Category Archives: Creative non-fiction

My Success…What a Mess

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I could have been writing

Blogger Fransi Weinstein (Three Hundred Sixty-Five) recently posted: “Yesterday’s Word Press Daily Prompt really caught my eye. The theme? “Success.” “Tell us about a time where everything you’d hoped would happen actually did.” And she did, quite eloquently.

So ok, let me begin by saying I know I’m lucky to have had success in my passion: writing short stories. Let me also say, unlike Fransi, my success has been sketchy, plus I have never made much money at it. In fact, just for fun, let’s do the math:

In-coming:

  • New Millennium Short-Story Story Contest: $1000
  • Illinois Arts Council Fellowship: $5000
  • Illinois Arts Council Grant: $500
  • Some literary mag, don’t remember which: $50 (I’m not counting the copies I received in lieu of payment, the typical literary mag ‘payment’)
  • Part-time teaching adult ed in creative writing: around $300 a semester – yes, 300 – not a typo. (I feel I need to count this, even though I am not a teacher at heart, nor a very good one, but it seemed to be part of my passion while I was doing it.)

Out-going:

  • B.A. (English & Psych) $$$$
  • M.A. (English) $$$$$$$$$$

The total, of course, is a total bust. But who’s counting?

I’m not. Honestly, who regrets getting an education? Especially when loans are finally paid off.  🙂

So, back to the subject at hand: my passion for writing short stories. Long story short, my love of short stories began with J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. One read, and I was hooked. Then when I was in college and majoring in Psychology, my love of literature drove me to accumulate hours in English. I just needed a few more hours and I’d have a double major.

Ah, but all that extra reading! Did I have energy and time for it? Then one day I discovered they offered a Creative Writing Workshop. Well, ever since I was a kid, stories seemed to pop into my head. I had written some stories, though none of them had really ‘gone’ anywhere. Still, why not? I thought. What did I have to lose but perhaps my pride? One or two semesters of this, and I’d have my double major.

Looking back, I see it was no accident that I ‘happened’ to choose a college that offered a writing course (in those days, college writing courses were few and far between). And there I met an amazing writing instructor, and ended up writing a story that was published in a fine literary magazine before I graduated.

And here’s where the tale twists. This first published story got a lot of praise. Success, right? Follow the momentum, follow the passion, keep on writing, right? Well before you can dedicate yourself to your passion, you have believe in it.

One part of me always knew I was a writer. Another part of me – well how to put it – was scattered. Not focused. Not sure what to do with this first success, which a large part of me did not really believe I could ever duplicate.

So I directed my energy elsewhere: raising my family, making money, etc. Oh sure, every once in a while, I couldn’t stop myself from writing a story. But despite my early success, these efforts rarely came to anything. And I guess I thought of these writing efforts as just a creative outlet, a pipe dream, or simply an anomaly.

So, that’s the short of it. Although I started making up stories from an early age, I allowed a lack of belief in myself to get in my way. In fact, I didn’t really start focusing on my passion until somewhere in my 40’s when, kids grown, husband removed from the scene, I remembered I had one.

But that’s another story…. 🙂

Ready, Set, Go…For the Jugular

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Tell us your Secrets

For reasons unknown, I used to teach creative writing. The don’t-think/just-let-it-rip type of teaching, and depending on how willing/able people were to try it, I was mildly successful. I taught this way because it was the only way I knew – or know – how to write. Not suited to everyone, I found out.

But once, a student came back to class and said she let it rip for a half hour straight and apparently, she’d dug deep, pulled out something painful. Her eyes were huge, her voice shaky: “It scared the hell out of me!”

I was young, and as you might have guessed, not a great teacher.  Great teachers clarify, illuminate, impart useful information.  (What made me think I could do this???) So while I felt for her, I had no words to explain it.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I have those words.  I could have told her that yeah, writing can be scary. It can be painful. Because writing is a risky business. Because it’s about letting go and going for the jugular. Because fiction writers have to be prepared to go for their own jugular and dig up their darkest secrets — over and over again.  Agatha Christie put it succinctly: “writing is torture.”

While I’ve never been scared by what I’ve written, I can say, letting the story go where it’s wanted to go, I’ve been surprised by where it’s gone and what it’s revealed.

I’ve read that writer Doris Betts – who writes both novels and short stories – once said that the novel is prose growth, and the short story is prose revelation. This explains a lot to me! It explains why, when my short stories work well, they give me the chills. (I have one particular story that still gives me the chills!)

