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Enough – Open Book Blog Hop #188

August 26, 2019 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #188
Why would you, as an author/reader,
abandon (stop reading) someone else’s book?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

I was in my third year of studying for my bachelor’s degree, and enrolled at UAlbany. The class was turn of the century American history, so Teddy and the lot, and I thought it was going to be great. The professor was a talented man who really knew his topic. The problem was never him, nor most of the subject matter. But there was this one book they assigned, which covered the Klan. I promised myself that I would read it, like anything else, through to the end, because I always finish. My premise was that I needed to know what was in the book, at least for testing purposes.

When the test came, it was an essay. I was versed well in this time period and the topics. It was my bag, so to speak, and I got a 95 on the exam. My pride swelled, most especially because I threw the book I was to read across the room, and never took it up again, but to get it out of the way of the vacuum.

What caused such a volatile reaction? My nature is placid, unless pushed (many times). That’s not to say that I allow people to kick me in the shins repeatedly until I am bruised. I have a voice and I don’t allow others to abuse me, so long as I recognize it. In this case, the issue was something not personal. It was my empathy that did not allow for me to continue with that book.

You see, after reading the founder of the klan had less than a third grade education, I couldn’t handle reading a word more. An entire platform, one that has been wielded to justify violence against others in my nation, was based off the lunatic ideology of a dumb as dirt mother f—. Pardon my language, but seriously, this man is responsible for lynchings, murders, rapes, racist law, jim crow, and a slew of other insane race based abuses. My empathy for those this was inflicted upon was whipped up beyond a level of comfort that allowed me to read more.

Could I read more today? I probably could have finished it over the years, taking it in by doses. I have watched and read things that have caused me what felt like PTSD, because I carry it to this day without knowing how to package it up and handle it without pain—like the video of young American soldiers throwing a puppy off a cliff in the middle east. The yelping rings in my head as I type this now. I cried that day, and I cried other days, because what else could I do. I couldn’t save the puppy from the murder it experienced, the casual cruelty. My mind couldn’t wrap around the smiling faces and laughter at what they had just done. And, I couldn’t read another word more about the founder of the Klan because I couldn’t deal, in the moment, with thinking about all the people who have suffered and died because of them, and the utter fear of knowing they were at every level of our society. I felt helpless. I felt sick. I felt outraged.

What do you do with that, other than start working on change? Change takes time, a long, long time. I still cry. I still feel helpless, sick, and outraged. I write on, but the flood keeps coming. Would finishing that book have helped? No. I read enough to refresh my memory and take an A in that course without my grade being affected by the test that came on that book, and that was all I was concerned with at the time. There’s no good I could have done anyone, least of all myself, if I had continued to read it and, who knows.

Just to counter this, I’ll confess that I read The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor despite the PTSD trigger contained in it. The rape scene frightened and alarmed me, called up all sorts of old emotions, and I pushed through. I probably was able to do that because it was something I had learned to engage and disengage long ago. I knew the feelings of fear and violation would pass. I never read it again. Naylor’s work has my utmost respect, because that took bravery to write. Here, I didn’t feel so helpless, even though I was there on the street with Lorraine while it happened. It was brutal. I cried. I hated it. But, I didn’t feel helpless. I felt like I was there to witness another woman’s suffering, and hear my own experiences echoed back. Girl, same. I knew what I had to do here.

The difference is feeling lost and helpless, unable to prevent this horror from occurring again, and knowing it is all too late. Lorraine was fiction (based on reality, but still fiction), while the klan and killing puppies is historical reality. You might say, well Brewster was based on reality, and you bet it was, but when you read a play versus a non-fiction work about human brutality, or a move versus a document…Your mind can compartmentalize better. You package it up. You can deal with it. But, also, I had the experience, and I knew how to deal with it and what worked to ease the trauma of bearing witness.

Can you imagine what those who lived it actually went through? In one case, I don’t know, but in the other I do. I stopped reading because I couldn’t process the fear, disgust, and anger. That was a powerful book. It’s too bad I even erased the author and the book cover from memory, because I would share that with you.

