Where did it all begin?

By Peter Welmerink

 

 

 

Do you have writer's block?

 

Are you wondering why you do this thing called writing, called creating?

 

Have you felt you've lost your writing mojo? Saying, "Dang! What happened to those good ole days when I could just vomit forth lines and lines of adventurous words and create fabulous tales?"

 

Answer: if you have stuck with it (writing, creating) for this long, I can assure you...

 

YOU STILL HAVE THE MOJO.

 

You may just have to hook a chain around it, a tow strap, hook it up to your monster truck, and pull that SOB out and make him/her/it work.

 

And... !!!

 

IT CAN BE DONE.

 

#

 

In my own life, I can't say exactly when the writing bug bit me. I grew up in a middle class family, working mom and dad, just me and one sibling. Folks got separated when I was in 4th or 5th grade. I went to a parochial school, paddled with a yardstick by the nuns. Living in a neighborhood close to downtown, the bustling metropolis of Grand Rapids. Lived IN THE CITY for sure as the family home was situated on one of the busiest east/westbound streets. There were woods near the house though for traipsing through. There was the John Ball Zoo a block away. More woodland (the boonies) further southwest, and the Grand River.

 

It's not like my mom or dad tossed a pencil and notepad at me and said GO WRITE. It was just something I did. School had some one-subject notebooks, wide rule lined paper. The blank page. The empty line. I just felt the need to... fill it, fill the line, fill the page and pages with whatever came to mind.

 

I wrote about my life as kind of a lonely boy growing up in the 70's. Lots of love songs played on the radio. Sweet Life by Paul Davis. Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band. You're in my Heart by Rod Stewart. Sharing the Night Together by Dr. Hook. I typically wrote about LOVE or adventures in finding it.

 

I won't even get into the ROCK MUSIC or the movies I watched. (Foghat, Boston, BOC, Black Sabbath, Led Zep...and Planet of the Apes (Heston), Dirty Harry (Eastwood), Kelly's Heroes.)

 

Stir in reading Sgt. Rock comic books, GI Combat, Robert E Howard's Conan, Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars...

 

Crazy mixed up kid.

 

Was that why I wrote? All that stuff sloshing around my brain.

 

I don't know.

 

I had friends. I wasn't that lonely. Yet, I would often squirrel myself away and write adventure stories. Stories of war. Stories of saving the girl. Stories of being the hero. Stories of superheroism. Adventure. Adventure. Adventure.

 

Whatever the reason, I kept writing, felt the need to fill the blank page, create, tell a story even if I was the only one reading it. I didn't care if I was the only one reading it, I simply HAD TO CREATE.

 

So, to stop my rambling, let me say to you this:

 

IF YOU HAVE BEEN WRITING FOR THIS LONG, YOU STILL CAN AND YOU STILL WILL.

 

Remember back to the day when you first started writing, when you first started creating. Do that again. Just let it go and let it flow. Just write. Write some silly yarn. Ramble freely and abandon all thought on doing it for publication or even having any of it make sense.

 

As the music artist Seal says: "We're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy."

 

Go back to those early childhood times, let your mind go, and create.

 

Adventure! Adventure! Adventure!

 

###

 

Peter Welmerink has been writing since he found a stash of notebooks in a hallway cabinet drawer in grade school and began to scribe incredible tales of adventure and mayhem. He writes Epic Fantasy and Military Adventure fiction. He can be found at peterwelmerink.com, grandrapidsaltered.blogspot.com and darkheroicfantasy.blogspot.com.

 

TRANSPORT, his fictional Military Post-Post Apoc Zombie Thriller series, is available now. The events of the tale are set in and around Grand Rapids, Michigan. Childhood dream of massive adventure in his hometown brought back to life and published. Bazinga! Dream it. Do it.  

 



Poetry for the Soul by J L Muvlihill

OF DRAGONS AND WIZARDS

 The wizard held his staff up high,

as lightening cracked and sparks fell from the sky.

 

His dark robes billowing in the wind,

his hair wild and white as the beard on his chin.

 

His face weathered and marked by time,

and uttering from his lips he spoke only one line.

 

An ancient verse very few have heard,

but he yelled it with such passion accentuating 

each word.

 

High above a dragon raged and flew with icy speed,

with silvery skin,

enormous wings,

and blazing eyes of green.

 

The wizard cast a spell and sent it flying toward the sky,

the spell hit the dragon in the heart as the monster 

glided by.

 

The dragon screamed and bleated his defiance at this,

as fire spilled from his mouth but the wizard it did miss.

 

Still the lightening cracked and it began to rain,

the dragon filled with rage screamed out in pain.