In any case, if I were ever to go back to teaching (not!), I‘d still use the let-it-rip type of teaching. It’s what I believe in, it’s worked for me and it’s worked for thousands of other writers.

So here’s what I know: I know what works for me, and I know teaching is not for me,  But I very much like certain writing prompts. So how about this one: Write a piece of fiction that reveals something you have never told anyone before.  Don’t think, don’t judge. Just go….

If you get something that scares you – or gives you a little chill – awesome! 

🙂

 

Buck Up and Take It

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Rejection Sucks          It hurts. I admit it.

Over the years that I’ve been writing and submitting my stories for publication, I’ve received hundreds if not thousands of rejection letters and emails, and I’m still not immune to the sting of rejection.

I have enough rejections to line the walls of my dining room. Stuff like, “not for us,” “thanks for submitting, but we’ve decided….” or the worst one: “not funny and not fair.” Yikes!

It’s hard enough to put yourself and your work ‘out there.’ Still, rejection comes with the territory. And of course, one can always rewrite (or not) and re-submit someplace else, move the story to an archive file, join a writing group, or simply rationalize: They wouldn’t know a good story if it hit them in the arse.

In my heart of hearts, I’ve never quite believed that once your writing has reached a certain level of competence, it’s a matter of taste. Still, this is what other (more accomplished) writers have been telling me.

And then this happened:

My story 13 Rules recently won first prize in the short-short story writing contest run by  New Millennium Writings. At the same time that I submitted 13 Rules to NMW, I submitted it along with two other flash fictions to Fiction Attic Press. (Yes, multiple submissions are ok, particularly if a publication’s guidelines say it is.)

When 13 Rules won, I was so bowled over I forgot to notify Fiction Attic and withdraw it from their consideration. Bet you can guess what happened next….

A few weeks after I won the NMW fiction contest, Fiction Attic emailed me to say it wanted to publish two of the three flash fictions I submitted – and the one they didn’t want was – ta da! – 13 Rules.

Which just goes to show:

1)    One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

2)    After a certain level of competence, it really is just a matter of taste.

Of course all of us who have had our work rejected are in really good company. Here are 30 famous authors whose works were rejected (repeatedly, and sometimes rudely) by publishers

p.s. Coward that I am, I never did tell Fiction Attic the story they rejected just won 1st prize somewhere else.

🙂

A Stimulating, Impassioned Discourse on The Day Job

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A Stimulating, Impassioned Discourse on the Day Job

By the time you read this, it will be a couple of days past the end of my association’s Annual Conference. But today, as I write this, it’s a couple of days before the conference, and the plates are flying! Cancellations, last minute replacements, information requests in areas not in my realm of expertise…..

I’ve been doing this job for some time, but never get used to conference time. Sometimes, I go to the conference, sometimes I stay back, tend the fires and juggle the plates. And man, are there plates to juggle today!

Would I rather BE at the conference?  At conference, you arrive before the speakers, the attendees and the exhibitors. A day of unpacking, organizing, meetings and last minutes set-ups.

You’re up before the sun rises, and back at your hotel long after it sets. You sleep with one eye open, worried you won’t get up in time to meet the caterers and unlock the door so they can serve the staff breakfast. You are not hungry yet, but will be as soon as you are scheduled to be elsewhere.

You walk about a million miles in your hopefully comfortable shoes (God help you if you don’t bring any!). You check session rooms, distribute registration envelopes, take tickets, meet attendees, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors. Tired? You don’t notice. The energy that buzzes through the conference is exhilarating; everyone is having a great time, happy to meet you and like you, running on high.

Then, too soon, it’s over.

But I digress. It’s nearly five o’clock, and the fires are now out, the plates have gone back into the cupboard and the blessed weekend is almost here. On Monday, I’ll go back to editing/writing session descriptions for my association’s many upcoming conferences and help members who are, or wish to become, certified legal managers.

This is my job, which by the way, is not just the ‘day job’ I do to support my fiction writing; I actually enjoy it.

Still, I do wonder, if I didn’t work the ‘day job’ would I have more psychic energy to write fiction? Would I blog more, volunteer at a food pantry, spend hours at the library and go to lunch with my friends?

I’ve tried to imagine it. With retirement in the not so distant future, all I can say is, stay tuned….

Sex & the ‘Burbs

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By Guest Blogger, Timothy State

About two years ago, I sold out and chose a life with my partner in the suburbs over the urban lifestyle I’ve been used to for most of my adult life.  It was like moving to the country: occasionally we get public safety notices pushed to our cell phones that read something like, “Possible cougar sighting in the neighborhood.”  Of course there was a cougar sighting — and she was drinking a martini!

