Happy Holidays

My holiday gift to you is a break from reading blog posts. It’s time to chill and focus your energies on celebrating Christmas or whatever you observe. If you have time and want to write, just do it. You’ll find plenty of inspiration in old posts if you dig through the archives.

My hope for the coming year is that we can collectively use our writing to resolve some inner demons of our own and provide inspiration for others to do the same. As I’ve said many times, along with countless others, I believe Story can change lives, one at a time, and eventually those changed lives will fill the bucket of Earth with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and all that goes with it.

Look for new posts in January with some fun announcements and new ideas.

Write now: capture your thoughts on what peace would look like. Start with the personal level. What does personal peace mean to you? Move out to your neighborhood, your community, the larger area, your state, your country, and finally the entire world. Polish the piece if you wish, or not. Keep it at hand and look back at it now and then and consider what may have changed for you and how your life in later years resembles your thoughts right now. Leave a comment with some of the key thoughts.

Mr. Muse Cranks Up Creative Juices

I met Herchel Newman, aka Herm, about a dozen years ago in the original Lifestory Group on Yahoo when we were both new to the genre. I’m always blown away by his richly authentic stories. Whatever the topic, gentle humor or compelling drama, I’m mesmerized from the first word. We’ve stayed in touch after that YahooGroup went poof, meeting in person one time, and we’ve both continued to write.

Not long ago he emailed me some thoughts about his muse, the source of inspiration for his writing, both memoir and make-believe. He  graciously agreed to share those thoughts here on this blog. Hopefully Mr. Muse will guide you to tap more deeply into your creative forces.

There’s a guy who lives inside my head. I call him Mr. Muse. Besides God and myself, I’m pretty sure he knows me better than anyone else. He is the contemplative as well as the whimsical part of me. He comes and goes as he pleases. It doesn’t matter if I’m asleep or awake. Sometimes he gives me rhyme and reason for things I’m having a hard time understanding. Other times he’ll show me something that makes me laugh out loud. That causes my wife to wonder about me sometimes. I admit to being quite fond of him even though at times he’ll begin a story or piece of poetry and decide to take a nap before he gets to the end. And sometimes–like now–I call for him and he’s no where to be found.

Mr. Muse, for the most part, is a class act. For instance, recently he showed up while I was doing some free writing–you know, just to see some words going on my computer screen. He started telling a story, I would say from the inside out. Kind of like starting a novel in Chapter 4. Here’s the kicker. He was talking–get this–in character just as if he was Bogart.

Listen to Humphrey Bogart’s voice: “She took a table caddy-corner to the left and front of mine. Her red dress fit as well as the name Coke-A-Cola on a tall bottle. I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just there wasn’t anything else that could compete for my attention. She crossed her legs at the ankles like it was a romantic dance move. I never understood how shoes could be considered sexy until I noticed hers at the end of those cinnamon brown legs. Her brown hair cascaded just past her shoulders with silken waves the Mississip would envy. Her perfume invaded my space and deliberately sat like an invited guest. My wedding band began to vibrate like it was my cell phone. (Of course Bogart never had one) I joked to myself, ‘She needs to be ugly or I need another table.’

“She turned her head to the side, granting me a profile view. No, she wasn’t ugly. A diamond held a ruby dangling from the lobe of her ear. The corner of her mouth and that of her eye were gracefully lined to perfection. I’d no sooner formulated the questions in my mind: Who is this lovely lady and why is she dining alone on a Friday in a place like this? when I noticed a tear forming at the corner of her eye. Perhaps my answers were in that salty drop. She moved as if she might look my way. I turned my attention to the window view.”

I don’t know who or what Muse is to you, but here’s one other thing I’ll share with you about my Mr. Muse. He is a companion of my conscience. If I attempt to turn away from my conscience, he’s resourceful enough to get my attention.

Excuse me. Here he comes now.

