29 Tweets - February 5 - Horse Killer and Dead Dog

Ten was tough: I was branded 'Horse Killer' by angry Gran, and suffered devastating loss of treasured dog Festus: snake-bite.

29 Tweets - February 4 - How to Build a Reader

One bored and whiny 9yr old and one very frustrated mother add up to a summer of reading Shakespeare's Complete Works on a dare.

29 Tweets - February 3 - Choosing a Vocation

At age 7, through the good offices of RL Stevenson, the girl from the high plains discovers what she wants to be: a Pirate!

29 Tweets - February 2 - Discovery of Love for Horses

Riding, almost b4 she could walk, E developed deep communion with equine companions: the hallmark of a blissful childhood.

29 Tweets - February 1 - Birth

JW gave birth to a girl child on the steps of a Wyoming hospital in Feb. An omen: this child only flirted with propriety. #29TweetsProject

29 Tweets - Absurdist, Reductionist Fun!

Today I embark on a shared project on Twitter called 29TweetsProject.

The brainchild of a Scottish friend of mine, it is a challenge to tweet your life story in 29 installments - once daily thru Feb.

Yes, I will be distilling the essence of 49 years into 29 Tweets. It will be interesting to see what the 29 things are that highlight the seasons of my life thus far. Follow the hashtag: #29TweetsProject to read microcosmic views of our macrocosmic lives.

Each day in February, I will post my own tweets here as well.

Who Will Be The Gatekeepers of Self Publishing?

Recently, I have found myself overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of self-published and 'indie' authors in my network clamoring for me to read and review their books. I have had ten requests already this year. Out of the ten, only one book held my interest for more than a couple of paragraphs, and that one lost me before the end of the first chapter.

The culprit? Poor writing. Typos alone could be ignored; unfortunately, what I am seeing is basic mistakes - pronoun confusion, tense switching, extreme use of passive voice, incomplete or confusing description, etc. Many, if not most of these authors are active members of the on-line writing community and I encounter them on Facebook, on Twitter, at Goodreads, on Linked In and here. They all seem like such nice people. They all seem so committed to writing.

Of course, I am not the only one encountering this, and there is a lively discussion happening across the community on how we as writers should approach the problem. Chuck Wendig has a lovely (if profanity filled) blog post on it here.

One thing that Chuck brought up is the fact that so many self-published authors gush over the writing of other 'indies' regardless of the true quality of the writing. There seems to be such a strong feeling of camaraderie and support in the 'indie' community, which is good for authors, but does not truly serve the readers.

I have contributed to this atmosphere by politely saying nothing when given a free book that I subsequently find unreadable. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, so I just say nothing. I am beginning to think that is wrong. As I said in my comment on Chuck's blog post - I need to develop a polite but firm way of calling bad writing, bad. I am beginning to suspect that no response lets authors off the hook. Perhaps no one has told them that their writing is not up to snuff.

After all, my own mother thinks that all the drivel I write is magic. My husband will help me with trouble spots, but in the end knows me so well that his mind fills in blanks left in the story. My writing buddies that haven't yet finished a novel are in awe that I have. My writing buddies that are published have little time to spare.

In the end run, the critical eye is one of the main functions of the so-called 'gatekeepers' of publishing. These are people who don't know you and don't care how long it took you to write the book. They are judging the writing independent of any knowledge of you.

One of the things I think writers who choose to 'indie' or self publish need to do is create their own 'gatekeepers', a group of Beta Readers that can serve as honest reflections of the writing. This means finding people who do not know you, who do not know how long you have labored and who do not care if you succeed, but only whether the writing succeeds.

In the meantime, maybe the rest of us in the writing community need take the gloves off and start being direct and honest with those that have asked our opinion. Here is my version of a 'Thanks but. . . ' reply note:

Dear Aspiring Author:

I greatly appreciate that writing a book is a massive undertaking, and for accepting that challenge, I salute you. However, I do not think this manuscript is the best it can be.

Although I liked: (insert positive things here),

I was unable to read past (the first page) due to: (list of problems here).

