A Tribute - IWSG January 2025

 Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. Co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp,  Natalie @ Literary Rambles  and me! For links to all contributors, click here.

This month’s optional question: Describe someone you admired when you were a child. Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?

The summer I turned sixteen, I spent two months living with my best friend who’d moved one state over when her father purchased a country inn. Looking back on it, I think she was having trouble settling and  her parents imported me to help with that. Whatever. We missed each other like crazy and the plan was we'd both waitress in the inn dining room while having the summer together.

Starting my first paying job in a town where I knew no one but my friend was a bold step for shy me. After my first breakfast shift answering to a barking cook who had zero patience for a scared teenager, I climbed the stairs ready to flop on my bed for a good cry. But in the hall in front of my room, which happened to be next to the laundry area, I encountered a freckle-faced woman holding a bundle of sheets. Her face broke out into a welcoming smile and she greeted me by name, as if she'd been waiting to meet me. I have no idea if she recognized how miserable I was, but if someone asked me to describe an experience representing kindness, it would be that moment.

Kitty was a sort of Jill-of-all-trades around the inn and meeting her was the first thing that gave me comfort during those early awkward days away from home. Every time I saw her she offered me that same brilliant smile. Ultimately and regardless of a fifteen-year age difference, the two of us became friends.

I spent two summers working at the inn and afterwards became a prolific letter writer to folks I met there. Even then I expressed myself better in writing, and foremost and especially, I wrote to Kitty. She rarely wrote back but called on the phone and reached out to me when she was in my area. She invited me to her home on many occasions where we picked blueberries and blackberries in her yard. She and a friend traveled to see me when I was in college in Vermont, and after I graduated, she visited when I worked my last “summer job” on Martha’s Vineyard. We went to lunch when she’d come for appointments while I was employed in the city, and I remember being tickled when she commented about how grown up and professional I looked. The day after Christmas one year, I brought the man who ultimately became my husband up to meet her. Years later, after training as a nurse, she quizzed me when my young daughter and I visited her and she learned I’d had serious  surgery.

And then, as it is wont to do, life happened. A full-time working Mom, I crammed my daughter’s activities, home management, and family demands into the precious little free time I had. Letter-writing (or emailing at that point) landed lower on the priority scale and my regular communication with Kitty petered out. But always, I made sure to write a detailed Christmas letter, and most years, I got a long one back. Though I hadn’t spoken to her for longer than I care to remember, there’s Facebook, and when she discovered I’d lost my husband she called, telling me how even though we’d reached the ages we had, she’d always consider me her “little friend.”

I keep the silver bracelet she gave me for my seventeenth birthday in my jewelry box. I carefully hand wash the one wine glass remaining from a picnic set she sent as a wedding present, thinking of my dear friend every time I use it. These days, I’ve whittled what used to be an extensive Christmas card list down to three, but as always, the first one I wrote this year was to Kitty.

It’s been fifty years since that first summer I encountered her in the hallway, but even now, I think of her smile when I greet people, trying to replicate it with a warmth that starts in my eyes. I know I wore it on my face when I checked my mailbox last week and found her Christmas card inside.

Who had an impact on your life growing up?

High Stakes or High Charm? - IWSG December 2024

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh.  Thank you to December co-hosts: Ronel, Deniz, Pat Garcia, Olga Godim, and Cathrina Constantine! To find links to all contributors, click here.

December 4 question - Do you write cliffhangers at the end of your stories? Are they a turn-off to you as a writer and/or a reader?

Since I write what I like to read and I’m a tie-it-up-in-a-ribbon type of reader, I stay clear of the cliffs. High stakes is one thing. Of course we want to keep readers engaged but to me, leaving readers hanging at the end of a book seems like a manipulative way of doing so. I’m fine with stories that leave points open to interpretation, but if the plot isn’t resolved by the end, I’ll be disinclined to read that author in the future.

