Sherrie R. Cronin's Blog, page 54

Cease firing for a day: Saturday September 21 2013

“Do Unto Others” by Norman Rockwell

Every year about this time, the world celebrates “An International Day of Peace.”  It goes largely unnoticed, at least here in Texas where I live, and this year I’m putting some effort into changing that.

This 32 year old event is also called Peace Day, and you can read about it here. It’s goals extend beyond the ending of wars between nations and include improving relations among all peoples. The website says that observances range in scale from private gatherings to public concerts and forums where hundreds of thousands of people participate.Hmm, not seeing any of that here in Houston.

Suggested activities for the lone individual include lighting a candle at noon, or doing a good deed for someone you do not know. Both are fine ideas, on any day actually. However, my personal favorite is the suggestion to consider Sept. 21 as a day of ceasefire – personal as well as political. One could take the opportunity to make peace in ones own relationships while they wish for an end to the larger conflicts of our time.What a day it would be if a chunk of humanity decided to call a cease fire on their own anger and resentment for just twenty-four hours.

A simple idea. The really good ones usually are.

A short political rant (not mine)

I read a lot of blog posts by other writers. Some are funny, some are informative, and a few are full of themselves and more than a little annoying. None-the-less I learn about my craft from all of them and I am appreciative.

Today I stumbled on a blog by a twenty-two year old English major and aspiring fiction writer who took a few minutes to rant about the situation in Syria. I’ve been pretty conflicted about the whole mess, and I found her analysis succinct and worth repeating.

Why? This blog is not just about my writing,and my novel x0. It is also about the themes behind the book, including empathy and world peace. When someone has something worthwhile to say on those subjects, I am happy to reblog. So please, read on.

A short political rant.

and then you bleed …

I’ve just handed my fourth novel off to the first of my beta readers and I’m taking a little time to reflect, not to mention time to do a few loads of towels and go through the “where the hell did this junk come from” pile on my dresser. I’ll be starting d4 in October, and it now looks like I will in fact write a collection of six books. Wow.

I’m thinking of Ernest Hemingway today. It’s somewhat embarrassing that I’ve never read one of his novels even though I love many of his quotes. Recently I found this one. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Five years ago I would have found that silly and overly dramatic. Today it strikes me as the most succinct and accurate description of writing fiction that I have ever read.  Not that I write as well as Hemingway. He wasn’t talking about good or bad writing, just about the act of pouring yourself into a story. No matter how overblown it seems, the truth is that I have pretty much gotten up for three days a week for the last seven months and picked up my lovely new ultralight computer, taken it out to my porch, and bled all over it. And found it fun.

Now that I’m handing the bloody mess off to friends and strangers alike, I have to wonder what motivates such odd behavior. I’m a very private person, yet I’m incapable of creating a story that isn’t filled with my most personal dreams and fears. I’m also incapable of not creating stories. I am aware that this didn’t end well for Hemingway, or for a lot of other writers that I admire. Others seemed to have navigated those same waters and survived and even thrived. What makes the difference?

Maybe while I’m on break I’ll skim a few writer’s biographies and try to figure out how others bandaged up their open wounds in between books. Maybe I’ll even finally read “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. I mean, how can I be writing a collection of stories that starts off with the premise that we are all one, and not have read a book that takes its title from a 1624 quote that says

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Words worth considering as our world contemplates one more outbreak of war, and as each one of us sits on our porch and tries to bandage our own wounds from the previous day.

it grows and grows

I’m building a world. It’s very much like the world we live in, but the differences are what make it worth visiting. In my special universe, there is a growing number of telepaths, working as agents of empathy. They belong to an organization known as x0, and its members rescue and train others as they work for world peace.

There is also one very unique shape shifter, whose friends each celebrate their own uniqueness in an organization called y1. Meanwhile an aging athlete has formed a group known as z2 for those who are able to slow down time, or who are trying to understand the nature of time better.

Now there is another secret organization, with a power and mission all of its own. Please consider visiting the universe of c3 in late December, and join a teenager from Texas as she comes to terms with a skill set unlike any other.

#SFWApro

and the energy inside you goes round and round ….

According to the kids’ song, it’s the wheels on the bus ….  but some days it’s the thoughts in your head, the feelings in your heart, and excitement in your soul that you can hardly contain as it all twirls and spins around, powered by the very force that drives the universe itself.

Research for my latest novel has me looking into particle physics, as an informed and curious lay person, and let me tell you that’s some very scary stuff. The universe? A whole, whole lot of nothing. And the little bits of something that are there? They are more waves than they are anything else. And they’re not even so much waves as they are the possibilities of waves …

It’s amazing, and it truly does make the petty arguments of this world appear even more inane. A lot of emptiness very wound up about how it is RIGHT and all that wave motion and nothingness over there is wrong.

