A Stone's Throw...

“Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.”  --  Tom Stoppard, “The Real Thing: A Play”

Whether you believe it's true or not, you've heard the story of David and Goliath. You're familiar with the story of the young man who---in a move of faith---managed to defeat the giant Goliath with nothing but a slingshot and a rock. A kid. A rock. A slingshot. A victory. One stone---just a stone a boy picked from a million others---was the center of a story that has lasted for centuries, a tale that is legend. A stone.

That Biblical account brought to my mind a very important thought: that everyone of us carries with us a bag of stones just like the boy David. Only our stones aren't physical ones. They are are voices. Our words. 

One toss of a rock onto a still pond is able to send ripples across the water's surface---from bank to bank. That rippling effect can be beautiful, serene, playful or frightening in its subtle power.  Because---just think about it. That one tiny fragment of hardened earth has the strength to disrupt the entire quiet of the pond's surface. 

The same stone, if tossed at a mirror's glass, has the ability to shatter that once-pristine surface and destroy the mirror. One striking blow can turn the reflective glass into a spiderweb of cracks or it can completely destroy it by rendering it into a heap of glistening shards. Either way, the mirror is destroyed. By one stone.

And it is so with our words. It's a little scary to think of the power contained in each and every one of us---not just authors, but anybody. 

Our voices. These stones we carry inside us. They may not seem like much, but they have the ability to hurt others, the power to destroy relationships. They can be the impetus to ruin others if they're thrown by those with influential voices. Words can soothe. They can arouse. They can make love. They can lead. They can follow. They can frighten. They can bully. Damn, they are powerful little things. And so versatile in their scope of uses.

I wonder about David and Goliath. Surely David had the experience with having used his slingshot to know just which size stone to use. His young mind must have, after enough use with this primitive weapon, known to calculate the stone's size to know it's projectile capability. And just how much momentum would be needed in order to---in just one shot, since that was all he would have---hit its target and fell it. 

And our words have to be weighed just so. Because they are extremely powerful. 

As an author, or anyone whose voice finds its way to this new technical marvel---cyberspace---I feel it's a responsibility to use this power within us...these stones inside us called words...wisely. 

I feel that people who have the fortune to be influential to others should take advantage of that wonderful privilege to use their words to build, not break down. To encourage, not to discourage. To make peace, not battle. To soothe, not to wound. To support, not to bully. To make changes for good. 

Voices may seem like nothing but little stones. Those like me who aren't in positions to influence in big ways can still use my words for good. Even if only one person hears a word of encouragement from me, hears a smile in my voice, then I've used my voice wisely. 

Maybe my voice alone can't stop hatred, bullying and bigotry. But my little stone, mixed with multitudes of other stones, CAN. 

Whether my own words will ever make wonderful changes in my universe is doubtful, as I'm a tiny stone among many. 

But one thing I do know. Sometimes I might use my words to make quiet ripples on a pond's surface. Because that stone merely makes its ripples, just to show it was there, then drifts to the pond's bottom without having done any harm. And sometimes I will use my voice in a bigger way---for whatever it's worth---to blend with other voices for equality. 

I hope, though, never to use my precious stones to break mirrors. 

 

 

A Descending Spiral...

Madame DeFarge, A Tale of Two Cities

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.


Something's bothered me for a while and I've kept silent about it---well, if you don't count occasional spurts of frustration on Facebook and various forums. I remained silent because I just couldn't put my finger on what actually disturbed me. I couldn't, as hard as I tried, make a connection in my mind as to why I was disturbed or tack a name to the angst growing bigger and bigger inside me.

But this weekend I stumbled on photos from the Dickens classic, A Tale of Two Cities.

And then it became so clear. And when it did become clear, it became even more frustrating and...frightening.

This week, upon the death of Margaret Thatcher, I was shocked and dismayed over the giant uproar---the joyous uproar---of so many chanting all over Twitter and Facebook such things as "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead...' gleeful voices raised in celebration at the passing of a public official. By the degree of happy pandemonium, you would have thought a violent dictator had been executed. Oh, I don't know British politics but I do know hate when I see it.

