The first is to ignore anybody who says there’s a hard and fast rule that you should always follow.  As soon as you try to say that, up pops something to prove you’re an idiot.  I should know because I’ve tried to get away with blurting out a hard and fast rule over and over and over.  It never worked.  So the title to this post is a Bronx cheer to everyone who tells me I should never end a sentence with a preposition.  There.  I said it.  You’re welcome.

Now that I’ve unencumbered myself of that weight, I’ve found a nice little treasure trove of quotes from people who know what they’re talking about.  They know this because, like me, they’ve tried something over and over and over again until they finally figured it out and became successful.  Having only been successful with figuring out one rule, I figured I’d let all these other people do the rest of the tips for me.

This is a nice little collection by Cody Delistraty on Thought Catalog, and it’s been a few years since it was compiled but the truths within are timeless.  They aren’t all really tips, exactly, but they’re nuggets of wisdom to help you build a framework for your concept of what your writing is all about.  And they’re not hard and fast, either.  But you can sure use some pondering on each of them.

21 Harsh But Eye-Opening Writing Tips From Great Authors

By Cody Delistraty, September 24th 2013

A lot of people think they can write or paint or draw or sing or make movies or what-have-you, but having an artistic temperament doth not make one an artist.

Even the great writers of our time have tried and failed and failed some more. Vladimir Nabokov received a harsh rejection letter from Knopf upon submitting Lolita, which would later go on to sell fifty million copies. Sylvia Plath’s first rejection letter for The Bell Jar read, “There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.” Gertrude Stein received a cruel rejection letter that mocked her style. Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way earned him a sprawling rejection letter regarding the reasons he should simply give up writing all together. Tim Burton’s first illustrated book, The Giant Zlig, got the thumbs down from Walt Disney Productions, and even Jack Kerouac’s perennial On the Road received a particularly blunt rejection letter that simply read, “I don’t dig this one at all.”

So even if you’re an utterly fantastic writer who will be remembered for decades forthcoming, you’ll still most likely receive a large dollop of criticism, rejection, and perhaps even mockery before you get there. Having been through it all these great writers offer some writing tips without pulling punches. After all, if a publishing house is going to tear into your manuscript you might as well be prepared.

Read more…

The fact that jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

— E. L. Doctorow

It’s not like I haven’t seen a little stress before.  I’ve driven an 18-wheeler worth 50 million dollars on the LA freeway during rush hour, squinting through dense clouds of smoke from raging forest fires right next to the road.  I was deployed to Kuwait on 9/11, within mortar range of Iraq when we didn’t know who was behind the attack yet, and carried a chemical warfare defense ensemble around with me for months.  I even gave graduation speeches (mankind’s greatest fear — public speaking!) for professional military education courses in front of colonels and generals and suchlike.

A little stress here and there.  Sure.

But those things were just things.  They were part of the job, and they had to be done, and I did ‘em, ‘cause that’s what you do.  But to write something, right out of my own self, and just put it out in front of the whole world?  Whoa, dude.  What am I thinking??

Writing my novel was like stabbing myself in the heart with that pen and bleeding my soul out all over those pages.  That’s me, right there.  You know that, if you’re a writer, ‘cause that’s what you do.  And when your naked soul is sitting there waiting for you to offer it to the world, whether it’s in a novel or a poem or a song or a screenplay, you’re afraid of what the world is going to do to it.  And you.

What if it sounds stupid?  What if nobody likes it?  What if they laugh at me?  What if I can’t find an agent?  What if no publisher wants anything to do with it?  What if it never sells a copy?  What if nobody else thinks it’s nearly the marvelous thing that I want it to be?

So I finally figured out what happens if any of those things come to pass:  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  If any of those things happen, or if all of them happen, you’re going to be exactly where you were before you tried.  Your family won’t disown you, your dog won’t bite you, and the utility companies will still send your bills just like always.

But it might also mean you didn’t achieve your dream.  Guess what?  If you didn’t try, you also didn’t achieve your dream.  But you, yourself, took away the chance you had to achieve that dream.

And guess what else?  There are thousands upon thousands of other people who are afraid of the same things.  And thousands of them will talk themselves out of trying because they’re afraid.  So who wins?  The ones who realized they really had nothing to lose, especially those utility bills, and gave it a shot.

I gave it a shot and found out I’m not quite a Hemingway, or even a Patterson…yet.  But you know what’s the cool thing about it?  You get an unlimited number of shots.

It’s your turn.

Hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy.

— Liu Xiaobo

There are very definite opinions on both sides of this question.  I did a lot of research before I published my book and just couldn’t find the scales tilting strongly enough either way, so I went with my cheapskate nature and published for free.  I did pay for a cover design, but that wasn’t exactly required.  However, it may have enhanced a little attention-getting, which could have brought me more sales.  That’s debatable.

