I'm Sioux Roslawski and this is my blog about writing, dogs, grown-up children, menopause, the joy of a marvelous book, classroom teaching in general, and specifically, the teaching of writing. You can email me at sroslawski(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Janet Fitch, author of best-seller White Oleander and Paint it Black, has her own blog, but today, she's dropped off a special treat for writers. If you go here, you can get her take on developing characters, how she handles writing about dark subjects, how much foreshadowing/background is necessary, third person vs. first person, and much more.
Every week Tess Kincaid hosts Magpie Tales. She provides the photo, we provide the creativity in the form of a vignette or poem. This is the 74th Magpie. Being consistent for more than a year is awe-inspiring. There are probably weeks that Tess would like to devote her time to something else. Replying to the Magpies is a large investment of time; every week Tess lures in dozens and dozens and dozens of writers. And yet she continues to cast her line out and we take the bait...oh, so eagerly.
Thanks, Tess. And below is my Magpie.
a map of africa or a mask
it makes no difference
the dark continent should stay there in-the-dark-and-out-of-our-thoughts
egypt and all its rich history? it's in africa? i don't think so
the cradle of civilization is in africa? surely you jest
all that apartheid stuff and those mass killings and the boys who get stolen into soldierhood it's so far away... does it really affect us?
And finally...Lisa Ricard Claro is hosting a contest to celebrate luring in her 200th follower. There will be more than one winner. If you don't already follow Lisa and her blog, it's well worth the meandering over. She's offering copies of a Chicken Soup book with beautiful Golden puppies on the front. Be sure to follow (if you're not already) and enter...
It's Book Blurb Friday again, hosted by the lovely and talented Lisa Ricard Claro on her blog, Writing in the Buff. The object is to hone our talents at writing book blurbs. After all, someday, some of us will really have best-selling books that will be begging for a blurb...
Lisa provides a photo. We have only a 150 word limit; the rest is up to us. Fiction or nonfiction? Serious or humorous? We get to decide.
Read Lisa's blurb, leave a comment, link your blog to Lisa's via Mr. Linky, and then read and comment on the other blurbs. Below is the photo for this week along with my blurb. I hope you enjoy...
photo by Christina Claro
The Bridge to Somewhere
Across the bridge…her childhood crush. The boy who wore harness boots and could rebuild an engine like he made love: JW didn’t miss an inch of anything, and both the engine and the girl would end up purring in the end.
If Maggie turned and headed back, on the other end of the bridge was her husband Richard. Dependable. Supportive. A straight arrow. The father of their three grown children.
An unexpected letter from JW sent Maggie reeling and eventually... to this bridge, and the awful decision she had to make.
Standing in the middle of the wooden bridge, looking at the river below, she watched the driftwood flowing with the current. She stared off into the horizon. After a while, she smiled, knowing where she was headed.
Will Maggie choose the past or the present? Will her fantasies become a reality? Or will her past root her in reality?
I admit it. I love the show So You Think You Can Dance? and I make the admission without a smidgen of shame or guilt.
photo by THA J-SQUAD
My friends think it's ironic, my fondness, because I am notoriously not a dancer. I cannot do Richard Simmons' "Sweatin' to the Oldies." I cannot do any kind of exercise that gets in the vicinity of dancing, and when it comes to full-blown dancing...? Forgetaboutit. The simplest of steps confound me. I am what people envision when they say "White people can't dance." I am horrendously uncoordinated.
(In fact, last year at our school we had an after-school dance/exercise class for our parents, kids, and staff. The dances we did were various slide/shuffle dances; we'd start out facing one direction but constantly were taking a step to the left, turn, etc. This really screwed me up, because normally when I get trapped into activities like this, I get as far to the back of the room as possible, so my gawkiness will not be put on youtube witnessed by others. This time, although I started at the back, after a couple of turns there I was, in the front, and I got so discombulated, some of the students--gifted dancers they were--were shrieking, "We're watching you, and then we get mixed up." It was an afternoon full of laughter.)
Back to the topic at hand...
I love So You Think You Can Dance? because it takes an assortment of young adults and forces them to dance out of their box week after week. Some of the kids are street dancers without any formal training, and one week they have to do a waltz and the next they have to do a Bollywood number. Some of them are classically trained ballet dancers, and they have to krump and hip hop and jive.
Their passion also appeals to me. When the dancers are able to wow the judges and audiences, these young men and the women cry. So committed they are to their art. So alive do they feel when they leap and lift and twirl. So thrilled they are to have moved someone.
Here it is, Hope: As writers, we have to think outside the box. We have to stretch our writing abilities. If we normally write personal essays, taking a foray into horror or romance (or Horrors! Romance!) might be a pleasant surprise.