All I can remember is reading that the founder dropped out with a third-grade education, and lying in my bed at my mom’s, then throwing the book in disgust…

Hop on over to the other authors’ responses by clicking on the links below:

Arc De Triomphe – Open Book Blog Hop #187

August 19, 2019 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #187
What does literary success look like to you?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

What an excellent question! This affords me the opportunity to impart some sage advice to my colleagues in the writing field: figure out what success looks like to you as a writer, be specific, and hold onto that image—cultivate it.

Now, let me tell you why your Arc De Triomphe matters, and it matters that you flesh it out completely and reasonably…

If you don’t know your goals, exactly how will you achieve them?

In business, managers set the goals and missions of their organization. Authors can and must do the same, because they’re a business. A lot of us get bogged down in a television/movie idea of writing, or we develop a sense of authorhood from the reader end, and have only a vague idea of what goes into being one. 90% of the fight is learning your craft, but the most important parts to your success, to achieving the Arc De Triomphe, is in the 10% business end.

The best course of action to take is to write your mission and overarching goal. Then, look at that statement and see what the smaller pieces of that puzzle are. Start fleshing out your plan, so you can tick the boxes as you go. Hang onto the write up because you’ll refer back to it with each project. Tweak and modify the plan as needed, but be very clear with yourself what each step is and what completion of those steps looks like to you.

Why is that necessary? Because, like me, you might miss your success. Yes, that can happen. When you plan too far up in the clouds, and have too clear a picture of what that will look like but no in-between check points to usher you forward toward it, you’ll have no idea where you are in the wood, and where you are actually headed.

I’ve published four novels, two of my series, with the final on the way to make a total of five. I published a couple travel articles very early on, just after achieving my Bachelor’s degree. Just before signing with a publishing company, I completed my Master’s program. I’ve extended my network through it all, and gained many readers in the process of getting out there. I’ve expanded my knowledge on marketing and outreach, as well as business management, and continue to do so. Until recently, success wasn’t what I would call all of that. I would have called it busy work done in the meantime. One day, however, I woke up to the reality that I was quite successful, just not at the end goal of my business plan.

You see, success manifests in several forms throughout one’s career or lifetime. It’s not going to be an immediate jump (or moderate amount of time from point a to point b) with no muss or fuss between the start and goal posts. But, absolutely, know what your Arc De Triomphe looks like. When you create a vision, you’ll be able to plan all the steps along the way to get there much more easily.

For instance, my goal is to have a substantial readership of a few million, and to write quality films, either adaptations of my own work or those of others, that will become classics. In order to achieve that, I needed to go to school to learn about literature and writing, and hone my craft. I chose to focus on English and History. Once I graduated, I sought an agent and began to teach myself screenwriting. The agent I obtained did not succeed in getting my work placed, despite interest from Penguin Books and others due to bad timing, so I altered that goal to finding an editor and publishing on my own, which I succeeded in. Shortly thereafter, I wanted to make my film studies official and went back to school. There were many years of wandering between the dates of the degrees, due to the lack of understanding on goal setting, vision planning, and accomplishing the mission.

Don’t be afraid to modify your plans to suit new learning. When we initially set goals, we may not have all the information, but be sure you have as much as you can, because you want to plan smartly. This will reduce the time it takes to achieve your goal, because you won’t be out there searching and struggling. Sometimes you can’t help it, either, because the information isn’t always available to you. When I started out, the internet was still quite young, and the information and networking available was not as easy to access.

Success, for me so far, has been checking off the boxes between here and there. It feels so good to keep moving forward. At times, it feels like I’m still spinning my wheels, but knowing more clearly what I want out of this has helped to focus me, and make me aware of the positive momentum.

Hop to the other author responses by clicking on their links below…

Writersbane – Open Book Blog Hop #186

August 12, 2019 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #186
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

Every part of the process is fraught with its own difficulties. I’ve written before about many of the aspects, and the struggles to be found in each. There are, however, a couple more details that I can speak to, as far as difficulties.