I sincerely hope you will not give up on your dream of being an author, but reapply yourself to the craft, working and shaping your prose until you have words worthy of your aspirations.

Remember: “What is written without effort is in generally read without pleasure.” Samuel Johnson

Sincerely, Me

I would love to know what others in this community think.

Rant: Pay Attention to the Subtext

Teach Your Children Well

We are funny beings we humans. We want what is best for our kids, but we can be terribly myopic when it comes to getting it. For example, I am currently couch-surfing with a couple that have an amazing 9yr old daughter. They carefully control what she eats, wears and consumes in an effort to help her grow up healthy and happy. This is good, but where does the myopia come in?

It is in the subtext. What they don't seen to get (what many of us don't seem to get) is that the surface story is only part of the message. The subtext is critical, and studies have shown that subtext actually communicates more to our children than text. If it didn't we would never have invented the phrase 'Do as I say, not as I do!'

When it comes to choosing the TV, films and books your kid is allowed to consume, are you considering the subtext? The strammash last summer over the violence in YA was a case of an adult looking only at the text, and patently ignoring the true message delivered by the subtext. Yes, the Hunger Games is violent, but it is a paean to non-violence. Yes, Cut involves cutting, but the underlying message is self worth. Basic compare and contrast.

So, what got my panties in a bunch this morning? Disney! The haven of G rated shows, the channel you let you kid watch when you are afraid they will be titillated by teenage sex in Glee, or damaged by the violence in Rango, or warped by the language of Roller Skates. The Disney channel is safe, right? It won't warp kids inappropriately. Hah!

Let's examine the subtext in an episode of Disney's Clubhouse I watched this morning next to the aforementioned 9yr old:

This episode, ostensibly about Minnie opening a 'Bow-Tique' contained two stark instances of damaging subtext - there were probably more, but I couldn't decode them while my stomach was churning so violently.

1) Daisy Duck is a blank, a cypher, a foil. Her only purpose is to react to Donald. How that was proven: Daisy dons a 'Mood Bow' that will show her moods by changing color. On the shelf the bow is a transparent grey. On Daisy's head the bow is a transparent grey. In order to get a mood, Daisy must ask Donald to make her angry, sad, happy. As soon as Donald does, the bow changes color. As soon as he stops, the bow goes transparent. At no point in the episode does Daisy's bow change color again. Here is the lesson little girls: you are nothing without a man, and all your moods are subject to his actions. Appalling!

2) When you have a really big problem, use someone. How this was proven: There is this thing, I don't remember what they call it, that stores tools for the characters to use; three tools are revealed and one is a big mystery. The show builds to its contrived climax, and all tools have been used except the mystery tool. The bows are all stuck in a tree, we need a tool that will help us get them down. What is it children, can you guess? Is it a ladder? No! Is it a hook? No! It is a monkey! That's right, a living being, reduced to being a tool. Oh, and it is a monkey - hmmm... what was the derogatory image for a black man in the slave era - that's right a monkey. So get up in that tree little monkey boy and be the tool you are. Here is the lesson kids: Slaves are just tools and we should all use them.

THIS is the subtext that latches into a 9yr old's brain. My young friend's take-away - "I wish I had a monkey to do all my chores." Oh please GOD can we just have some cussing? Or sex talk? These things I can teach - we can talk about appropriateness, time and place, ethics and morals. But the subconscious desire for a slave? How do we as parents combat that?

PARENTS: Please, for the love of GOD, pay attention to the sub-text. Trust me, the work F#@K will not mess up your kids. THIS kind of crap will!

WRITERS: What is your subtext? Maybe the writers of this episode didn't draw the correlation I did with the monkey and past racism, but there is NO EXCUSE for the direct reference to a living being as a tool. Pay attention to what you are saying - that is equally as important as how you say it!

I'm Baaaaack! Because there is a contest...

... I just had to tell you all about!

Brave New Words is giving away not 1, not 2, but MONTHLY 25 page manuscripts critiques!

Go. Now. Get in on this!

To Klout or not to Clout

That is the question in this week's blog post at EddieLouise.Com