Diana Pharaoh Francis's Blog, page 14

More Poetry

I heard the term “Alternative Facts” today. It reminds me of gaslighting. And this is what came to my heart:

 

alternative facts say he

loves you

love tap

love bites

stop crying or he’ll

love you so

hard

you break

your heart

bones

blood spills

stop screaming or he’ll

love you to

the hospital

to the moon Alice

to death

or worse

stop dreams

and joy

and life

and will or he’ll

love you loudly

with knuckles

with snarls

with bruises

and breaks

and then he’ll love

the kids as much

as he

loves

you.

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Hate and the march

I’m so proud of all the marches across the country today. The turnout gives me great hope. I’m not a good poet, but this arose out of the last year, yesterday, and my fears going forward and this is the thing that the marches today defy:

 

the shape of hate is diffuse

smoke at night invisible

desperate

agent orange, thalidomide, love canal

health

prosperity

winning

termite gluttony gnawing chewing

needing

what they can’t find

and crave and demand

tasty hate

that stretches the stomach with

sawdust

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Whirlwind already

The past couple weeks have proven to be a whirlwind. Already.  I’m almost done writing two different books. I plan to be done by the end of January. One is DCM 4, the other is this book that came out of nowhere and is huge fun. For me, anyhow. The writing has gone fast on the second book. Crazy fast. DCM 4 is complex and digs more into the the Tyet stuff and has some really cool twists. A couple are even shocking, I think. I can’t wait to see what my editor thinks.

Am in the mood to go digging rocks, which of course is not possible given that a) there’s snow everywhere, and b) the ground is frozen.

I have to confess I have yet to take down the Christmas tree. Part of that is sheer laziness. Part is the fact that we got it up late and I’m still enjoying it. But it has to come down, so I think since the kids have the day off tomorrow, I’ll make them help me do that.

We have a deep love of rocks, not that I know much about them. We sometimes go rockhounding to look for different things. We’re just getting started figuring out what we’re doing. We also go to estate sales and that sort of thing to look for rocks. This weekend, we went to an estate sale and had some great luck. Found a bunch of rocks and many were very cool. Some were already cut, some were rough. Hampton Butte petrified wood, tiger iron, lots of agate, lots of jasper, some other stuff I have no idea what it is. But very pretty.

Makes me want to go out and dig holes. We’re going to try to get to look for some limb cast as soon as the snows go. We figure the runoff this year will expose some good stuff. Or so we hope.

 

 

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Writers Club

I’ve been doing a series of posts over at the Bookview Cafe Blog. I’m going to start mirroring them over here. They come under the heading of Writers Club. These are the Rules. Or Guidelines. Or something. Anyhow, here you go:

 

I’m not saying that self-editing is bad. It’s not. It’s just we often do it while writing and that’s when it’s evil. Sometimes we do it when we aren’t aware and that’s when it’s really awful.

When I first started out writing, I wrote for me and me alone. I was trying to entertain myself and so I didn’t worry about whether this would be offensive or that would be sappy or if readers would hate my characters. None of that entered my mind because it was all about the fun of telling myself the story and getting lost in it.

Then I published. This was a dream come true. But that’s when the evil self-editor started sneaking in to my creative zone. I’d write something and then delete it because it was too something: too off-color, too disgusting, too violent, and so on. That limited me in ways that I stopped noticing. I internalized those limits and made them an unacknowledged part of my writing process. It’s like a house. You don’t pay attention to where walls are or light switches because they just exist and are necessary and you’re glad they’re there doing their job.

Only really, the self-editor at this point in the process is really a saboteur. It’s a swarm of termites eating away your writing in secret and you have no idea it’s even happening.

Recently I accidentally started a . . . something. Since it’s well-over 45K by this writing, I guess it’s a novel. It started as just a fun thing I wanted to write down. My main character–Beck–is obnoxious and says things that are not polite and yet are very funny to me. I found myself writing on it constantly and racking up big word counts. I’d stay up late. I write through obligations. I’d forget time. At some point, however, I realized that I was losing her voice because I’d begun self-editing. I began to worry about what readers might think or how they might respond. So I slowed down. I started thinking more and being more careful about how I was telling the story, rather than focusing on actually telling the story and entertaining myself.