And we have to be passionate about writing. We should be emotionally connected to our craft. We should get fired up about our work.
'Cause if that's not happening, we're not doing it right.
Tracy Seeley, author of My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas was kind enough to do a guest post today. She also generously provided a copy of her book to WOW-Women On Writing to give away in a random drawing and I was lucky enough to win it.
photo by zzzrandyzzz (Randy Souther)
Here is what one review said: "Tracy Seeley's My Ruby Slippers offers a graceful journey into the secret worlds of grief, illness, and ultimately, recovery. This is a wonderfully vivid and compassionate book, reminding us of how place can shape us and make us whole again." - Dinty Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire.
I cannot wait until I get the chance to read it; it was delivered this weekend. Memoir is my favorite genre to read. The idea of a journey that is healing intrigues me.
photo by shawncalhoun
Here is Tracy's post. If you tweet and want to follow her: @tracy_seeley If you "like" facebook, go to My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas On the web, go to www.tracyseeley.com
Revising: When You Love Your Words But It Just Isn’t Working
By Tracy Seeley (@tracy_seeley)
In writing school, one of the first things you hear is “kill your darlings.” It’s usually good advice. All those great turns of phrase, brilliant sentences, and witty puns? The ones you’re most attached to? They really have to go.
I don’t share such a brutal outlook all the time. At times the darlings work. But usually, we hang on to them far too long. We look at the pages and something nags: it just isn’t working. The “it” is often the darlings. We love them, they got us where we are now in this draft of things--and yet our story or essay or poem has outgrown them. It’s taken a different turn or grown in a different direction. It doesn’t need them anymore. Still we don’t want to see the lovelies go.
That’s why as writers, we need to be clear about which role we’re playing when: writer or editor? In truth, of course, we’re both, but at any given time in the creation of a work, only one of them gets to be boss. When we’re creating, crafting, imagining, then the writer gets the corner office. Playing editor at the wrong time can cripple us. We end up second-guessing ourselves and stop taking risks. When the writer works, the editor needs to go out for lunch. But later, when the time comes to read what we’ve written, it’s time to switch offices and let the editor be in charge.
With experience, the editor in us becomes highly skilled at pointing out what doesn’t work. She develops an uncanny ear for the clunky phrase, keen logical sense for structural flaws, and psychological radar for when a character’s run off the rails. And she sees right through your darlings.
With experience, the writer in us knows when to listen. When we hear that still, small, nagging editor’s voice that says, “Something isn’t working,” we carefully ponder her judgment, set aside our ego, and bow to the wisdom of the red pen. Reluctantly, of course, but maturely, we pack the darlings off to summer camp and wave wistfully goodbye.
Thank you, Tracy, for the great advice. It is indeed tough juggling the writer's duties and our job as editor. Good luck with your blog tour and your book signings.
In the below video clip, Tracy asks her readers, "What do you know about the place you come from?...How deeply do you delve?" Perhaps after diving into My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas, some of us will be inspired to take a journey to delve into what used to be "home."
Please leave any questions you have for Tracy in the comments section. Tomorrow, Tracy will stopping by Donna Volkenannt's blog. There, she will be talking about what it is like to work with University of Nebraska Press, which was her publisher. And as always, thanks for stopping by.
My skin is flawless. It really is. It reminds me of porcelain. When I hear talk about the complexion of certain actresses, how perfect it is, I think, 'My skin is like that too. My face has no evidence of pores...'
That is, until I got a magnifying mirror.
Oh, from a distance, and with eyes that are going bad, my skin is perfect. I cannot see any pores whatsoever. It looks like I'm wearing foundation (although I never have succumbed).
But with the help (thanks so much) from the magnifying mirror, I can finally see that the pores on my face are large enough to land a rocket ship in. (In fact, I hear a helicopter circling now. Excuse me. I'll be right back.) There are also huge brownish spots. (Someone muttered, "Age spots." I backhanded them.) And the wrinkles and furrows are deep enough to host a pipeline. With room for some tree-huggers to crawl around, as well.
I got the mirror because my eyebrow hairs are quite wily. Elusive, clever, they are bent on survival. They even have evolved and now use camouflage to avoid getting plucked. Pure white, they blend in with my pasty skin and are almost impossible to see. The magnifying mirror helped me hunt them down, but now I am too scared to use it.
If you see one of those mirrors in the store that boasts "10x" or even more, don't walk away. Run. And put a lower wattage bulb in your bathroom. Your self-esteem will thank you...
(This was prompted by a comment Lisa Ricard Claro made on Tammy Goodsell's blog. They are both funny, but I don't read their blogs anymore because my pantyliners have a limited capacity.)
