R.R. Campbell's Blog, page 5

Presenting: Just Me with R.R. Campbell

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It took nearly four years and over one hundred episodes of podcasting before I realized I was never once myself in any of them. This left me with one haunting question.

Why?

Fear, I suspect. Fear of what it might mean to open up, to let go, to let in the light and the dark and the in between. Fear of sharing who I am, what I value, and how I feel about how I arrived at all of this and more.

And the more I thought on this, the more I came to suspect I’m not alone.

That’s why, on March 30th, I’m launching “Just Me with R.R. Campbell,” a new podcast and video series.

Over the course of twenty-minute episodes, we’ll explore topics like grief, joy, friendship, and fear, and we’ll do it all with one goal in mind: living unscripted, living unedited, and living unafraid.

Along the way, we’ll learn more about ourselves, too: who we’ve been, who we are, and who we might become.

So I hope you’ll join me on March 30th, when the first three episodes of “Just Me” debut on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, TuneIn, Spotify, and YouTube. Two more episodes will follow later that week, and then, starting on Thursday, April 9th, we’ll move to weekly explorations of all the topics mentioned above and beyond.

See you soon, everyone. Until March 30th, live unscripted, live unedited, and live unafraid.

Subscribe to “Just Me with R.R. Campbell” on your favorite podcasting platform.
Prefer video? Subscribe on YouTube!

Adventure Indoors and Out

Sometimes inspiration comes not from doing, but being.

“Imagine a forest. Can you see it?”

“Yes, oh yes. Trees as far as the eye can see. Trunks so thick they can’t be hugged. Fruits so splendid, you’d never long to taste another. A forest of unmatched bounty. A forest for all.”

“That is a forest, yes, but I dream of dry valleys and steep cliffs, of brush that prickles to the touch, of life that scurries instead of swings.”

“But the fruit of this forest—”

“The fruit of this forest is not plucked from the vine. It is not peeled and pitted. It is found always around the next bend, over the next incline, and beneath every unturned stone. It is a feast for the eyes, for the fibers of woebegone muscles. It silences the voice within that would have you collapse with every pace.”

“I do not know this fruit.”

“But you do, yes, you do. It is the fruit of all earned journeys—the spoils of a triumphant spirit.”

—

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I spent much of February drying out in the Sonoran Desert, the Tonto National Forest, and the Superstition Wilderness Area. I desperately needed the time away from the cold, and though daytime temps started in the 30s, most days they reached the 60s or 70s, which provided enough of a reprieve to have me feeling refreshed by the time we boarded our return flight home.

Then, this greeted us as our plane descended in Madison.

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The snow is to be expected this time of year (it is February, after all), but I won’t pretend I wasn’t a bit disheartened.

Once we deplaned, however, I found this snow, too, refreshing. It was a reminder of the often fleeting nature of the quiet moments, of those pauses for rest, of the opportunities for contemplation we often need but rarely have the chance to embrace.

Aside from helping me recognize the time away was even more precious than I thought, I realized that very sentiment—that of the fleeting nature of that which we often need most—lies at the heart of my current manuscript and, in fact, much of what I write.

In my current manuscript, a novel that takes place on a cranberry farm in northern Wisconsin, my main character only has the present. Everything he longs to recapture is locked away in an inaccessible past, and his future will remain uncertain, he feels, until he can determine what he’s left behind.

The funny thing about this character’s failure to embrace the present? I didn’t realize any of it was in the manuscript until I left it untouched during the time I was away.

This is a lesson I’ve had to learn time and time again, and every time I encounter it, it becomes more and more true. Sometimes the best thing we can do for a project, for a relationship, for even the most mundane of tasks is to leave it be for a time.

That said, it isn’t practical to scamper off to the desert every time we need a break (at least not if you’re in Wisconsin like I am). The good news, though, is that time and distance can, for these purposes, be relative. We can pick and choose the when, how, and how far of the space we need for ourselves, and accepting that control (and acting upon it!) can make all the difference between stumbling into inspiration and burning oneself out.

So give yourself space. Give yourself time. Give yourself power over your challenges by making sure they know you control them and not the other way around.

Speaking of challenges…

I’m taking on a new one myself.

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I’ve been producing audio for years as part of my Writescast Network podcasts, but I’ve recently started dabbling—okay, more than dabbling—with video as well.

If you’re unfamiliar, the above photo depicts a green screen, the kind of thing your weather forecaster stands in front of when reading their report on the nightly news.

With some video magic, you can use a green screen to make it seem as though you’re someplace you’re not, or, say, put up a few examples behind you as part of a teaching module.

See where this is going?