I wrote x0 to examine the idea of how hating and hurting each other would be affected by being able to feel each others emotions. I still believe that empathy is the key to overcoming so much of what ails us as a species. But if empathy is hard to come by, maybe we need to require more quantum mechanics in our schools. Just one more alternative to face painting for world peace.

For more thoughts on the forces of life twirling and spinning, check out my z2 blog here as I speculate on seeing the future and check out my y1 blog here as I share some joy.

 

 

My own peaceful place

The last two weeks I’ve been living underwater  — or at least that is the feeling I always have as I put the last little pieces of a novel together. I call this process my first edit, but in reality it is more like fitting tiny puzzle pieces into the right slots as all the miniscule components of the plot get checked and triple checked for consistency, correct order and believability.  Most my awareness goes where it needs to, and that’s into the world of the book itself. I thank the wonderful people who tolerate my lack of presence here.They know who they are

But I’ve come up for air today. I’m just over half done, and know from past experience that the first half of the book takes considerably more time. Apparently by  the end of the story, I have a better idea of exactly where I am going with it. The good news for me is that I am pleased with my latest creation. It’s called c3, and it is the story of youngest daughter Teddie’s out of body experiences. I hope to get it to my first beta readers over the next couple of weeks, and to have it out on kindle at least by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, my blog tour for novel y1 has just ended, and a couple of the guest posts I wrote seem worth posting on my own blog. Below is my favorite, about the peaceful place that helps me write and my appreciation of those in my life who provide me with such support while I do it.

How to Create a Great Work Area for Inspiration

I think that a good work area is so important to writing that I’ve gone ahead and made three of them right in my own home.

Work area number one is a living room chair designated as my writing chair and used when I just have to get something out of my head quickly and I don’t care who is talking or how loud the TV is. I keep little notes strewn all around it and the whole family knows not to touch anything on “my chair”. It’s a little indulgent, but they humor me and having it there lets me feel like I can stop and get an idea down at any time.  I suspect every once in awhile my daughter walks by late at night and finds things like “Jeb must meet Tasha sooner!!!!!” scribbled on a paper towel with a red marker and just shakes her head.

Then there is the small spare bedroom upstairs that I have turned into my official office. The walls are lined with inspirational sayings. I go there when I need lots of time alone.  Four things make it special.  A closed door. Its own attached bathroom so I don’t have to emerge even for a minute and risk anyone interrupting my train of thought. A very comfortable chair. And, a second power cord for my laptop so I don’t have to run downstairs for that either. When I go into my office everybody, including myself, understands that I am very, very serious about getting some writing done.

Finally, there is the place where I actually write.  At least I’ve written over eighty percent of each of my three novels in work area number three, which is my front porch.  It is clearly where I most enjoy writing, even though the workspace has to be set up fresh every time.  Two pillows cushion the rough wicker chair and a third softens the small table turned into a footstool. The roof overhang protects against all but the worst of rains, especially if I turn around and face the house, and lean over to protect my laptop while I let the raindrops bounce off of my frustrated back until the deluge stops. I live in Texas, so in the winter, which lasts about two months, I bring a blanket and a space heater out with me.  In the summer, which lasts about seven months, I work in a tank top and blast one and sometimes two fans at myself. It’s coffee in the morning, ice tea in the afternoon, and sometimes a glass of wine as the sun goes down. That’s about the time when my husband will stick his head out of the front door and ask “are you still out here writing?”

“Yeah. I’ll be inside in a minute.” He shakes his head and half an hour later he brings my dinner out on a plate.

It’s good to have at least one work area that you love. It’s even more important to have people who will let you love it.

This post appeared on:

June 11 at Blog-A-Licious Authors

June 17 at The Unending TBR Pile

June 30 at Reading the Dream Life

Check these blogs out for a wealth of information on reading, writing and publishing as well as leads for many fine books you aren’t that likely to hear about elsewhere.

Qi — the best Scrabble word ever

I used to play a lot of Scrabble as a child and I always hung on to a U until the Q showed up. It was a strategy that paid off.  Then I took a break from the game for a few years, until I discovered various online word games that approximated Scrabble (close but not so close that there is copyright infringement, you know the ones). Not only could I now play any hour day or night, but I could find opponents, good opponents, willing to do the same. Better yet they were from India and Australia and all sorts of exotic places and some were happy to chat with me about where they lived and what they thought about life.The world was now my oyster. Wahoo!

The very best part, however, was discovering all the wonderful letter combinations that were now considered words. ZA.  Acceptable as short for pizza though I have never heard anyone of any age actually use it. KI. A plant from the South Pacific. But the very best has to be QI. More useful than QAT, QAID, QOPH and QWERTY combined, I used it happily for over a decade without having much of clue as to what it meant.

