THE KEY TO WRITING SUCCESS

Ghost of Samuel Clemens here.

No, not Mark Twain.

Only heathen call me by that name.

It's my confounded pen name after all. And a pen name is a sort of ghost, ain't it?

Well, it would give me incorporeal indigestion to call myself a ghost of a ghost, don't you know?

I strolled over here to swap a lie or two with Roland, only to find him dozing in his chair.

On his electronic gizmo, the boy had written : the key to success in writing.

And then, promptly fell asleep.

He must have had one of those 300 miles day ferrying rare blood all over God's creation.

I took pity on the boy, pulled up my ghost chair and commenced to writing.

I purely have no idea what he was going to say, but ...

There are keys to success in writing.

I did not learn them early.

I did not learn them all at once.

They came to me like the passing of a kidney stone --

with time and with pain.


For Roland's sake, I am going to pass on a few of those keys. Not in any particular order -- just as they occur to me, much like I wrote my autobiography.


THE KEYS :

#1) Write without pay until someone pays you.

In other words, write because you love it, not for thoughts of wealth. Only a very few authors ever are able to leave their day job.

Do this and you will relax and write with confidence. The reader will sense this, and your novel will be more interesting to your reader.

Write only about what interests you. The reader will be infected with your enthusiasm and keep turning the pages.

#2) Don't say the old lady screamed.

Drag her out into the scene and have her caterwaul herself. Telling the reader that a grandmother was stabbed does not near involve him as showing her stabbed.

#3) Never say in writing what you couldn't comfortably say in conversation.

Be natural in your writing. It will add the feel of reality to your novel. Put an acorn of truth in each of your characters.

The lonely weariness of a single father will grab the heart of the reader. In the next chapter when he robs the bank, the reader will be on his side.

#4) Periods are not ugly --

so do not put them so far away from the start of your sentence. Make your sentences and paragraphs short. Do not make your writing blunt instruments of prose.

Rather, write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

And for that you need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm. Train your ear by reading your pages aloud as you finish them.

#5) The more you explain it, the more I do not understand it.

Be clear. Clear writing comes from clear thinking. Know logic. Know the subjects your characters do. Know the law if your hero is a lawyer.

Make sure each sentence could only mean what you wished to express.

And Lord Almighty, use short, direct words. Do not IMPLEMENT promises. KEEP them.

Remember that readers cannot know your mind. Do not forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you. Speaking English to a Frenchman will not get you very far. I know. I tried.

#6) Write as if you were dying --

Indeed, write as if your readers were dying.

And in a way, both you and they are. You just do not know your exact shelf life.

They don't have time for all those long, dreary paragraphs about Aunt Edna's digestion. What tale could you spin to a dying person that would not enrage by its shallow triviality?

That thought will prune many needless ramblings on your part.

And please no adjectives to tell the reader how to feel. Instead of telling us the thing is "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified.

You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please, will you do my job for me."

#7) Do not hoard.

Give each paragraph all the dynamite you possess. Do not save a "good bit" for later. If you do, the reader may become bored and wander off before your novel explodes.

Do not worry. More dynamite will occur to you -- if you give each scene all the wit and heart you have.

Those are seven keys to success in writing. There are more, of course.

But too many keys jangling inside your heads will make such a commotion that you won't be able to think straight, much less see where they apply to you and your novel.
****

ONCE AGAIN THE WORLD IS ENDING

Once again the world is ending.

No, I'm not talking about 2012,

or about that radio evangelist who states Judgement Day is coming May 21st of 2011.

{Last time I checked, the Bible still states no man knows the day or the hour ...

merely the season.}

Assuredly, the season of change is upon us.

Technology is evolving once more.

The Industrial Revolution created chaos and havoc, along with its eventual progress.

All the children maimed and whose lives were cut short by hellish child labor at that time

are sad testimonies that what lies ahead may not be pleasant for many.

Publishers are downsizing. Ebooks are stirring in the gene pool.

