Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 65

Creative Juice

Just signed up for this year’s Rochester Writer’s Conference put together by DWW member Michael Dwyer. Michael does so much in the Michigan writing community: he is set to sponsor a writing contest, runs an open monthly workshop, creates an annual conference.

Having so recently had a taste of what it takes to make a conference go, I really don’t know how he does it. I had a ton of help, but he organizes the entire thing himself. I was a RWC speaker last year and saw from the inside Michael’s impressive organization skills. He’s lined up a great roster of interesting workshop leaders and I cannot wait to be a student again.

One of the key aspects of my personality is that I love learning. I’m glad my love of learning has continued this far down the road of my life. I know I’ll never know it all, but I shall be inspired and enlightened. There’s nothing like a room full of writers to get the creative juices flowing.

Inspiration at the Conference

The conference is over, and I am finally feeling like myself again. In that 12 hour day, almost everything flowed perfectly (Still need to hunt down the person who stole a turkey  sub, leaving a lone veggie wrap on the food table.) When I thought about how my day would be, I imagined running here and there, putting out fires, but nope. All was calm and all the workshop leaders and volunteers delivered.

President Diana Dinverno kept the show rolling smoothly. Elizabeth Buzzelli, keynote speaker, was a huge hit. Her workshop was standing room only. I’ve heard nothing but good things about all of our workshops, the food, the library, and the gift bags.

My gift bag included a little sticker that said “inspire” and I hope that’s what the conference did for everyone. I felt the energy and was inspired! Today I finished a revision of my novel, Blue Heaven. So next, I take a day to read it through (tomorrow will be good, nothing on the calendar) and make final changes. Then polish and send to publisher.

And then on to the next book, which has already been written and revised. After sitting in a box for almost a year, I’m sure I’ll see its flaws. Still, I am inspired to revise and polish until I get every single one of my books right. That’s the magic of a conference.

10 Years!

I can’t believe the ten year anniversary of this blog slipped away without a mention. It was Monday, so I’m at least in the same week. Two years ago, I decided I was going to self-publish all my novels, put them on the website for free, and stop blogging. Just have a static website where people could come and read free books. That was my actual plan.

Things never go the way I plan. First, I decided to do the 99 cent thing with Kindle. I liked it, but I’m not rich yet. Then I got a publishing contract with The Wild Rose Press and I liked that even more. I even managed to assemble a free story edited out of TWRP novel. So at least one thing here is free:)

So, three publications was all I could manage in two years. I did a lot of teaching that first year, but the second  year I was mostly just writing. I’m taking this fall and winter semesters off too. Just so I can maybe finish my “publish all my novels by any means possible” in as timely a manner as I am able. This is my entire bucket list. Get those books out!

Then there’s the “no more blog” thing. Ha! This reminds me of when I was 28 saying “if I don’t have a book out by 30 I’ll quit writing” Double ha. Keeping the blog, keeping the title of the blog, and maybe mixing up the content a bit. Got my new design. I had other big content-related plans for this blog, and I am still going to get them to you–after the conference Saturday.

This is not a commercial for our Detroit Working Writers conference this Saturday. But you can still sign up at the door:) Or shoot me an email:))

Yesterday I wanted to post about all the stuff that goes wrong when you’re planning an event with so many moving parts. As conference chair, I’ve been treating this as a graduation party, except the food is catered and everyone gets a Swag Bag. Oh, and there are workshops. So really it’s nothing like planning a graduation party. Or even a wedding. Except they all require lots of time and effort and I have (to my surprise) have not had a nervous breakdown. Maybe because I had a ton of help. 20 volunteers! Doing everything from registration to leading workshops to guarding the bookseller’s table.

I may be the only one who thinks things are going great. We are having a meeting two weeks after the conference where we will talk about if we want to do this again, what we can do better, where we can patch up the cracks. So I’ll be basically listening to a critique of my event planning skills. Should be fun.

Meanwhile, happy blog anniversary to me!