In this suburban wilderness, my partner and I seem to have amassed a following of tweens, who show up at our house wanting to tell us all about their boy troubles and girl troubles.  One young gentleman in particular has taken a fondness to me, which I am certain is because of his yet-to-be-realized need to be comforted in life by the arms of another boy. Despite being surrounded by images of gays everywhere, he seems to be trapped. Isolated in the way that every teen seems to be isolated by their own demons.

It’s a bizarre world here in the suburbs, where all the ladies on the street are either going through a divorce, are on the verge of a divorce, or have completed a divorce.  Those that are still married seem to be married to closeted gentleman who suppress their need for male companionship.

We’ve trained these ladies to show up at the front door, wine glass in hand, when we flip on the martini light that we place in the front kitchen window. Given advanced warning of the martini illumination, they bling out, like it’s a special occasion — a tupperware party, a Mary Kay bash…. But here, in the home of two gay men, they seem compelled to trash-talk their husbands who continue to not live up to the exacting and unrealistic standards they hold them to, unwilling to admit they themselves don’t live up to their own expectations.

After pointing this out (as a simple courtesy), they stare blankly over their blush-filled wine glasses, like cougars caught in headlights, paralyzed by reality.

On the other side of the room, in the gentleman’s corner, the husband with one testicle who shoots blanks with the testicle he has, finds an occasion at The Gays as the perfect opportunity to lose himself in a bottle of RumChata.  “Boozy Milk,” we call it. Drunk on the intoxicating cream, his hand slips across the inside thigh of another street husband whose raging homophobia has banned “Glee” from his household, driving his twelve-year-old daughter down the street to watch the show with the budding gay boy on the night that he thinks she’s at piano lessons.  The irony of this over-protection is that he seems to have no cause for limiting his daughter’s exposure to the dangers of FOX News, like the father who leaves a loaded pistol on the coffee table. But I digress.

Palm of hand firmly planted on the inside homophobic thigh, the shock of pleasure reverberates through both their bodies, like an electrical charge igniting the Hindenburg, leaving behind a sticky social residue calling for delicate diplomacy.  They retreat as stunned, wounded puppies, grabbing their wives. They share what happened with their wives, quick to place blame the other party, clearly a move of offensive masculinity. Are we imagining this, you ask?

Well, a few days later, walking through the neighborhood, a glass of wine in hand and the dog exploring on his leash, we spot a cougar housewife as she races out of her home to reveal to us that she and her husband returned home to have what could only be described as, “angry sex.”

“Angry sex?” my partner, Michael, and I ask in unison.

“It was so rough,” she says.

“Oh, so you mean rough sex.”

“No.  Angry sex. It was so hard and rough, filled with so much aggression; I’m bruised. I can barely walk, let alone sit down.”

Michael and I look at each other quizzically, wondering why we’re the receptacle of this over-share.

“He was on top of me and then behind me, then on top of me, and then behind me again.”

“Wait? What?”

She then describes how he penetrated her vi-jay-jay, then went to the vi-no-no, back to the vi-jay-jay, before finally shooting up her vi-no-no.  She doesn’t seem to mind it up the vi-no-no and he seems to really enjoy plugging her from behind when she’s on all fours.

The irony is not lost on us that in this moment of hyper-masculinity, her husband went right for the hyper-homosexual; we suck down wine to keep words from escaping our mouths.

“So you used a condom, and washed up in between, right?” I ask.

“No. That’s why I had to go to the doctor,” she says.

“The doctor?”

“I’ve got a vaginal infection. I’m on an antibiotic for ten days.”

Such is the normal neighborhood conversation while walking the dog.

We turn on the martini light about every other week, which means the cougars on the street are generally on a low-level antibiotic. Always.

Better than Cymbalta or Zoloft, I suppose.  At the very least, we know they’re getting some.

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Timothy State, writer, photographer, producer, has been living in the North Shore of Chicagoland since 2011.  In that time, he’s spotted numerous wild cougars.

This Is Your Brain On…

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Welcome to your brain

Welcome to Your Brain

Compliments of Guest Blogger K. Jean King

Texting and driving – dangerous right? It’s a national campaign: to become aware of the dangers of texting while driving and to end it. But here is the thing about that: texting while driving is actually impossible to do.

Let’s start with the brain, because, like everything else, that is where our problem lies. There are two types of functions the brain uses to complete any given task: the cognitive and the associative.

When the brain is engaging in an associative task, it is capable of doing many different things at once, such as listening, talking, singing show tunes, and driving.

