S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 60

Journal Secrets

In today's all-digital, all-public-all-the-time age I think it's becoming more important than ever to keep some things hand-written and personal. Yes, this is yet another Why Aren't You Journaling? nag post. I know, it's not easy, and it generally requires you to write more than 140 characters, and it's a pain to upload to your Tumblr blog or Twitter thing or Facebook page. But with a little time and creativity you may discover it can be just as much fun as all the electronica.

This is a pic of the journal I'm using this month for my personal chronicles, and we'll take a couple peeks inside so I can show you what I put in it and how it helps keep me motivated and actively involved in learning, moving forward and feeling gratitude for my many blessings.

One reason I think more people don't journal is that they think they'll have nothing to say, or they dread all those blank pages, or they believe they'll end up whining and writing bad poetry the way they did in high school. Because a paper journal is probably now the last place you can bitch about anything without someone looking over your shoulder or using it to hatchet-job you online, it is tempting to make it a depository for all the negative, depressing things that happen. Now imagine that's all that survives you (personal journals are almost universally cherished once they get old enough), and someday your great-great granddaughter opens your old journal to find out what kind of person you were. Are they going to think you were the interesting person you are, or an endless complainer who never appreciated any of the good in life?

Personal struggles are standard journal fodder, but so are the little triumphs and accomplishments we manage, too. For this journal page I added a list from the magnetic notepad on my fridge, which I use to track my progress with walking each week. While history may not care how often I walked every day, it's important for me to know so I can stick to my goals, tally it up and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the week so that I'll be motivated to keep doing it. I like making and looking at lists that show what I'm doing, too, because they're a good barometer of how healthy I'm living. I'm now competing with myself to do a little more walking; I would love to work my way up to walking 50 miles every week (if that sounds like a lot, imagine Charles Dickens, who reportedly walked at least 20 miles a day.) When you get older motivating yourself to be active becomes more of a challenge, so setting goals and sticking to them helps boot me out the door every morning, too.

If exercise isn't an issue for you to journal about, pick something that is. For example, my friend Jill was trying to clean out her spare room, which was pretty cluttered with stuff, and making little progress. I suggested she start taking a picture of the room every time she worked on it and put the pic in her journal, along with a list of what she got out of the room and what she did with it. After a week of doing that she told me it did the trick, and she had the room cleaned out completely (this after months of being unable to make a dent in it.) She also tucked the receipts she got for donating some of the excess into her journal. Now next year come tax time she'll be able to detail exactly what she donated to Goodwill, and have the pictures to prove it, all by raiding her journal.

Here's something you may not know about me: I save every single card, note or letter my family and friends give or send to me in the mail by adding them to my journals. Here's a lovely card I received from a wonderful reader of mine that left me a little teary-eyed -- and yes, I do keep everything my colleagues and readers write to me, too. I even have a special journal just for editor correspondence. Occasionally, when I feel strongly about an issue, I write to very famous and powerful people, and sometimes they write back as well; among the more famous letters I've stored in my journals is one from then-President Bill Clinton about health care for the elderly, and a note from the CEO of Waste Management about the fair treatment of working-class people.

You may not think your correspondence is worthy of saving in a journal. I'm sure Jane Austen's friends might have thought that. Women of her time were mostly regarded and treated like room decorations, and I doubt anyone thought the little stories she scribbled would go on to become some of the most beloved classics in romantic literature. Or Emily Dickinson's few friends. Sure, she was a crazy lady who dressed in white and never left the house . . . and after her death would become one of the most admired and respected poets of all time. Almost all of what we know about Vincent Van Gogh's state of mind comes from the 874 letters that survived him. Even if you and all the people you correspond with never become famous, you still have value to history. You know how they say "In a hundred years, what will it matter?" Maybe in a couple hundred years all the electronica will be erased by some disaster, and your humble little journal may contain the only record to survive and show your time as it really was, ala Pepys.

Future fame as a dead celeb or posthumous contributor to history is definitely a glamorous reason to journal, but perhaps not as important as what has personal meaning for you. You all know one of the great joys in my life is quilting. I talk about it occasionally online, but where I really explore it and work on it and think about it is in my personal journals. I keep a quilt diary to record everything I make, but I also use my daily journals to play with design ideas, work out problems, figure out failures, celebrate milestones and pretty much quilt-dream whenever I like. This is something that makes me happy, allows me to channel my energy into artistic creation, and keeps me connected to some of the happiest aspects in my creative life.