Job-protecting purchasing agents for said publishers are only buying what they perceive as the "Big Books,"

ones that can generate high sales from their first day of publication.

Agents are getting editors to listen to their pitch, only to have those purchasing agents refuse to authorize the sale.

What are we as struggling novice writers to do?

The best we can.

Use our skills to present ourselves in the best possible light.

The query is the flare that gets the agent's attention. Sadly, they are viewing a sky filled with them. Our flare must stand out.

How?

1.) In a sky filled with long-tailed flares, the short one stands out :

Brevity. Be one page.

Like having only one suitcase for a trip, wisely pack your one page where a little says a lot.

2.) Hook. {If the world were all vampires, what would they drink?}

{Research what high-sale book this agent has handled that is like yours (don't cheat -- it has to be like yours -- or the agent will feel cheated)}

Mention how your book is cut from the same cloth as that book -- that will slow the reject mantra down. She made money from that particular book. She could possibly make money from yours.

3) stirring sentences boiling down your plot to the basics. At this point, the agent is only considering your query in the broadest sort of way. She is asking herself, "Do I want to see more?" Intrigue her enough to nod yes.

{Ever ask, "How are you?" to an acquaintence and get a three hour, detailed painful answer?} Don't be that in your query. The most effective monster in the movies is the one of whom you only see broad flashes.

4.) Be a bad reporter : don't name names. It jars the agent to have to stop and mentally go,

"How the h___ do you pronounce Sidhe de la Muerte?" The agent is thinking speed and ease of digesting your query.

Give the agent verbal indigestion at your peril. No names. Usually it is unnecessary. Hero. Love interest. Enemy. Arena of conflict.

Fit the above in a three act format, showing the agent you actually have a coherent storyline.

A.) Never trip your agent's attention. Highlight in broad strokes. Don't spotlight in numerous details.


"The man with death in his veins is the reluctant champion of life in post-Katrina New Orleans."

No sub-plots. Your agent will probably make her initial reject at the genre alone. "I don't do military history."


B.) I do the housekeeping as it is called : title, length, and genre in the subject header of my email. Fast and upfront. And this way it doesn't interfere with the flow of the query.


C.) Next will be your basic plot. If your base plot seems weak without your sub-plot. That's because you plot is weak. Time to tweak not query.

The above logline is too general. For once I did that on purpose. How about :


"In post-Katrina New Orleans, there is one dark French Quarter street where the dead are rising. And to stop them? One undead Texas Ranger. The Night of the Hungry Shadows has begun."

D.) Think brief but specific. Also think : "What time is it anyway?" The agent is. Tell her.


As in the logline above. Hurricane Katrina. Two short words but they paint a whole picture of human struggle. I mention the time frame. The Night of the hungry shadows.

It gives an immediate structure to my work for the agent. She knows my book has a structure. She knows a lot from a little.


A novel set in post-Katrina New Orleans will have an entirely different flavor than one set during the six days of the missile crisis in the Kennedy White House.

Location gives a sense of atmosphere, of the culture, and of the people involved. Post-Katrina New Orleans. Three words that tell the agent a great deal.

In one sentence without one word of plot, the agent can see the broad scope of my novel.

Can you see your query a little more clearly now? Hope so.
***

IS YOUR NOVEL REAL?

Odd question, isn't it?

Of course your novel's not real.

But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent,

bought by a money-tight publisher,

and loved by readers.

You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :

Clothes :

Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.

He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.

{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}

Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.

She, like Twain, is rebellious.

But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.

SPEECH :

Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.

Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.

Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.

Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.

Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.

The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.

MINDSET :

Take physicians.

One of my favorite novels is CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Rosten
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Newman-leo-rosten/dp/2221036816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278471759&sr=1-1

It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.

But there are other mindsets among physicians. And it is understandable why they develop that perspective.

They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.

In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.

On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.

A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.

To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.

CULTURE/CUSTOMS :

Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.

I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.

Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.

Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.

Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.

The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.

Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.

For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.

I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with the 19th century world.

Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities.
***
There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :

THE MUD OR THE STARS?

“Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.”
- Frederick Langbridge

There are epic events in each person's life. What we make of them determines what we make of our lives.

Jodi Henry

http://jodilhenry.blogspot.com/2010/12/award-and-great-list.html

has awarded me the "Versatile Blogger" where I have to reveal 7 things about myself.

Amanda Sablan and VR Barkowski awarded me and tagged me with similar awards. Ouch.

For one, I had to tell 10 things you don't know about me, and for the other, I had to answer 5 questions with 5 answers about myself.

I thought I would combine the three. Probably won't work. But hey, it could be fun. I think Custer said that same thing about that infamous stroll through some valley.

Question One : WHERE WAS I FIVE YEARS AGO?

Five years ago, Hurricane Rita was a category 5 hurricane. I spent the morning running rare blood to scrambling hospitals.

I drove back home to wolf down a hurried lunch. A mandatory evacuation was issued. I went downstairs.

Someone had siphoned the gas from my car. All the gas stations were shut down. I was stranded in the path of a killer hurricane. Alone.

Or not so alone.

Freddie, my supervisor, called checking in on me. He offered me a ride in his car as he drove beside his wife's car containing his two children.

So with the clothes on my back, my laptop on my lap, and Gypsy in a carrier, I rode with my friend into the darkness.

The highways were shut down. We drove the back roads, the cypress trees bending down over us in the blackness as if listening to our whispered voices. Freddie's eyes were hollow.

As we passed his wife's car, I saw she was frantic, on the verge of panic.

I winked at the pale faces of Freddie's two children, Allison and Abigail, pulled Gypsy out of the carrier, and picked up her front paw as if she were waving at the two girls. They giggled. And the grip of panic on their mother seemed to break.

She waved back and gave a valiant smile with a thumb's up salute.

Freddie studied me for a moment and said, "Dude, you're like Job."

"How so?"

"I mean you got your gas siphoned out of your car just when you needed it most."

"I bet a lot of people did."

"Yeah, but if Rita hits Lake Charles, this will be the second time you'll have lost everything.

You lost it all when your home burned. And before that you closed your business. Your mother died before that. And before that your fiancee died. And your childhood best friend died before Kathy. Damn, it's like you're Job."

I nodded, smiling sadly, "As I recall Job ended up pretty well."

"You've got a strange way at looking at life, dude."

"You're not the first to say that."

We made it to Baton Rouge where I worked delivering rare blood to all the hospitals reeling under the impact of Katrina. I drove to the hospital of Metairie, the first suburb of New Orleans. (It is a French term for a tenant farm.)

I saw people who had only thought they knew what having nothing meant. I smelled the stench of decaying human flesh on the breath of a too silent city. I saw young boys in uniform trying to be men under impossible conditions.

Late at night I typed the first draft of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, alone in the spacious suite afforded me by the blood center for which I worked. It had been leased for the board of directors to oversee the new center in Baton Rouge.

So for two months I slept in a prince's suite. Gypsy was, for once, satisfied with her accommodations, she being a princess and all.

I barely saw the suite. I was always driving it seemed -- down long, unfamiliar roads to strange hospitals protected by hollow-eyed young boys with automatic weapons and dry mouths.

Finally, the blood couriers were allowed back to our devastated city. It was like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. But these ruined streets and gutted homes I knew. Our city has never truly recovered. But my friends are a hardy bunch.

Me? I just fake it.

And there you have at least 7 things you didn't know about me. And I've answered only one of the five questions. Like Freddie says, I tend to talk a lot.

But he smiles good-naturedly when he says it.


Oh, and that time in Baton Rouge was the first time I saw my soon-to-be Viking friend, Eric.

And another thing about me : Each time I enter my apartment, Gypsy pads to me in greeting, and I say, "The Force is with you, young Gypsy, but you are not a jedi yet."