Since driving is an associative function, we have gotten very used to being able to do other things at the same time.  We can listen to music, have a conversation, eat a burrito, have a thumb war, all without compromising the effectiveness of our driving. (You know, as far as our brain is concerned).

This is why it is possible to talk on your cell phone and drive at the same time. Talking is associative. Driving is associative. Your brain can do it.

Cognitive tasks, on the other hand, render your brain incapable of performing any other task while you are engaged with them. Cognitive tasks include things like long division, reading and writing.

As soon as we pick up our phone and begin to read a text message, our brains have become involved in a cognitive task; by nature, a cognitive task needs the entire brain to engage in it.

Therefore, if you are texting, your car might still be moving, but your brain has stopped driving it.

If you are reading a text message, you are sitting in the front seat of a two-ton tank, now speeding down the road at fifty miles an hour with no one operating it.

Texting while Driving

Two Ton Tank Driving Itself

If you are writing a text message, be aware – that is all you are now doing.

Additionally, your brain will not start controlling these things again until you stop reading or writing that text message, either because you’ve finished or because your attention has been diverted by the giant elm tree that is now where your front hood should be.

To call any task “texting while…” would be -and is- completely inaccurate. When texting, your brain can do nothing but text. You cannot text while talking. You cannot text while singing. You cannot text while rubbing your stomach and patting your head. And you certainly cannot text while at the same time driving, even though, in our cars, we are under the illusion that we are doing both.

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K. Jean King has been battling a writing affliction since early childhood. She lives outside of Philadelphia with yet another dog and the rest of her family. For humor and insight by K. Jean King, please visit theirrefutableopinion.com.

Questions from The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer

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Writer

by Guest Blogger, Pat Childers

Why do you write? I know why I write. I write for money. I write creative nonfiction for money, but I also write fiction to make myself laugh and so far nobody pays me for that. Sometimes I write to find out what I’m thinking and that can be really scary, but it does help me straighten out my medication.

I’m currently writing a science fiction thriller titled “Robot Love.” I thought of calling it “50 Shades of Robot Love,” but that would make it an entirely different book, albeit entertaining. I’m also writing a mystery that takes place in Chicago about a private investigator named Murray Antoinette. Anyway, I’ve had my picture taken for the dust jacket, written the prologue and thanked the people who helped me. It’s just that stuff in the middle (the actual text) that I’m having trouble with.

But what I want to know is: why do you write? What is it that you have to say that is so insightful, thought-provoking, or entertaining it needs to be shared with as many people as possible?  Do you have a story inside you that will cause a reader to pause and re-read a passage because it is so well said it is startling? Is it plot-driven, character-driven, or written in stream of consciousness like Virginia Woolf? I am anxious to know.

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The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer lives in Midwestern flyover country with her dogs. There have been reported sightings of her husband. In between innings of the Cubs game she is working on her web site and can be contacted at pat@pjchilders.com.

I Love Jack Reacher

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Reacher Book Cover

Compliments of Guest Blogger, The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer

I love Jack Reacher, a man with no baggage. I’m not speaking metaphorically; he literally carries only a toothbrush and a wallet. When his clothes are dirty, he throws them away and buys new ones. No ex-girlfriends; actually no immediate relatives at all, Jack is the perfect guy. Well, except for the fact that he’s never home.

What makes the enigmatic Jack Reacher and his adventures so readable is the repeated storyline of deceit and malice fomenting in a small town and ensnaring Reacher, an innocent bystander. He then feels compelled to save those in harm’s way and right wrongs until the bad guys are brought to justice. And the end result is Jack Reacher’s justice alone, which is quick and deadly. And then he moves on.

Most people are aware that Jack Reacher is a figment of Lee Child’s imagination (real name Jim Grant). I had the opportunity to meet Lee Child and hear him speak at the 2012 Thrillerfest in New York City. He is witty and humble, and let us in on how Jack Reacher came to be.

It is a well-known story that Grant worked in television production in England until, at age 40, he was found to be “redundant” and jettisoned from the job. He had seven months’ savings and decided to write a book in the thriller genre and get it published before his money ran out.

He began by reviewing the thrillers on the best seller list, his competition. The protagonists had interesting names, so he chose a simple name, Jack. They were tied to cities and jobs, so he gave Jack the entire United States. They were average-sized individuals, so Jack became 6’5”, 250 lbs, with a 50” chest. They had families and responsibilities, so Jack had none. Then he gave Jack a background in the military to fortify him and sent him out to a small town in Georgia.