This is a pic of some lovely quilted blocks and a huge, generous collection of fabrics that a dear friend sent to me. The colors and patterns are just amazing, and right now in my journal I' working out what to do with all of it. I'm sketching and planning and arranging little swatches on the pages, and having so much fun. Now that said, I don't think any of my quilts will be historically important; I'm not that skilled. I leave the history-making stuff to my more talented sisters. What will be important is what quilting taught me, how it made my life more colorful and fun and content. Those passages in my journals may inspire someone else someday to give it a try. I hope they do, and in passing along that gift I hope it enriches their life as much as it has mine.

Bottom line, whatever secrets (or non-secrets) you choose to put in your journal, the chronicle of your life is something only you can create. A journal is in every way a book of your life, and who better to write it than you?

Club D

The final edited edition of Club Denizen is now posted to the online freebies library; to go to it click on the cover art. For those who have been following it for the last couple of months, not much has changed; I cleaned up what typos I could spot and added some bits for clarification here and there. I am tempted to make it into a novel, or perhaps a series, so I'll think more on that and see what the work schedule allows in the future.

Thanks to everyone who did follow along; writing this one was a lot of fun.

Friend to the Mobiles

According to this post, Google is going to make things a little easier for mobile users:

Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone. This can be a frustrating experience for our mobile searchers. Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, we’re adding a “mobile-friendly” label to our mobile search results.

This change will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks. A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot: Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash; Uses text that is readable without zooming; Sizes content to the screen so users don't have to scroll horizontally or zoom; Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

With more people using their mobile phones to surf the internet accessibility is apparently becoming an issue, and if you use your site or blog to promote your books you may want to see how yours will be flagged. According to Gerard over at The Presurfer, where I originally found the info and the link to the test: "This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for their devices."

To find out if your site will be flagged as mobile-friendly, go here to test the URL. And in case you're wondering about PBW:

Revisited Reads

Mary Balogh, one of my all-time favorite historical romance authors, recently published a new edition of her 1995 novel Longing, and since it has been about twenty years since I first read it I decided to revisit it this month to see how it holds up after two decades.

Here's the copy for Longing:

The illegitimate daughter of an English lord, Sian Jones abandoned her heritage to live in a stalwart coal mining community in South Wales. Empowered by their cause, she’s engaged to be married to the leader of a revolutionary movement that is bracing itself against the tyranny of English mine owners. But Sian’s principles are unexpectedly shaken when she accepts a job as governess under Alexander Hyatt, the mysterious Marquess of Craille, the oppressive symbol of everything she has come to resist. She never expected Alexander to upend all her expectations. He is sympathetic to her cause. He is a loving father. A man of wealth and position, he is fatally attractive. And he is offering his heart to the independent woman who has illuminated his life. Now, caught between two worlds, and between the promises and desires of two men, Sian must make a choice that will define her future — one that can only be made in the name of love...

Now onto my backstory: in the mid-nineties I was staying at home with two little ones in diapers, and with only their dad's income to support us we lived on a very tight budget that did not allow for lots of book purchases. So once a week I would go to the library to pick up books to read during naptime or after the kids went down for the night. Longing came home with me on one of those trips. I'd read only a few of Mary's books back then (the first I read was Dark Angel, which knocked my socks off) but I was already hooked on her lovely writing style. This story was also set in Wales, about which I knew absolutely zero, so I considered that a bonus.

I remember reading it slowly while I mentally tried to sound out all the odd Welsh names and words, too. When I finished it I felt a bit walloped. The story was very emotional as well as very non-traditional in how the romance (more like a romantic triangle) played out, and in the HEAwful era of the 90's it was quite refreshing. It also had an intense cast of characters that stayed with me a long time after I finished the story. When I returned it to the library I promised myself I'd buy a reread copy for myself the next time I was at the used book store.

Actually I never did get a copy of Longing for myself (another long story), so I was quite pleased to see it back on the shelves with its pretty new cover art. I think as soon as I began reading it I remembered that walloped feeling superimposed over a similar experience I had when I saw BBC's production of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South for the first time. While Longing has a different setting, plot and characters, much of the emotional stakes in both stories had the same effect on me. Now that I've written 50+ books of my own, including a few like Dreamveil and Disenchanted & Co. that have more than one hero, I can also personally appreciate how tough it is to publish a story that features multiple romantic interests that last longer than the usual two pages.

Longing definitely held up very well after a twenty-year reading break, and for those of you who didn't get a chance to read the original release I can definitely recommend it as an excellent choice.

Sign Me Up

Ten Holidays Writers Would Like to Celebrate

Butt in Chair Week (January 2-9): To help all writers get a decent start on all those writing resolutions they made on January 1st which they will either ignore, forget about or declare impossible by January 10th.