On other topics, the house is partially decorated and I’ve bought a few presents. I’m looking forward to our annual festival on the common this weekend I’ve written about so many times here. All of the local churches gather together and offer jumble sales, meat raffles, book sales and clam chowder. In various iterations, Santa has arrived by boat or fire truck. Now he arrives in a vintage car and sits outdoors on a sleigh in the middle of the town common for photos. At noon, a band made up of former high school musicians from the surrounding area performs a Christmas concert in a church that has stood since the 1700’s. The whole thing is low on pizzaz, high on charm and it’s one of my favorite days of the year. 

Wishing you all the happiness of the season.

What are your favorite holiday traditions?

On Walking and Artist Dates - IWSG November 2024

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. Thank you to November co-hosts: Diedre Knight, Lisa Buie Collard , Kim Lajevardi, and JQ Rose. To find links to all contributors, click here.

November optional question: What creative activity do you engage in when you're not writing?

Years ago I worked through the twelve-week lessons from The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. One of the requirements was to take a weekly “artist date,” which could be any activity designed to inspire creativity. Unemployed at the time and not keen on spending money, an artist date for me meant a walk with my camera.

Having worked indoors for more than half of my life by then, walking outside any time I wanted introduced me to a world I'd missed. Everything I encountered felt nuanced and layered. Two dories reflecting on still water at dawn. A paint-peeling house emerging from a thick fog at the edge of a salt marsh. Egrets stick-legging through the eelgrass. A golden retriever balancing on the gunnel of a lobster boat as it trundled into the harbor. Each time I took a walk, I found myself savoring these vignettes, taking them into my heart, if you will. It was during this time I learned to look east during sunset to find a more subtle beauty, and that winter light offers something ethereal so it's worth bundling up to catch it. Even now I think that spell of unemployment was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. After each outing I downloaded my photos and more often than not, wrote a blog post about something I’d witnessed.

These days, my writing is pretty much at a standstill. A reader/proofreader I trust is going through my last project, so I can’t fuss with that right now. I have no will or desire to start anything new but I don’t want to stop the practice of writing. For the past month I’ve been forcing myself to journal during my early morning writing hour. Truth be told, it feels like homework and I give myself weekends off for good behavior. Thankfully, I woke up last Saturday with an artist date in mind. Before I could talk myself into chores, I hopped into the car.

It helps when things seem fresh and new, so I took myself to a park one town over that I've rarely been to and not for a very long time. The land was purchased by the navy in 1906 and served as an ammunition depot until the early '70's when the government declared it surplus. Paved roads remain from its former incarnation. Rambling dirt paths skirt the river. The location is popular with dog walkers and joggers and it was busy enough that I felt the company, but peaceful enough for me to reflect on my own thoughts. I have a new phone and since the upgrade from an iPhone 8 to a 16, improvements to the camera are notable.

So there I was, walking amid the skitter of falling leaves, watching kids trying to skim rocks on the river while imagining gunmetal ships docked at old wharfs. The sun is low in the sky these days and my phone could actually capture the sparkles on the water. A cormorant circled and I waited, hoping it would land on an old piling and lift its wings to dry them. When it did, relief floated through me. 

I may not have a writing project to work on, but at least I came up with an IWSG post.

What creative activity inspires you?

Past, Present, Future - IWSG October 2024

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. Thank you to October co-hosts, Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre. To read posts from other contributors, click here.

October optional question: Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

My favorite ghost story isn’t a Halloween story, but it’s a classic. I’m not much of a scary story kind of girl, so it’s probably good that my first experience with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was a version featuring Mr. Magoo, the bumbling, vision impaired cartoon character from the 1960’s. How frightening could a story be with him as the star? By the time I was assigned to read the actual tale for high school English it was like returning to an old friend.

But it was the 1984 movie starring George C. Scott that put A Christmas Carol at the top of my favorite scale. We first watched it back in the VCR days, and my husband and I liked that adaptation so much we taped it, rewinding and playing it again every Christmas. There is still a DVD of it stored in a box labeled “Christmas Movies” at the top of my family room closet.

