non-fiction. If you're only looking at novels, short stories, plays, or poetry, just 46& had read a book. And that's not a steady figure. It's almost 10% than ten years earlier. The closest thing to any good news for a fiction writer in the NEA study is that the actual number of readers has stayed approximately the same because of population growth.

Oh, and if the hard facts that there are fewer people reading literature isn't a dark enough cloud, there's this little tidbit from the study - more people are writing. Goody. More competition.

Week 3, exercise 6, 3 of 3

I want to describe the sparkle, 
but those eyes are cold and black.
This story will have no happy ending
the demon muse has come back.

In my mind I see day kissed skin,
two bodies entwined as one.
But the story that he would tell
Is from a world with no sun.

My plot would have you call a lover.
But you simply will not obey.
You are every bit the hunter,
a spider that lures its prey

I loathe to write the lines that follow,
when he cowers in your heat.
I've been in this dark space before
No partner deserves such mistreat.

Week 3, Exercise 6, 2 of 3

The Closet

Little boy lost, little boy found
Little boy, in the ground.
Gotta grow up
gotta do you thing.
Little boy lost
Gonna be a big man.

Try to do the right thing
try to act the same.
Gonna marry your sweetheart
do the other on the side
Do the right thing
Gotta be a real man.

Look at all the pretty girls
Don’t you want a turn?
Stop doing what you do
Never should have gone that far 
Little boy gotta learn
The lies they call a man.

Week 3, Exercise 6

I  restarted Eric Maisel's The Creativity Book two weeks ago.  One of the exercises for this week is to "Settle into mystery" and to do that, I am to write a poem a day for three days.  Sure, I could write them and file them away in my laptop.  But that's one of the problems I'm trying to address - the confidence to publish.  Before my inner critic can talk me out of it, I send one raw and first draftish poem out into the everlasting world of the internet.

Negative energy

I don't know enough about physics
or the natural world
to say where this energy comes from.

I only know that I can feel the pull
when you are here
And when you are gone there is none.

You are a mass, a gravitational pull
At worst, a black hole
I’ve tried to balance too long.

When you are gone I move along
I have found the center
of my own universe. It is me.

But what have I read lately???

Reviews are now posted on Goodreads. When Twitter and Goodreads are on speaking terms, update feeds will post to Twitter.   Check out the top of the sidebar for my most recent tweets.

A tiny post to keep the bedsores at bay.

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." -Albert Einstein

Books 39 - 42

39. Death of an Ordinary Man by Glen Duncan - A dead man observes his family at his own funeral and wake, looking for clues as to why he died. His recently departed stature gives him the ability to see but not be seen, as well as to hear some of the thoughts of his family. Their grief triggers memories of another death in the family, one that no one dealt with nearly as well they seem to be handling his passing. The presence of two people he doesn't recognize is what troubles him most, and until he finds the connection, he can't let himself move on. In a less brave author's hands, this story would have been turned into a predicatable story of bad things happening to good people. But Duncan isn't afraid to twist the story, to veer off just when you think you see the path he is following. He's an author who creates characters strong enough to tell their own story.

40. Fielding Gray by Simon Raven - Set in 1945, this is a story of what happens when the acceptaed school boy flirtations and crushes develop int0 something stronger and less accepted. **, an upper level student at an all boy school, is attracted to a younger student. He pursues him, seduces him, but isn't ready when the younger boy wants to continue the relationship over the term break. An unhappy home life convinces ** that is is good to be wanted, despite warnings from other classmates that he's wrong to encourage the younger student. By the time he's ready to face the younger boy, something he feels responsible for setting in motion had gone horribly wrong. A very fast read, sad but honest.

41. The Outcast by Sadie Jones - If Ian McEwen had ever been a sixteen year old girl, this is the book he would have written. A young boy loses his mother, and no one around him has the tools or the heart to help him recover. Instead, they all have their own levels of disfunction to travel through - all except one, who fanfic readers will recognize as a Mary Sue of the highest calibre. That's not to say this isn't a good read, if you enjoy a pretty good gothic mixed with a heavy dose of romantic idealism. My complaint is that Jones paints her characters in such obvious broad strokes that you know what they're going to do pages before they do it. Also, there's a gender bias so broad (women = silently suffering victims, men = brutes that can't help themselves), it might have worked for a story set in the 1850's, but not the 1950's, The author is capable of letting characters reveal their flaws through subtle actions, there are some very moving passages of this book that prove it. It's when the story is dragged back onto a "love conqueres all" path that it becomes difficult to read.

42. The Birth House by Ami McKay - l checked this historical fiction out at the library after having a "Well, I've never read a book about that place or topic!" reaction to the cover flap, and I'm very glad I did. Set in Nova Scotia shortly before WWI, this is the life story of a young woman, the only girl in a large family of boys, who learns the art of midwifery, at first out of lack of any other future, but later out of love and respect for the other women in her town. This was the point in time when medical science had discovered how to turn child birth into a medical procedure instead of a natural event, and our protaganist runs head on into a doctor who is all about business and nothing about health or well being. There's a lot of interesting homepathic history in this book, as the village midwife dealt with all parts of women's health, from infertility to after-the-fact birth control. There are plenty of multi-layered characters in the book, and every one of the main ones has a complete and believable arc, something that few historical fictions accomplish.