Ray doing his one-man Benjamin Franklin show!

WRITING IS LIKE A POTLUCK DINNER

Bill Carl challenged me to chronicle “writing all your novels, advice to budding writers, and encouragement to them.” I imagined a three-volume treatise, but then he added, “no more than 1,000 words.” Time to put on my Forrest Gump (“Life is like a box of chocolates”) hat and share succinct ideas about what it takes to be a writer.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite meals was meatloaf, baked beans, and potato salad. Our church held mid-week potluck dinners, and those items appeared regularly on the buffet. My first epiphany: from the hands of multiple cooks, no two meatloaves, or potato salad, or home-made beans taste alike. Forty years after striving to become a novelist, I find writing is like prepping for a potluck dinner. You’re the chef; concoct a story that works for you.

My journey toward publication began in 1986, when a new job’s travel schedule kept me from auditioning for community theatre. Since I’d always enjoyed mysteries, I embarked on writing one as my new creative outlet. During weekend trips to our local Barnes and Noble, I invested in books to help me navigate the writing process. We amassed an entire bookcase devoted to topics from finding literary agents to understanding poisons. I pored over those books, gleaning information to aid my writing process, while making sense of contradictory advice. These days, that same information is on the internet, in writer’s blogs, or on YouTube videos.

I attended conferences, workshops, seminars, and rubbed elbows with actual authors (including a few famous ones), soaking up as much knowledge as I could to help me be a better writer.

It took a few years (weekends only) to complete my first novel. A tactful fellow writer, upon reading it, advised, “You’ve got that one under your belt. People often find that their second book is better.” Eventually, the more I wrote, rearranged, edited, and tweaked, the more my efforts produced positive results. I’ve been in critique groups since 1997. We give each other “tough love,” sharing our honest assessment of what works and what doesn’t.

In the words of Ben Franklin, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” Just as athletes spend hours training before key contests, becoming an author takes both time and resolve. There are millions of authors producing countless books. Just like that potluck dinner smorgasbord, not every menu item will be to everyone’s taste. If it were, the world would be a boring place.

I’ve been at this craft for thirty-five years. Five Star published my first mystery novel, UNFORGIVING SHADOWS, in 2005. I later became an indie published author and now have sixteen books in two series (Brad Frame mysteries and Ryan Caldwell novels), plus a standalone suspense. Each novel begins with a fresh idea and a blank page.

What follows are tips I’ve learned over the years that I hope you’ll find useful.

1)    Write the book you want to read. Why replicate John Grisham’s potato salad or Mary Higgins Clark’s meatloaf when you know what suits your tastes?

2)    Most writers wish they’d paid more attention during middle-school grammar class. Grab yourself a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk & White and keep a copy of it handy when you write.

3)    Get a good grasp on what “Point of View” means. It will save you a lot of grief down the road. In short, who is recounting your story? Is it in first-person or third? Deep POV? Or is your story in omniscient POV?

4)    Writing a novel is storytelling, and yet we repeatedly hear advice to “show don’t tell.” If you remember actions illuminate character, you’ll understand how to show what you mean (e.g., Instead of “Marie struggled to do the laundry,” try “Marie felt her joints creak when she bent to retrieve the laundry basket and pain shot up her spine as she stood erect.”).

5)    Entertain and keep your readers engaged with the story. Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, reportedly left his office after a day of writing, came to the dinner table, and announced to his family, “You won’t believe what Archie Goodwin just said to Nero Wolfe.” Introducing “the unexpected,” “an element of surprise,” or a “bit of whimsy” into a scene can hold the reader's interest as much as a gunshot.

6)    Write to be understood. Book lovers want to know where they are (time and place) and who they are listening to. When using pronouns, make sure the reader can distinguish the person to whom they refer.

7)    Don’t get bogged down by writing process issues. Whether you write at 5 in the morning or between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. doesn’t really matter. There’s no ideal number of words you “must” put on the page each day. “Write every day” is BS. There’s nothing wrong with taking time out. I often find that a story percolates in my mind when I’m not typing words into a computer. In short, do what works for YOU.

