The rules are simple:

• List ten things you resolve not to do in the upcoming year.
• Be as creative as possible.

To get thing rolling, here are…

My 2010 New Year’s Anti-Resolutions

• I will not free up room to take in borders by convincing my kids to sleep in more “convenient” places—like the oven or bathtub.
• I will not try to spice up the Winter Olympics in my house, by convincing each family member that they were adopted from various cold-weather countries.
• I will not open job interviews by asking if I should have listed my RockBand Drum skills on my resume.
• I will not try to push day-glo sombreros as the next fashion trend.
• I will not hang around the seafood section of the grocery store trying to convince the patrons to throw their “catches” back.
• I will not attempt to create balance in the universe by making only left hand turns.
• I will not try to addict my kids to crystal-meth in order to take wagers on who can resist the longest.
• I will not try use my old boxer shorts as material for a “more interesting” type of quilt.
• I will not try to become famous by faking an Easter Bunny sighting by supplying a fake pelt as evidence.
• I will not use the ridiculous number of Slurpees I buy Jeni as justification to initiate a hostile takeover of the nearby convenience store.

Originally posted on where six writers talk about the trials and tribulations of their writing lives. And each Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

I know that I’m one of those individuals who is prone to depression. In part it runs in my family (on my father’s side I can trace back undiagnosed depression for several generations, including a great-grandmother who killed herself), and in part there has been a huge confluence of events in the last year that hes held me down in my funk.

1. For more than nine months now I have been unemployed. Ever since moving to North Carolina I’ve had trouble finding lasting employment, but until this year I’ve managed to keep myself working on a string of contracts that helped keep us afloat. But as the recession worsened earlier this year, the contract jobs dried up, and since then we’ve been keeping this family of six alive on unemployment and food stamps. There are quite a few politicians who would say that I’m coasting through life by sleeping and slyly collecting unemployment as a way to sponge off the hard-working people of this state. But I can tell you from first hand experience that there is nothing relaxing about living on less than one-fourth of what I was living on last year, and there is nothing vacation-like about wondering why no one seems to find your skills valuable any longer.
2. About ten months ago a good friend passed away. It wasn’t exactly suddenly, but neither was it expected. His son was 17, the same age I was when my own father died. His death affected my family in a host of ways. Not only did it bring back a lot of unresolved emotion regarding my own father’s death, but it was also the first death Jeni or the kids had to deal with up close and personal. And there is nothing easy about explaining to a six-year-old that his “Uncle” wouldn’t be around anymore.
3. Now a common response when someone has a bad string of luck is to offer, “At least you still have your health,” but even this advice is moot our household this year. When our friend got sick, and ultimately died, Jeni got sick as well. She got a nasty case of pneumonia that took over six months to completely go away, but not before it gave her a, thankfully temporary, heart condition. She had her gall bladder removed in an emergency surgery, and for the last four months has had a constant migraine headache that prevents her from eating more than a few bites at a time, and has interfered with her sleep almost every night. This is on top of her bad back, and doesn’t even touch the cancer scare—those pink ribbons are all over our house this year.
4. And not to be outdone, I’ve had my own battle with headaches this year. If you’ve never heard of cluster headaches, take a moment to pull it up on wiki. They are called suicide headaches because it’s not uncommon for those who get the worst of the headaches to kill themselves in a logic-clouded attempt to stop the pain. Last year I was diagnosed with cluster headaches by my GP, who proceeded to give me six injections into my skull to try to alleviate some of the pain (it didn’t help in the slightest). But this year the headaches worsened significantly. There are some treatments that work for some cluster headache sufferers, but with my health insurance lapsing along with my unemployment, I’m forced to treat the headaches with Coca-Cola and Advil. During one rather traumatic visit to the ER (for my youngest) I had a sudden attack that crippled me and scared the hell out of my kid and the hospital staff who said they’d never seen an attack like that.

You may read the list above and roll your eyes, thinking that I’m just complaining to get some sympathy. While many who have had the year I have would do that, I still (most days) have the perspective to understand that there are many people (and a few I know personally) who have had a worse year than I. The young man who lost his father also lost his grandfather and two of his teenage friends…that’s a pretty bad year. Another online acquaintance, who suffers from cluster headaches, took his own life after the hospital refused to treat his headaches, instead claiming that he was just looking for a fix.

Yes, we are still a family, and yes, for the time being we still have our home, but that doesn’t give me a whole lot to fall back on when I’m looking for a reason to be introspective or creative. And that is the crux of why I’ve been so quiet. When I’m depressed I always assume that one else will want to hear my problems. In my head I know this is ridiculous logic, but that’s the danger of depression…what we know is the truth often doesn’t feel like the truth, and we just pull even further into ourselves.

