Tag: short story

I like ’em short

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I’ve been reading and writing novel length works lately. I belong to a few online book groups and people are always posting great reviews of this book or that. Sometimes I pick them up, sometimes I like them. It’s hard for me to find that book that hits the sweet spot – the perfect mix of good writing and a good story.

I love the exceptional use of language. That’s a talent.

In my literature and writing classes, I use Best American Short Stories. I chanced upon an old copy the other day. I read half of the first story and felt engaged, awakened!

Picking up the book of short stories immediately energized me with ideas for short fiction.

The joy of reading a short story happens because they’re tight, no nonsense needed, straight to the point, well written and excellently executed niblets of fiction.

The joy of writing a short story is the challenge. The point, the characters, the setting all expertly set up in concise wording in a small period of time. The use of language is easier to control, the beauty and rhythm easier to accomplish.

I once belonged to a short story group. It was so gratifying to read the short fiction. If you didn’t like what someone chose, you could still read the ten or twenty pages and talk about it. It’s not 300 pages of silently cursing your book group.

So… I’m going to recommend some books of short fiction. Of course, I recommend the Best American Short Story Series. Wonderful writing by newbies and scholars alike!

And mine: But also – I’m a huge fan of Jo Rousseau and Ron Terranova.

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Jo Rousseau and Ron Terranova also have websites/blog. Stop by and check them out!

Successful Writing

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Okay, so not bragging, but….. I’ve been hard at work….

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The Healer’s Daughter in The Ear

The Healer’s Daughter is a departure for me. It marks a turns in my writing that came about just this year. It’s more mystical. Risky, maybe. A woman’s daughter describes her mother’s gift and discovers she has her very own gift, but will she actually use it?

The Healer’s Daughter will be featured in my summer release of How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party. It’s a book of short stories, all of which have a special or surprising twist.

 

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Friends, Lovers, and Liars in Home Renovation

Originally titled Deception, it didn’t find a home. In fact, the topic of lies and cheating offended one editor. I think it may have hit too close to home.  It, too, will be released in the summer release of How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party.

 

 

 

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How to Throw a Psychic Surprise Party in The Electric Press Magazine

The title story for the book of short stories. Inspired by a show in which I saw a television host throw a “surprise” party for a psychic. It struck me – How do you throw a psychic a surprise party?

This story may answer that question. Maybe not. How much empathy can you muster?

 

 

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Hunger and other poems as well as some photography in Voices of Eve

 

Not in the book of short stories. But well worth the read. Hunger is one of my favorite poems.

 

 

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Also in the book of short stories –

The Crier: In a time when emotions are unheard of, people need a release.

The Mirror People: Ever wondered what’s inside the mirror? You know there’s something, right? Here’s a woman who collects them – she knows.

Bowie and the Basket Case: Anna’s things keep disappearing and reappearing. At first she thinks she’s misplaced them, but then she’s sure she hasn’t!

How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party is available for Pre-order!

 

 

Book Group Problems Solved

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We’ve all been in book groups. And there is no perfect one. The novels are chosen in different ways, by vote or by the leader or by a different person each time. Sometimes people don’t have time to finish the novel or find it’s too boring to go on.

My friends and I wanted to read and share our thoughts on literature, but none of us had time for a full novel and we didn’t have the freedom to choose one night all of us would be free every month, so we did something a little different.

We created a short story group. We each took turns choosing the story and would email it or bring copies. We didn’t have a specific day or date, but it would be “next time we get together.” This was lunch or dinner or a walk through the park for the following week, two weeks, or occasionally a month.

This became such a wonderful part of our activities. We’d have lunch and then discuss the story, or we’d walk around the pond in our regular conversations before we moved on to talk about the reading.

It was a pleasurable, no pressure way to get our lit fix. WomenWalking.jpg

What makes good literature?

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An extremely good conversation in my literature class about intelligence (Inspired by Ted Chiang’s The Great Silence). We talked about other species that fall under the definition of intelligence, which is “the ability to understand and apply knowledge.” parrot.jpgConsidering Alex the Parrot and Koko the Gorilla, and other species: crows are problem solvers and remember faces. We discussed dogs, cats, and others. Is love, as an abstract idea, understood and applied by animals? And then – is intelligence found in showing love?

This is what good literature should do. Teach, delight, and create wonder.

Read The Great Silence here

Blocked? How to shake it loose.

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Creative blocks are brought on by various reasons.

Writers, poets, artists, musicians need to express themselves. Sometimes, something plugs our flow of creativity.

My friend and I have found release in other creative outlets. She took a watercolor painting class. She feared, at first, that she was taking away from her writing; however, what she found is that it opened her flow and she felt even more creative and was able to add even more to her usual creativity.

I take art and other classes on a regular basis. Most of the time their directly related to writing, but sometimes they are not – but they still feed my imagination and add depth to my writing.

The Healer’s Daughter will be released on May 15th in The Ear. This story came pouring out after a six week drawing class I took at a local museum/gallery. And… I feel like it’s one of my best, filled with color and meaning.

Shake something loose by trying another outlet. You may come back stronger and more creative than before.

The Secret to Successful Short Stories

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I spent much of my time in grad school trying to please a certain teacher and understand the secret formula for a short story.

Up until that time, I’d only written novels (or novellas), longer pieces of work in which I developed the characters and followed a plot. These felt full and complete.

Writing one small selection vexed me.

So I read and read and researched and attempted one time after another to create a successful short piece.

I suppose there is no formula and  no one right answer, which is what I was looking for – the correct answer.