She seems unperturbed. And here are some scenes you will not believe from George Lucas' new creation, THE OLD REPUBLIC :

THIS IS NOT AT ALL BAD -- EXCEPT AS PROSE

Gore Vidal said that of a book written by Harold Robbins.

He also added : "To call Harold Robbins an author is like calling a woodpecker a carpenter."

Those words were brought to mind by a milestone of history trivia.

On this day in 1184 BC, according to calculations made some 900 years later by the North African Greek, Eratosthenes, Troy was sacked and burned.

And we've been sacking and burning it, and other icons, ever since.

I thought to myself :

when did archetype devolve into cliche? And can we revive archetype back to life in our writing?

I asked that after thinking of the movie, TROY,

and reading the reviews for KNIGHT AND DAY, VAMPIRES SUCK, and THE LAST AIRBENDER.

Two losers. One so bad it was painful to watch. You guess which that one was.

An acre of craft goes into a bad novel. How much more must go into a great one.

You must fertilize it by going beneath the surface with wit and intelligence ... and love.

Yes, you must love your idea.

How else do you expect an editor to even like it if you don't love it?

And the protagonist ...

do you know him/her down to the depths of his yearnings, her doubts, his sense of humor? Do you like him?

Would you like to spend time with him on a roadtrip? If not, why would expect a reader to want to spend days reading about him/her?

Whether he is Sherlock Holmes or Hannibal Lector, he thinks along lines that are beyond your abilities --

but not your dreams.

He says and does the things you wish you could, whether in your dreams or your fantasies of revenge.

And you must know where he's going. Listen to Mickey Spillaine's wisdom :

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end.

If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book.

The last page sells your next book.

And know what the readers want of your hero. Mickey has advise on this as well :

Imagine a guy hits Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger and knocks him out.

No reader wants that.

You hit Mike Hammer over the head with a wooden coathanger, he'll beat the crap out of you. That's what the reader wants.


And how do you discover what the reader wants? Read the kind of books you are writing. Time's a problem with that? Stephen King has a word for you :

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."

And try to keep a sense of humor about it. Stephen King has a word about that as well :

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?"

And the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off."
— Stephen King (Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay )

King winks at us and says, "Fiction is the truth inside the lie. Good books don't give up all their secrets at once. If yours does, guess what kind of book yours is?"

But I began this post by talking about how to breathe life into cliche, making it vibrant archetype. How do you do that?

BRING IT HOME :

I thought about this method while walking some days ago across a hospital lobby as I delivered rare blood to an ailing patient.

On the wall TV was the tail end of an interview with a poor woman, sobbing in despair and loss over the death of a loved one in a mine-collapse in New Zealand.

The CNN camera switched to the newscaster in the studio. Her face was glowing. Literally glowing. Not somber with empathy. No, her plastic Barbie face was bright, cheerful even.

"That video certainly brings it home to our viewers, doesn't it, Bob?"

And I suddenly realized why her face was so radiant.

The cameras had caught a scene certain to grab the audience and boost the ratings. She was oblivious to the trauma of the woman, fixated only on her own needs as a reporter, eager to be promoted to a better time slot.

Some writers are like that reporter. They want a bestseller. They want to snare millions of readers.

They need a tragic trauma to happen in the lives of their characters. In the compulsion to write of an epic crisis,

they see only the details of the situation -- not the soul of it.

To touch our audience, to make our novel throb with life, we must bring it home to the readers.

We must touch the heart.

Do more than describe what happens. We must merge the terror, the heartbreak of the characters with the mind of the reader.

Speak to the universal fears of people everywhere :

abandonment, loneliness, yearning for love, caught up in a desperate need to belong, yet feeling always on the outside.

I believe most of us who write are more aware, more sensitive than that CNN reporter. I think we believe what William Faulkner once wrote :

"A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream."

I believe we as writers must bear that curse proudly and follow the path William Faulkner urged the writers who followed him to take :

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.

Try to be better than yourself. If you do that, you're a writer.