 

The Hart & Horn

I loved The Hart & Horn. This is a true indie novel, in the best sense. It’s the kind of book that’s hard to put into a category; it is its own unique thing. Traditional publishers don’t take many chances these days, they can’t, their industry is at risk. So they like formulas that have worked before. They can’t take chances on unique until it makes them millions and then they want more of the same unique.  Enter the indie. C. S. Gordon uses Smashwords.

Don is a drifting twenty-something, fast approaching thirty. Unhappy in his auto company office job, living in his parents’ basement, he is without hope or joy. We think we know this guy. He’s the one in all the Judd Apatow movies, the guy in early novels by Tom Perrotta and Nick Hornby. When he gets fired and his parents ask him to move out, he’s not that guy anymore.

Don thinks about when and where he was happiest. In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with his best friend Nate, he decides, and just as quickly moves north. Problem is, Nate and Don aren’t kids anymore, but they still have the mindset of young adults who live to party.

Don works when he has to, at jobs he does not love, and takes classes at the local college that sound interesting for their own sake, things like medieval music, where he meets Cassie. He’s still drifting, and now without his pal Nate, who is going through a life-changing journey of his own. Cassie is older, has a kid, has a plan. Sparks fly when they see each other at a bar, both there to listen to the lovely voice of their mysterious music teacher as he sings and plays the lute.

The main question is always will Don grow up? There are plenty of other questions that keep the story boiling, and this is one of the things I love the most. C. S. Gordon doesn’t keep to consecutive time, but feels free to imagine a past that impacts Don’s present. There are jumps into future years as well that satisfy in a way a lot of mainstream books just don’t. She handles the various plotlines with depth and honesty and things never get boring for even one minute.

Her prose is lovely, almost invisible except for when she’s describing the beauty of the natural world Don has found in the U.P. and then her vision is clear and true and makes me see that world so clearly. Great characters, great setting, great plot, great writing. You will be happy to lose yourself in this one.

#am writing

Now that the long holiday weekend has passed, it’s back to work. Putting together a writer’s conference, at this point, with less than two weeks to go, is like a job. There’s lots to do and I’ll be working steadily, for several hours every day, until it’s over.

I’m not complaining. I knew what I was getting myself into, and a conference is something I’ve been pushing for since I joined DWW several years ago. It’s only fitting that I take on the challenge of chairing this event and commit my time accordingly. So, where does that leave my novel-in-progress?

I sat down this morning with my cup of tea and thought about it. The irony of it. My book is almost finished. The conference is almost here. I have two big items on my agenda and all I really want to do it read. I want to bury my head in the sand. I want a day to relax after all the socializing of the holiday. I want to prepare myself mentally for a funeral service tonight, the husband of a friend, who is younger than I am by ten years. He leaves behind not just his grieving widow but two heartbroken teenagers.

When I don’t feel like working on my novel, I usually default to morning pages and ask myself why. What happens most often is, with pen in hand, writing in my notebook, I remember where I was with the manuscript and what is left to do. And then I flip to a fresh notebook page and write by hand. Four pages today. And a blog!

Not bad for someone who feels the way I do today. Sad. Mournful. Anxious. Talked out. Ready for a rest. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in your life. If you’re a writer, that’s what you do. You write. First. Before anything. At least for me. Then I pop onto Twitter and check in with my tweeps at #amwriting. It’s what we do, no matter what.

Union Born & Raised

My great-grandfather knew Thomas Edison. GG Hines was one of the first union electricians. And my grandfather was in Local Union 58 of the United Electrical Workers. And my father. And both my brothers served Local 58 for many years. They marched in the parade.

My husband is in the UAW, as was his father, and his grandfather, before him. I have uncles in the UWA as well. I’m in a union myself. A teacher’s union. My degrees are in English. And so I have a book suggestion for anyone who thinks the unions are too strong, too weak, too corrupt, too big: please read The Grapes of Wrath and get back to me. The author is John Steinbeck who worked canning fish in California.

