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Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Keep on Keeping on, IWSG December 2019


It's 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 safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds.IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader. To find a list of contributors and to link to their posts, click here.

This month's optional question:   Let's play a game. Imagine. Role-play. How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream? Or if you are already there, what does it look and feel like? Tell the rest of us. What would you change or improve? The awesome co-hosts for the December posting of the IWSG are Tonja Drecker, Beverly Stowe McClure, Nicki Elson, Fundy Blue, and Tyrean Martinson.


My dreams are small. When I'm published, I’d like to talk to other writers about what it takes to be a traditionally published author. I’d tell my story, how I started writing to purge the shock of unexpected job loss, and how I challenged myself, first by publishing blog posts, then moving on to freelance articles and how finally, I dared myself to write a novel. I’d describe how the only draft of my first book attempt was such &#%* that I didn’t know how to fix it, but my second book demonstrated improvement. I'd talk about how I took writing classes, joined a writing group and how, when I queried my third book, I received requests for full reads which came to naught, but in spite of the soul-sucking disappointment of it, still,  I began querying my fourth book. 


I’d tell anyone who will listen that I made myself go back and look at that first awful book attempt, delighted to see after all the years of writing, I’d developed the skill to fix it. How now I spend my writing mornings working on a second draft, hooting at my first awful attempt, but tickled to see how much I’ve grown as a writer.


Living the dream for me means talking about never giving up, encouraging other writers to keep going, keep writing draft after draft, proof, edit, re-write, proof again, listen to critiques and edit again, then send out those darn queries until finally, finally, finally, you get where you want to be. I'd tell other writers, because that's what I tell myself now.


It’s simple, my dream. It doesn’t involve Hollywood, or fame or riches. Just a book (or four) on a shelf, with my name on the spine(s). A Google search that turns up my Amazon listing. A friend, telling me how much they love my stories. And the experience to tell other writers to just keep going. 

Then, I'd sit down again, and convince myself to do the same.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

IWSG November 2019 - Thin Places


It's 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 safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader.  Co-hosts for the November posting of the IWSG are Sadira Stone, Patricia Josephine, Lisa Buie-Collard, Erika Beebe, and C. Lee McKenzie.  To find a list of other contributors and to link to their posts, click here.

This month's optional question: What's the strangest thing you've ever googled in researching a story?


For my novel, This Side of Here, I researched “thin places” which according to Celtic folklore, are  locations in which the veil between our world and the ever after is well, thin. Pretty universally, thin places are considered to be mystical settings that touch the heart, where a communication, a depth of feeling, or connection between now and what has gone before is more easily attained. There’s an old Celtic proverb that says something like, heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. Some people consider thin places spiritual, closer to God. In my mind, a thin place can be where you are your truest self, a place in which you are more open, in tune with universal messages, accepting of energy vibrations or intuitions. 

My story contains ethereal elements and the idea of thin places plays a role, which may or may not have led to the following…

In 2015, after querying This Side of Here and receiving a fair bit of interest but no bites, I picked it up again after a two-year hold and began a full-on edit. Around the same time, my husband and I took a trip to Ireland with my sister and brother-in-law. One morning while at the beginning of a drive around the Ring of Kerry, we pulled over at a historic sight, this one an old stone famine hut. While visiting  an exact location where the wretched poverty, starvation and pain suffered by the Irish during the potato famine occurred, let’s just say my emotions were engaged. Perhaps, I had thin places on the brain, but when I wandered the land, high on a slope overlooking the vast grey ocean, I was consumed by a longing, a yearning if you will, a sense of closeness to my ancestors who took a fateful trip across the ocean in 1849. I stood for a long time, trying to absorb the aura around me until my companions called me. Even then, I was reluctant to return to the car. 

We saw so much more of Ireland on that trip, and yet when I return there in my mind, I always start with those few minutes I stood above the sea, feeling as if I was suddenly imbued with every thought and heartache that had ever been felt in that space. 

It wasn’t my plan that our visit would turn into a research trip. Google had provided more than enough reading on thin places. But until I stood on the edge of the world in another country I had no idea how powerfully gut-wrenching it could be to encounter one.  
 




Have you ever heard of thin places? Have you ever experienced one? What was  it like?