 

The wizard’s spell cast upon the beast,

had bound it at last and its body fell to the trees.

 

In sorrow the wizard watched as the dragon drew

last breath,

and faded slowly into the slumber and at last into death.

 

His task now completed the last dragon gone but at 

what cost,

no more dragons,

no more wizards,

soon the magic too would be lost.

 

For each one feeds upon the other,

the wizard without the dragon so like love without 

the lover.

 

War no more will the dragon wage,

peace no more will the wizard gauge.

 

A dying breed they both have been,

both to lose no one to win.

 

He turned and walked away head bent to hide
            his sorrow,

no one to see his tears his greatness gone on
            the morrow.

 

No more as a wizard would he stand,

all anyone will see now is a broken old man.

 

So ends the magic of dragons and wizards for only 

legends they be,

memories of them kept alive through songs,

stories,

and reflective poetry.

THERE’S NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

THERE’S NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

By John F. Allen

When I was a child, my grandmother told me one day, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” At first I didn’t understand what she meant. Later, as I got a little older I refused to believe her, and was determined to prove her wrong. Finally, when I began focusing on my career as a writer, I accepted her nugget of knowledge as fact, and learned to embrace it for the truth it is. However, if the above observation is true, then what makes any story different from the next?

The answer…

LIFE EXPERIENCE, IMAGINATION, VOICE AND STYLE.

As most fiction writers will agree, we are products of our environment and individual life experiences and therefore, it stands to reason that many of the seeds for our story plots originate from said life experiences. This can be from what we’ve dealt with on a personal level, what we’ve heard from others, or seen around us including—but, certainly not limited to—what we’ve watched on television, read in books or learned in school. These personal life experiences give our stories a unique flavor which cannot be exactly cloned due to the intricate variables in our individual lives.

I believe that there is a collective consciousness which extends to us all, as we tap into our imaginations and creativeness. We must also accept the fact that the possibilities for formulating scenarios involving larger than life creatures, myths, epic heroes and monsters is finite, just as our voices and styles are infinite. As writers, we sometimes find in the course of plotting a story that we read stories from someone else who came up with very similar ideas for their already published work(s). It is because of this, I continue to work against the truth stated in the title of this post, in order to produce unique stories. I feel in doing this, I can delve deeper into the recesses of my imagination, creativity and life experiences to produce my very own individual story. It is here that we begin to use our imagination to find a variation of the themes we draw from our life experiences and formulate creatively new and exciting takes on tried and true scenarios and themes. It is then that we brand our stories with distinctive twists and turns and imbue it with our own individual spirits and personalities.

As a writer, I’m constantly thinking up new story ideas and using my voice and style to tell the stories. All writers have their own unique voice and style, which separates them from other writers. When it comes to certain elements of storytelling, there are no new ideas. Often, writers of genre fiction ultimately come across elements in another author’s work that closely resembles their own. While this is a common phenomenon, it doesn’t mean that we can’t separate ourselves from other storytellers using similar scenarios and/or themes; it merely means we must work all the more harder at imparting our own essence into our work in order to make it exclusive to us.

Just as there are finite possibilities in regards to scenarios and themes, there is again something to be said for voice and style. I’ve read books that had such similar plots that if you broke it down to the bare essentials it could be the same book. However, what separated the books was the differences in how the authors delivered the story, developed the characters, and the language used to breathe life into the personalities of the characters. How we tell a story, and how much of ourselves we put into our works, is what sets us apart from other writers with similar ideas and themes.

Always remember the old Vulcan axiom from the Star Trek series, Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC), the philosophy which celebrates the vast array of possibilities and variables in the known universe. And while there are finite themes when stripped down to their essential cores, when we take into consideration the life experiences, imagination, voice and style of the storyteller, the possibilities are infinite. 

The Rewards of Writing

THE REWARDS OF WRITING
by John F. Allen

When I first started seriously pursuing my writing goals some three years ago, my life changed in ways that at the time I could have never imagined. Over the years, relationships formed with some very amazing people, who I never would have had the honor of knowing otherwise. My writing skills have improved and I’m more confident in my voice. In general, my friends and family have supported my journey as a writer, for which I am immensely grateful. However, pursuing a career as a writer has not been without its detractors and malcontents.

From early on, what I’d read about being a writer and the pitfalls which came from it was discouraging to say the least. Many of the articles stated that writing was a solitary endeavor which caused introversion, apathy, madness, depression and eventually led to death. Many famous examples of this gave it a modicum of truth, that was unless you became published and garnered a healthy following, then you just ended up dying of a heart attack due to lack of exercise and/or poor diet. I also read that there was little to no money or reward in writing. A more highly compensated career path such as law or medicine was encouraged.