And I’d like to dedicate this post to the person who unfriended me on Facebook because I didn’t fly an American flag on Memorial Day. Today, I’m letting my freak flag fly. And I am able to do that because of a little thing called collective bargaining.

Picture

I’ve been staring at this picture for awhile now. It’s on my fridge, which is where I put pictures people send me in the mail. This particular photo shows six or seven women. Everyone is wearing black and I am wearing an ivory top with an overlay of floaty ruffles. It’s a beautiful piece, one of the prettiest things I own. But it makes me look like a marshmallow. At least in that picture.

I have read enough self-help books to understand that hating myself for the way I look in a picture (You should see how fat my face is! A big bloated puff ball. And my bangs, even after all my work– spray, flat iron, spray again–still ended up in the dorky curl they seem to do these days!) is just going to make me sad.

I kept that picture on my fridge for a week. Maybe two. I loved that I was surrounded by friends, and we were all celebrating. But I couldn’t get over the image of myself. I even went downstairs to the scale. Because sometimes a photo will make me start or renew a diet and fitness program. About a month ago I quit sugar and I have only had sugar once since then. No cake, no cookies, no ice cream. Okay, well, there was an ice cream incident. But only one.  

So I’m already trying, is my point in that last paragraph. No meat, no sugar, yoga, meditation. I still overeat at lunch, but yesterday I had a banana/chocolate soy protein shake and it really satisfied me. Anyway, the scale. I took it into the bathroom because it was on the carpet and everyone knows you don’t weigh yourself on carpet. The number was well past what I have ever weighed and it couldn’t be right because I would not be able to zip up my jeans if that number were correct. So I moved the scale to a more level space and the number was so low I knew it couldn’t be right because if it was my jeans would fall off. 

I need to buy a new scale and throw that picture into the trash.

Twitter $ale$

I go back and forth with love/hate Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. This blog has disgusted me a few times too. When I feel sick of some social media, I just leave it alone. At first, with Twitter, I thought, well, this is something I have to do. I have to be my own publicist for my novels. I couldn’t do it. Well,  not “couldn’t” more like “didn’t want to.”

I saw people constantly flogging their books and they sold well but I just didn’t have–I never have had–that ability to sell. I’m not a seller. Not a marketer. Not a PR person. I don’t want to be that, either. Not that there’s anything wrong with selling, flogging, flooding the twitter stream with “buy my book.” Just the opposite. Those people sell books.

So why don’t I just get down to it? Simple. Don’t want to. Not for me. Although today I ran a quick blurb someone put in an Amazon review of The Paris Notebook “This Book Rocks” with the link to my novel. But I also posted 10 or 20 other comments and went to some links and retweeted and friended and DMed.

I don’t think I’m the selling type. I tried to set up with Gremin, a kind of automated PR machine that will send out auto-posts daily. That way the not-seller-type doesn’t even have to think about it. Gremin does it for you. So Gremin started sending out just my name as a tweet. That was it: @CynthiaHarriso1. For weeks. It was mortifying. There was one funny moment where somebody just replied “No!” and that cracked me up. I still smile when I think about it. Mostly the posts were overlooked until I finally figured out how to stop the madness.

So maybe it’s my bad experiences with trying to sell. When I first started tweeting, I got sucked into some horrible “review” site that advertised the shit out of my entire post. I’ve had other bad experiences besides Gremin and the fake review thing when I try to be a marketer of my books. One of the worst things though is nobody cares because everyone is a writer trying to sell you their book. I have not found my readers yet, but I can tell you, they are not on Twitter. I’m not going to find them there.

I’m not going to find them at all. They’re going to have to find me. Or not. And I can live with that. So use Twitter if you want to, see what your comfort level is like, and go from there. I still like Twitter. I bought a book from an author tweet today. I find lots of great links to interesting stuff. I just don’t put up a booth and try to sell there anymore.

Reviews & News

The Paris Notebook got a nice review! I’ll take those 4 lightening bolts, Nikki. And then I saw another new (and positive) review on Amazon! Thank you:)  The title to the new Amazon review is “This Novel Rocks!” great blurb, especially for a novel about duking it out with a rock star.

