Thrift Shopping for Gems Overlooked

Yep, that’s one of the things I did last week while waiting for my computer connection to be repaired.

We went to the new Goodwill that opened here not long ago. We spent over an hour in there and BJ, our friend Jody, and I all came away with something new to us, something that filled current needs. We left because we had no spare cash to get more.

I found something—an electric fuzz shaver—that I’d been looking for in stores and catalogs for at least six months. Btw, it works great. I also got a set of new flannel sheets for $5. I couldn’t beat that with a stick.

Later, while in the same frame of mind, I looked on my desktop’s hard drive when I got home. My poor documents directory was full of stuff that I had yet to do something with. There were articles for children and adults, literary essays that only needed a finishing polish before sending them out, as well as stories for all ages and in all genres.

Among the poetry files were two books that needed those finishing touches. Both could go to competitions. I knew that. So, why hadn’t I already put together a poetry chapbook to enter, or polished the full-length poetry book so that it could begin the rounds of agents/publishers? What about our travel book and the women’s novel?

I had no real excuse. There were some good pieces within my personal slush pile, and I was ignoring them in favor of new ideas or flights of fancy. I’d delegated these potential gems to a littered cache on my desktop to languish unappreciated until some undefined whim moved me to rescue them. How could I have so little faith in myself and my abilities?

That’s when the truth raised its arms and brought the 2x4 down, hard, on my head.

It wasn’t a lack of faith that had intervened and prevented me from completing the writing cycle on any of those wee gems. It wasn’t fear, either.

It was because I had more interests and less discipline than I needed. I saw potential in everything. “Ooo… That would make a great little filler piece for the travel mag that we enjoy so much.” “Hey, I could do a piece on that dog sled race from last weekend. We have pics available, and it could go for kids.”

My problem was that I’d lost control of my ideas, again. (I really have to carry more ropes with me so that I can keep them corralled better.)

I’d diagnosed the disease. I looked for a treatment, one that I could begin immediately. I realized the only way to do the job justice was to take the time to do them all now and be done with it.

“Travel slowly and grasp the details.” became my new work motto.

I chose to take one piece every other day and revise, edit, rewrite, redirect, or whatever it took. Before I could begin work on another, I had to submit the first one somewhere. A paying market wasn’t as important as simply beginning the submission process and having the thing out of my drive. I could easily live with it sitting in a submission’s tracking program.

Now that I’ve begun slowly, it will be easier to move forward. Before I lost my connection with the Internet, I’d already placed three poems and this week I plan to send out at least two articles/stories. I’ve finished a revision on one article and begun the marketing process. I can submit the one article tomorrow since I’m back online.

I spent today doing marketing research that I’d never heard of before, but which seemed to be a good fit for some of what I have to send out.

There you have it, peeps. I’m doing a bit of thrift shopping in my own computer for future published pieces. The cool thing is that a few of the ones I glanced at gave me ideas for at least two or more articles/stories out of that same subject that I can peddle to other venues.

I think I’ll shop closer to home more frequently. How about you? Oh, I also found several pieces that will make great children’s books for a couple of publishers I’ve been investigating.

A couple of weeks away from the net and I’m energized again for these projects. My new scheduling program will work well with this newly intended writing activity.

Dive into your personal slush file and see what you can drag out into the light. Distance lends perspective, they say. Have a great week, all.

Until later,

Claudsy

Finding the Writer in Everyone

This morning I helped submit a contest entry written by my sister to the lit agency running the contest. She’d written it on a lark because when I read the prompt to her, she felt it was too good to pass up.

Now Sis is a good writer on her own. She just doesn’t do it very often, which is more the pity. She has a strong voice on the page and a terribly creative mind to back up her words. But I digress.

I had agreed to edit the submission for her so that it would meet guidelines. The contest prompt was like none other that I’ve seen in any contest, and Sis was right. The thing was a hoot. It’s entire concept was made for the quirky minded and those who could take any five words handed them and make a story from them. Poets use this kind of prompt all the time for building poems. It’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Sis is very good at that, too. Just remember that. I’ll come back to it later.

Editing her work wasn’t difficult. I do it on a regular basis for several of writers. Most of us do. It keeps us on our toes and it keeps us honest, too. What we find in other’s writing that needs changing is always a lesson for our own work. None of us is perfect, by any stretch of a rope.

I tend to see certain problems a writer might have because I have difficulty with that same issues… parentheses and punctuation, for instance. Does the question mark go inside of the end paren even at the end of a sentence? That’s always a killer for me, and I can’t seem to ever retain the answer.

If you’re a writer, you know what I mean about learning from the mistakes you see in other’s work. Me? I’m one of those readers who gets stopped dead in the written road when my eyes come across a typo on the printed page. Until I correct it in my head, I can’t continue reading.

And don’t shake you head. You know others like me, too.

Regardless, writing and editing well requires two people. One to write, one to edit, and then the first gets to rewrite and so on until the work gets as close to perfection as they can make it. I learn far more from the editing process than I ever did from the writing lessons. The lessons stick far better, too.

In some ways, I’m an advocate of the “throw the aspiring writer into the deep end of the publishing pool with a good and patient editor” school of thought. Unfortunately, there simply aren’t adequate numbers of free editors hanging around the untaught, willing to take on that challenge. At least, that’s how it seems sometimes.

Now, let me return to that line from above about how my sister is a good writer. I gave her five words just a few minutes ago to use for the basis of a story with a word limit of 100 words.

The words I gave her were: monkeys, hammer, night, howling, and gratitude. I accept the caveat of using derivatives for this purpose (i.e. plural, singular, different verb tense.)

Here is what she wrote as she sat down with her e-mail.

Monkey’s Birdhouse

      The young boy carefully gathered his materials. He and his father were building a birdhouse together. His Dad had nicknamed him Monkey, because he loved to climb trees. He picked up his tools and began to assemble the birdhouse. He used his hammer, some glue and a saw. As he tapped in the last nail, he hit his thumb! He howled like a wolf in the night. It throbbed and was sore but not badly injured. He could now put up the birdhouse in the tree and listen to the sweet song of a bird's gratitude. (98 words)

Five minutes and a few words. Storyline -- Check, Main Character -- Check, Plot -- Check (Simple & straightforward,) Problem solved -- Check.

Does it still need work? Sure, doesn’t every rough draft? But is it a viable story? I think so. Yes, I would rearrange a couple of things, but that’s a matter of presentation and flow. The elements are there, the direction is obvious, most kids could relate to it in one way or another. It has achieved its goal of being a story under 100 words, using the target words given as its major points.

These words could have produced a multitude of stories and never repeated. And they wouldn’t have all been for children, either.

So, dear writer friends of mine. I issue the same challenge to you. Can you build a complete story in 100 words or less from the target words and make it work? Any genre or target age. And do it in less than ten minutes?

Feel free to post your resulting stories here for review by the small mass of writers who wander through. Think of this as part of the deep end of the pool and enjoy the swim. I dare ya!

Take care all. Watch your words. They have powers hitherto unknown to man. Hope to see you back here soon with great little rough drafts for all to read.

Until then,

Claudsy