Hatchet Job Recovery Day (Anytime): Must be celebrated with the writer's favorite consolation activity, food or beverage as well as a very large box of tissues.

Income Tax Weepfest (April 16th): Save some of those tissues for this 24-hour period of hysterics over all those lost receipts, being unable to claim Hagan-Daaz as a deduction, having to pay twice the FICA for being self-employed, etc.

Leave Me Alone I'm Writing! Month (November 1-30th): Because calling it National Novel Writing Month has not discouraged non-writers from interrupting us while we're creating our next work of breathtaking genius, maybe this will.

Love Scene Composition Day (February 15th): Got to do something with all that personal intensive research we did on February 14th, yes?

Not Going to Nationals Compassion Weekend (July): For our writer friends who are members of RWA but are unable to afford the thousands of dollars it costs to attend their National Conference, which we all know is a huge waste of time and will do nothing for their careers but can't convince them of the same.

Promo No-No Day (Anytime): A full day and night during which the writer does not have to advertise, hand out gratis copies, hold a giveaway, promote or even mention the latest release. Not even during a casual conversation on Twitter that offers the sparkling opportunity to regale all fifteen of one's followers with purchase-enticing snippets.

Snickerfest (April 1st): The day we all get together and laugh over the latest piece of idiocy perpetuated by a colleague whose advances have outgrown their common sense. This year I vote we guffaw over any writer who claims their characters are making them write their books badly. Because, you know, characters do that so frequently.

Writer Love Day (Anytime): A day when everyone just shows us some love instead of the usual barrage of crap. Wouldn't that be nice?

Writer Prezzie E-card Month (December): For thirty-one days every member of families and friend circles will resist the urge to buy us fuzzy socks, cologne that smells like rotting mangos and the obligatory [Insert Writer Pun] T-shirt and instead present us with electronic gift cards from whatever bookseller we are currently not boycotting due to shady business practices, the ever-looming possibility of bankruptcy, or who refuse to remove that two-star review with all the damn spoilers on our last novel even when we can prove it was that envious ass ex-critique partner who wrote it.

Doodle On

How doodling at your job can lead to amazing art (with narration by the artist and background music, for those of you at work):

Keep Doodling | Will Barras from James Partridge on Vimeo.

Just Write

Today I'm off to write something new and post it online before midnight. Everyone inclined to do the same is invited to join me.

My link: The final installment of Club Denizen , with new material beginning on page 58.

For more details on Just Write Thursdays, click here to go to the original post.

Image credit: windujedi

Off to Write

I'm unplugging today to take care of some work that needs finishing. So that your stop here was not a complete waste of time, here are the details on the Twenty-First Annual Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers Short Story Contest, which does not have an entry fee but does offer an option to get a critique if you donate five bucks:

"Theme: ADVENTURES IN A PERSONAL UTOPIA

Old Ski Nose and Der Bingle sought a metaphorical Utopia on one of their many cinematic road trips, but unlike Mr. Hope and Mr. Crosby, many of today’s practitioners in speculative fiction follow a road going in the opposite direction, a grim path leading to a bleak future full of relentless zombies, environmental catastrophes and totalitarian police states that are particularly unfriendly toward precocious teens. Dystopian fantasies, to some degree, reflect the anxiety of the times, but the reason they’re consistently popular is because they appeal to the rebellious streak in all of us. We’ll accept any oppressive regime, no matter how ridiculous the premise, because we’re hungry to see it fall. It’s so much easier to destroy than it is to build.

And that’s why this year’s contest may be something of a challenge. Cast away all pessimism and craft your vision of the ideal society or the perfect future. The more whimsical and humorous, the better. But above all, make it personal; what is the perfect life to YOU. Make it as realistic or as absurd as you want. Lord knows plausibility wasn’t high on the list of considerations for the current literary wave of 1984-wannabes. And remember to tell a good story: if flying cars represent the pinnacle of human achievement, then take the reader on a joyride. But please, no dry treatises about a Socialist collective workers’ paradise or the benefits of selfishness under a strict Objectivist economic system. Make the future fun!

Submission Period: The contest opens April 1, 2015 and closes July 31, 2015. Any manuscript received before or after the submission window will be disqualified. Multiple submissions are NOT allowed.

Eligibility and Prizes: The contest is open to everyone, no combat skills required. The top five stories will move on to the second round, judged by Hildy Silverman, Editor-in-Chief of Space and Time Magazine. The 1st Place story will be published in a future issue of S&T, as per editor’s timeline and discretion, and the author will receive the Graversen Award ($70), in honor of the GSSW’s founder, Patricia Graversen. The 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive $40 and $25, respectively. There is NO ENTRY FEE. GSSW members will receive a detailed, written critique. Optional: For a donation of $5, non-members may also receive a critique.