And those merry cheers immediately brought to mind the roaring crowds I'd read of during the French Revolution. The crowds gathering to cheer on the beheadings of the aristocrats. Barbaric pleasure they took in these executions.

And, no, it wasn't just the reaction to the Thatcher's death that hit home with me. It was something that had been brewing inside me for some time and this event only seemed to bring it to the surface for me, to put a name on it.

Hatred.

The power of hatred among a group of people.

What may surprise you is that the hatred I speak of---the hatred that has upset me for a while now---is not among those bigots against who we fight for equality. Oh, they are filled to the brim with hate, that's for sure. But it's not them who have troubled me lately.

No. It's those who do fight for equality who are showing the hatred so blatantly.

Specifically, not a day goes by that I do not see on various forums the rants against Christians. Everything unfair thing that happens in the name of hatred is somehow lumped in with the name Christian. I see the word every day and it's rarely---if at all---in conjunction with anything good.

An us-against-the-Christians voice it seems.

And, upon seeing this so much, I was reminded of such violent events in history such as the executions in France during the revolts. The frenzied fury of those so full of revenge and hatred that they simply dragged every person who even hinted of having money and slaughtered them along with those who actually did deplore them.

The fight for justice and equality gone berserk. The furor seeping into sensibility and discoloring even the innocent; therefore sending them to death for having done nothing but been wealthy.

Unfortunately, such hatemongers as the Westboro Baptist Church have put a black spot on all religion as far as the fight for equality goes. Now it seems the very word Christian is the keyword for bigotry, along with the word Republican. Every day I read comments that---for every wrong done against the equal rights movement---it must be those Christians, those conservative religious zealots, etc., etc.

Do you want to know why this scares the hell out of me?

Because I am a Christian. Yes.

No, I do not attend church. I don't feel whether I sit in a brick building every Sunday has any bearing on what's in my heart.

But I do follow the teaching of Christ which---if anybody studied hard enough---would prove to be just the same philosophies as all teachers of peace since the beginning of time. He taught that we were all the same. Everybody sins.

And....I might add here that sin---the actual Hebrew translation---meant nothing more than missing the mark. An arrow shooting and falling short of the bullzeye. A human thing. Not a doomed-to-hell fault but just a very human part of life. We miss the mark, we get up and go again.

Love. He did teach love. He didn't hang out with the sanctimonious. They, in fact, were the ones who persecuted him because he was different. They were scared of him and his truth. He was a threat to their old ways, their ancient beliefs and holier-than-thou arrogance. He was the equality fighter of his day. He died for it.

If he walked among us today, he would be right there in the middle of the fight for equality. He would never have judged. Never.

Do you see what I mean? By using this coverall label of Christian, to lash out at anyone who does call themselves so, you're targeting me and you might accidentally be lumping me in with those who do hate. And I might get hit in the crossfire. Because the animosity is so strong toward the name, I fear it will only keep cooking until it boils over.

I do not know a remedy for it all. I only know it's unfortunate to find myself thrown into this mix, to have to defend myself and what I believe in when I am as big a believer in equal rights as the others who fight for it.

If anything, it breaks my heart for the Churchians (a term a minister used to define those who merely sat in a pew on Sundays but who did not practice what they preached) to call themselves Christians and then to display such bigotry and hate.

But, again, I don't know a way to fix it.

The only thing I can do is live what's really in my heart, to stand strong on my beliefs of equal rights for all. To let my life be a witness, to show that a Christian loves, a Christian loves everyone equally.

Just, please. When you do refer to bigotry and hatred, please be careful when using the word Christian. Because if you aim it at a true Christian---who really embraces what the man whose name it is derived taught---you've got the wrong guy.

When the Beating of Your Heart...

When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes! -- Lyrics, 'Do You Hear the People Sing', Les Miserable


My last post was a lament, a tribute to fear. Fear of writing. Fear of other people's writing. Of being afraid because other authors' prose, their voices, were so damn good that it scared me. I shared thoughts on being boxed in by that self-imposed writing barricade of inadequacy. 