That’s right: in the coming months, I’ll be debuting a series of online courses based on material I teach at writing conferences (and some material I’ll be teaching only through these online portals!).

You’ll receive more updates as we get closer to the launch date for these courses, but, until then, you can check out some of this material during my forthcoming visits to these conferences.

That’s all for my February updates. We’ll see you again in March, if not sooner!

The above is an abbreviated version of material that first appeared in my author newsletter. If you’d like to receive these updates in your inbox each month, you can subscribe here.

Come Find Me in 2020!

It may only be January, but you better believe I’ve got a number of events already lined up for this new year. So when and where will you be able to find me in person?

So far, these are my confirmed appearance dates with links to the events in question.

University of Wisconsin Writers’ Institute

Date: March 26 – 29, 2020

Location: The Madison Concourse Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin

At this year’s Writers’ Institute, I’ll be… busy. Extremely busy. But that’s a good thing! Rather than have me enumerate all of my sessions and one-on-one coaching availability here, you can find an (almost) full list at this link.

UntitledTown 2020

Date: April 23 – 26, 2020

Location: Green Bay, Wisconsin

Here, I’ll be presenting my renowned Keeping Your Scenes Afloat with the Five Fun “Floaties” of Scene Structure.

Lakefly Writers Conference

Date: May 8 – 9, 2020

Location: Premier Waterfront Hotel and Convention Center – Oshkosh, Wisconsin

If you can’t make it to UntitledTown (or even if you can), this is another chance to catch my Keeping Your Scenes Afloat with the Five Fun “Floaties” of Scene Structure.

WisCon 44

Date: May 22 – 25, 2020

Location: The Madison Concourse Hotel – Madison, Wisconsin

At this year’s WisCon, I’ll be leading two sessions, one on voice entitled Prose, Poetry, and Voice in the Void, and another known as Let’s (Not) Do Lunch: On Pushing Our Settings Past Restaurants, Bars, and Cafés.

Write by the Lake

Date: June 15 – 19, 2020

Location: The Pyle Center – Madison, Wisconsin

Write by the Lake is an intensive, week-long retreat that’s been described as “like two semesters of an MFA program.” At Write by the Lake, I’ll be teaching a three-day course called Treasure ho! Mapping Your Way to Story.

I’ll also be presenting a special, one-hour session called Roll With the Punches, Then Punch Back! Writing One’s Way Through Disappointment, Grief, and Glee.

There you have it: the full list (for now)!

I’ll be sure to keep you updated as new dates are added and more details come in. In the meantime, keep your eyes on this site, my newsletter, and my social media feeds including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

When The Stars Conspire

This manuscript has been through countless drafts, through innumerable shifts in emphasis, POV, genre.

But today, after the most substantial rewrite yet, I can say it’s closer than ever to being exactly where it needs to be.

What started as a capital-R romance on a cranberry farm in northern Wisconsin has become more sure of itself with every revision, has blossomed now into an upmarket suspense. Still, though, the core of the story and its setting have remained the same. The outcome for the characters has, to some extent, lived on unchanged. The heart of these characters and their world has kept on beating unabated.

Some day I hope to share this manuscript with readers. I hope you, too, can know the splendor of Wisconsin’s northwoods, that you can hear the pine needles crunching with your every footstep, that you can listen to the soft lapping of waves against the beachfront, that you can watch eagles circling high overhead, probing for prey beneath endless stretches of blue.

This manuscript will be exactly where it needs to be some day, but it’s not there yet. It is, however, one step closer, and for now, that’s everything I can ask for and more.

Write on and write well, everyone.

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r.r. campbell

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A Death Unlike Any Other

Somewhere in an empty office sits an empty chair.

This chair was filled once, was party to a purpose only one person could realize. Like many of us, this person was a writer, but to so many, she was much, much more. An inspiration. A community leader. A mother. A wife.

This writer was one of my clients, a thoughtful, optimistic individual who saw promise in the world and the people around her. She dreamed of perfecting her first fiction manuscript—insofar as perfection can ever truly be attained—and, from there, signing with an agent, earning a publishing deal, and sharing her story far and wide.

In July of 2019, we connected by Skype to review my comments on the most recent draft of her manuscript. We dove deep into opportunities for strengthening her character development, as well as how we might increase the resonance of some scenes by relocating them to more vibrant, unique, and tension-inducing locales.

Both of us left the conversation eager to see what she would make of her novel; she said she would follow up with me later that year about partnering together again once she had the chance to implement this new, shared vision for her manuscript.

Summer came and went, and in November, my mind drifted back to this writer and her manuscript, so I emailed her to check in and to pass along some new possibilities.