8)    Correct spelling, punctuation, format, etc. are easy to get right, and these days there are computer tools to assist. Proof your story. Read it aloud. There’s even a feature on Microsoft Word that will read to you.

9)    Writing may seem like a solitary endeavor, but we all need help—whether working on book #1 or #17. Join writers’ organizations. Become part of a critique group. Ask beta readers to look at your completed novel and freely share their thoughts. Probe what they liked or didn’t, as well as unanswered questions they might have about your story or what confused them.

10)  Above all, have fun. Remember, this is your potato salad, I mean book. When you hit a roadblock, take a deep breath, smile, and place those fingers back on the keyboard.

You can read more about my novels at www.rayflynt.com. I’m always happy to converse with new writers, especially in the mystery/suspense genre. Email me at: ray@rayflynt.com

Mike Farris

Write Your Music

Peter Abelard wrote, “Against the disease of writing one must make special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.” 

Dangerous?  Writing?  Surely you jest.  Heck, it’s not even hard, much less dangerous.  You just pick up a pen or pencil, or sit at the computer, and put words down on paper or screen.  That’s all there is to it, isn’t there?  See?  Easy.

Do you ever get that from your friends or family?  You know, the ones who just don’t want to hear it when you talk about how hard it is to write, or how much trouble you’re having with your latest project. After all, it’s not like it’s really work, is it?  They would probably agree with Russell Baker in his autobiographical work Growing Up, where he wrote: “The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.”

I suspect Russell Baker, himself, was quickly disabused of that notion the first time he actually wrote, instead of just thought about writing.  No, we more likely share the notion that Gene Fowler was talking about when he said, “Writing is easy.  All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Or that of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote that “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”

“Ohhh,” your friends say. “You’re talking about good writing, not just writing.”

Well, duh!  And that’s one of the things that separates us as writers from the great unwashed masses – when we say “writing,” it’s synonymous with good writing.  We don’t really need the qualifier.

And we all know that good writing doesn’t come easy. It may come easier to some than to others, but that’s not the same thing as coming easy.  As Alexander Pope said, “The ease in writing comes from art, not chance.”  Along those same lines, John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, wrote, “Of all those arts in which the wise excel, nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.”

Yeah, writing – good writing, is hard.  It’s part storytelling, part putting words on paper.  I’m not sure which is the hardest – coming up with the storyline, the characters, the dialogue, and the plot twists, or manipulating the English language to create a sensory experience for your reader.  But I do know this: Both are essential. Because what’s your end goal?

Anthony Trollope said, “Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.”

But I like this from Hemingway better: All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good, the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and places and how the weather was.  If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

I guess what it really all boils down to is this simple question: Why do you write in the first place?  Good question, huh?  After all, there are not many things in life that are more frustrating.  Trying to find just the right words to give your sentences a punch. Trying to find just the right traits to give your characters depth and make them jump off the page.  Trying to shape the right attitudes to make your dialogue crackle.

It can’t merely be to indulge your ego.  Before it’s all over, you’ll find that your ego has never taken such a pummeling.  And it can’t be for fame and fortune – those elude most writers.

So why do you write? I heard one writer – a screenwriter – once answer the question this way: “I think we write because we’re all damaged in some way.”

Maybe there’s something to that – I don’t know.  Maybe there’s something deep down inside of us that we need to expunge.  As Hemingway described one of his characters in Winner Take Nothing, “If he wrote it, he could get rid of it.  He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.”

But I like to think it’s more than that. Maybe it’s a need to immortalize one’s self.  Listen to this from Benjamin Franklin:

If you would not be forgotten,

As soon as you are dead and rotten,

Either write things worth reading,

Or do things worth the writing.

Or maybe you write simply because you have something to say.  Because make no mistake about it, when you write, you are saying something, even though it may be in a make-believe world from the lips of a make believe character.  When you write, you leave a little of yourself behind.  Thomas Carlyle said, “In every man’s writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.”