And a writer is a creature driven by demons.

You won't know why they chose you. Luckily, you'll usually be too busy to even wonder why."

To me, TROY told the surface story.

GLADIATOR, on the other hand, touched the heart, the soul of its viewers.

Here's the trailer for that movie, followed by the song by Loreena McKennitt that I played on a constant loop while healing from my burns.

**

HOW TO WRITE THEIR BEST READ OF THE YEAR

"At the age of fourteen

I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable."

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, Forward to Sweet Bird of Youth


*) Tennessee gives us the first clue :

Readers usually first discover the world of books for the same reason Tennessee found the realm of creating his own worlds :

Something was lacking in their daily lives.

Like the hunt for the mythical will-o-wisp, the hunt for the fulfillment of that lack drives them even today to read.

In childhood, we often feel different, feel outside the group, feel weak, and feel unloved.

Those same ghosts haunt many into their adult lives.

Give readers a protagonist that they can identify with,

whose goals and hurts echo their own,

and dangle the fulfillment of those aims in front of them being threatened -- well, you've certainly gotten their attention.


Which brings us to the real number one.


1.) Learn the lesson of Madonna :

Before you can get them to read your book, you have to get the reader to pick it up.


Your Title :

When Madonna chose her name it was controversial, attention-getting, and short.

Same for the title of your book. It must be short, grab the eye from the endless titles on the book shelves, and be jarring :

LIPS OF THE LEPER. SEX ON THE ROAD. RIGHT TURN ON DEAD.

Tell me you wouldn't at least pick up those books to flip a page or two.

Which leads to our second path to Best Read of the Year.


2.) Each page may be your reader's last.

Think channel surfing.

Have you ever surfed the TV, just listening for a second to each program you passed?

One would have a snippet of dialogue so jarring or funny or both that you just had to stay and watch.

Another would have a scene so riveting,

you leaned in close on the edge of your seat to see what would happen next,

hoping to be able to catch on to the story as it progressed.

Each page of your novel has to be like that.

You have to turn the browser into the buyer. You have to keep the reader burning to turn the next page. Arthur Miller has a clue to how we can do that :


"One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world,

and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives."
ARTHUR MILLER, "The Shadows of the Gods"


3.) Be like Madonna's plunging cleavage or minuscule hem line : eye magnets.

Suspense. You have to keep them guessing. How?


4.) Sow the dragon's teeth, water, then reap the deadly harvest :


a.) Show a ring of black mushrooms in the neighbor's yard in whose center lies your MC's dead cat.

b.) A little later have your neighbors invite your MC to dinner. They are eating those black mushrooms stewed. Your MC politely declines that item on the menu.

c.) A few chapters later, the rings of black mushroom are in everybody's yard but hers. And everybody has stopped talking to her.

d.) One evening as she's coming back from her nightly jog, she sees a mob of zombie-like neighbors trudging to her door, each carrying a tray of those black mushrooms.


You get the idea : Suggest a puzzling problem. Let it blossom strangely. Have the harvest come out of the darkness to threaten your MC.


4.) When a good writer is having fun,

the audience is almost always having fun too.

STEPHEN KING, Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 17, 2007


Make the readers laugh.

The laughter will make the following harrowing adventures that much more intense.

Work to give your characters one-liners that the reader will repeat to her friends.

Making your readers chuckle along with your heroes will endear them to her. So when one cries or makes the ultimate sacrifice for the others, the reader will mourn as if for a real person.

Your novel will have the semblance of real life even if it is a fantasy or horror story.

Humor is the glue that holds the reader to the next page :

"As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs."
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs


5.) Don't forget the music :


"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make." Truman Capote

Have each page contain a paragraph of prose that rolls like billowing fog in the awakening dawn, catching the heartstrings of the reader.

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions." James Michener

"In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection.

But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word.

When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm."
Fran Lebowitz {Which is great advice.}

6.) Love is not a four letter word in writing.