Notice how Herm’s muse is fickle. What he didn’t mention here, but I know he knows, just as I know it with my muse Sarabelle, is that when a muse speaks, you’d better not only listen but write down what you hear! You probably won’t get a second chance. Notice also how Mr. Muse guided him to magnificent description details and the “voice” of Bogart. That’s hard to do when writing “cold.”  Mr. Muse puts Herm in a state of flow.

Write now: Try some free writing, as Herm did. That’s the best way to get in touch with your muse, however you may define this source of inspiration. See where s/he leads you. And don’t forget to write down any ideas your muse whispers in your ear at odd times and places.

Herchel Newman A.K.A. Herm, has been a seasoned storyteller all his adult life. He added photography to his skill and operated a successful wedding photography business for many years. He has stories published in three titles of Chicken Soup for the Soul – one a cover highlight. He loves family and romancing Sweet Lonnie, his wife of forty-four years. Also a motorcycle enthusiast, he says every day has an adventure to write about. Click here to read his spellbinding story, Escape from Hell, excerpted from Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Miracles. He is a valued member of the Life Writers Forum.

Lessons Learned on the Amazon Path

No, I have not been on vacation to the Amazon recently, though I wish I had – except not right now during its rainy season. I’m referring here to the unexpected twists and turns on the path to the CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) arms of Amazon.com  as I completed my journey toward publication of Adventures of a Chilehead.

I wrote about early details of this project in three posts in June: “Chile or Chile? Check it Out,” “Lessons Learned”, and “Story Album to Memoir.” In July that early manuscript flowed through email to a team of beta readers. After incorporating their sage advice about need for further detail, spots that needed an edit and more, I thought final layout as all I needed to do before the book was ready for publication.

That predictably became complicated, and pressures of preparing for classes I was teaching in September resulted in setting the project aside for more than two months. When I reopened the project in late October, I was stunned. I read a paper copy of the manuscript and realized it still needed a lot of work. Here are a few of the lessons I learned (or relearned) in the process:

Wine, cheese and stories improve with proper aging. This is not news to me. I often open story files I haven’t looked at for months and years and see dramatic improvements I could make. We get too close to our work to be objective. Setting it aside and immersing our thoughts in something else for a time allows us to return with fresh vision and perspective.

In the future, I’ll schedule in these breaks before final publication. I always underestimate the time required anyway.

Expect unexpected glitches. This time the unexpected glitch was a section break meltdown in my print version of the manuscript.  Since this was a print document, having the precise type of section break (odd page, next page) was not as important as having some section break to control page header changes. I did an end run and arm-wrestled that gator to the ground. Then, after all was said and done, I checked online and found the solution.

In the future, I’ll turn to Google right away. 

Proof-read in many modes. Again, this was not news. But sure enough, a paper printout looked different from anything digital. When I read the.mobi file proof from the KDP site, I found several more rough spots that needed further sanding. When I ordered my print proof copy, I filled it with flags. Not until I saw that final print version did I realize I’d failed to check for stragglers (those stray single words at the ends of paragraphs) after reducing the margins by .2”. As long as I was making those changes, I found even more opportunities for improvement.

In the future I’ll print a paper copy of the final pdf version before uploading.

Remember that stories of any size are always a work in progress – like life itself. At some point it’s time to realize it’s as good as it’s going to get. Click the Publish button and get on with it. You can go back and make changes later if you want, but at some point it’s time to turn loose and move on.

So, it’s done. My path finally led to the river. You can purchase your copy of the Kindle version of Adventures of a Chilehead: A Mini-Memoir with Recipes on Amazon right now. The print version should be ready for orders by December 6. I had so much fun writing this book, I hate to see it finished, but it is time to set it free and hopefully watch it soar. I’ll tell you more about some of the elements that made it such fun very soon.

Write Now: If you are working on a story that’s driving you nuts, set it aside. Let it age for two or three months. Pull out an unfinished story or project that’s been sitting around for a few weeks or longer and work on that.  Your old story will sound fresh to you and you’ll quickly find ways to improve it. Meanwhile, your problem story will stir around under the radar and reemerge with fresh energy.