Now that’s something worth thinking about.  So maybe the answer to the question of why you write lies in what you write.

Here’s my advice to you: WRITE YOUR MUSIC.

                Emerson said, “Most people die with their music still inside them.”  If that’s true, then how sad.

                A number of years ago, I attended the funeral of a family friend for whom Emerson’s statement was decidedly not true.  Only sixty-one years young, for her the music had been literal.  A beautiful woman, she had been first runner-up for Miss Texas in the early 1960s.  She was an incredibly talented musician, both in voice and piano.  Her music will be missed – but remembered.  As her daughter said, “The angels in heaven had to step aside anytime my mother opened her mouth to sing.”

                How about you?  Is your music still inside?  Have you even found your music?  It’s there, you know.  Inside each one of us, our own unique, special music.  Some distinctive chord that not only stirs our souls, but that has the power to touch other lives. 

What is your music? 

What is it that makes you laugh –

Makes you cry –

Swells your heart with pride –

Humbles your heart with compassion?

What moves you?

What causes the angels in heaven to step aside for you? 

Whatever it is, that’s your music.  It’s inside all of us.  Buried a little deeper in some, perhaps, but there nonetheless. 

So why is it that, for so many of us, the music remains inside?  Many, I’m sure, have not yet discovered their music.  And for many others fortunate enough to have discovered it, the tragedy lies in their not knowing how to express it. 

Or, worse yet, fearing to express it.  Afraid of ridicule, or embarrassment.  Afraid of offending someone. Afraid of not being politically correct.  No wonder Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

As writers, you have the gift by which to share your music – you write!  You tell stories imbued with your music.  Stories that fill others with meaning and hope in their lives of quiet desperation.

Think about it: Every time you put words on a page, you have a chance to let your music out.  There’s nothing wrong with writing good, commercial material, but don’t do so at the expense of what really means something to you.  Don’t waste your talents on the meaningless.  As Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

I am reminded of the words of the old gospel song; some might say it’s a children’s song: “This little light of mine; I’m gonna let it shine.” 

Your music is your light – let it shine. Never let it be said that you died with your music still inside.

To quote Sir Philip Sidney, “Fool!” said my muse to me. “Look in thy heart and write.”

Vera Stasny

https://authorverastasny.com/

TO ASPIRING POETS

 Dear Writer- in -Waiting

 I never set out to create a poem, let alone write a book!

And I certainly was not expecting nor willing to share it.

 I never set out to let anyone know my inner most thoughts.

 I never even kept a diary because I didn’t want to reveal anything personal.

 Then I began to write.

I wrote to survive my vulnerability and my mortality.

 I wrote because a friend said I should keep a journal to find relief.

 I wrote because I couldn’t sleep.

 I wrote because I had to.

My book follows no rules.

It disturbs, it pokes, it scratches at hidden emotions that I would have preferred to ignore…

 I stepped beyond my own fear of being heard, of being witnessed.  My dear friend (whom I affectionately call my earth guide) said that it would be selfish of me not to share…that my words might help another soul.

 When I re-read what I wrote I have no idea that those are my words, but they are.

 I feel freer now that I have been exposed.

 I have created a legacy.

So, I encourage you to take your own turn to write and to share what is inside you, what is waiting to come forth, what is percolating…

 Step beyond your shame, your reluctance, your insecurities, your “not good enough” saboteur.

 Give voice to what is lodged in your being.

 Let the words come out, spilling, tumbling, unedited.

 Release what stops you, what constrains you…

and allow your words to materialize.

 Unedited -

to free yourself, to reveal yourself.

My words are not your words.

My stories are not your stories.

 Find your own words through your own stories and your own experiences.

 Tell it your way.

And mostly don’t judge.

 Will you write your own words and create your own legacy?

 It is in the sharing that we touch each other’s hearts.

