Conversations with Barb and Jann
October 2, 2012 by Jann Ryan in category Jann says . . . tagged as Barb Delong, Conversations with Barb and Jann, Jann Audiss, Journaling, Memories
The Power and Joy of Journaling
The other day I was going through an old childhood trunk I call my Trunk o’ Memories when I came across some of my trip diaries from the ‘60’s. My husband and I sat down, read through them and had a great laugh. Back in the day, my frugal mom would put $25 in an envelope for each day of travel, all road trips, of course. That $25 covered all expenses for me and my mom and dad, including gas and the motel. I duly recorded said expenses in the diary and some days we even had a buck or so left over to add to the next day’s envelope. The diaries brought back so many memories of the places we visited (mostly the northeastern U.S. – we were from Toronto, Canada), the ‘60’s era, my thoughts at the time, and the weather. Yes, I also recorded the daily temperature and precipitation.
I had forgotten about those diaries this summer when we embarked on an epic family road trip where I once again kept a daily diary. This time I tapped away on my iPad in my Pages app. I call it epic. Think eight people in a GMC Yukon SUV, three of them six years old and under, on a road trip up the California coast to Portland, Oregon, and back. We stopped along the way (many times), had some fun and some not-so-fun adventures, went through a lot of diapers, laughed and cried (sometimes it was me), and I duly recorded it all. Yes, including the weather.
What I’d done back in the day and now, was journaling. As I wrote in my journal before bed last night, I realized that I have always journaled. But why? Why did I feel the need to record the daily routines, the life-altering events, my thoughts and feelings, the weather? I’m sure it was not just to place these things in the historic record, to be read twenty or thirty years from now.
Remember that secret diary with the tiny key you kept as a teen, the one your bratty little brother read excerpts from to all his friends? You snatched it from his grubby hands and wrote that night,
Dear Diary,
I’m going to strangle my brother and stuff his body into his stinky gym bag!
That was journaling. Admit it. You felt a darn sight better after venting. And so, that’s why I journal. I feel better afterward. I throw down on the page my innermost thoughts, my deepest feelings, loves and hates, hopes and dreams. For my eyes only.
I think everyone knows this about journaling. But when I was researching the subject, I came across a website that listed no fewer than 100 benefits! Check it out at www.appleseeds.org/100_journaling.htm.
October 2012 Online Class
September 26, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Alison Diem, magic, mystery, NaNoWriMo, Online Class, steampunkConquering National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)
October 15 – November 11, 2012
Poetry
September 24, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as poetryI majored in English in college—I have always loved stories. I can’t even remember now what my period of interest was—maybe 19th century English and French literature? That sounds reasonable. I read a fair number of novels, plays and…poetry. Yes, I fondly recall a seminar in French symbolist and surrealist poetry.
Homework was reading poetry, and I remember how first I’d just read an assigned poem. Then I’d go back and look up all the words I didn’t know or understand and translate it. Then I’d read my crude translation to try to understand the sense of the individual words and the vision of the poem. Read it again trying to internalize the meaning of the words as I read them. Read it again out loud to hear the language. It took hours to read a few lines of text on a page!
While I was wrestling with this class, I remember going to some event and chatting to two somewhat inebriated English graduate students and explaining that really, I just didn’t get all the hoopla about poetry. And having them earnestly explain that poetry was it. The pinnacle. The point. The Ultimate in the pantheon of literature….
I didn’t buy it. I figure they just liked to lord it over us lowly undergraduates and needed to pick something obscure and difficult (indeed often impenetrable) and pretend they understood the secret language, and others lacked the refined ear and were not worthy of the key to unlock this treasure. ENC (Emperor’s New Clothes) I thought. Nothing there.
Flash forward several years. Had broken up with my college/post college boyfriend, moved to New York, gotten a job. But I was still connected with our collective friends when I found out from other sources that he was getting married to a woman who had banned all of his former friends (our friends) as a pre-condition. He had to give them all up for her, and he did.
I felt compelled to write to him. It couldn’t be any kind of lengthy explanation of my disappointment in his actions: his willingness to betray long term friends to satisfy an utterly inappropriate perception of threat. To roll over and allow for such bad behavior. To not stand up for himself. To be so utterly lacking in integrity. No. No explanations.
It had to be brief–no more than 3 sentences. Expressive. Dignified. Ruthless.
I wrestled with words. Wrote and rewrote. Crafted my note. Every word had to have resonance, had to have it’s own integrity and then when juxtaposed to another, and another, create a new and nuanced meaning. I flashed back to my conversation on Poetry and realized…
Poetry is it.