What’s also debatable is whether you get what you pay for when you go with a vanity press.  It may be expensive, but might it be the right balance of time, effort, and potential success? There are a lot of aspects to cogitate upon.

Here’s one discussion of it that examines several factors, by Barbara Lane in the San Francisco Chronicle, and it’s worth a read and some pondering on the subject.

Is it worth paying $7,500 to have your book published? Maybe

Click here to read more…

Always keep your words sweet and soft, in case you have to eat them.

It’s National POW/MIA Recognition Day.  Please don’t forget those who have served our country and sacrificed so much…those who have become Prisoners Of War or Missing In Action.  Why?  Here’s why:

Fifty-two years ago, 5-year-old Bryan Knight went to Dallas Love Field to say goodbye to his father, as Air Force Major Roy Knight, Jr. left to serve in Vietnam.  Bryan never saw his father again.  But last month, Bryan, himself an Air Force veteran and now a pilot for Southwest Airlines, flew his father’s remains back to that same Dallas Love Field, bringing him home, finally, to be laid to rest.

You can read the rest of that amazing and heart-wrenching story at the link below, but I’d like to take a few moments to explain how this happened.

There’s an agency in the Department of Defense called the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, whose sole mission is to recover missing personnel who are listed as Prisoners of War (POW), or Missing In Action (MIA), from all past wars and conflicts and from countries around the world.  They recovered (subsequently promoted) Colonel Knight’s remains early this year and identified him in June, and now he’s at rest and closure has been given to his family.

But they didn’t just find him and identify him.  When he was shot down in Laos on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, search and rescue teams immediately tried to get to him but failed due to hostile ground fire in the area.  The point is that they didn’t stop trying.  His crash site was re-visited, searched, and excavated at least seven times over the years before he was finally found and recovered.

The DPAA is working constantly to bring home our service members, and as an example, just so far this month they have identified the remains of twenty-two of the missing from Korea and World War II. Their search continues now, and they will never stop as long as any are still missing, because when a service member is being held prisoner or is awaiting rescue, the biggest thing they can cling to is the certain knowledge that their country is striving, right that very moment, to find them and bring them home.

They know that bad things happen, and they realize that they just might not see their families again.  But it also helps them to know that one day, their families will find the peace of closure like Maj Knight’s family did.

Our service members and their families need to know that our government will never, ever stop trying to bring them home, whether they’ve been captured for a day or lost for fifty years.  They need to know that we will honor them and never forget them.  So for the ones who are, right now, risking their lives in your service, please show them that you have them firmly in your minds and hearts.  Fly your POW/MIA flag, post your support on social media…let them know that while they have your backs, you have theirs as well.

That’s what you’d want to know if you were in their combat boots.

On May 19, 1967, Maj. Roy A. Knight, Jr., USAF, was shot down while attacking a target on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. He was initially listed as Missing in Action until being declared Killed in Action in 1974. During that time, he was promoted to Colonel. Fifty-two years later, in Feb, 2019, Col. Knight’s remains were recovered and identified by personnel assigned to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. (Photo: None, defense.gov)

Read the USATODAY story here.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Ol’ Blue was in the early stages of Plumb Wore Out.  At thirteen years old and a hundred thousand miles, my ’63 Ford Fairlane had faithfully hauled me hither and yon, from Iowa to Texas, Colorado, California, and everywhere else Uncle Sam sent me, without a whimper.  But having recently expanded our family by its first increment, we finally broke down and bought a 1972 Mercury Montego, which was only four years old and therefore sparkly new in comparison, to carry the family around with a tad more dependability.

Ol’ Blue was now relegated to second place in the transportation hierarchy and occasionally got a bit cantankerous in retaliation.  The first significant thing to go was the linkage between the gearshift and transmission.  This became more significant when I realized new parts like that weren’t being made for cars that old.

The Air Force had recently promoted me from Airman First Class to Sergeant and I was now bringing in the astronomical base pay of $459.30 a month, which made me believe I could manage payments on a used Montego.  It did NOT make me giddy enough to go flinging dollar bills about with wild abandon, such as fixing Ol’ Blue by converting my three-speed-on-the-column to a floor-shifter with that cool conversion kit down at Checker Auto Parts.  As you can imagine, that was the recommendation by the counter guy at Checker.

But forty bucks was forty bucks.

Luckily for my wallet, there was an automotive parts reclamation facility east of Colorado Springs on Highway 94, several miles out past Peterson Air Force Base.  Back in the 70s, though, we got away with calling it a junkyard.  I should be able to find the appropriate linkage there, and cheap.

I pulled up in front of the shack that served as the office and paused a moment to read the small, faded, hand-painted sign next to the steps in front of the door:  WATCH FOR RATTLESNAKES!