 It is in the sharing that we become more vibrant.

Write it, paint it, sing it, play it,

I look forward to you sharing your creation…

Vera 

https://authorverastasny.com/

Donald K. McKim

Grace in the Writing Life

I have always lived a writing life. Not exclusively. I’ve never had to depend on writing alone to make a living. I have always written; but written in the context of other activities: being a pastor, seminary dean and Professor of Theology in Presbyterian seminaries, and as an executive editor for theology for Westminster John Knox Press and editor for church curriculum. My writings have been for academic and for general audiences. They have been in the area of religion—particularly, Christian theology and Christian faith. I have written/edited over 60+ books within the confines of “religious publishing.”

            My experiences have helped me see and participate in writing from the perspectives of a writer/author and of working for a publishing company where I sought authors for books that were appropriate for the publisher’s mission and audiences. These dimensions have enriched my overall perspectives on writing and publishing. They have led to some insights which may be helpful for those embarking on their own publishing lives.

Begin with a Proposal. Publishers deal with book proposals. Most publisher’s websites have Book Proposal Forms which indicate what publishers want to see in order to evaluate ideas for books. Become familiar with the kinds of questions typically asked and develop responses that are appropriate for your proposal. The advantage of dealing with proposals is that they give publishers an overview of a project in short compass. If there is interest, the publisher may ask for more materials—beyond the “sample chapter” that publishers usually require. For the author, the advantage of the proposal is that one is forced to think through the main elements of the book, its market, and other details. If there is interest, publishers may suggest revisions—in a number of ways. It is much easier to accommodate these before the manuscript is written, rather than with a completed manuscript. So, work hard on a good proposal.

Congruence is Key. I always say “the trick in publishing is congruence.” Congruence is the convergence between what the author wants to write and what the publisher thinks it can sell. All publishers have “audiences” or “markets” toward which their books are oriented. These are the groups publishers trust (hope!) will buy their books. In choosing a publisher to whom to submit a proposal—research the types of books they publish and get a sense of their targeted audiences. This will save months of waiting to hear the fate of your proposal, only to be told the proposal “does not fit our publishing program.” I tell budding authors that “With apologies to the Evangelist, ‘In the beginning was the market’” (see John 1:1; New Testament).

Keep Writing. It would sound like advice from The Reader’s Digest to say that persistence at writing is really important. But it’s true! Writing is hard work. As Dorothy Parker, famously said: “I hate writing. I love having written.” Others have shared that sentiment. Different types of writing take different methods or forms to produce. A poet may not have to do the same kind of research required for technical, academic writing. But whatever methods you employ, there is no substitute for persistently turning to writing, day by day—and working at it. Sometimes we’ll say about writing: “I will strike when the iron is hot—when I am inspired to write.” A better maxim is: “Strike until the iron is hot—keep writing and writing.” Persistence alone is no guarantee of “success”—whatever that may be! But without the persistence, the chances of “success” are drastically diminished. My teacher, Jack Rogers, used to say: “Scholarship is like digging a ditch. It’s one shovelful at a time.” You don’t have to be brilliant to write a book. You just have to have a “strong back”—and keep at it

Keep Encouraged! Discouragement is part of the writing life. Turn-down on book proposals or projects, criticisms of one’s writings, long weeks of just waiting for a publisher’s response. These are all ingredients for discouragement. But believe in yourself. Believe in your interests and the importance of what you are doing. When you write from your passions—whatever they are; you can keep the flame of encouragement alight. Annie Dillard advised: “Publication is not a gauge of excellence. This is harder to learn than anything about publishing, and very important.” Publication is a writer’s goal. But on the way to that goal, don’t give up! Keep trying to find a publisher. I always note that it only takes “one match” to have a project published. I have found that when a project is turned down by one publisher, it can lead to submitting to other publishers and—in the end—if a “match” emerges you may well find, as I have, that the latter publisher was actually a better “result” than earlier ones would have been! This relates to the “congruence” mentioned above. Another way to put it is: “Rejection means Redirection.” The “redirection” may turn out to be the “best direction” after all…! So keep encouraged.