Most readers live loveless lives in this country. Sometimes the loneliest people in America are the married ones.

At least give them the dream that real love can exist between two intelligent people.

Give them love that survives the bed sheets and goes with the couple into their daily lives.

Give that loving couple struggles that draw them together not pry them apart. A true, lasting love is like driving a car at night.

You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
***

STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND

{Don't forget to puchase Talli Roland's ebook, THE HATING GAME!
Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/hX2ieD }


Have we become obsolete?

We as writers,

as thinkers,

as empathic observers of the human condition?


Have we become strangers in a familiar land?


"He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign."
Ernest Renan


Those who read books are becoming fewer and fewer, causing the publishing world to become tense observers of trends and profit margins.

And thus, they have become stoic, ruthless guardians of the portals of publishing which are emblazoned with :


"You Enter Only If You Bring Us Certain Profits."


Children equate reading with boring, agonizing homework assignments.

They want quick, easy thrills offered by video games and movies : no mental assembly required.

Just blood, action, and sex (not love.)

But are the viewing children and adults like the husband who roars at his wife to just shut up. He gets what he asks for but not what he truly wants.

He wants the love of his life back. The sweetheart who thought the world of him and whose sight made the breath catch in his chest.


“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and all science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead:

his eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein



We need the magic back.

Not the Harry Potter kind of magic exactly. But the magic that can take a day of remembrance of Rosa Park's courage and cast a spell with these words by former American poet laureate Rita Dove :


How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.


But the world is too much with us :

its clamor, its demands, its cliched entertainments that cause our minds to slumber, our souls to slowly wither.

We forget the dreams and hopes of our childhood. We forget to listen to the lament of our starving hearts.

We think it is a conditon of the 21st century. It is not.

On this day in 1821 Percy Shelley's "Adonais," his elegy to John Keats, was published in England.

A cornerstone of both Romantic poetry and the myth of the Romantic, the poem paints Keats as Adonis in pursuit of Beauty and Truth, brought down by those less noble and talented.

This was a fate Shelley predicted for himself,

and he died before Keats's gravestone had been erected.

He had one eye upwards on the pursuit of Beauty and Truth, and one downwards on all that was in pursuit of him.

Could that be said of us as we pursue our publishing dreams? Are we selling truth in a marketplace that wishes only affirmations that the moment is all there is?

That there is no tomorrow, no place for nourishing kindness in an unkind world, that success is the product of the manipulation of the masses?

Keats wanted his gravestone in Rome to read "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

Are we writing in water?

Perhaps. But the world and we, humans, are three-fourths water. Water is the key to life.

If, in our writing, we touch only one heart that finds strength for the next step in a harsh, dark world, have we not made our striving worthwhile?

We, as authors, do not think of masses. We think of the individual : the solitary protagonist -- the solitary reader. I do not think of many reading my book. I see one reader reading my book at a time:

A lonely young boy emboldened by the plucky courage and wit of Victor Standish.

A thinking man nodding at the reflective compassion and courage of Samuel McCord.

An intelligent lesbian finding worthwhile role models in Ada Byron and Margaret Fuller.

A struggling married couple finding empathic connection with Renfield and Magda, making an impossible situation forced upon them somehow work with love and courage.

The British writer and naturalist, Henry Williamson was born on this day in 1895.

Although Williamson’s reputation now survives only in connection to Tarka the Otter, his beloved 1927 children’s book, he wrote a series of autobiographical books.

One such was entitled, A SOLITARY WAR.

We, as writers, as empathic thinkers ... we, too, are engaged in a solitary war whether we are married or single.

No one truly sees into our minds, our hearts, our dreams. Nor do we see truly the depth of those things in others.

It is an external war. It is also a perpetual inner warfare as well.

As we go about the hustle and bustle of our holiday activities and our routine work grind,

let us stop for a moment to see if someone by us is one of the walking wounded of their solitary war.

And if so, soldiers fight better together, having one another's back.
***