Of the things written in grad school, the one instructor I attempted to satisfy deemed them mostly unworthy.

It wasn’t until near the end of graduation that an instructor said “half of that story was the best he’d ever read.”

He didn’t tell me which half.

However, almost all those stories have been pulled out, dusted off, and accepted with few edits. Hence – dear teachers – they were good! I had learned something; I had accomplished something.  (I must be doing something right, over 30 published in the last few years!)

There may not be one right answer, and there’s no secret, nor is there a hidden formula. Short stories need to get to a point, need to have conflict, need to show a budding of growth – perhaps.

 

 

Goals & Accomplishment

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I know many people don’t start think about goal setting for another four weeks, but I consider it year ’round.

I don’t want until January 1st to begin anything, except a new year. I don’t make resolutions that I don’t keep, I rarely make resolutions at all.  When I want to start something new, whether it be health, wealth, a writing, I do it right away.

So – I’m not going to talk about what I’m going to do four weeks from now, but what I did 10 or 11 months ago.  In January of last year (not January 1, I think it was near the end of the month,) I made a vision board of what I wanted to see in my life. I’d never made one before.  I won’t bore you with all the things I placed on it, just a few things that did actually come to me throughout the year.

Of course, I had writing and publishing goals. I didn’t have a set number of publications or a set number of hours spent writing; those I set more often than yearly. eighteenHowever, by continuing to work on those writing and publishing goals, I’ve succeeded in publishing EIGHTEEN times this year.  18!  18 poems, short stories, books, etc floating around out there in the world!

 

 

 

 

 

I received these four complimentary copies in one week!

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What Lies Beneath features a poem “UnWalden Pond.”
Vine Leaves has two poems: “The Fly” and “After.”
Wild Women’s Medicine Circle a narrative poem, “H.”
Delphinium published “Hope.”

 

 

Elsewhere on the vision board, I had things like book signings and talk shows and other personal things, some of which happened, some of which have not YET.

One of the things I included was an interview.  I’ve done two in the last month, but I did a live on air interview with darktimes.png

Super News Live on their show Dark Times in June. They gave me about 24 hours’ notice!  But

it was so much fun. The members of the crew and staff were very sweet!

 

 

 

 

 

Our brains like Goal Setting! Even setting little goals and crossing them off our lists makes us feel like we’ve accomplished something.

With my vision board, I didn’t actively cross anything off.  In fact, at some points, I forgot I’d had things on it. I looked at it after my Poe interview and realized – I had a picture of LIVE interview on it!!

I haven’t set goals for next year – yet. I have set short term goals that I will reset and realign when needed.

Waiting for New Year’s to set goals is like planning for failure. Why wait? What can you do right now to accomplish what you want? What can you do in the next month to know what you want to accomplish next year? If you know what you want to work on – why not start now?

I think by having a list or a goal written down somewhere, picture or other form, encourages us to more actively pursue, perceive, maybe envision that goal and work to accomplish it.

Good Luck!

 

Grandma’s Secret Revealed!

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When Grandma asks you to do something –

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You do it!

So when Grandma asked Katie to “take care of something” and “don’t tell anyone,” she barely hesitated. She had to get on a plane in the middle of the night and go to a storage unit……

What had Grandma kept hidden for 60 some years?

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If you’d like to know… You’ll have to open this Top Secret File at Pilcrow & Dagger.

Writing Wishes and Publication Dreams

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I’ve been working on a new story – not only working – OBSESSED!  I don’t think I left the house for most of January and part of February until the first draft was done. I’m currently working through it again and again.  I’ve begun to gather my beta readers, and I’m quite excited.

Weekly, I spend time submitting. This is what a working writer does. Writes and submits. Rejections are no fun, and I get plenty of them. I read one statistic that read, “a writer gets an average of 26 rejections for every acceptance.” Not sure how they came up with that… I feel like it’s three times that much; however, things change!

Malcolm Gladwell, estimates it takes 10,000 hours to master any one thing. I feel like I should have reached those hours long ago; but, maybe, it takes some of us a little longer to get it. (That’s the story of my life!)

So – I have to update you.

My poem, “All At Once”, was a finalist in Medusa’s Laugh NanoText Contest. I didn’t win, but it’s still to be published in their anthology and in an e-book version. This should be available soon!

My poem, “I’ve Never Looked So Beautiful” has just been accepted by Mother’s Always Write. Before you start thinking I’m quite full of myself – the poem is about my lovely daughter! This should be available in the next month.

My story, “How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party” has been accepted by The Oleander Review. Sometimes, I write something and I think, this is pretty damn good, and I think this story says a lot about our humanity. I’m so happy that it will be published. It will be available mid-April

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, Writer Advice has just notified me that my story, “Memorial Day Death Watch”, has been chosen as a finalist in their Flash Memoir Contest!

We must have a purpose – I’ve always wanted to reach people, tell them they’re not alone. I think I’m just beginning to do that.

Live an Inspired Life!

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Free Reading for the Holidays

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Dad Shining is available for free now on Kindle Unlimited.   Enjoy!

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“Through the blue hills and green mountains of West Virginia, there’s a cemetery with my name on it. It’s in the back country where paved roads have yet to enter. The dirt and pebbled pathways are unnamed; the towns, if they can be called that, carry only the names of their settlers. In some cases, the families are long lost to graves and the names are an unsure mixture of dialect and history. But our name has carried through, strong, certain, alone on the trail that leads to the family church, the family land, and there, next to the chapel, the family graveyard.”