My Writerly Achilles Heel

My Facebook friend, Al Boudreau, posts daily questions to writers on Facebook. His question this morning was:






Writers/Authors: We all have strengths and weaknesses in our writing. What are you most deft at, in terms of winning readers over to make them fans? What are you striving to improve about your mad skills? 


Several authors have given their interesting, often self-deprecating answers. Reading them, it's good to know I'm not the only one out there. Here was my answer:


I think "voice" is my writing strength. My weakness is getting that shitty first draft on paper without being compulsive about getting every blasted sentence perfect. Most writers talk about over-editing their manuscripts. I over-edit my sentences.

I thought it was interesting that I had to think A LOT longer about my strengths than I did my weaknesses. Maybe that's because I'm experiencing one particular weakness full-on in the last few days. For over a week now, I have been stuck in the thick sludge of re-writing sentences over and over as I try to move forward with a story. I don't know if I should blame it on my obsessiveness with trying to get each sentence just right, or if I should blame it on my character's stubborn refusal to tell me her story.

In my Monday Mashup, I posted a link to an article by Jhumpa Lahiri called "My Life's Sentences." In the article, she states, "Constructing a sentence is the equivalent of taking a Polaroid snapshot: pressing the button, and watching something emerge." It is the same for me. I see mini stories within each sentence. Perhaps that's why I like to write haiku. (Click here to go to my haiku blog.)


I felt a little better after reading Ms. Lahiri's essay on her own struggle with sentences. She says:

My work accrues sentence by sentence. After an initial phase of sitting patiently, not so patiently, struggling to locate them, to pin them down, they begin arriving, fully formed in my brain. 

Still, it hasn't helped me to get more sentences down on paper. I suppose it's just one more aspect of waiting that tries the patience of a writer. Waiting for replies on queries. Waiting for a publisher or agent to call. Waiting for a character to tell her story. Waiting for a sentence to come.


So . . . back to Mr. Boudreau's question: What are your writerly strengths and weaknesses?

Bring It On, 2012!

I've enjoyed reading end-of-the-year blogs that summarize 2011 and talk about hopes, resolutions and goals for 2012. In fact, I've been inspired to keep a resolution/goal journal to track (and focus on) my progress--or lack thereof.

I know that in all my successes and failures in 2012, I will be inspired by others. So, to kick off 2012, I thought I'd list some of my favorite quotes I've been reading in the last few days on Facebook, in books, even iPhone apps. Thanks to my friends who have shared this inspiration. I know I'll refer back to this list many times throughout 2012.

May you be defined by your passions
and not your fears.

Facebook, via Kim Corneau Dombrowsky

Never compromise your true, authentic self
to please someone else.

Facebook, via Debbie Fox.

I prefer to describe myself as “delightfully difficult.”

Facebook, via Necia Parker-Gibson

You've got to get up every morning with a smile in your face, and show the world all the love in your heart.

Facebook, via Sharon Guthrie

Do not wait until all the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.
Zen Wisdom iPhone app

No mud, no lotus.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Fall down seven times, get up eight.
Japanese Proverb


A frog leaps forward

His mind focused only on

Landing where he's aimed

My New Year haiku from my haiku blog

Here are some links to end-of-year blogs that I enjoyed reading:

Madison Woods - 2011 The Year in Writerly Review
Linda C. Apple - Get a Goal
Beth Carter - Making New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year, everyone. If you have pieces of inspiration to carry us into 2012, please share in a comment. I look forward to spending 2012 with you!

Swallowed by Ugly

Sometimes I think the world is being swallowed by ugliness. Bickering in Congress, so vitriolic they can't seem to get anything done. Bullying so despicable it drives a person to take his life. Nasty comments on the internet. Constant griping about whatever is wrong in our daily lives.

You know it's gotten pretty bad when pictures like this appear on Facebook.

Usually, I tune most of it out. But lately, I feel like I'm being swallowed by it, too. The constant griping, complaining and arguing. A lack of respect for others.

It happens all around us, so much so that it's begun to feel almost normal to me. Then, last week, I saw a story about a 14-year old boy named Jamey Rodemeyer. It was another incident of a teen who had been bullied so relentlessly, he committed suicide. Sadly, these kinds of stories have been in the news so much, even they have become almost "normal." What??

But Jamey's story especially, struck a nerve. This young man struggled to help others who might be going through the same thing. Even through his own pain, he tried to get the message out that "it gets better," until it became too much for him, and he took his own life.