Unfortunately, there is merit to what I read and there are undeniable truths in much of it. I think that writing can lead to the above maladies—which can prove fatal—but, I know that those very same afflictions can arise from a multitude of other professions, some of which practically guarantee far more compensation and personal accolades. It’s also true that because writers are usually sedentary, most of us aren’t the most fit or health conscious people in the world. As far as making truckloads of money from writing, less than 1% makes more than four figures a year. Even ER doctors and small time dentists can do better monetarily. However, one thing—from the above mentioned pitfalls of writing—that I feel has absolutely no merit or truth, is that there is little to no reward from writing.

I have found that writing is rewarding on so many different levels that it is in itself invaluable. I cannot begin to tell you how many times that writing a blog post or a journal entry has saved the last remnant of my threadbare sanity. As an outlet for an emotional meltdown, the latest family crisis, or dealing with all of the voices of your characters in your head, I’ve found writing to be very therapeutic. Writing is also something which is a huge part of who I am as a person, which is rewarding in its own right. Having a high paying career and being unhappy would only go so far. Money can buy you a lot of things, however it can’t buy you fulfillment.

Writing can also serve as an obvious means of expressing one’s thoughts and ideas, in such a way as to inform, entertain, make a statement or create change. Yet, telling stories can also be a very selfish effort as well. I’ve found that my motivation for writing isn’t always altruistic.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
~Toni Morrison

I have come to live by the above quote from Morrison, as it sums up the previous statement perfectly.
In all of the other examples of rewards one can gain from writing, I feel that this final one is most important. Not solely because it can serve to prevent the previously mentioned pitfalls of writing from becoming fatal, or because it can inspire and empower us to reach our fullest potential, not only as writer’s, but also as humans. I feel that this final example is most important because it has the power of giving us hope. Hope of learning from our past, hope of coping with our present and hope of brighter futures, just beyond the horizon. I’m talking about family.

I have been blessed to have entered into a very eclectic, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic family of writers dedicated to the craft and each other. I feel that the personal relationships that I have and continue to develop with fellow writers are crucial to my ability to persevere in the darkest of times we writers face. My college professor, Jim Powell once told me that without the human condition/connection, our writing would be without meaning, no matter the genre. That not only applies to the content of our work but how we live as a community. I believe in the truth of his statement and what it means for the millions of writers out there grinding out their work every day just as I do.

I have experienced the awesome comradery which being a part of a community of writers provides. How we share, how we laugh, how we cry, and I know that we are a very special group of people. I have had the honor of meeting and befriending a great group of writers who have helped to guide me, inspire me, and support me as a writer and as a person. I can only hope to repay their kindness with kindness of my own and an extended hand to others I meet along my journey. We as writers, have an obligation to continue moving the art of writing forward by remaining vigilant in our efforts to strengthen our collective community. We must take every opportunity to extend a hand to our brethren, helping them along on their journey as best we can. Although it’s impossible for us to know each and every one of our brothers and sisters on a personable level, I believe we are of a shared consciousness and linked by our call to write. We must always remember that when we reward each other, we reward ourselves, and the rewards are invaluable.

How to Eat an Elephant

Contrary to popular belief, my first love is not reading. My first love is putting pen to paper and telling stories to anyone interested. Before I ever taught myself how to read, I told stories to entertain myself. As an only child, you can probably imagine the worry I caused my parents when I would find strangers willing to listen to one of my crazy stories. (To me, the definition of ‘stranger’ has always been obscure.)

For my fifteenth birthday my parents bought me an HP desktop, which for the next several years I abused to no end, pounding away on the keys, forcing thoughts, characters, stories and worlds onto the blank page that we writers are all too familiar with; the cursor blinking, taunting and begging for that blank page to be filled. Thoughts filled with fear and doubt always steered me away from being able to finish a story. For a year, I would start a story and abandon it before ever reaching the rising action.

The Spring of ’06 I stumbled upon a handful of paperbacks, each one, in my opinion, better than the last. It started with Brian Keene’s The Rising, and ended with Tamara Pierce’s Bad Things. I blew through them in a matter of a few weeks, and, somewhere in between, Gary A. Braunbeck’s In Silent Graves sealed the deal for me. After putting it down, I knew my calling: to tell my stories to an audience that would pick up my stories of their own volition.