When I didn’t hear back from her after a couple of weeks, I chalked it up to holiday business, but as time wore on without any engagement from her by email or on social media, I began to worry.

I don’t know what came over me, but on the second of January, I checked in again, this time by visiting her on Twitter where we first connected. Nothing. No posts since shortly after the time of our conversation by Skype. I fretted, for a moment, the possibility my comments chased her away from writing altogether, that what I took for an earnest engagement with my feedback was, in fact, a coping mechanism to survive what had been, for her, a difficult conversation that challenged her more than it inspired.

Then I Googled her name. It autocompleted with the word “obituary.”

She died ten days after our conversation on Skype.

This writer and I never met in real life. We had no relationship outside that of editor and client, of mentor and mentee, but reading about how she—an otherwise healthy young woman in her thirties—inexplicably passed in her sleep shook me in ways I could not have expected.

I could linger, now, on the obvious tragedy, on the anguish her passing must have caused her family, her friends, and community, but instead, I want to focus on one word: promise.

Who she was lives on. Her promise is part of those whose lives she touched. It’s part of the promise their lives hold now; her purpose is now, to some extent, theirs. And though her manuscript never had the chance to land an agent, to fetch her the publishing deal it would have very much deserved, that story lives on, too.

“Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin never died. They simply became music.”

This quote may come from the fictional Doctor Ford in HBO’s Westworld, but it speaks, in my view, to an inspiring, reassuring truth: who we are is defined by so many things, but ultimately, we will become that which we create for ourselves, for those we love, and for those who happen upon our legacy, no matter the shape it takes.

So, in 2020, I’m dedicating myself to that word: promise. I will live with promise in mind, making my every step a purposeful one, embracing every new beginning and respecting—but never fearing—the inevitability of every end.

This client and I may never again connect, and the world may never read her manuscript as she intended, but I will think of it from time to time. I will think of it, of her and those she left behind, of how her words and her presence, however fleeting, will forever be part of the promise I bring myself and others.

She wrote with purpose, with all of the promise her life held and more, and I hope you’ll join me in honoring that spirit in 2020 and beyond.

Write on. Write well. Be good to each other.

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This post first appeared in my January email newsletter. Subscribe here to become among the first to receive similar news and updates on this and other endeavors.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or check out my writing courses and editing services.

R.R. Campbell in the Lifelong Learner

I was recently mentioned in The Lifelong Learner, news from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Continuing Studies!

This article by Lisa Bauer details how nine authors, yours truly included, received support from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Continuing Studies Division on the way to becoming published.

The authors alongside whom I’m mentioned are award-winners, bestsellers, and, most importantly, friends and familiar faces I’ve come to know over the years at events like the Writers’ Institute and beyond.

So check out this article when you have a moment, and consider paying a visit to the 31st annual Writer’s Institute when it takes place in March of 2020. I’d love to see you there.

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You can also subscribe to my newsletter, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or check out my writing courses and editing services to stay in touch.

 

The EMPATHY Series in Author Spotlight

The EMPATHY series and author r.r. campbell have recently been featured in an author spotlight on the blog of fellow writer J. Scott Coatsworth!

This feature includes an author Q&A, an excerpt from Mourning Dove, and an Imminent Dawn ebook giveaway. 

So don’t miss out on your chance to get a free Kindle version of the first book in the EMPATHY sci-fi saga. All you have to do to claim your copy is subscribe to the r.r. campbell author newsletter before December 8th, 2019, which you can do via the author spotlight at this link.

Prefer to read a print copy of Imminent Dawn or want to pay for it the old fashioned way? You can find it and its sequel, Mourning Dove, at the links below.

Imminent Dawn

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | NineStar Press | Kobo | Smashwords| Goodreads | Author Website

Mourning Dove

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | NineStar Press | Kobo | Smashwords | Goodreads | Author Website

Now Available: “State Line”

“State Line,” the story of a widower confronting a recent loss and interstate stereotypes, is now available on Wattpad.

This is my first short story in years, and I’ve been writing about what went into creating it all week.

Whether you choose to read up on the story’s background first or prefer to dive right in, I welcome your feedback and do hope you enjoy it.

Write on. Write well. Be your best you.

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A Peculiar Affliction

I drive better after I’ve had a few.

It’s, like, five miles.

I don’t want to put anyone out of their way.

These are phrases one hears all too often in Wisconsin’s taverns, bars, and pubs, expressions of perilous confidence in taking to the roadways after a long (or short!) night of drinking.

Drunk driving is a scourge in many places, surely, but against a backdrop of 2.7 times more bars than grocery stores, lax impaired driving laws, and a state statute that permits children to drink in public with their parents’ permission, Wisconsin fosters an environment in which impaired driving is widely accepted as a cultural peculiarity.