Format: Stories must be original and unpublished. Manuscripts must be double spaced and no more than 4000 words in length (firm). Please include contact information (name, mailing address, phone number, email address) on the first page of the manuscript.

Where to Submit: Electronic submissions ONLY. Email manuscripts as an attachment in .rtf file format to contest@gshw.net. Please note the story title in the subject line.

Results: Contest results will be announced at the GSSW’s meeting on September 12, 2015 at the public library in Old Bridge, NJ. All entrants are invited to attend. For directions, please visit our website at www.gshw.net. Prize money will be issued in the form of a check payable to winner. Winners unable to attend the meeting will receive their prizes by mail. All contestants will be notified of the results via email and those who qualify for a criitique will receive theirs no later than September 30, 2015."

Walking It

Getting back to writing full time has been great in all ways except one: spending most of the day sitting in front of the computer. I take breaks and proof things out on the porch, or take my editing out to the work bench in the garage, which I use as a standing desk, but I have been spending a few too many hours on my butt in a small room. After gaining a few too many pounds over the holidays I also needed to work that off before I ended up spending all of summer in my chubby clothes.

I am not an exercise lover; my joints make most workouts impossible for me, and I'm not nearly flexible enough to do more than the very basic low-impact stuff. Also, like most people, I hate exercising. The only varieties of exercise I've always liked are swimming and walking, and since we don't have a pool and the beach is far, far away I decided to set a daily walking goal for myself. In addition to what I already walk with the dogs I would try to do an extra mile in the morning and another in the afternoon.

Two miles doesn't sound like a lot, I know. Unless you have a bum knee, arthritic joints, and a tricksy ankle that likes to sprain itself with any misstep; then you're probably quite familiar with my pain. Most days those extra two miles do feel like twenty, especially when I do mile #2 after dinner. The first week I got blisters from wearing the wrong shoes; the second I had to change my route because the late-day traffic and people driving like maniacs down my favorite country road to walk scared the heck out of me.

The benefits, on the other hand, have been measurable. I lost five pounds in the first week without any extra dieting (probably all in sweat.) I'm sleeping better, too -- deeper, restful sleep without waking up in the middle of the night. I can't say I'm full of boundless energy, but my spirits have been better and I feel more upbeat about things, which tends to make me more energetic. Being outside in the sun and seeing the flowers of spring has that effect on me; we writers often forget how beautiful the real world is, too.

Walking also inspires me to think in different directions. I took my camera on one morning walk and photographed this old shed door, and then came home and wrote on the image:



Sure, it's not War and Peace, but it made me think in a different direction. When I booted up my work file for the day I took on a scene I thought would be difficult to write, but thanks to getting creative with the pic I worked my way through it with a bit more confidence and enthusiasm.

Where you walk is as important as how often you walk. Obviously you want to go somewhere safe, but you should also consider the environment. I love country neighborhoods as much as urban developments, but I try to avoid dirt roads (the ankle -- it's super tricksy on uneven or unstable surfaces.) I love to walk down by the lake, and since they have a really cool nature trail there I also see lots of birds every time I go. If you have a beautiful park nearby your home or office that offers a nice walking op you should try to visit it a few times a week.

On days when the weather doesn't encourage outdoor walking (next month rainy season starts here) I'll either do all my walking in the morning before it usually rains, or head to a nearby mall that I've measured with a pedometer; one lap of that place equals exactly one mile. I'm also going to measure a couple of local museums where I have annual memberships to see how much of my goal I can knock off by walking through them.

How do you exercise most successfully? Let us know in comments.

Sub Op

Dreaming Robot Press has an open call for their upcoming 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide antho for middle grade (ages 9 to 12) SF readers: "We’re looking for stories that: Have a main character that a middle grade reader (ages 9-12) can identify with; Show a diverse set of real characters; Are well written, fun to read and encourage a love of reading science fiction; Tell of adventure, space, science. Give us rockets, robots and alien encounters, and we’re pretty happy. Steampunk, time travel, weird west and alternate history are all fine. Are between 3,000 and 6,000 words. We’re especially looking for stories: Of adventure! We love a good dystopia as much as the next robot, but remember – this is the young explorer’s adventure guide. Where the main character is of a population that has traditionally been under-represented in science fiction, e.g. girls, people of color, differently abled people; Where the main character has agency, exercises it, and isn’t just along for the ride." Payment: $0.06/word; query reprints, electronic submission only, see guidelines for more details. Deadline: May 31st, 2015.