First, there is the writersbane known as the book blurb. It is certainly not as bad as crafting loglines, but it is close, because it is a major step on the way to that summation. Taking your work down to a paragraph, after spending months or, more likely years, is no easy task. Those who are good at it are privileged. If you think you are good at it, then you probably aren’t. That’s one of worst parts about blurb writing (or writing on the whole). Self-doubt is what drives us toward our best writing.

Summarizing each of my books into a pair of short paragraphs has been a struggle every time I embark on the task. When I wrote the blurb for the last in the trilogy, all of the inhibitions released and I satisfied the work with a couple of concise lines. The strange thing was that I didn’t feel anything more need be said. If I did write more, then I risked giving up a lot of information. So there the lines stood.

During my graduate studies in screenwriting, I practiced log-line writing. Of course, writing screenplays helps you to learn crafting on a budget, so to speak. It was great practice for blurb writing.

There is always hiring out, too. If you can swing that in the budget.

Second on my list of difficulties is blogging. Keeping up with the weekly entries is a struggle. This is less often about writing and more about topics on which to write or vlog. The other day, in fact, I mapped out my plan for the Zo Duck series for the next year. That was easy as pie, because it is something I meant to work more on, but also have had a long time on which to think.

I’m grateful to my colleagues on this hop, who I work with to brainstorm topics to keep us going. It has allowed me to reduce the heavy lift to something far more manageable. This is, of course, when there is no book in the queue. The lift in those times becomes quite a feat.

Even when there are topics to write on, there are often times I sit with my fingers on the keyboard and no clue how to begin. The best remedy is to just start a ramble and try to make it go somewhere worthwhile. A lot of great books started out that way, right? if you don’t think so, you’d be wrong. Sometimes dumping all the gunk in your brain onto the page helps clear the path for the story that’s trying to find its way out of you. That doesn’t negate the difficulty to be found. You might get the entire thing written and off to the editor before you remedy the gunk problem.

When I first published Blue Honor, it had a major gunk problem, but I also had a major lack of capital with which to hire a good editor. Putting the book out in the best possible shape I could manage alone was a stepping stone to raising money to complete the project, and other projects, along with carving the real book out of the chunk of gunk in which it was trapped. Thankfully, I got through that period and the book has been freed.

That’s a risky proposition to undertake. There are those who do not empathize with your journey and will be cruel. There are those who mean well but cannot really help you. And, then, there are those who can help you, but you might not be able to reach, either because of a lack of compensation or bad timing.

Essentially, the writersbane I have found is the gunk. Whether it is trying to hone a great, concise book blurb or writing blogs that will connect with readers and not bog them down in unfocused ramblings.

To find out what the other authors struggle with during their artistic processes, click on one of the links below…

3 Doors Down – Open Book Blog Hop #185

August 5, 2019 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #185
What is your writing Kryptonite?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

When I read the question, the song immediately popped into my head. I couldn’t think of another thing. And the irony of that is the band who plays it, and the intertext with my work: 3 Doors Down. Once my series is completed, the books will be clothed in art that depicts three very important doors. Those doors come from recurring dreams I have had since I was a kid. (Sorry, but you’ll have to read the books to understand why they’re so awesome.)

That oh so familiar guitar line at the outset… the drums that come in like a marching cadence…

What really has been the bane of my writing career are the gatekeepers. They’re these people who you have to engage in order to get access to resources, readers, or revenue. For some reason, they are hell bent on stopping writers from getting past the gate of which they have placed themselves in charge. This could be an agent, publicist, advertiser, publisher, other authors, social media, and so on.

Being courteous is something that I was just about born with. I always approach others humbly. Yet, for some reason, I’m often treated as a nuisance or worse by those I have to work with in my writing career, who have the keys to next steps. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why that is. There is the obvious ‘burned-out’ attitude excuse, but I don’t feel satisfied with that, and I will tell you why. I’ve seen other authors do exactly the same things as me, say the same things, and be treated far more respectfully.