Jamey's story broke my heart. It made me think that we have not progressed beyond a pack mentality.  We sense weakness, whatever makes a person different--whether it's race, religion, sexual orientation, political philosophy--and we attack like wolves, hungry to destroy whatever "stands out" and makes us uncomfortable. Whether we know it's wrong or not, sometimes it feels more comfortable to "run with the pack," rather than to stand up against it or fight it.

I didn't intend this post to be only about bullying, though that is serious enough. But bullying is just a byproduct of the pervasive ugliness.

Is it worse than it used to be, or in our world of the internet and 24-hour media, do we just hear about it more? Perhaps our high-tech world enables it to spread more quickly, a contagion of ugliness. Are we all so miserable that we need to draw others into our pack?

Whether it's worse or not, how do we stop it?

Accentuate the positive.

I still remember waking one morning as a teenager, with this strange concept flashing in my brain like a neon sign. I thought I'd made it up and was pretty darn proud of thinking of such a profound and simple statement. Of course, later I learned it wasn't my creation, but the title of a song written by Johnny Mercer in 1944. I must have heard it somewhere, sometime, and placed it in a jam-packed, disorganized drawer in my mind, labeled, "Neat Things to Remember When Needed."

For some reason--maybe it was my parents' divorce, or the loss of my first love--I pulled the phrase out of storage that morning long ago, and it has been with me ever since.

Still, even as I recite the quote, I hear a collective, "Ick," or "Oh, brother." But I don't care. It's what is needed today. Rather than focusing on all that we DISAGREE on, why not focus on what we AGREE on?

When we are uncomfortable with someone we perceive to be DIFFERENT, why not focus on what is the SAME?

When we are having such a BAD day that we have to make others' days miserable too, why not focus on what's GOOD about the day? And if you can't find something good, take a deep breath and be grateful for that breath.

There's something good--positive--in everything and everyone. Find it. Maybe then, instead of ugliness eating away at each of us, we can eat away at ugliness instead.

Joy Beyond Technology

On Sunday, President Obama spoke at the commencement of Hampton University in Virginia, saying technology "puts new pressures on our country and on our democracy." In his speech, he told the graduating students, "With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment."

"Information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment."

I agree with what President Obama said, though I believe that as long as we are aware of the potential to be a distraction, technology can also be an enhancement to our lives.

I had an interesting discussion with my dad's wife the other evening. We come from very different backgrounds. She was raised without television and computers, and I was raised in a family that kept the television on most of the day, if nothing else, as background noise to drowned out the chatter of my four siblings and me.

In our discussion, she expressed her frustration at technology today, and how it takes us away from being "real human beings," about how we've forgotten how to write letters, sit and talk, ponder another human being's feeling, rather than rushing a conversation between texts, phone calls, etc.

I'll admit, at first I felt defensive, knowing I struggle and sometimes fail to completely set aside my technology to have a focused one-on-one conversation with a real human being, as opposed to a virtual one. But, I let my defensiveness go. After all, I've thought those same thoughts as I've watched people walk down the street, focused only on their cell phones while talking, texting, or listening to music. Whatever the techno-buddy cell phone provides, it permits them to shut out the real world. It's the same in coffee shops or restaurants. We sit at tables with REAL people, but can't seem to completely let go of our virtual world.

Is the once-removed communication cell phones and computers provide a wall of protection? And if so, what are we afraid of?

I will be the first to admit. I love email, enjoy the occasional text, participate fully in the Facebook world. All of that has made communicating with a wide variety of friends so much easier, and I'm back in touch with people I knew decades ago. Without technology, that never would have happened.

But, it has been unsettling a few times, when on Facebook, I discovered that a friend was ill, had surgery, or lost a loved one. So strange to learn of a major life event on a computer screen. But then, if it hadn't been for Facebook, texting, whatever virtual source, I might not have known at all. Is this good or bad?

I'm thankful for the expanded ability to communicate through technology. But more and more, I also believe it's important for us to remember to write a snail mail letter every once in awhile -- they're so much more meaningful, and now, even nostalgic. Send a real card by snail mail, rather than an e-card. I know I miss those days of watching the mail box for a letter or card. Go have coffee or lunch with a REAL friend. Watch his or her expressions or body language as you speak.

Technology has saved us valuable time by making communicating faster and easier. So, rather than filling up our extra time with even more technology, I believe we need to remember to use that time to exercise the things that make us human -- those things that were so much a part of us before technology: tingling at the smile of a friend or loved one, feeling the warmth of human touch, or your heart flutter at the sound of joy or sorrow in a voice.