I was not talking about talent but something much bigger than talent. I was talking about passion, about being afraid to write what's in my heart and about shutting off this faucet that keeps my passion from flowing free. How frustrating it was to see others write these powerful stories. How it finally hit me what that magic element was in their writing was---fire, fearlessness, this beautiful kind of anger that even their greatest inhibitions can't smother.

I wanted that secret ingredient in my writing.

Well, to that post, I enjoyed so many supportive comments, so much wonderful advice. And, among those who offered words of understanding and support was a long-time, dear, dear friend. A gal who was pretty much my very first mentor and critique partner.

A beautiful author, Joylene Nowell Butler.

She told me something that hit home. She said to learn from others. And then she said something that rang bells in my head---oh, it clanged like the huge bells of Notre Dame---read the classics.

And so I did. Read the classics. 

Oh, I didn't scour through volumes and volumes of classic novels, although I would gladly have done it, I love them so. I did, however, grab up films---adaptations of classics as well as biographic movies of authors from times past.

And...holy shitsky. My friend, my dear friend Joylene! How could she have known?

First of all and coincidentally---I'd just bought it---I watched the newest musical film adaptation of Les Miserable. Yes, the one with Hugh Jackman and my idol Russell Crowe. It had been a long time since I cried so wonderfully, so broken up and emotional. And so inspired. 


Immediately after, I read about the author of Les Miserable, Victor Hugo. Ahead of his time. Daring. Blaring with a voice so bold and free that it's still shouting even today. 

But, during all this research, things much deeper than just beautiful prose spoke to me. 

First, it lit this fire inside me to let my own voice break free, to stop fretting about how it's going to be received. That very fear of reception was its own road block to my creativity. The story, the songs, the facts acted as mufflers to silence those internal whispers such as so-and-so says there is no such thing as love at first sight, this or that reviewer says they don't like love at first sight.
 
I loved Hugo's thoughts on this issue, The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."

I wondered, after reading this, if he'd seen victims of the Goodreads of his day? Had he seen authors being intimidated by reviews from using their own voices, from just letting love be whatever their souls told them it should be?

As though some invisible force knocked my mental barricade down, I felt this wonderful freedom. I could not get some of the song's lyrics out of my mind, I played them over and over...Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see? Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!

I'd never been so inspired. I'm still zinging. 

I can't explain the fury---a wonderful, wild freedom---that broke out in my heart when I watched this film, this production of the classic story. But I do know that the exhilaration was like another of Hugo's quotes, More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. 

That gives me chills.

There is a world I long to write beyond the barricade. And, by watching a film adaptation of a classic story and by reflecting on the other classics that have weathered time, I recognized all the things I crave to write---love at first sight, characters who were bad and ones who were good but who were painfully human, seedy life, the very grit of life, loneliness, despair, spirit, fires in the bellies, justice, injustice, anger, fear, poverty, wealth, beauty, ugliness, faith, sunshine, rain---every human condition imaginable. Without holding back, not giving the voices in my head any slack.  

Hugo also had a quote for authors lifting others up, The delight we inspire in others has this enchanting peculiarity that, far from being diminished like every other reflection, it returns to us more radiant than ever.

Radiant. Yes. So thank you, all of you who understood. And thank you, Joylene Nowell Butler, for that one word. Classics.

I don't know the outcome of what I write. But it will be mine, it will be free of worry, it will be what is in my heart.

I think my time has come to really...write.  

 

 

 

Only the Wind and Your Breaking Heart...

“Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.”

― Kate Braverman


This isn't going to be the first time you've heard me say this. I've talked about it many times which pretty much says it's a huge issue for me. As far as writing goes, that is.

So here goes.

I'm...can't think of a better word...depressed. Frustrated. Heart-breakingly so.

I decided to speak of it out loud because the subject on my mind comes up in various forums and I realize I'm not the only writer who suffers this 'malady' on occasion.

And here's my ugly truth.

I have a dear friend, a fellow author, who happens to be one of the most eloquent yet simple, in-touch-with-the-human-heart writers I've ever met. And I've met a lot of them so that is saying a lot.