All this is not meant to say that 2009 was all bad—although in just under a week when the calendars change over, I will not, for a single second, mourn the passing of this year.

I started a new hobby—I’m learning to play the harmonica. Nothing formal yet. I’ve bought a few how-to books and a few entry-level harps, and I satisfy my musical inner child with painful honking and accidental chords. But it is fun, and it’s an instrument with a lot of online support, so it’s easy to take the first few steps at my own pace, and free of charge.

Also this year, a couple of my fellow columnists at Write Anything approached me about contributing a story to an anthology. I accepted with a great deal of reluctance, not because of the venture, but because of my depression I wasn’t sure I could get my creativity up and on a deadline to boot. But it turned out that the biggest hurdle to completing a new story was to overcome my cluster headaches, which peaked during the time I should have been revising my story. I still owe my editors a huge thank you for sticking with me even when I pushed my deadlines to the max. The Chinese Whisperings Red Book is due out January 1, 2010.

So that’s my 2009, and that’s why I’ve been so quiet.

Right now, I’m working on a short story that’s giving me some trouble—for those of you playing along at home, this story is part of a compilation/collaboration with a few other authors on this site. The dialogue is tricky because…well, without getting into too much detail, it involves some characters that aren’t all there. This is all particularly maddening for two reasons. First, I usually have little trouble with dialogue. Second, this story relies almost entirely on dialogue, so if I can’t get the dialogue to work, the story will fall flat.

Generally, I don’t have too much trouble with my characters and what they say. Oh, the overall story may be giving me trouble, but that’s more of a story-direction problem than it is a problem of speech not sounding authentic.

So what’s an author to do? Aside from the most obvious solution—keep tinkering with the dialogue—I’ve come up with a few techniques to help myself out. Unfortunately, they’ve all fallen just as flat as my character’s voices. But a couple of days ago I stumbled upon a technique that’s helping quite a bit. And even if it’s not solving the problem, it’s making the tinkering much easier.

Several years back, someone in an online writing group I was part of posted an exercise: Write a short story of indeterminate length, with two characters, and nothing but dialogue—not even dialogue tags. The only attribution we were allowed was to write the story in play format—minus any stage directions (the results of that exercise can be seen here). I had quite a bit of fun with that exercise, and over the years I have tackled several writing prompts with the same approach.

So, a couple of days ago, on a whim, I decided to try this approach with my current draft. I spent a couple of hours stripping away everything except the spoken word. And once that was done, it was obvious why the story wasn’t quite up to snuff—the dialogue was flat in several places. Where I thought there was cute banter, there was nothing more than dry Q&A. Where I thought I was being circumspect, I wasn’t.

So now the problem is clear. My dialogue seems not-quite-up-to-snuff because I’m relying on exposition and narration to get me through the rough spots.

But now, stripped of all it’s cruft (it’s a techie term, look it up if you need to—call it a word for the day) not only were the problem spots apparent, but fixing them became drastically easier. Now, if I need to change what Character-X says I don’t have to worry about what it does to my precious sentence that I’m so attached to—that decision will come later.

So far it hasn’t been a panacea, but it’s given me an avenue of attack.

If you have a talk-heavy story that’s got you banging your head against a wall, try it out. I’d be terribly interested to know how it works for you.

Aside from fighting with the dialogue in his current story, Dale is also fighting a nasty bout of cluster headaches. If anyone thinks they have a future as a superhero who fights uninspired prose AND crippling headaches, he’s happily accepting applications.

Originally posted on where six writers talk about the trials and tribulations of their writing lives. And each Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

Although she’s just accepted a promotion to Deputy Chief of Staff in the Army of the Army Surgeon General, she was already looking into what she would do with the next chapter of her life.

Wagner’s many Army postings included serving as adjutant for the 85th Medical Evacuation Hospital at Fort Lee, Va.; executive officer and company commander of D Company in the 187th Medical Battalion at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio; and chief of personnel for the 57th Evacuation Hospital in Wuerzburg, Germany. She also headed the personnel services branch at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

According to her sister, Kim she spoke often of teaching overseas. But quietly, the two of them used to dream about hosting a television cooking show together.

“Her shtick was baking; mine was cooking,” said Kim. “Our hope was that we could retire at the same time. If we decided to teach school, we were going to get our experience in Texas and try to go abroad.”
Athletics had long been part of her life. She liked to relieve stress by taking long run sand while at UNLV she played guard on the university’s women’s basketball team.

She made strong connections with people, especially children, her sister, Kim, recalled.

“She never met a stranger,” her sister said. “She was the kind of person who, when you met her, she would never forget you. She would talk to you like she’d known you forever.”

Karen J. Wagner High School in San Antonio Texas, was named in her honor…

Go Thunderbirds!!!