Scott is chillingly believable as the miserly Scrooge denying Bob Cratchit his piece of coal and returning to his own frigid house for a bowl of broth on Christmas Eve. He assumes it's his imagination when he hears the rattling of chains from the ghost of his late partner, some kind of dream triggered by a digestive complaint. Once he accepts the visitations are real however, he becomes incrementally more sympathetic as the ghosts of past, present and future show him what his worship of money has cost him and what more he stands to lose. Scott is marvelous as a newly reformed Scrooge, jumping up and down on his bed the next morning as he realizes all the good he can do.

So, yes, it’s my favorite take on my favorite ghost story because the acting is so superb it feels real. Even now, the sound of the screeching whine that accompanies the beckoning finger of the Ghost of Christmas Past gives me the willies. For those of you not of a certain age, picture a dementor from the Harry Potter movies. When the apparition first arrives, it scares the Dickens out of Scrooge (lol), and no matter how many times I watch it, it does the same to me.

What is your favorite ghost story? Is there a particular scene that sticks with you?

Punctuation, Commas [,] and Getting it Right

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. Thank you to the co-hosts for September: Beth Camp, Jean Davis, Yvonne Ventresca, and PJ Colando. To read posts from other contributors, click here.

This month’s optional question: Since it's back to school time, let's talk English class. What's a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

English. Oy. So many rules and I’m supposed to choose only one? 

This question brought me back to seventh grade. Our English teacher Miss Newman was lovely, but I had a lot going on that year and spent a good deal of class distracted, which is to say I failed to learn how to diagram a sentence. Enough rubbed off that I know my parts of speech, but how to punctuate them is a definite weakness. 

In a display of I’m never too old to learn-itis, before receiving this month’s optional question, it happens I did a little research on the Oxford comma. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I knew the definition of an OC but I’ve encountered enough controversy about it online that I decided it was time to educate myself. Back in the day, I was taught that a comma before the conjunction preceding the last item in a list was optional, depending on what it did for clarity. My research revealed my “optional” comma is the Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma. Much ado about not very much I suppose (except for a 2014 lawsuit in Maine you can read about here), but the general idea is to be consistent with usage and always make sure you are being clear.

Oxford comma: I live with my brothers, monkey, and snake.

No Oxford comma: I live with my brothers, monkey and snake.

Without the OC, it reads that the brothers are the monkey and snake. With it, you can tell the brothers, monkey, and snake are separate parts of the list.

But when all is said and done, perhaps the best idea is to re-write the sentence.

I live with my brothers. I also have a monkey and a snake.

Anyway, there is more debate than I even knew with regard to my “optional comma,” because my research revealed that the AP Stylebook (Hello journalists!) does not use the OC, but the Chicago Manual of Style, used by book publishers, does.

Aha. This explains a lot. I started my secondary education as a journalism major before morphing to English Literature. Go figure. I guess it’s easier to blame my OC lack of clarity on competing writing styles rather than a failure to pay attention during ancient history.

Oops, sorry. I mean seventh grade English.

Where do you land on the Oxford Comma issue? What other writing rules confound you?

A Real Download - IWSG August 2024

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh.  Thank you to August co-hosts Feather Stone, Kim Lajevardi, Diedre Knight, C. Lee  McKenzie, and Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen! To read posts from other contributors,  click here.

August optional question: Do you use AI in your writing and if so how? Do you use it for your posts? Incorporate it into your stories? Use it for research? Audio?

Typically when I write an IWSG post, I start it a week ahead, pretty much as soon as we get the email reminder with the month’s optional topic. But last week I received the email in the middle of my second week of a “staycation,” and could think of nothing relevant to the topic to write. In fact, I couldn't think of anything to write at all. So I tabled it. When Sunday arrived, my last day before going back to work, I spent it grocery shopping, reading at the beach, and then getting myself organized to get back into the work routine. I woke after midnight feeling normal work anxiety along with a sudden shock that I'd forgotten to get back to my IWSG post. Even then, I had no idea what I would write. I’m woefully undereducated as it pertains to AI and had no other topic. I tossed and turned, wondering if I could bail out with pictures of my hydrangeas, but oops, I did that last month.