I won't mention his name, and I'm not talking behind his back, as he and I have talked about this. The only reason I'm mentioning it publicly is because I saw comments from more than one author on more than one forum who cited that they shy away from reading other authors because it discourages them, and ignites doubt in their own writing abilities. While sad to hear that, I was kind of relieved. That meant I was not the only one, that others suffer this insecurity at times as well.

And, yes, yes, I know. I talk about insecurity an awful lot. Yep. I do. It happens to be, probably, my number one weakness in my writing process.


  I remember one author---who I love dearly---claimed that she had resisted reading certain authors because she was...yes...jealous. I admired her honesty, her bravery in facing her fear. Because, let me tell you, she is not alone. I knew exactly what she meant. The funny thing about it? She, as it happens, is one of the authors I resist reading for that very reason. So there. Go figure. Us writers. What characters we are.

Anyway, back to my gifted author friend. I told him, as humiliating as it was, that I was hesitant to read his book because I'd read such powerful reviews about it. I was scared. Books which promise to blast me with emotion----no, not just angst, killing off characters and torturing them, but deep heart stuff, human stuff.

We're all insecure to a certain extent with our talent. Even when other praise us, when we see good reviews, there's still that speck of doubt deep down. I suspect even the most successful harbor those misgivings at times.

I will at least admit I write fair-to-middlin'. My prose, anyway. Oh, I've got miles to go in the plotting department, boatloads to learn about characterization, dynamics, everything.

But here's the kicker. While trying to pinpoint what I DO feel is lacking, what I DO see in my author friend's work that I feel missing in mine, I came across a quote by Eudora Welty from her book, On Writing, "To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most."

And I realized. That key. Honestly and with all our powers. And I knew, then, that the element missing from my attempts is that seemingly small but oh-so-gigantic all our powers.

You know that that means? ALL our powers? It means writing on all eight cylinders. Letting go. Giving it the gas. Letting it rip, gunning the engine, speeding right through those barriers of fear that keep you from going too far. It means writing fearless. Opening all the windows on that heart of yours.

Some seem to feel letting it go means to superficially shock. And I suppose it could. But, for me, it means losing all my inhibitions about exposing my gut to a reader. Emotion.

And that's where my depression sets in. I see these other authors who have that GIFT---and I consider it is a precious gift---of doing just that. They have this beautiful ability to express what is actually deep inside them. They are fearless in doing so. I admire that, I crave that.

It's not about words, either. I can come up with the words. I've got a warehouse of words, ready to be used to express my deepest soul. But, for some reason, fear of SEEING in that deep dungeon of emotion keeps that warehouse door barred to me.

I don't know what it will take to open that door, to bust off that rusty lock. But I DO know it's going to happen because the prisoners---my innermost thoughts---in that secret place cry out all the time, begging to be set free. All it will take is me.

So the depression, in a way, seems to be able to give way to satisfaction and then exhilleration. Because I DO have the key in my hand.

Who knows? Maybe, if I DO read those authors whose gift I fear, I'll feel something in their fearlnessness that will push me over the edge.

Ray Bradbury said, I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye.

That sort of thinking, those beginnings such as he mentions, might have been one of my biggest obstacles. One WILL be miserable to read other authors in order to emulate their gift. Their gift---the one I seek anyway---is not something that can be copied. Their gift is unique to them but, oddly, available to me as well. Because the truth----MY truth----is beneath MY skin and behind MY eye.

Hot damn. Is that exciting or what? So rev her up, baby. I might not be able to go zero-to-seventy in one gunning of the pedal and be comfortable in sharing my innermost soul through my writing overnight. But I CAN get there. The destination IS within reach.

For me. And for you.

The Adventure of Being Ordinary...

William Gedney, Photographer

“What is the adventure in being ordinary? It is daring to love just for the pleasure of giving it away. It is venturing to give new life and to nurture it to maturity. It is working hard for the pure joy of being tired at the end of the day. It is caring and sharing and giving and loving…” -- Marilyn Thomsen


Negativity's been swirling in the air once more in the m/m society, and I've watched with curiosity and discouragement...but a tiny bit of relief to be only a tiny speck in the big scheme of the genre. For once, I was kind of glad to be a nobody.