Information for this post pulled from:
The Washington Post
Wagner High School

At 7:27 AM on August 31, 1987 my life didn’t change. But I saw something that would, eventually, change everything about my life. It was the first day of my senior year, and like a good little A student I’d gotten there early so by 7:27 I’d already found my first class (Computer Programming II, Mr. Koski) and plopped down, exhausted—who makes teenagers start school at 7:30?

So I was watching the door to see who else was in the class with me, and who I might already know. At 7:27 in bounced a tangle of wild hair surrounding the most brilliant smile. Later that same class she said hi to me, and by Wednesday she’d actually forced me to talk—you think I’m shy now, you should have seen me in High School.

I was in love with her before 2 weeks were through, but I never had the courage to tell her until more than 16 years later.

Would my life have been different without her? Without question. She was the one who pushed me through my last half-year of High School. She was the one that held my hand after my dad died, and made me start living my life again. And when I was in Vegas, sometimes without any close friends, she was my friend whenever I needed one.

She reads this blog, and I’m sure she’s rolling her eyes by now, so I’ll sign off by saying that I’ve loved you for 22 years and I hope I get to do so for 88 more.

(click for a better view)

I’ve always been a big fan of the bargain bins of the bookstores I shopped. Some of my favorite authors, I’ve discovered for no better reason than I was able to snag a hardcover for $3.99 or a paperback even cheaper. I’ve stumbled upon John Varley, Christopher Moore, Jack Whyte, Joseph Heller and Michael Crichton this way. So I’m no stranger to good values at the bookstore. But today I lucked into a deal to beat all deals.

Jeni starts a new semester on Monday, and for her history class she needed The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan. So as I headed out for a quick trip for groceries, I thought I’d be nice and run by the nearby Borders and pick it up for her. The book was easy to find, even among the relative mess of the reorganizing that Borders is undertaking. Book in hand, I looked around for 20 minutes or so, and even though I found plenty of other books that would have been worth buying, taking into account my current lack of funds along with the absurd pile of books I still have to read, I decided to stick with just my single purchase.

But when the cashier rang up the book the computer alerted her that there was an identical copy of the book in one of the bargain bins. So off she went to locate it for me. She returned with the book to the right, marked down nicely from $14.95 to $3.99.

But when she rang up that book, there was a small problem. Oh well, I thought, it was too good to be true. So I waited as she called over the manager for an override. I guessed that there was some sort of error in the computer and that I would indeed be paying full price. The cashier and the manager discussed the intricacies of pricing books in the bargain section while looking the book over. Finally the manager said, “That price is probably right, all the stuff out front was marked down.”

I took this to mean that I’d get the book for $3.99 after all. I did what must have been a classic Looney Tunes double take when she gave me the grand total of 1¢.

Yes, that’s right: 1¢.

I kept the receipt because, well I’ve never actually had a receipt for anything that cost 1¢. Plus I secretly suspected that I’d get stopped and arrested on the way out.

I’ll let you know if it helps with the headaches.

When that thought first sprung to mind I nearly dismissed it. It’s patently ridiculous to think that a practice about writing wouldn’t develop it’s own insular tech-speak. But after thinking more about it, it makes perfect sense.

I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to say that over the years I’ve dabbled in some obscure hobbies—Archery, Fencing, Role-Playing, Printmaking, Paintball, Bagpipes, Heraldry and most recently, the Harmonica. And each of these has a long list of specialty vocabulary. Truth be told, it’s one of thing I like about some of these activities…

Archery — riser, cresting, draw, doinkers, fistmele, fletching, quiver, tiller, nock
Fencing — florentine, coup lance, epee, parry, florentine
Printmaking — intaglio, gravure, pochoir, restrike, vignette
Bagpipes — birl, cran, chanter, drone, grace notes, leumluath, piobaireachd, taorluath
Heraldry — abatement, cadency, clarion, escutcheon, jessant-de-lys, rampant, talbot (I could go on for close to a thousand words as classical heraldry uses Norman French)
Harmonica — ionian, myxolydian, dorian, aeolian, glissando, pentatonic, tremolo, riff, trill

The specialized language of is a function of both small societies, and society as a whole. Fencers aren’t overly concerned about being understood by hundreds of thousand of people, because there are only a few thousand people interested in it. So if someone comes up with a term that is less than obvious, it will only benefit those who take the time to learn it. As a side effect it also helps create a camaraderie among those in the group.

With writing however the reverse is in effect. Our sole purpose is to be read and to be understood. To create specialized language is self-defeating, for who will take the time to decipher a story in a language that makes them feel alienated. Also, writers have a natural aversion to creating new words for things when a word almost certainly already exists.