Meanwhile, my online words games began to shape my writing as I began my first novel x0. My relationships with my community of unseen kindred spirits gave me ideas for the worldwide organization x0 and helped me design its imaginary website. An accountant in England who I play with regularly served as a model for the British tax accountant who shepherds Lola and Nwanyi safely on to a plane at Gatwick Airport. One British woman who beats me regularly was even a beta reader for x0, and her husband chipped in with an amazing job of proofreading. My world of happy telepaths was a reflection of my own happy hours spent making words worth lots of points while chatting with people I enjoyed.

Click here to visit flowingzen.com

But I still didn’t know what QI was.

And then last week I spent five entire days learning about my qi. Turns out qi is the modern spelling of chi, an Anglicized attempt to capture the Chinese word for the life force or energy within all of us. While I am only a beginner, I did learn enough to understand that moving ones qi in healthy ways while meditating and doing light rhythmic exercises is both invigorating and relaxing. At least it is to me and apparently it is to many others. So it turns out that I’m a real big fan of QI, I just didn’t know it until last week.

Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

Not thinking in Costa Rica.

I get it. Thinking about not thinking does NOT constitute not thinking.

Apparently I have persistent chatter in my head, which I have agreed to refer to by the rather unflattering phrase “monkey mind”, at least for the next few days. Friends have talked me into joining them on this week-long retreat in beautiful Costa Rica for an introduction to the ancient art of Qi Gong.  It is related to Tai Chi and King Fu, all of which involve understanding and ultimately manipulating the flow of energy through one’s body. I’m a long way from doing anything impressive, but I am finding the concept cool and the exercises alternately invigorating or relaxing. Originally we were planning on a girl’s weekend in San Francisco shopping, and I’m not sure how it morphed into this activity instead, but oddly enough I am glad that it did.

We are entering into the meditation phase of the day’s session. Be quiet, monkey I say to myself. Luckily I talk to myself a lot anyway so this isn’t a problem. You’re a person of words my inner monkey replies. You need your words. You use them to write books, remember?  Well, the monkey has a point there.

Just to demonstrate her worth further, the monkey begins reciting back to me the post called Feeling Gratitude in Costa Rica that I just wrote for my other blog. It is true that as I write, I stop every so often and recite the words I have written back to myself, listening to their sounds and turning them over in my head, analyzing whether each has conveyed my thought or feeling in the best way possible. See, that’s me and you writing, the monkey says.

Really? Because when the words themselves are being created, once I’ve gotten going, I don’t say the words in my head and it often seems as though I’m not in my head at all. There is this sort of odd peace inside me while ideas flow all mistyped onto the screen and although sometimes I anticipate what I am going to type, more often I don’t. It’s a state in which I can be startled by everyday sounds and can’t easily function for a few seconds after an interruption. It’s dynamic and yet peaceful and it feels as good as anything I know. In fact, it is very much like meditation, but with me being a lot more active.

Then it occurs to me, and I have an answer for my monkey.  I mostly write without you, dear monkey mind.  What you and I do together is called editing. You’re my internal editor! And  you’re a great one. I’m so glad I have you.

I give my internal chattering monkey a mental hug of appreciation and then send her off for a nice nap. We’re not editing now. We’re meditating. Not thinking. Not … no not that thought either. Not anything. Not any thought. We are.

Read more about my novice attempts at meditation here. Read about other changes this week has wrought here.

To learn more about Qi Gong and what I have spent this past week studying, please visit Sifu Anthony’s website called “Flowing Zen” here.

The look of peace ….

I am once again in search of images that convey the idea of peace. Interesting ways to assemble the peace sign work well, and this tumbler page for #peace has many of them,

Click for hashtagpeace

Doves are a favorite also, and I found this version with doves and olive branches especially appealing.

Click to visit Robert Graham’ site

Finally take a look at this beautiful mural. It is from a fascinating website listing many examples of peace monuments using the symbols of hands & handshakes

Click for more

If you like the idea of searching for an image to capture a quality we all seek, come see images of joy on my y1 blog here and images of hope on my z2 blog here.

 

Music to read by

“Dooooon’t do it ……”

That was the advice from several published writers at a website called the Absolute Write Water Cooler. It is a forum for people who write, hope to write, or like to talk to people who write and you can find it here. You will meet some of the most encouraging folks there that you will ever find anywhere (and a few of the snottiest) and will get help from both.

I was working on my first draft of x0, and wanted to include some snippets of well known classic rock lyrics to give my reader something to hum in their head while they took in certain parts of the story. It turns out that a LOT of authors have this great idea. I was concerned about copyright issues, but every one that I mentioned this to assured me that I would be fine thanks so some vague notions of public domain and fair use. Only the nice people at AW said differently. Song lyrics are like poetry. You cannot safely use even a tiny bit of them. Doooooon’t do it.”