With the pseudonym of Lee Child, he sent chapters of the partly finished book to a random agent. He heard that it took weeks and even months for an agent to respond. However, the agent responded within days, and requested the balance of the book. Lee Child put the effort into high gear and remarkably at the end of seven months, he had a publishing contract for “The Killing Floor” and a check.

Of course a character in a book can’t exist without a great story and excellent writing to propel him forward, and Lee Child has accomplished that in his series of Jack Reacher books. And in today’s reality, where  justice seems seldom served and tepidly at best, in the fictional world of Jack Reacher, crimes are solved and absolute justice is meted out to the guilty. Very satisfying to this reader.

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Pithy and occasionally irreverent, the Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer (aka Pat Childers) is a student of classic literature, contemporary writers and writing in general.

Not Famous Yet

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Compliments of Guest Blogger Ben “Bitter” Gardner

Not famous for this.

Not famous for this.

There are millions lot of reasons why I am not rich and famous. I don’t have movie star looks, I can’t act, or dance really well and my parents aren’t famous enough to start a reality show. I’m not fast, I can’t jump high, or skate fast or spike ball at a hundred miles an hour. I can’t spin a record, I don’t have 15 kids, or know an excessive amount of useless trivia. I can’t solve a math problem unless I have a calculator, I don’t have enough scientific ability to find a new element and I don’t have the guts to jump on 4 reds balls in an obstacle course.

I’m not naturally good at anything. I don’t have a rare ability that few people have, or a superpower. What I do have is ideas. Lots of them. Some really good ones that could make me famous. I have great ideas for apps that would be fantastic, or ideas for movies, or books, or businesses. I have vision. I know how to think outside the box. I’m so full of ideas, I don’t always know what to do with them.

But I think I figured out the reason. The biggest inventions or the greatest actors or most successful writer have two things. Not only do they have good ideas, but they had the ability to execute them.

Sure, she was a great writer, and great at executing, but also had a little luck.

Sure, she was a great writer, and great at executing, but she also had a little luck.

For instance, J.K. Rowling had a great idea, but she also had the skill to write it all down, edit it and get lucky enough for someone to read it. Edison not only had the fantastic light bulb of an idea, but was able to actually build the thing and lucky enough that it actually worked. Scott Adams was not only a hilarious person with a great idea about writing about the workplace, but he could also draw, and lucky enough that a comic about the workplace hadn’t really been explored. My theory is that most people have one or two of these things, but rarely have all three.

Don’t get me wrong, being famous would be good for a month, and being rich would be great for a couple of years, but if we had all those things, what would we have to complain about? What would I have to be bitter about?

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Ben’s alter ego, BitterBen, blogs to perfect the stand-up comedy routine he says he will never do. To get a full dose of his sardonic humor, check it out here.

So Little Time

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Tall Book Case     Compliments of the Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer

So many books and so little time….I can’t remember when I didn’t love books. Not only the words housed between the covers of books, but also the heft, color, and fragrance of them. When I was a child my favorite book was “Lorna Doone,” which my grandfather brought with him from Ireland. Every detail of Lorna and John’s trysts in the English Doone Valley was as real to me as my family’s Sunday dinner.

I didn’t read much in college, except an occasional textbook. I remember attending a moratorium to end the war in Vietnam, a sit-in at the student union, and a candlelight vigil held the night of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Other than that, my interests were prurient and shamelessly self-indulgent. My greatest struggles were opening beer cans without a can opener (in the years before pop-tops) and living in a house with 16 girls and only one phone. Life was good.

As a young mother I read voraciously, but primarily in the bodice-ripper historical romance sex-on-the-plains style of Rosemary Rogers and others like her. The men were lusty, the women were busty, and their personal hygiene was questionable. When one book faded into another, I looked around for something more challenging.

At one time I belonged to three book clubs. They’d send me six free books and I’d only have to buy one more book in the next six months. What a deal! I read “Goodbye, Columbus” by Philip Roth and thought my head would explode. Then, “The Fear of Flying,” by Erica Jong, which everyone knows is about airplanes…

Fear of Flying

A book about airplanes?

My introduction to actual literature was mesmerizing and the more I read, the more I learned about writing. Then I read every book on Oprah’s list.

Is it possible to run out of things to write about? No, there will always be a writer with another great idea. As a reader, I’m thankful for all the writers out there and I look forward to their next contribution. Never underestimate the power of words to make an impact on book lovers like me.

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When not being pithy and irreverent, the Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer (aka Pat Childers) is a student of classic literature, contemporary writers and writing in general.