As a Christian theologian in the Presbyterian tradition, I take a “providential” view of publishing. I entrust all my writing to God’s gracious purposes. When I write a published piece, I entrust its “effects” to God’s work—in bringing people to read the piece—and in their reactions to it. I have written what I have written. What happens with the piece after it is published—is not my work; its “effects” belong to others. And, I would say, they belong to God. I write because of my “vocation,” my sense of “calling,” to write theology and provide theological resources. I am not brilliant. I usually try to make resources available in new ways. My most satisfying cover endorsement was from a scholar who said of my books: “Why did no one think of writing it before.” It was the idea, the concept which made the book.

My writing life is all of God’s grace!

Donald K. McKim

Audrey D. Thompson

Writing Against the Grain

“Around the preposition ‘at’ on Grammar Street,” that’s what my godmother would say whenever I’d ask a question and put “at” at the end – Where do you live at? Where should I put my bags at? Her refrain, while funny to me as a kid, was a constant reminder of how my own words can unwittingly betray me. It’s ironic that I’ve become a writer, making my living by “properly” putting words together and teaching others to do the same. Although, being trained in rhetoric, with a repertoire of skills to navigate just about any given rhetorical situation, I am still trying to find my way around those prepositions and still struggling to ask the right questions the right way. There’s much more at stake now on Grammar Street, and yet the more I understand the rules of grammar the more necessary it is to break them.  

It would take years of studying African American history and learning about the “politics of respectability” to understand why it was so important to my godmother that I learn where to place prepositions in a sentence. Misplacing the preposition “at” could not only signify that I was stupid or poorly educated, but, even worse, unworthy of respect. My grammatical errors were political and, much to my godmother’s chagrin, could be used (as they so often have been in the past) to justify relegating all blacks to an inferior status. Over the years, my laughter at her rejoinder turned to shame and then into a paralyzing fear of the thought that others might suffer because I was dumb. Ever since, I’ve thought that the only remedy against this kind of socio-political muteness was to master the mechanics of the English language – to learn all the comma rules, proper capitalization, subject-verb agreement, how to avoid split infinitives, correct dangling modifiers, etc. I learned enough “to pass,” and, in the same way that blacks who could pass as white gained access to certain sectors of American society denied to those who couldn’t, my learning to write and speak well opened many doors. I had become respectable but didn’t recognize my own voice.

Not until I read the writing of another Audrey was I able to catch a glimpse of something that sounded like the fearless, inquisitive girl I once knew myself to be. In her words: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The subversion expressed in this sentiment is encapsulated by Audre Lorde’s intentional misspelling our old English first name. For me, dropping the letter -y begged the homonymic question: Why? Why had I invested so much time and energy into mastering the tools of the English language, only to lose the confidence to use them to make room for my own voice? With Lorde and my other literary mentors, I am constantly reminded that such willful resistance to behaving properly, such disregard for putting things in their proper place is characteristic of little black girls. Alice Walker calls it acting “womanish” and rebukes our being miseducated to deem this behavior a sign of disrespect. bell hooks, who also intentionally used her name to dismantle the hold of the master’s language on her voice, inspired me to think of transgression as a practice of freedom.

Whether or not their acts of defiance are enough to dismantle the master’s house, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and bell hooks represent the writer’s ability to imagine other ways of being when Grammar Street leads to a dead end or writer’s block. Their “alternative routes” around notions that grammatical correctness can signify anything about a person’s inherent worth are the signposts I’ve used to find my way home. Yet, in following their directions, I have also discovered that writing against the grain comes at a cost. For me, this has meant fewer publications and more than a few unpublished masterpieces, either because I intentionally resist writing about subjects that are more likely to get published, or I actively pursue them in transgressive ways that are less likely to be accepted. If, however, writing is to serve a higher purpose that lifts every voice (including mine), then I must be willing to pay the price and take the courage to write freely so that whoever reads me hears “me” and can see exactly where I’m at.

