by jphilo | Sep 12, 2016 | Daily Life
Today’s post comes from a fellow resident of our dusty gravel road. It’s a pleasure to turn the keyboard over to Anne Fleck who happens to be my daughter. Once you read what she has to say, you may see a family resemblance. And you’ll understand the significance of the yellow legal pad graphic, too.
Notebook Neurosis
I don’t usually think of myself as a neurotic writer. Disorganized, eccentric, prone to edit my work until the second coming of Christ, yes, but neurotic? Definitely not. I read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and it was like reading a field guide to a foreign country: informative, but hardly familiar. When I sit down to write, there are not voices to ignore, no thoughts about success or failure or other people’s opinions. Just me, my pen, the page and the call of adventure.
The page is the fly in the ointment. When it comes to the physical paper I write on I am cagier than a zoo. I’m not alone. I seem to remember there being something about it in Bird by Bird. I’m not really that sure, I read it a while ago. In my own life my mother also displays a paper-related psychosis. She will only write her books on a yellow legal pad.
Clearly she’s a sick, sick woman. The very thought of it makes me shudder. That terrible yellow burning its way into my eyeballs, the red line a knife in the consciousness. The subtle horror of the lines–are they grey or blue? Blue–printed on yellow–looking grey? Or green? Let’s not even start on flipping the page up instead of over.
If there were nothing but yellow legal pads in the world I would write my novels on napkins and bed sheets before succumbing to their canary-colored tyranny. The correct thing to write on is a spiral bound, five subject notebook with a blue cardboard cover.
To read the rest of this article visit Anne’s blog, Not-SoStarvingArtists.com.
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by jphilo | Aug 8, 2016 | Mystery Update
Poor Jane. Poor patient Jane. The protagonist of my South Dakota mystery novel has suffered a setback. She was turned down by editors in the nice, cozy publishing houses I had hoped would give her a good home.
Now, there’s no need to worry.
Jane is not dead or abandoned. She’s just waiting quietly for her creator to complete another edit of the book. Yes, you read that right. Another edit. This time to ratchet the suspense level up a notch. Something one of the publishers suggested that was confirmed when a writer friend read the book and offered similar feedback. When two writing experts give similar feedback independent from one another, an author is well-advised to sit up and pay attention.
So I did.
During the week at Idaho family camp, I spent several afternoons revising and was almost certain that at this rate, the rewrite would be done by the end of July. Then I arrived home to the aftermath of almost two months of travel.
Laundry.
Groceries to purchase.
Piles of mail.
Mom’s finances.
Our finances.
Emails to return.
Preparations for speaking engagements.
Flowerbeds to weed.
Yada, yada, yada.
By last weekend, I was finally caught up. Confidently, I wrote “work on mystery revision” in the afternoon slot in my planner for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I spent several hours revising on Monday. I was pumped and sashayed around the house that night, absolutely sure that by the end of the week, the revision would pass the halfway mark.
But then.
News came that the funeral of the mother of a dear friend would be Wednesday morning, 2 1/2 hours away. The Man of Steel had to work, but we both agreed that I should attend. Which meant in addition to visiting Mom on Tuesday and a speaking engagement on Thursday afternoon, two breaks already factored in, I would also be gone Wednesday.
But, I told myself, Friday was still intact.
Until something possessed me to pick up 10 dozen ears of sweet corn and spent Friday afternoon processing and freezing 30+ quarts of sweet, golden goodness. Poor, patient Jane uttered no objections. She may live in South Dakota, but she grew up in Iowa and understands the importance of having sweet corn stashed in the freezer to be eaten on dark, frigid January nights.
But I feel guilty. Oh, so guilty.
I’m not sure I can open the latest revision and look Jane in the eye. She’s been such a good friend. Never complaining. Never manipulating. Never snitching sweet corn. Even nodding approvingly when she heard about the plan to attend the funeral. Then she settled back to wait.
And wait. And wait.
