Rebirth of the Blog!

Okay, okay, I'm supposed to be a writer (I've written 10 published books after all), and that means I'm supposed to do this blog thing. But I honestly don't know what to blog about. For a time, I tried to do this as a "Writing Tips, Tricks, and Tactics" blog because I was told that would generate followers. Except there is one problem: I don't have any tips, tricks, or tactics for you. Lots of other writers have those -- all over the internet. Everywhere. Just Google it. Enjoy.

This blog is going to have to be something other than that.

If I were a famous writer, people would follow this blog just to see what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, why I'm doing it, and so forth. As you may have noticed, I am not famous.

So I may post samples of my writing here -- old or new -- and I may share links to other sites that I think are worthwhile for writers to see. This blog, as noted above, will be "mostly about writing because I have other blogs for other things."

Follow this blog.
If you dare. 

#amwriting

Why Do You Write?

As writers, we get up close and personal with a lot of rules, a lot of DON'Ts, words to avoid, parts of speech to avoid, and so forth. We are told that our work is more likely to be rejected by editors and agents if we violate the "rules."

I just finished reading about 75 entries in a competition called Letters About Literature. For this competition, students in grades 4 through 12 are given the following instructions:

"Select a fiction or nonfiction book, a short story, poem, essay or speech (sorry, no song lyrics) you have read and about which you have strong feelings. Explore those feelings and why you reacted the way you did during or after reading the author’s work. . . Write a personal letter to an author, explaining how his or her work affected you."

In this blog entry I am going to share a little bit from various letters to various authors. My purpose is to show my fellow writers what matters most to the young people reading their work. Not one letter thanked an author for using active voice instead of passive. Nobody said he was inspired by the minimal use of adverbs. Not a single student wrote "Thank you for showing, not telling."

Here is what some of the letters said:

This book... made me feel more comfortable about myself, that maybe there really isn't anything wrong with me. It also showed me that a world where I can be accepted does exist.

Your book taught me that some people will forever be a part of us.

This book made me want to help the young teenagers that get bullied many times throughout their life.

Your poem has pushed me to become the best person I can be, not becoming someone else.

I was searching in those books for a real explanation of my emotions and fears. I at least wanted someone who understood how I felt, so confused.

I will shoot for the stars and beyond because you've taught me no matter how rough things get you can achieve anything.

Reading your book has changed my viewpoint of the world. It's as if someone has lifted a great storm cloud away from my eyes, and now I can see.

I now know that I need to cherish my childhood. I realize that having intuitiveness and a great imagination is very important in life, and that I don't have to let myself be judged.

Your book has given me an immense appreciation for human emotions, teaching me how we need to accept all of it in order to be truly happy, instead of selecting what we choose to feel.

One could argue that these books would not have had such an impact on readers if the author had written largely in passive voice, used a lot of adverbs, and relied primarily on "telling" rather than "showing." That may be the case. I don't recommend rejecting "the rules" out of hand. But it seems obvious to me from reading these Letters About Literature that young people bond with characters who reach out and touch them and stories that stay with them long after they close the book.

Mechanics and techniques have their place, but only when we write from the heart does our work have the potential to change lives for the better.

The Alfred Owle Experience

Time for a little cross-blog promotion! Many of you know that I have been making jewelry and selling it on eBay and Etsy. I have a blog called Jewelry by Scotti. One of my latest pieces of homemade jewelry is the Alfred Owl Necklace (at left).

What does this have to do with writing? Prepare to be amazed (or bored or troubled).

"Alfred Owl" is a name that came from a distant time in my youth. My father took my brother and me to a professional baseball game in St. Louis. It was an exciting experience for us (we were fairly young, maybe ages 10 and 13?) We actually got to see Willie Mays play.

Anyway, all during the game, we kept hearing a vendor shout what sounded to us like: "Get your Alfred Owl buttons right here!" We kept looking at each other. Alfred Owl buttons? What's that? It became a joke between us. We never did find out what the vendor was really saying. There was no baseball player or anyone named Alfred Owl.

As a teenager, I wrote a long, very strange poem called "The Alfred Owle Experience." I am sharing it below. In those days, I just loved to play with words and plunk them down in the midst of things without worrying about how much sense they made together.

Many of my poems contained a "secret message." In this case, just take the first letter of the third word in each line (before you get to "All these are The Experience"). If you read the first letter of the third word in each line from top to bottom, you will see the message.

The Alfred Owle Experience

To be tangible -- in an imaginary, theoretical existence.
To be hollow -- where once there endured the pulsation of life.
To be eternal -- and part of an expansion that wavers but never runs its course.

To be wistful -- sighing at the futility of another endeavor.
To be obdurate -- belligerent in defense of total injustice.
To be romantic -- sentimental and genial, but only at twilight.
To be destined -- and yet without comprehension of a goal.

To be impoverished -- lacking even a sympathetic glance from an itinerant breeze.
To be sagacious -- aware of all eventualities except extinction.

To be loyal -- but betrayed by the subconscious dream.
To be obscure -- yet master of every indigo, emerald, amethyst, scarlet hue of the rainbow.
To be valiant -- even before the sedulous derision of acute grief.
To be enchanted -- possessed by a laughing leprechan of cognac.

All these are The Experience. The Now. The Creation.

But who

Is Alfred Owle?

Do you see the "secret message"? If you read the first letter of the third word in each line from top to bottom, you will see: the word is love. (This was the 1960s after all.)