I was forewarned but still determined, so I tried another approach. I took my nine songs and found out who owned all or part of them in the US and world wide and I started writing people.  Can I please use this line from your song? How much will it cost? The assorted parties for seven songs just ignored me, and they kept ignoring me no matter how many times I wrote them back.

Sony/ATV Music Publishing however, has people on staff to handle just this sort of thing, and I found myself in negotiation for weeks with a Licensing Analyst named Lacey. She wanted to see context, I sent her pages from my book. We argued about how many copies I could sell for the price she decided on. I’ll never know why I persisted with this, but I think it was just that the whole process fascinated me. There are people stealing these songs left and right all over the internet, not to mention quoting the entire lyrics, and yet this very nice woman was spending time dickering with me over few words in a self-published first novel that might not sell ten copies. I think we both thought that the other person was nuts.

I will also never know why in the end I paid about $300 of my own hard earned money to secure the rights to use selected words from two of my favorite songs, in the first 5000 electronic copies of my book. But I did. No, I have not sold 5000 copies yet, and yes I am keeping track. I’m like that. And so is Sony/ATV.

I’ve included links to the two songs below, along with the placement in x0 that I paid for so dearly. What can I say ….. these two songs will now always have a special place in my heart . And maybe Lacey bought my book.

http://cyndilauper.com/

This part of her job sat somewhere between treasure hunting and puzzle solving, and Lola had to admit that her day-to-day work would not have made a bad 3D video game if someone added a little bit of music and some glossy effects. And, okay, maybe a car chase or two. Lola enjoyed herself as she twisted and turned her 3D visualization of the rocks on her computer screen, humming as she looked for shifts in the rock layers known as faults.

“If you’re lost you can look / And you will find me / Time after time.”

Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 hit Time After Time (BUY) had once been a favorite of hers, and now that Lola thought about it, it made good music to prospect by. She was surprised she hadn’t remembered the song for years. She sang a little louder.

“If you fall I will catch you / I’ll be waiting—”

“Time after time.” Bob, the older engineer in the group, joined in her song as he walked by her door. “Geez Lola,” he said, “I’ve had that song in my head all damn morning. What are you doing singing it?”

“No idea. Maybe we listened to the same radio station on the way to work?” she guessed.

“I only listen to my iPod,” he replied.

4 Non-Blondes: click for official video

Amnesty? That sounded hopeful. As she started to read, Bob walked by, singing in his head one of the many great oldies he had managed to amass on his iPod. Where did the man find so many good old songs?

“What’s Up?” had been the 4 Non Blondes’ 1993 hit, coming out the year that Ariel was four. Lola loved it, and the two of them had sung, actually, screamed it together whenever it came on the radio when Lola was driving little Ariel to preschool.

In her BBC article, Ms. Duffield described talking to taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and hotel clerks in the Niger Delta region who were all hoping for peace as they watched militants hold disarmament ceremonies which involved relinquishing guns, rocket-propelled grenades, explosives, ammunition, and gunboats. Gunboats??

And so I wake in the morning and I step outside And I take a deep breath and I get real high / And I scream at the top of my lungs / What’s going on?

The BBC article added that while no one appeared to have given up their entire arsenal, the quantity of weapons released, presumably for cash, was significant. Concerns had been raised that no independent monitors were tracking what was being done with the weapons, and this caused particular concern because in the past, corrupt officials had sold confiscated guns, which had then made their way back into the hands of a wide variety of criminals.

And I try / oh my god do I try / I try all the time, in this institution.

The article noted that another major obstacle to peace was that there were now thousands of young men in the region effectively unemployed, given that their previous full-time profession had been guerilla fighter, with resumes that included kidnapping, blowing up oil pipelines, and stealing massive amounts of crude oil.

And I pray / Oh my god do I pray / I pray every single day for a revolution.

The government plan, according to the article, was to retrain these young men in new skills. It noted that they were already being processed at centers where they were being asked about their other career interests. Other career interests??

The BBC said that retraining would be a daunting prospect, and that in the case of failure, the young men would likely return to their previous activities.

And I realized quickly when I knew I should / That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man / For whatever that means …

She looked at the photo of the giant pile of automatic weapons. Seriously, right now in Nigeria there were actually thousands of angry young men filling out employment questionnaires??

Twenty-five years and my life is still / Trying to get up that great big hill / Of hope … for a destination.

For more on my adventures with including music in novels, check out my z2 blog here for a little fun with bubblegum music and my y1 blog here for songs I wished I had used.