This week, my planner has four afternoon appointments scheduled with Jane. I’ll be accepting no phone calls, gathering no vegetables, avoiding social media, and taking no prisoners. All for the love of Jane.
Poor, patient Jane.
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by jphilo | Jun 17, 2016 | Out and About
This Fantastic Friday, I’m at the Cedar Falls Christian Writing Conference once again. This time my fellow author and editor, who also happens to be my daughter, will be co-presenting a workshop about What a Manuscript Editor Can Do for You. With that in mind, what could be more fitting than this June 16, 2015 post for another Fantastic Friday?
Top Ten Things About Going to a Writers’ Conference
The bags are packed and I’m ready to head out for the Cedar Falls Christian Writers’ Conference tomorrow. Here are 10 top ten reasons to attend a writing conference, in Cedar Falls, Iowa or anywhere else one is held.
10. They’re a great opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of other writers and to see if your inner insecure writer’s envy-o-meter readings are going down or up.
9. Writers’ conferences are a wonderful place to make new friends.
8. And they’re a place to reconnect with old friends, too.
7. A good writers’ conference will provide information and concepts to challenge your comfort zone, stretch your thinking, and conceive new ideas.
6. Each conference should offer confirmation that God created you to be a writer…or not.
5. They offer time to reflect upon where you are now as a writer and where you want to be in the future.
4. They also offer time to step back and see God’s hand at work in and through your writing.
3. Somehow, unexpected doors for your writing will open in unexpected ways and under the most unexpected circumstances.
2. Someone else does all the cooking and cleans the bathrooms.
1. At a writers’ conference you are with like-minded people who think your obessions with reading, composition notebooks, ballpoint pens, and mechanical pencils are absolutely normal.
Have you ever been to a writers’ conference? What’s on your top ten list?
by jphilo | Nov 9, 2015 | Daily Life
This house almost always has 1 writer in the house. But for about 2 1/2 weeks, while our daughter and her family were here while the Man of Steel and Woman of Aluminum recovered, the writer population around here swelled to 3.
A Philo Phamily writers’ colony right here on the pharm.
As the days went by, the kitchen island sprouted notebooks and pens, the living room resounded with keyboard tapping, the voice of a young author reading her manuscript to the Man of Steel as he recuperated and the Man of Steel laughing at all the right places emanated from sick bay, the excited voices of mother and daughter discussing plot points for new novels tumbled over one another, and young parents sat together talking about how to better develop characters for an audio play.
Think of it as Little Women for the new millennium.
With fewer girls, more mature women, and a couple handsome men. Also a baby whose presence pulled the house’s inhabitants down from the rarefied air of art for art’s sake to fold diapers, change diapers, and play peek-a-boo. And the handsome man who’s a non-writer begging the authors to finish their next manuscripts because he can hardly wait to hear what happens next.
Heady stuff, as you can imagine.
Yesterday, the 2 young writers took their baby home to a neighboring state. Today, the Man of Steel is recovered and back to work. The 1 remaining writer was sad to see them go and good-bye. But as is the way of writers, she was not sad to say hello to an empty house. Because she knows the words inside her head require external silence and time to labor alone if they are ever to come alive on paper. If they are ever to be read by another author and revised. So their timing is perfect enough to make the Man of Steel’s laughter ring out–music to a writer’s ears–when he reads the next manuscript and begs for a new one.
Yes, there’s a writer in this lonely house. And she feels right at home.
by jphilo | Oct 8, 2015 | Three Thoughts for Thursday
- I’m taking the death of Yogi Berra pretty hard. Not because I’m a Yankee fan. But because the media tributes have revealed that at least half of my dad best one liners were plagiarized from the great ball player.
- After double-checking the math, I can confidently say that having 3 books published in 1 year + completing a mystery novel = almost 2 much.
- With a winter’s worth of jugs full of rain water for the house plants in the basement, as well as several apple pies and bags of basil pesto in the freezer, our home has that Little House in the Big Woods cozy feeling.
What makes your house feel Little House in the Big Woods cozy?