I’m always amazed at writers who have ten, twenty, more reviews. Not the big guys. But small press writers, indie writers, ePub writers, new authors. How do they do it? Christine Nolfi spells it out. So I really have no excuse other than wow that sounds like a lot of work.

Writing is hard work, and for this author, marketing is even more difficult. I decided a while ago I just wasn’t going to do much of it. If that means my books remain in obscurity forever, only to be read by my family and friends, well okay. I made my peace with that decision. Trouble is, I often change  my mind and reverse my decisions. 

Which brings me to the ‘news’ portion of this post. Two years ago I decided to end A Writer’s Diary at the ten year mark. I also planned to have all my novels up on the site here by then, published or free. LOL. I thought I’d start a new blog, maybe. But now that the time is here, well, I’m not doing it. I’m not going away. I’m not even renaming A Writer’s Diary. 

I did get some new wallpaper, and I have a September surprise, but nope, not going anywhere:) And maybe this winter, with  the snow falling and the pace slowed, I’ll get to those reviewing tips Christine suggests.

(I Need To) Change

Last night I saw Dr. Daniel Amen on PBS. This was my first experience of the good doctor and it lit me up. If you don’t know who he is, he writes and speaks about health and the brain. I was surprised to see how many books he has out. Really? A diet guru I have not heard about? A new diet plan I have not tried? To say the least, I was intrigued.

I justs spent over a month reading The Lean by Kathy Freston and following her simple plan. That book helped me cut sugar from my diet. I didn’t lose much weight, but I was able to fit back into my jeans and am happy to have control over my sugar addiction. Freston is also the writer who converted me to vegetarianism several years ago.

So why I am still 25 pounds overweight? Part of it is the amount of food I eat, and the times I “cheat” with horrible foods like potato chips, bagels, cheese & crackers. Part of it is, I am very sorry to say, wine. I don’t consume anywhere near the wine I used to, but Amen says to cut that almost completely out. My friends who successfully lose weight and keep it off do not drink alcohol.

Another reason I’m too big for my brain’s health is lack of exercise, which also causes blue moods, cranky moods, lack of energy, negative thinking. I blame a lot of my personal woes on lack of exercise. I’m so unmotivated in that area. I was not always this way. Until I started taking medication for migraine and insomnia, I always exercised. I liked it! I had a gym membership, I rode my bike, I took long walks. All my life before medication I was an active person.

I have to give myself credit. I eat clean. I juice kale every week. I do some yoga every day. I meditate every single day. Sometimes, like once every month, get on my treadmill or lift weights. I need to walk 4 times a week & lift twice a week. Plus keep the yoga. Which is no problem because I love yoga.

Weight around the middle, and the health problems it causes, is one of the top reasons for brain deterioration. Dr. Amen had lots of pictures. Before and after brains. He gave a checklist for people who can’t just run down and get a scan. If you have any of these red flags, like extra weight, fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, chronic pain, or depression, chances are good that your brain is not in good health.

One thing he said that really got to me, he called it the #1 secret to better brain health: um. I can’t remember the word. That’s called brain fog. And Amen says memory loss as we age is not an inevitable state. But that word. It started with a C…contemplative? I think that’s it. People who are healthy and who overcome their brain-harming addictions are contemplative, that is, they think before they act, and when they act, they do so in a way that helps, not hurts, their brains.

I’ve been impulsive and impatient all my life. I like to hide from pain, any kind of pain, including hunger. I eat to stop bad feelings from bubbling up. I need to change. I need to become comtemplative when it comes to my body and my brain’s health. 

I had just about given up on trying to lose my girth. I mean, really, no meat, no sugar, whole grains, and I’m still overweight? It’s hopeless. Nope. I eat the right things most of the time, I just eat too much of them. At my age, vanity is  not the issue. The issue is being in good mental and physical health as I age so my husband does not have to take care of me.