I paused a little longer.  But I was cool and sauntered into the ramshackle building quite nonchalantly, I thought, after surreptitiously scanning the ground in all directions.  It wasn’t like there were venomous serpents slithering everywhere, right?  And they’d rattle if I got too close, to warn me, right?  The sign was probably just there for liability purposes and most likely the critters were pretty rare.

Right?

I was a country boy, raised in the fields and barnyards of Missouri and Iowa, spending my youth wrestling hay bales, scooping soybeans, shelling corn, wrangling pigs, hunting, fishing, and camping.  I was well acquainted with garter, bull, king, and rat snakes…I never liked ‘em, but I was familiar with ‘em.  And they didn’t kill people, generally speaking.

But rattlers, now…they were something new.  Something to make you exercise a little extra…healthy wariness.  I didn’t want to be taken for a greenhorn, so I tried to walk the fine line between laid-back and eagle-eye.  I think I was pulling it off.

Inside, I was told to just go out and find what I needed, remove it with my own tools, and bring it back to the office so the guy at the desk could tell me how much to pay him for it.  I had been hoping it would be a little less work on my part, but at least he gave me a few possible areas to search.  I decided to locate a good donor of parts and then fetch whatever tools I’d need.

At least there were wide lanes between double rows of old junkers that were mostly laid out side-by-side in a neat and orderly fashion, and I could walk down between them while judiciously scanning the arid landscape.  It was mostly bare dirt and rock, except right around the vehicles themselves, where it was a little harder to keep the weeds trimmed back.

In the older section I was focusing on, things were a bit more random and disheveled.  Tall, dry weeds sprouted in clumps around casual piles of tires or sheet metal pieces, and the wind had wedged tumbleweeds into a lot of the nooks and crannies.  And there was a beat-up ‘63, splotched with rust, wedged in haphazardly, sideways between two rows of cars and surrounded by old tires and a couple of wayward bumpers.

I exercised healthy wariness for a minute or so.

I couldn’t get to the car in question without either wading through thick weeds and piles of car parts or climbing on top of other cars.  I had second thoughts about this method of car repair, out here in the desert wastelands, confronted by sidewinding assassins.

But, well, forty bucks was forty bucks.

So climb on top I did, from the bumper of a heap bordering the bare dirt pathway, over the roof to the trunk, to a neighboring hood, to the top of a pile of fenders, and onward.

Arriving next to the ’63, squatting cautiously on a stack of tires, I peered through the broken driver’s window and discovered that this one wouldn’t work out because it was an automatic.  I was turning to pick out a route to head for the next potential area of perusal when something caught my eye.

Hanging by two wires, underneath the steering wheel, was a small plastic contraption I recognized immediately.  It normally sits underneath the horn ring on the steering wheel and controls the turn signals.  My car’s controller had a piece broken off and I’d been manually cancelling my signals for a while, but here was a chance to get it working right, and cheaply.  This one looked intact, and was already unscrewed and ready to unplug and remove.  Bonus!  I figured I’d better grab this one while I had the chance and then go look for the shifter linkage.

I was still exercising healthy wariness.  I scanned the ground under the edge of the car, the seats, what I could see of the floor…nothing.  I eased in the door handle button and slowly creaked the door open as far as it would go.

Scanned some more.  Looked for movement.  Listened for stealthy slithers.  Nothing.

I leaned in through the doorway, still balanced precariously on the stack of tires, one hand on the door, one on the door frame.  I reached out with my right hand, little by little, until I could grasp the controller…but the two little electrical plugs wouldn’t pull loose.  I needed a firmer grip.

I leaned a little farther and slowly moved my right knee to the edge of the seat cushion to brace myself for one quick jerk on the wires, and as I lowered my weight onto the seat…

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Like a thousand tea kettles!  Like a steam engine on steroids!!  The loudest sound I’d ever heard in my life, amplified and echoing inside the confines of the old wreck…AND IT WAS COMING FROM RIGHT UNDER THE SEAT!!!!

Up until that time I’d never really believed in levitation, but within half a microsecond I was about thirty feet in the air and gaining speed.  I don’t know where I touched down, or how, but I was out in the middle of that wide, packed-dirt lane, moving purposefully and as outwardly nonchalant as I could be, under the circumstances, exercising an impressive outpouring of healthy wariness as I went, around the shack out front, out to the Montego, and rocketing toward town before my pulse slowed down below heart attack range.

In close succession, I learned two important things.  One: I proudly own one of the finest sets of reflexes on the planet.  And two: it took a whole day and lots of cussing to make modifications and install that conversion kit, but Ol’ Blue ran great and looked awesome for the rest of his natural days with that Checker Auto Parts floor shifter.

Best forty bucks I ever spent.