This makes moving forward on a project that much harder. There’s a sense of being ostracized from your own artform, being dismissed and disrespected despite one’s credentials. It is a major drag on the juice I need to keep producing my art. My anxiety takes over and I start thinking more about what I have done wrong, what I could do better, or even why do I bother, instead of focusing on creating. It’s a really hard thing to redirect away from.

When I first started out, this didn’t stop me from writing, but it very nearly did. I approach my art differently now—probably, with a more sullen demeanor of f— em if they don’t like it. The counter to it all has come with the growth of the independent market and availability of independent publishing. Not only can I now say f— em if they don’t like it, but I can manifest the soul of that independence by doing the work without those people.

I’ve learned to find my own editors, designers, and artists. It’s hard paying that all up front when you’re not sure what the return will be on the other end. The point, though, is getting your work out despite the gatekeepers. Do not allow them to stop you. In many cases, their attitudes and actions are rendered arbitrarily, as I have found. So take their feedback and sidebars with a grain of salt, unless there’s something they say that backs up something you were thinking to begin with, or the feedback you got was specifically sought and fulfills your needs.

The truth is, agents and publishers, big house editors and so on, we don’t need them anymore. We can do the work without them by utilizing the great resources in the independent industry. It’s our art, and they shouldn’t redesign it to suit market whims. Certainly we need to be cognizant of what is hot and what is dead on arrival, but in the end, art dictates itself. As creatives, we shouldn’t be subject to gatekeepers. They don’t serve us or the consumers of our works. They instead try to starve both.

Take a look at the lyrics of Kryptonite to see the link to what I’m saying. Then, check out the links to other author answers below…

Research – Open Book Blog Hop #184

July 29, 2019 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #184

What kind of research do you do, and how long do
you spend researching before beginning a book?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

The type of research that I do depends upon the type of book or other work that I’m writing. For instance, the research I did for Blue Honor was based on historical records. The research done for a course on poverty and trauma was based on other research by professionals in that area. And, the research I did for Trailokya was multifaceted and strange.

When researching for a historical work like Blue Honor or OP-DEC, the writer has the luxury of documentation, and non-fiction work already done in reams. That is not to say that the same outcomes should be expected, or that the stories take the same turns. No. Blue and OP-DEC are vastly different novels. First of all, Blue relies on the dramatic and makes great use of Victorian novel tradition. Not only was it based in the 1860s, but it was to feel like it was written in that time, too. OP-DEC did have that similar bead to it—the feel and the time stamp, but OP-DEC was a thriller, not a Victorian drama. Likewise, I sunk fictional characters into authentic timelines. Yet, for Blue, I didn’t need to research Film Noir, or figure out the logistics of submarine warfare. Certainly, I did have to research horse soldiers, and the movements of the Army of the Potomac. There was no film to observe, and photographs were limited—rather damaged and poorly rendered, as the artform was relatively new at the time.

Trailokya took a rather different road to incarnation. This drew from real life experiences, including things I learned in my lifetime thus far. It drew from dreams, myths, readings, theology, history, fantasy, and horror. There were some things that I needed to nail down when I sat to write, and things I still wanted to learn, whether they made it into the text or not. I felt this might help flavor the texts properly.

Reading about demons, Astral planes, dream walking, angels, and other mystic lore was something else. I felt, at times, that the writers of the non-fiction tomes I reviewed weren’t all together. Maybe I’m just not ready to go where they went? They went to some strange places though. It was fascinating and it compelled me to write on. What if these things were true, and what would that look like? That was a lot of fun, and I don’t think I had as much fun or freedom with the result as I did in that series.

If you’re interested in research and writing, I did a series on the blog some time ago about all the necessary pieces to it, with a focus on historical fiction. You can apply this to any genre by extrapolating the points. Find that series of articles here.

Now, hop over to the other answers to this question and see what else you can pick up from our hoppers. Click on any of the articles below.