Susan Hunter's Blog, page 14

And so this is what happens when I’m not writing

I’ve been struggling the last couple of weeks with some pieces of my plot not fitting together very well … or at all. I decided to take a break and focus my attention elsewhere in the hope that my subconscious will figure things out while I’m otherwise engaged.

However, I should know that when I choose to distract myself by venturing into the kitchen, the results are never pretty. I cook because I like to eat, not because I derive any artistic satisfaction from it. Preparing a meal is almost always the gateway to endless frustration and clean up. Even when I meticulously pre-plan every step to maximize efficiency in my small kitchen, it inevitably devolves into chaos.

The last kitchen disaster inspired me to film the aftermath of dinner preparations.

Click below to view it.

 

 

 

Writing versus Real Life: Spoiler! Writing Wins

I had an epiphany today, as I wrestled with a real-life problem that keeps recurring, doubtless because I find it easier to put a band-aid over it than perform the surgical excision that is probably necessary.

Writing life is better than real life. Why? Easy. Because I have complete and total control over the universe I’ve created. Oh sure, my characters have some say, but in the end my rule is absolute. And that is so unlike real life.

In real life, I have lots of observations, insights, advice and judgments that are met with indifference, hostility, contentious argument or worst of all, simply ignored. Even though I know if I could just direct the lives of everyone I love we would all be happier, healthier and safer.

In writing life, whatever I say goes. Rain may fall on the just and unjust alike, but as a writer I can make it a warm spring mist or a raging mid-summer thunderstorm. Sad and bad things happen, but I choose what those things are, and when they occur and to whom.

In real life, random events befall people I care about and the solutions are hard or scary or sometimes non-existent.

In writing life, time moves at the speed I choose. It doesn’t hold me green and dying. I hold time in my grasp and slow it down or speed it up as it suits me. I can make the happiest moments longer and the saddest moments shorter.

In real life, time moves at breakneck speed. It doesn’t wait for me to do the things I always meant to do. Important words are left unspoken, wounds unhealed, justice undelivered, satisfaction withheld.

In writing life, people come together or apart as I like. It’s my choice whether or not a problem is solved, or a relationship is severed or repaired.

In real life, people may drift or be driven away. My best efforts can’t always hold close those I hold most dear. In writing life I only have to let go of people when I’m ready to face the loss. I can save anyone I chose and comfort all who need it.

Real life requires courage, endurance, acceptance. Writing life requires only imagination – and the ability to stare for long periods of time at a blank computer screen.

There is truth, I know, in the contention that real life’s unexpected turns and harsh demands, as well as its sweet moments of connection, are the very things we need to become fully actualized human beings. Still, there are many days when I do believe, despite any accidental personal growth or incidental wisdom I may have accrued, that writing life is better.

 

 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation – sort of

What I’m doing
Watching a mama duck and four ducklings bask in the late afternoon sun on the riverbank. Thinking how it was just weeks ago that the ducklings, now almost as big as their mother, were fluffy little balls of feathers tottering around on the lawn.
What I should be doing
Working on my new book.
What I’ve been doing
Checking and rechecking to see how many reviews I have on Amazon and how many have been taken down – which happens when Amazon’s algorithms perceive a friendly connection between the author and the reviewer. Obsessing over how many Kindle and print books have been ordered. Badgering people to write reviews in the so far vain hope of moving my book farther up on the Amazon search list so that people browsing for mysteries can actually find it.
What I should have been doing
Figuring out a promotion strategy that is more far-reaching than sending my husband out to strong-arm friends, friends, acquaintances and strangers into buying copies of my book. Settling on a Kindle Countdown Promotions schedule. Determining how to advertise with no advertising budget.
What I’m doing next
Walking out and sitting on the balcony. Eating some delicious chocolate chip cookies left behind by my friend Sharron who baked and brought them all the way from North Carolina. Imagining that Oprah just called to tell me she’s chosen Dangerous Habits for her next book club pick. Thinking how great it would be if I didn’t have to stir my introvert self into doing all kinds of non-introvert things to promote my book.
What I should do next
Settle down and organize my thoughts, put together a rough outline, stop thinking about it and start actually writing my new book.
What I probably actually will do tomorrow
Obsess a little more, eat a few more cookies, settle down to writing because that’s really, really what I like to do, way more than selling. Although I will be taking phone calls, just in case Oprah tries to reach me.

Writing is easy, technology is hard

And for my next trick …

Ok, so I thought that writing a book was actually the hard part. Turns out that no, no it wasn’t. The really hard part is everything that comes after, from formatting for Kindle and print to creating clickable links and teeny tiny versions of your book cover.