Since that spring day, I’ve managed to do all the right things without realizing it: I joined a writing group, started networking, and continued to write. Which brings me to now: my reading goals have been established for 2012, but I’ve realized my writing goals haven’t. Somewhere within the last month, I’ve realized that I don’t have a professional publishing credit to my name. It’s not a major, life-altering revelation, but it’s made me stop and think hard about what I want to do this year. So, I sat down and drew up my Writing Plan for ’12.

Have you ever heard the phrase that begins: “How do you eat an elephant?” It's probably not something you hear often, if at all, but recently I found myself asking that very question. If you know me, then you know that I'm an ambitious person. Even if I don't succeed, I set crazy goals that seem short of impossible. But I've found that's the only way I can attain my dreams. Even if I don't hit my mark, I've done more than what I would have done before.

Without realizing it, that's how I had approached my reading goals for this year. So, it only made sense that I followed that same format when setting my writing goals.

Here's what my writing goals for '12 look like:

Write four short stories, one for each quarter of the year.

Submit each story to different markets (two of the stories I have planned already have markets to submit to; the last two I have vague ideas for).

Continue work on the handful of novellas that I either have notes for or large chunks written (each novella stands on its own, but all of them are written in the same universe and tell a larger story). My goal is to be able to knit them together and create a novel-length piece by the end of the year.

So, what does that mean for my word count for the year? Well, something like this:

Short Story #1: 3,000 to 10,000 words

Short Story #2: 3,000 to 5,000 words

Short Story #3: 3,000 words

Short Story #4: 5,000 words

Novella #1: 25,000 words

Novella #2: 25,000 words

Novella #3: 35,000 to 40,000 words

Which means between 99,000 to 113,000 words will be written in 2012.

According to traditional publishers, a novel (and this is along the more literary mindset) begins at around 50,000 words. Conventional publishers – the small press and big six who publish speculative fiction – mostly agree on 80,000 (this doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t publish anything shorter, but 80k sells better than 60k).

Either way you slice it, 99,000 words is a lot. Which brings me back to that phrase: “How do you eat an elephant?” Well, that's simple: in small bites.

At the end of February, I’ll be left with 306 days to write 99,000 to 113,000 words. 324 – 370 daily, depending on which goal I need to reach, so let’s just say 370. That’s not too many pages when considering standard formatting: 12 point font, double spaced, Times New Roman or Courier New. Which breaks down to about 350 words per page, for a total of a page a day. Small bites.

A bite a day keeps the doctor away.

Let's see how I do!

~Rodney




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The Bloody Pen
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/kidstaple

Firearms in Fiction

by Terry W. Ervin II


All too often I’ve come across writers working on a short story or first novel involving a character carrying and using a firearm, and they (both the writer and the character) simply refer to it as "a gun" and "my gun."

Sure, it depends on the context. A steamy romance where the main character comments that she keeps a gun in her vanity’s drawer just in case is different than a hard-boiled mystery where a detective ventures daily into inner city neighborhoods packing heat or a heroine armed with silver bullets ready to fend off werewolves. The latter two would certainly be more intimate with the trusted firearm than would be the steamy romance character.

In the context of some stories, writers don’t even narrow the ‘gun’ used to a revolver, hunting rifle or shotgun, but they write as if the individual is competent, if not an expert with the firearm they’re carrying and using.

Quite often, upon asking a writer whose manuscript I am reviewing what type of firearm the character used in a particular scene, the response often is, “I don’t know.” That is usually followed up by, “I don’t really like guns” or “I don’t know the first thing about guns.” Then they ask, “Does it really matter?”

I think it matters. The limitations of a firearm based on the caliber or the effective range makes a difference. Can it be carried concealed and if so, where and how will that affect the character’s wardrobe? Failure to incorporate such basic knowledge could annoy, if not turn off, an entire segment of an author's the potential reading audience.

Does the writer have to own or be an expert in firearms to include them in his or her fiction? Absolutely not. But a writer, for example, who researches in great detail the layout of a city where the short story or novel’s action takes place, shouldn’t brush aside proper research on the firearms intimately involved in the action.

Online research is a good place to get the basics. Visiting a local gun store with questions will often net in-depth answers. An uncle that’s hunted whitetail deer every fall since he was thirteen could provide enough details about how a shotgun works, its recoil, types of shells, strengths and limitations to enable the prose to be both authentic and accurate. In my experience it’s a rare instance where someone balks at helping a writer with content in an area where he or she is experienced and knowledgeable. The individuals may even offer to take the author shooting, if desired, so that the author can get hands-on experience and understanding.

A little time and research effort can pay great dividends in the depth, quality, and authenticity of a writer's manuscript, the result being a more believable and enjoyable reader experience.