Everyone has an uncle or friend or cousin who’s been pulled over after a night out, and we’ve all heard legends of drivers who’ve been ticketed and jailed more than a dozen times for the offense—yet still retain their license.

There’s always talk of tightening the state’s operating while impaired (OWI) policies, but very rarely are meaningful reforms enacted into law.

This begs the questions why and what can we do to free ourselves of this peculiar affliction?

To liberate ourselves—and to make our roadways safer—many, including myself, are resigned to person-to-person advocacy, to intercepting friends and family before they turn the keys in their vehicle’s ignition. This produces mixed results, though the intervention and success rates have, at least anecdotally, improved in recent years.

The why is more complex. Miserably cold winters, the state’s infamous Tavern League, and deeply entrenched cultural defaults all play a role in the furtherance and maintenance our state’s embrace of this affliction.

It’s said defaults—this self-stereotyping—with which I reckon in my forthcoming flash fiction piece, “State Line.” In it, I explore interstate bias, particularly as it pertains to how poorly drivers from the state of Illinois handle Wisconsin roadways while we gladly cruise about three sheets to the wind—at least if the stereotypes are to believed.

“State Line” debuts on Wattpad this Friday, and I do hope you’ll give it a read. Until then, however, write on. Write well. Be your best you.

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The Worst Drivers in the Union

They never signal. They pass on the right. They weave in and out of traffic with no regard for their safety or that of others.

I’m talking, of course, about drivers from the state of Nevada.

Or Georgia.

Or Missouri.

It really depends on who you ask.

One study, in fact, did ask this question, and the results raised some eyebrows—or they did mine, at least.

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Mississippi, then. It’s settled, at least if we trust the methodology Smart Asset employed when conducting this analysis.

Personally, I have no qualms with drivers from the Magnolia State, likely because here in Wisconsin I never find myself tailgated, cut off, or otherwise confounded by the actions of vehicles with Mississippi plates.

That honor belongs to drivers from the great state of Illinois.

You can imagine my frustration, then, when I learned that, at least according to Smart Asset, Illinois drivers finished just outside the top ten best in the United States, with folks from my home state coming in right in the middle of the pack.

I mean, how could we Wisconsinites be any worse than the Illinois-plated trucks roaring down our interstates at twenty-five over the speed limit? How could anything we’re doing compare to left turns from right-turn-only lanes, the speeding down one-ways in the opposite direction of, well, the one way?

If we permit ourselves some distance from Smart Asset’s metrics, the answer, naturally, is it’s all relative.

Of course drivers from Wisconsin are more likely to be wary of those from Illinois who are wary of folks from Indiana who are wary of motorists from Ohio. When drivers from adjacent states are on their neighbors’ roadways, they’re less likely to be familiar with the area, and probably just want to get home—and home, for them, is much farther than a couple of blocks or a few country miles.

But even if we set aside matters of proximity and unfamiliarity, I suspect some of this wariness is also based on other regional stereotypes, in a tendency to distrust the other, and further manifestations of tribalism that play out across and within cultures and subcultures everywhere.

I don’t expect any of this to be revelatory.

Still, it’s worth noting that simply because one appreciates these concepts intellectually, that doesn’t necessarily mean one’s blood pressure doesn’t increase that much more upon noting it was some Illinois-plated peon who barreled down the shoulder to bypass those holding up our end of the social contract by waiting our turns in gridlocked traffic because we live in a society.

But wouldn’t it be nice if we could keep ourselves from having and acting on those prejudices?

This Friday, I’ll be exploring just that in my new flash fiction piece, “State Line,” the story of a widower confronting a recent loss and interstate misconceptions. As I’ve written in other posts this week, I’m proud of this new short—not only because it’s the first I’ve written in years—but because it comes from a place of honesty.

Yes, I do grip the steering wheel that much harder when a vehicle from Illinois is flying past at speeds unsafe even in ideal conditions. I do fist pump when state troopers have an Illinois-plated vehicle pulled over. I do wonder why I permit myself to feel this way, even when I understand these attitudes are maintained, at this point, almost entirely by my unabating desire to keep them alive.

I don’t have an answer to this particular question, nor will “State Line” provide one definitively. Writing it, however, did force me to reckon with perceptions I hold about Illinois, yes, and also with perceptions folks from Chicagoland undoubtedly have about their neighbors to the north.

We’ll see how all of this plays out when “State Line” debuts on Wattpad this Friday, but until then, write on. Write well. Be your best you.

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r.r. campbell