As a result, here I sit, 6:37 am on Monday in front of the computer and this is what you get. A brain dump. Not an artificially crafted piece, but one generated as a result of my conviction that even when I have no idea for a post, if I sit down to write, something will come. So, back to the topic at hand. Writing using AI? Nope. While I suppose there are places where it can be utilized effectively (Legal briefs? Insurance documentation? Real estate closings?) my guess is, I won’t be using it for my creative writing anytime soon.

Like everyone else, of course I USE AI. How can we not? Search engines, navigation systems, online credit cards and banking, Venmo, the computer in my car, even my new oven is Wi-Fi enabled. It sends a message to my phone when it has preheated and another when the timer goes off. I could go on and on--to the point I worry about the world of hurt we’ll all be in when the internet crashes sometime. Hints of that are already happening (Hello, last week's airline outage). What's our back up plan? I know I’m an antique when I pull out my paper checks, and the yellowing Rand McNally road atlas in my car may be severely outdated, but in a pinch it could still get me from point A to point B (although the odds of getting stuck in traffic will be greater). I hang on to these vintage tools because I’m pretty sure we're so reliant on technology that we've lost ability to function without it. They're MY back up plan. And then there’s this. I picture the old Terminator movies and wonder if that’s our future? Will artificial intelligence turn on us?

And that sums up the difference between AI and me. I have the capacity for worry.

But—I also have the ability to think positively. So, as I “create” this post, I remind myself that artificial intelligence wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for human intelligence in the first place. This essay is my little demonstration of the real deal. Using my own brain, in less than twenty minutes, I created the barebones of this post that I’ll tweak to turn into my August IWSG obligation.

There you have it. It’s now 6:56 am.

Full disclosure: I’ll use the AI from Microsoft Word’s “Read Aloud” function as I revise this piece, before scheduling it to publish on Wednesday.  

6:58 am.

First draft done.

What's your writing world experience with AI?

"Groups" and Therapy? IWSG June 2024

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of our fearless ninja leader Alex Cavanaugh. Co-hosts for the June posting of the IWSG are  Shannon Lawrence, Melissa Maygrove, Olga Godim and ME! To read other contributors, click here.

This month’s optional question: In this constantly evolving industry, what kind of offering/service do you think the IWSG should consider offering to members?

I’m being a smart-aleck here, but personally, I’d go for a rejection therapy group! While I’m pretty good at taking no for an answer, it’s ugly when you finally talk yourself into querying again, send out four queries, get one immediate "no," wait for a while, and then receive two rejections on the same day. Yes, I can do the math. When I sent the fourth one, the instructions said there would be an automatic confirmation receipt, but one never appeared in my inbox (or my "trash," and yes I looked), so who knows if it ever made it? How about a power of positive thinking group, too, in which we repeat  mantra’s like, at least three out of four responded, and aren’t I glad those queries were for an older project (as I gear up to start querying my newest one)?

I know the drill. Two rejections means it’s time to send out two more. Ugh.

All kidding aside, I peruse the IWSG site to find information on agents, publishing, and querying. I’ve taken part in IWSG Twitter pitches, and weekly posts by various members often provide helpful tidbits.

I do wonder if IWSG might offer a means through which like-writers can identify each other in order to develop small, interactive groups for reading and critiquing ongoing work. Back in the dark ages, I became a member of an online writing group that I think was formed through IWSG, but it faded into oblivion. Of course, anyone seeking to create or join a group could always shout out in a monthly post “Hey, I’m looking for X number of writers for regular reading and critiquing of XYZ genre,” but perhaps there’s a way to come up with something more curated?

In a similar vein, writers are often looking for beta readers. I’ve found some of mine through IWSG in the past, but they've been people with whom I’ve already developed “blogging” relationships. Again, individual posts by IWSG members expressing the need for beta readers would probably work, but perhaps a list of members willing to read, their qualifications and genre would be helpful?

Regardless, I want to call out Alex and all the administrators to express my thanks for continuing to pursue ways through which IWSG may help writers grow.