Putting it all together

Even the simplest technological tasks loom large for me. So cutting and pasting the 300+ pages of Dangerous Habits into a template for printing, and also stripping the formatting from the original document to create an HTML for uploading to Kindle required levels of concentration I found extremely daunting.

On top of that, I’m not that great at sequencing tasks either. Many a time I’ve prepared multiple handouts for a meeting only to discover that several of the stapled-together packets contain three page fives, no page two and that I have several page sixes left with no place to go.

Those two handicaps resulted in multiple fails in the post-writing production process.

And then there’s the promotion

But that was as nothing  compared to the levels of despair I reached trying to create this website (even with a WordPress template to work from), then upload photos and create clickable links and convert jpegs to PDFs (and I’m really only parroting words here I’m not at all sure what that all means).

Some of it happened through the kindness of friends and other parts came to be by dint of banging my head slowly on the desk and then hitting multiple keys and hoping for the best.

But some of it had to easy, right?

I breathed a sigh of relief when I reached the easy part of the process. Posting on Facebook. How hard could that be? People post every day. I’ve had a Facebook account for years.

The thing is, I never post anything on my timeline. Ever. I might occasionally “like” something or very rarely comment on a friend’s post, but one extremely regrettable incident at work some years ago involving a department-wide listserv left me seriously wary of sending out to the masses what is intended for the few.

But I decided to chance it to let some old friends and work acquaintances know that I finally had written the book I’d been talking about for years.

I didn’t expect to get an avalanche of responses but I was surprised not to get even a “like” from some of the people on my friend list. Then I discovered that I had my privacy settings locked down so tight that my posts were visible only to me. Yes, that’s how you know you really are an introvert, when you only post with yourself on Facebook. Good grief.

I changed my settings, and after several misfires managed to get the Dangerous Habits book cover and a line or two about the content out.

Some days, it just doesn’t pay

Bloodied but unbowed, I moved on with a sense of confidence to email. Even I could do that. I mean, I send email every day. So, I sent a message to non-Facebook friends and included a link to my Amazon book page. Except no, I didn’t. I forgot to include the link. Then when I resent the message with the link, I inadvertently dropped in a line from a different message, thanking a friend for the beautiful flowers she’d sent me. Great. So then I sent another email explaining that I wasn’t actually trying to guilt people into sending me flowers.

All bad things must come to an end

By the time I was done, another friend emailed me and thanked me for the entertaining series of corrections I’d been sending out all day, which were like watching a devolving situation comedy.

So I will pause now to stare aimlessly out the window at the river winding by and the swans swimming in tandem and the heron landing on the bank and will not worry about what fresh hell tomorrow’s technology challenges will bring. Cheers.

 

 

Bravehearts and Heroes

I Saw Heroism on the Outskirts of Baghdad during the first Provincial Elections in January 2009. As an official observer of the elections on behalf of the US Army, I had toured through many of the polling stations to see how smoothly the elections went. We wanted to know if Iraqis understood the process, and if […]

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Afghanistan Through a Muddy Window

Camp Leatherneck – I flew out of here yesterday (March 13, 2011) to visit a team at a subordinate unit, courtesy of our cousins from across the pond, and returned this morning by ground convoy, also courtesy of the Brits. Actually, it was a Scottish regiment that provided the ride today, and along the way, we […]

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From Whence Anger…

Veterans – They Include Our Sons And Daughters: Following is an article I wrote while still in Afghanistan, in April 2011. In light of the furor over treatment of veterans by our national government recently, remembering the challenges of our sons and daughters in harm’s way is poignant:  Raison d’Être: I fall back again on the original […]

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Those Magnificent Troops In Their Flying Machines

Fighter Gymnastics – Cirque du Soleil cannot match the performance that US, British, Danish, Georgian, Jordanian, Afghan, Australian and other NATO and Coalition Force warfighters see every day when they ride in the indomitable machines that fly them from here to there. Pilots sit in their cockpits studying charts or flipping switches. At lift-off, we are […]

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Somber Note From A Combat Surgeon

I was deployed in Afghanistan for 17 months, came home, and then went back for an additional 2 months. For a short time while there, I published a blog.  In light of closure of national monuments honoring our Fallen Heroes, I have here re-published a particularly moving guest article; it is a letter home from a combat […]

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When Good People Remain Silent, Evil Wins

Son Wounded – The six 40-millimeter live grenades that exploded within eight feet of my son’s head at a patrol base in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan left him, as he informed me over Secret channels later, “with his bell rung.” The attack was at night, he was asleep on the ground in a patrol base, and […]

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