I just write. Simple as that. I think I like that simplicity.

Simplicity. Just working hard. Loving my uncomplicated life, loving my stories, loving my small fan-ship, loving...just loving my situation as it is.

Coincidentally, while ruminating on this 'settlement' of life, this old fashioned mental publishment (sorry---heard this word in an old American folk song and wanted a chance to use it) that's come over me, I stumbled on the photographs of American photographer, William Gedney.

While studying them, I ached with the beauty I found in the black-and-white candids of a series on rural life in Kentucky.

The subjects of the photos, their lives, tore my heart because they were so damn beautiful. Excruciatingly gorgeous because of their basic, raw painting of ordinary lives. Ordinary days.

The photo essay brought me back to my own roots. A very simple life where, as in the photo above, menfolk gathered around the cars and either worked on them or gabbed around them or both. And they were happy. So damn unwealthy yet abundantly rich. The kind of rich I long to be.

I almost cried over this photo. That's my idea of a lovely moment, there on that porch. Coffee in hand. Maybe sad, maybe just tired. But somehow so serene.

That hidden world where men might be as good looking or better looking than most movie stars, but no one knows them, has ever heard of them. They're just ordinary...men.

Something about the porch, no shirts, babies and bottles...

I've visited this porch a million times in my mind. I've sat on on much like it at my sister and her husband's fishing camp. Solitude. Warm, gritty, comfortable. The bevy of brothers in the photo...well, what can I say?

Something so ungodly happy about the nothingness of doing...nothing. Just BEING.

I long for those days when I was a child---so very much like the folks in these photos---who found so much pleasure in absolutely nothing. Pitching a tent made out of old sheets between two shrubs, the sweet smell of cotton and warm grass within that cozy shelter. The only thing that could ever draw us kids from that magic make-believe world was our parents' call or the clanging bell of the ice cream truck.

Climbing the tree in the back yard and sitting, hidden in the shelter of its leaves, for hours. Or doing nothing but sitting on the porch. Watching the world as it did nothing either. Reading. Reading and more reading.

No air conditioning, just attic fans that made the window curtains billow like silent, frail ghosts while---one some days---I lay in my bed and did nothing but daydreamed. Listening through the screen of that window to neighborhood kids who were also doing pretty much nothing, only performing their nothingness outdoors.

Oddly, this reverie does sort of connect to my writing life. The beautiful, really beautiful thing about these photos is the absence of the clawing to be anything other than what the subjects are. If their lives aren't up to par with society, they seem totally and blissfully unaware of it.

In reference to an upcoming author/writer convention, a reader blogged that she---quite honestly---did not want to pay money to be in the room with 'nobody' (or was it 'so-so'?) authors. Well, being one of those 'nobodies', that slammed reality in my face. That left me feeling this aching lack of something. This need to try to BE a somebody.

And you want to know something? Had it not been for a reader---for anybody--to scramble us authors around like a handful of jacks in the dirt then arrange us into neat categories, wanted and unwanted---I wouldn't even have been cognisant that I AM pretty much a nobody. Sure, I only have a tiny handful of books to my name, but I thought I was important anyway. I naively thought I fit in somewhere in the big scheme of authorly things. This reader kindly, very politely, informed me I am wrong.

It stung for a while. But, then---once my self-confidence washed away the stark truth---I still came back to who I am, to my heart. And my heart is an author's. I'm glad to say that the reader's proclamation of my invisible status in the writing world cannot change that. Damn it, I'm still proud and I'm still going to write. Because I'm not too bad at it.

I want my career as an author to be the simple, beautiful way of these photographs. To just write and be content and enjoy the loveliness that comes with writing to create, not writing to be popular, not writing to BE something. Since I can't STOP writing, no matter how many bloggers inform me I'm not worthy to share the room with the 'must have' authors, I might as well embrace it and do the best work I can. Not to be popular.

But because it's how I do things.