Certainly there are exceptions to this. Writing has a few words we use more often than others, or words that have meanings more specific to writers than to general readers. There are also a few authors who we revere for their ability to make up new words—Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss, come to mind immediately.

What hobbies do you have (or have had through the years)? Do they have their own lingo?

The image at the top of the post was created with a free service called Wordle. With it you can create a similar picture using your website (or any text you choose) to create an image in a variety of different colors and styles.

Originally posted on where six writers talk about the trials and tribulations of their writing lives. And each Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

I have two children in middle school, and in English they are focusing a good deal on improving the quality of their writing. And this year their teacher has chosen to include peer review as part of that process. So now my children are learning about critiquing, and it’s not the easiest lesson.

The teacher gave the students a handful of lessons on the different aspects of critiquing. Like Annie she focused on the technical aspects of critiquing—how to make sure your criticism is targeted and helpful. However, in helping my kids critique the work of other students I realized that the teacher’s instruction neglected the emotional side of critiquing—how to make sure your criticism is well received.

There is only one good reason for critiquing the work of another author—to help them improve their writing. In my experience, very few authors understand this.

In my writing career I’ve had many opportunities to have my work looked over by other. Writing classes, writing groups and online writing groups all use peer critiquing as a critical component of their format. But not all participants come to the desk with the proper mindset.

In writing classes, students often attempt to tear down others’ work to make their own look better by comparison. On the other hand, common in writing groups, are drive by authors who are only members long enough to get their own work critiqued. Some have developed rules or point systems to ensure that authors must critique a certain number of stories before submitting their own for discussion, which can, in turn, lead to authors who submit shallow, superficial critiques, just to inflate their numbers.

If you can’t pick up another author’s work with the intent—nee desire—to help them write better, to give them your honest, thoughtful view of their hard work, then don’t critique their work.

But even if you have the right purpose in your heart, it’s still easy to deliver a devastating critique, by giving your advice in a less than constructive manner.

Some guidelines I have found over the years (often through trial and error):

1. Don’t rush: The author didn’t rush in writing it, so you should give them the same courtesy. If a writer realizes that you spent 15 minutes critiquing a 15 page story, they’re likely to feel cheated.
2. Give positive reinforcement: In even the worst writing, there are good points. If you find yourself getting too negative, take some time and focus on something the author did well. We all have fragile egos (you, too).
3. Give criticism: And in even the best writing, there are things that need improvement. Don’t sugar-coat things. You can be honest without being harsh.
4. Don’t try to be funny: When we have some tough love to hand out we often think it tempers the pain if we tell a joke. But especially for critiques delivered in writing, they can’t see or hear your nuance, and if they take you good-natured jibe the wrong way, they may think that you’re making fun of them.
5. Don’t take yourself too seriously: You’re no Hemingway yourself. When your critiquing someone else, you’re not doing it for your own ego, so check it at the door.
6. When you give advice, give your reasons: Authors are often trying to elicit responses, hide clues, leave breadcrumbs. If you suggest they lose the extra character, tell them why. Your reasons may wind up being much more helpful than your actual advice.
7. Don’t get upset when they don’t take your advice: Whether they are too immature to accept your advice, or whether they merely disagree with you there will be times when they don’t like the changes you suggest. No big deal, you’re just offering your opinion, and you were glad to help.

Can you add to this list? What advice would you give to a critiquer who wants to make sure the author hears what they’re saying?

This post was originally posted on Write Anything—
where six writers talk about the trials and
tribulations of their writing lives. And each
Tuesday the soapbox belongs to me.

I don’t know much about my family history. I know a good bit about my maternal grandfather’s side—a few of the people in the Marous clan have tracked down a fair number of relatives, and I’ve even been to a family reunion about 25 years ago. About my maternal grandmother’s side I know very little—basically limited to her maiden name and a few relatives who have passed on. I know even less about my father’s side of the family. I met my grandfather once, but he left my father and grandmother early in my Dad’s life—evidently he was a club musician of some note. And while I’ve known my father’s mother all my life she knows little about her own family—her mother committed suicide when she was young and the children were scattered. And when you put all that together I’m left with a very fuzzy picture of my background.

In stark contrast I live with a group of people with a rich family history. Jeni is a direct descendant of Zachary Taylor—the 12th president of the United States. Which means that’s she’s indirectly related to two other presidents. One of her distant relatives signed the Declaration of Independence. She can trace her family back to people who dies in the American Revolution and the Civil War. And by completing a little bit of paperwork she could be a Daughter of the American Revolution. Her grandfather a nature preserve named after him in the Everglades—it just happens to be where the ValueJet plane crashed several years back. So much to talk about. So much to be proud of, especially on a 4th of July weekend.

When I was younger family heritage never meant that much to me—but as I get older I wonder if that’s simply because I never had much heritage of my own.