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www.ervin-author.com
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The Day After You Finish Your Manuscript

The Day After You Finish Your Manuscript
by Ren Garcia


THE END.

ding

You dot the last sentence and hit the carriage return. Congratulations! You just finished your killer new manuscript. The world has never experienced anything like it and will never be the same again.

So, now what?? That stack of paper in the tray, or that file on your jump drive is just sitting there, mocking you. What to do with your grand new opus, that Monster you've been slaving over?? There are many possible answers to that question, and, depending on who you are as a person, the answer will vary. The trials and tribulations of what happens to you and your manuscript the day after you finish could fill a giant-sized book and be made into a number of movies, so this will, no doubt, be the first of several blog posts covering the topic.

First of all, are You a Perpetual??

The first question you'll need to face as you consider your finished manuscript is: Are you really done??

There are many Perpetuals out there and either you are one yourself or you know someone who is. You know, a Perpetual is someone who is engaged in a never-ending pursuit: that person who's been in college for fifteen years and is nowhere close to graduating, that person who has been grouting the bathroom forever, or that person who has written a manuscript and is never quite finished. Let's face it, a manuscript is your baby and it can be tough to let go, couple that with an artist's tendency to never be satisfied, it's very easy to fall into a surreal mire of revision, re-thinking, re-editing and re-focusing, until such time that the original vision and purpose of the MS is lost. Some are perpetually "tweaking" and "fine-tuning" their MS and it will never be quite ready for Prime Time. Years pass, no progress is made, it's just not quite finished.

The Perpetual and their Manuscript shall waltz together until the proverbial music stops, and it's not going to stop anytime soon, so, for that person, the day after you finish your manuscript is the first day of the rest of your life.

Publishing: The Banana Republic

The next logical course is to attempt to publish your work-it's only natural, you've written something, now you want to share it. The road to publishing is long and difficult and there's no 1-2-3, step by step method of accomplishing it. Ask any author and they'll have all sorts of horror stories of how they got put through the wringer prior to being discovered. It's an inevitable process, and, whether you choose to seek an agent or submit directly to a publisher; it's basically the same.

First: you need to know who to submit to. Different agents and publishers represent and publish different things, so, if you've written a hardcore science fiction tome, you're not going to want to submit to a Christian, non-fiction publisher of inspirational short stories. Various publications and websites go over who does what, so it's worth your time to do a little research and target a specific list that is best suited to you.

Next comes the part that has been the bane of many writers everywhere. All agents and publishers have a lengthy list of requirements that you have to follow pretty much to the letter; any deviation, anything added or omitted will lead to your submission being summarily rejected. These people can get pretty detailed in their demands, from the line spacing, to the exact type of font to use, to the word count of the submission. It is a real Banana Republic where they make the rules and you follow them, or else. You know what they say about absolute power corrupting absolutely-well, there's the proof. They have the power and you don't. If you don't like it, complain to the President.

However, as we'll see, these days there are other ways to get to Heaven that don't involve going through Christ (But, that's a different Blog Post).

The Hell of Manuscripts

So, let's say you jump through all the required hoops and abased yourself as demanded, the final destination of your MS is a withering hell known as the "Slushpile". Lording over the Slushpile is a demon from college, paid minimum wage (if they're being paid at all) with girlfriend/boyfriend issues and a monitor sunburn who can barely see straight known as the Slush Editor. It's the Slush Editor who picks through all MS's consigned there and determines which will be forwarded on to the real editors for further consideration. Little balls of teenage angst, these editors vent their fury on the MS's in their charge, tossing them aside willy-nilly as the case might be (Yes-I was a Slush Editor, and Yes my attitude was poor. It actually felt really good having supreme power at a time in my life when I was otherwise powerless, so flushing a manuscript or two really made my day). Just remember, the next time you see some ridiculous person who's locked themselves out of their car with the engine running, that could be the person who just rejected your MS.

Thus begins the cycle of Submission and Rejection that many authors will face going the traditional route. Almost all MS's meet their demise in the Slushpile, and almost all will end up there more than just once. Writers on the lecture tour are fond of mentioning that Harry Potter was once on the Slushpile. The truth of the matter is that Harry Potter was probably on a lot of Slushpiles and drowned in the vortex of most of them. It is a real, lottery-winning moment when your MS happens to make it out of the Slush purgatory and into the hands of an editor who loves it as much as you do. But, that's a rare moment that can take years and lots and lots of rejection letters to get to.

Next, we'll go over the Promised Land of Self-Publishing, the stigma that comes with it and the Hungry Beast/Chain-Gang of Marketing

Bowl Naked
RG



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