Complaining/Not Complaining

~ patponderslife ~ 2 Comments

I entered a writing contest recently. Nominal fee to enter, and the contest was titled “First Chapter.” All of us aspiring writers know that readers’ attention spans are down to eleven seconds now, and if you hope they’ll want to read your work, you have to grab their attention. Immediately. Preferably with the first sentence. Turns out, “It was a dark and stormy night” captures the intent, even though it’s now become a cliché and therefore unusable. Drat.

There’s a lot of pressure to capture a reader’s attention, get them invested in your protagonist so that they care what happens to (in this case) her, set the stage with just enough sensory details so the reader can “be in it,” also to be relevant and clear with your intent, have an inciting incident that is a catalyst for your protagonist to be motivated or forced to “do something” that will play out as she is changed at the end.  You need a satisfying resolution. Your work needs veracity, integration, dynamics, resonance, and the mechanics of writing, spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation must all be perfect.

Of course, many real writers—the ones with best sellers, prestigious prizes, and critical acclaim—break those rules all the time. But they can afford to, can’t they? For us amateurs, it’s important that we follow all the guidelines.

In my case, I dragged out a novel-length story I wrote and self-published on Amazon KDP some years ago. I’m impressed by my former self’s ability to do all that, and I fear that today I lack the skills. But, I’m a better writer now, I think, and even though I still like the story very much, I’m pretty sure it could be told better.

The contest stated the chapter had to be 3000 words. I’ve never written a chapter that long, so I compiled my first two chapters into one and sent it in. Maybe they “like” everything that’s sent to them, who knows, but I got a thumbs up. Except for some not-so-great evaluations on several of those essential conditions I listed above. But here’s the thing: you get to revise your writing based on their feedback and re-submit it for the final decision as to who wins the contest. What have I got to lose, right? So I begin to revise. Over and over again.

One of their suggestions was peer review, so I sent one of my revisions to several of my peer writers for their feedback. I’m still waiting for two of them, but I have until the end of August to return my final revision, which is a couple of weeks away. And in the meantime, I’m still tweaking. I can’t help myself. I pull it up every day and change a word here and a word there, delete a phrase, put it back in, add something and then remove it again. It’s endless. Thank god I have only until August 31st. At least by then I’ll have to settle for whatever version I’ve cobbled together.

Along the way, I killed some of my darlings, some of the clever phrases I loved but that probably needed to go. I ended up with a lot more backstory than I had in the first one. In fact, a reader will now know that when Kate was seven her brother died or was murdered and her mother committed suicide the next year, leaving her and he dad to learn how to get through life as best they could. Which sometimes wasn’t good. I originally had no intention of telling all that this far up front, but if I wanted to “hook” the reader and make them care about my protagonist, I figured what better way than to elicit some sympathy, and maybe even a little admiration for the star of the story.

She’s prickly, my main character. Wouldn’t you be? Not terribly likeable, actually. Kind of a loner, sick of being the object of pity she has been in her tiny, tiny southern town for most of her life. But she doesn’t come off as a victim at all—probably because of the prickliness.

So why am I telling you all this? No earthly idea, except to get your sympathy, perhaps. Anyway, I persevere. And, I hope I’m not cutting the life out of my story of a damaged but strong young woman who, when all is said and done, will prevail, whether I win the contest or not.

Thanks for listening. You’re the best.

What do we stand for on Memorial Day 2023?

~ patponderslife ~ Leave a comment

Today we remember the many young men, boys still, who died to save our way of life. To stop a dictator who decided that “certain people” weren’t worthy of life. That their ways were an anathema to the purity of the Caucasian race. And it wasn’t only millions of Jews he targeted. It was homosexuals, dark-skinned gypsies, and people on the fringes. One man decided, and he convinced most of a nation that his ideas were necessary and patriotic. He formed an army to enforce his ideology. The US was reluctant to intervene, but in the end, we had to fight to keep that belief from spreading. We agreed that the democratic ideal–a person’s freedom to choose his or her way of life, as long as it didn’t harm someone else, was worth fighting for—even worth dying for. We believed in liberty and justice for all, not just some—not just for the “true believers”, not just for the fair-skinned, light-eyed people. We were dealing with our own prejudices then, so there was some hypocrisy in our grand gesture, granted. But we, along with other believers in democracy, fought, died, yet prevailed over fascism—the movement with a leader that exalts nation above the individual, a leader who divides a nation into warring factions of “us” and “them,” and then attempts to stifle, restrict and muzzle “them.” We’re still young, as a nation, and the ideals this country was founded upon are being tested—this time from within. Do we still believe that all people were created equal? Do we believe that every person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do we believe in equal opportunities for all? Or have we decided that in order to be considered a true American you have to be a Christian? That you have to speak English? That you mustn’t be allowed to learn that we as a nation weren’t always good guys? That our ancestors once wiped out an entire indigenous population—with malice and forethought. That our great, great grandfathers once bought and enslaved human beings? That we interred thousands of citizens of Asian descent because they looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor? That some families are different because there are two dads or two moms? That a tiny percentage of the population are born uncomfortable in their bodies? That women have no rights over their reproductive health? That some Americans are Jewish? Some are Buddhists? And some Hindus or Muslims? Or that some Americans do not believe in a deity at all? Who gets to decide who the true Americans are? Are we going to allow one person, one movement, to decide? Or will we continue to fight and die for the ideal that gives freedom of choice to everyone? Are we still a democratic nation or are we becoming an autocratic one? We’ll see. Happy Memorial Day. Let’s remember today the principles those boys fought and died for and decide for ourselves if we still believe in them.