Not so coincidentally, I slowed down. I didn’t feel like writing on it as much. It took me a few days to figure out why and I wanted to smack myself for doing it. The thing is, the self-editor is important. Finding and questioning the issues of your story is very important, but not until you’ve written and know what it is and what it needs. I also don’t think your words and story should necessarily change because a reader my object or feel a little annoyed. You have to decide what’s good for the story. You don’t have to throw glitter on the ugly or soften all the rough edges. You have to tell a good story with powerful, compelling characters that engage your readers and carry them on a fun ride from beginning to end.

Writers Club rule: Revel in the creative, and chase the editor off with a pitchfork. Hunt it down, put it in a mayonnaise jar with holes in the lid until you’re ready to let it chew through your manuscript.

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Over the shoulder and straight ahead

It’s that time when we all look at the last year and make goals for next year.

Looking back, last year was rough in a lot of ways. The world lost a lot of talented people, I lost friends, the family went through some tough times, and the world seemed to turn a lot darker. I also had a lot of joy in my life. I wrote things I am proud of. I made some new friends and I did some things that were on the bucket list. So it was a year with good and bad like most years. The difficult thing is I have real worries about what will happen next year and over the course of the next four. I worry for many things and all I can think of it we’d root ourselves deeply and hold on tight and try to look out for one another. Stepping into this next year feels like walking into a minefield. 

My goals for next year are a little unformed. One thing I want to do is get regular exercise, for my mental and physical health. I also want to go do some cool hikes to places I want to see. I didn’t do much of that last year and I wish I had. I want to get bills under control and some debt paid down. That means I need to get more writing out there.

For writing goals, here are things I want to accomplish.

Finish DCM4 by end of January
Finish Beck book by end of January
Finish 2nd Job book by end of February.
write the anthology story I owe
write a Crosspointe book.
Release the Job book

Those are the things I know I want and need to do. After that, I’d like to do a 3rd Job book and write the southern spider story. I really want to do that last one. I also want to do a better job keeping track of what I do in the writing and how I’m progressing. The first three items have about 70-100K left to be written. The Crosspointe book may turn out to be more than one and so I’m not sure. Minimally it will come in at 120K.

 

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

In which I pass along words of–

I’ve been asked to put together a promotional blog post for my publisher. I can’t think of what to write because of brain fry. Husband and son decide that this is what I should write:

Don’t be a Twit, Read my shit.

I don’t think this is as helpful as they seem to think. What about you?

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Merry Christmas!

For those of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah for my Jewish friends and readers. For everybody else–actually, for all of us–I wish you a day of peace and joy with laughter and no room for anger and depression.

Today we went to see the  Cirque Dreams Holidaze show. It was stunning and so fun. It was so wonderful to be there with my family and just get to enjoy. It was so fun and the performers–so very very good.

Tomorrow we have an unconventional meal planned, with fun and laughter and hopefully a dog walk, because the boys would love it.

From my family to yours, have a lovely day!

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Snippet

A taste of my sneak project: (no context for you!)

“Are you saying Damon doesn’t get you hot and bothered?”

I flushed. “Unfortunately, no. He does. And now that I have a little better idea what’s going on, I have even less reason to trust him.”

“How so?”

“Because for all I know, he’s thinking about how sexy my DNA is and how he’d like to contract the hell out of me.”

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Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

Ugly Christmas Ornaments

Actually, I prefer to call them hideous. I look for them. I buy one each year. This I only started a couple years ago. This one is this year’s choice. I found it at Michael’s in the bargain bin. Made me wonder how many they’d ordered and why? Are there other crazy people out there deliberately wanting ugly hideous ornaments? Okay, yes. I have a friend who would definitely pick this one out. Hmmm. Make that two. Megan and Christy, you know who you are. 

This is a horrible picture. The light’s bad. But it’s a flamingo in hot pink high heels with a gold sequin tube top with a pile of blond hair with pearls around her head. Isn’t it awesome?

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Originally published at . You can comment here or .

My holiday newsletter is out

Here’s a link to my newsletter with a short story for you to read.

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.