It is the challenge of packing the world in a thimble, of making each word do double, triple duty or more. Of creating a multifaceted object that you can turn and turn again, see through it, see yourself in it, see other dimensions within it. Within yourself.
My Story Is Like The Princess Bride
September 19, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category ArchivesMona Karel, member at large
No, it’s not about to be made into an iconic movie. No, it doesn’t have a classic line, uttered by an actor of impeccable reputation (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.) And it’s not filled with whimsy and sly references. Nor, alas, was it written by an award winning Hollywood icon
If you’ve read Princess Bride, you know it’s supposedly a book read to a young boy when he’s ill, by his elderly relative. When the boy grows up, he looks for the book to read to his own children and finds that his elderly relative was only reading the good parts to him, and the rest of the book was deadly dull.
My mind has been like that elderly relative, remembering the good parts about this particular book and not the rest of the story. So when I offered it as an “exciting and polished read” I was talking about the book of my weak memory, not reality. I was sure I could do one last quick trip through this book, polishing it to a gleaming brilliance in just a few short hours.
Ummm, not quite. In fact not at all. I’ve transferred the book to my kindle. I’ve pulled it up on my desk top and my lap top. I’ve even printed it out on (gasp) paper. And still the words refuse to reorder themselves into any semblance of rational order.
See, when I first wrote this mass of gibbering, I knew nothing about writing. Not that I’m any great wealth of writing advice now but at least I have learned not to change point of view three times in one four sentence chapter. So I blithely typed away back then, having the hard bitten hero describe the heroine’s hair as: “It rippled in a shining pony tail down the back of her head and caressed her cheek as she bent to help a young mother arrange bags and a sleeping baby. Chestnut with golden highlights, her hair crowned a proudly held head.” Yeah, right. He’s going to have those exact thoughts right before he pulls out an Uzi and sprays the room.
Okay, so I have a little bit of a POV problem. I could say I have a characterization issue but it’s most likely a need for DEEP point of view. So maybe I “man up” his observations and make him the rough, gruff grunting type. Nope. Still doesn’t feel right.
Instead I’m going to try going through the beginning of the book again, and this time force myself to stay in the heroine’s POV for a full scene. I might even go for the gold, and keep it in her voice for, are you ready? One. Complete. Chapter.
Yep, I just might try that thing. And maybe I’ll even make a real book out of this story, you just wait and see! One day we’ll be quoting lines from this book as if–sorry, I do get carried away sometimes.
Mona Karel is the writing alter ego of Monica Stoner, who had her first book published after only twenty something years of writing. She has two books out now from Black Opal Books, and if she can ever get this one cleaned up she’ll be on her way to a Romantic Suspense series. For more silliness and some neat recipes, check out her blog: http://mona-karel.com/.
emaginings: It’s Here!
September 16, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as emaginings, Linda McLaughlin, OCC/RWA anthology, Romancing the PagesRomancing the Pages, OCC’s anthology of romantic short stories is now available in e-book format from Amazon.com. I’m proud to be one of the editors of the anthology, along with Debra Holland and Louisa Bacio.
The stories in the anthology are:
All Summer on a Date, by GVR Corcillo
A Valentine for Lily, by Alina K. Field
Melting the Ice, by Rose de Guzman
Purple Orchids, by Erin Satie
A Bit of Romance, by Ottilia Scherschel
Peaceful Transit, by Theresa Moore
Canine Casanova, by Alexis Montgomery
One Weekend, by Elise Scott
The Guy with the Dragon Tattoo, by Barbara DeLong
The Meat of Romance, by Joy Elizabeth Hancock
Heart Strings, by Joyce Ward
A Helping Hand, by Janis Therault
Heart Hound, by FC Amati
Hero in Disguise, by Kitty Bucholtz
Princess Pumpkin, by Alexis Montgomery
The Carnival, by Joyce Ward
The Letter, Marilyn Bates
Jailbait, by Sharon Hampton
The Prosecutor, by Louella Neson
It was a pleasure to work with so many talented OCC members. This was truly a group effort. Our beautiful cover was designed by the talented Lex Valentine, and thanks are owed to Janet Quinn Cornelow for formatting the book.
Thanks, everyone.
Linda McLaughlin aka Lyndi Lamont
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An Irish lady from a scandalous family gets a chance at a Season in London and an opportunity for revenge, but her schemes stir up an unknown enemy and spark danger of a different sort in the person of a handsome young Viscount.
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