Elizabeth Ann Lawless

Elizabeth Ann Lawless is a 5x Amazon Best-Selling author with 112 Straight #1 Amazon Best-Sellers for clients. She writes about creativity, publishing, multicultural Western history, and spirituality. This creative, serial entrepreneur, speaker, and livestream/podcast host mentors creatives who want to publish for leverage or legacy; while also sharing the rarely and untold stories of multicultural contributions of the American Wild West. The Livestreams for both shows 5 pm CST Tuesdays @AuthorAdventure and 5 pm CST Thursdays @WildWestDiversity and can be found weekly on YouTube, Linkedin and Facebook or you can follow either show on multiple social media platforms.

          Liz (or LawlessLiz) as she is known, has actually been in the book business since 1972 when her mother opened a Christian Bookstore so she saw the retail side of publishing growing up. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Speech and a Masters of Liberal Arts she wondered if she could write creatively. Taking a Creative Writing class with her mother for fun she expanded her creativity and wrote her first children’s book which the instructor recommended she send to traditional publishers (that was the only option then –– no Internet).

          In 1988, after 47 rejections from traditional publishers, Liz put her dream of book publishing away and jumped feet first into creative entrepreneurship establishing an advertising agency in Dallas, Texas. A question from a client in 1992 resurrected her publishing dream, “You have a children’s book don’t you?” Well she had a manuscript not a book but what she had by then was an artist, a printer and cash-flow from her advertising agency. So she self-published and sold her first 100 copies and became a published author with “Creative Monster.” Today she is the author of 15 self-published books and counting. In 2013, a request from a friend caused her to shift from creative advertising services to helping people publish. One friend was taken advantage of drastically by a Vanity Publisher and another friend needed help becoming a #1 Amazon Best-Selling author (Liz’s first #1 for a client).

          Since then Liz has engaged in partner publishing (an author shared cost business model) where she has provided writing masterminds, editing, design, layout, production, formatting hardback, paperback and eBook, uploading to multiple platforms, book launches, publishing masterminds, ongoing marketing, media, event and distribution support. When clients work with Liz they get access to her 100,000 hours of publishing mastery. 

          Now in 2022, she is easing out of the day to day production work with clients to focus on her own writing projects and to provide Free or minimal cost education and information through Author Adventure and Wild West Diversity Livestreams, Podcast and eNewsletters. She also offers Virtual and Live Author Adventure Bookcamp Workshops on a quarterly basis.  She can be reached at lizbookcatalyst@gmail.com.  You can sign up for her daily motivational 1 Creative Action by texting 737-510-2788.

 15 Frequently Asked Questions

Here are 15 of the most frequently asked questions I have heard over the years related to book writing and publishing. As mentioned, most writers are already curious and have asked a certain number of questions at least in their own minds if not openly.

If you are not comfortable asking questions, I would recommend that you put that on your to-do list and work on it every day even if you just ask one small question. It doesn’t have to be related to publishing; you just want to build your verbal muscle and move from discomfort to a feeling of comfort.

   1.    How can I overcome my fears about book writing, publishing, and marketing?

   2.    How do I get started writing?

   3.    What should I write about?

   4.    What if I don’t know much about the topic I want to write about?

   5.    Where can I gather more information about my topic?

   6.    When is the best time of day to write?

   7.    What else do I need to include in my manuscript?

   8.    Why do I need an editor?

   9.    Where can I find a publisher?

   10.  How do I get my book to #1 on Amazon?

   11.  What are an ISBN and Barcode and why do I need them?

   12.  When should I start marketing my book?

   13.  Why do I need an author website?

   14.  How much does it cost to write (publish) a book?

   15.  Where can I get all my questions answered?

Learning to ask better questions is a skill all of us need to continue to polish no matter our vocation. For an expanded version and the answers to the 15 Questions visit www.LizLawless.com and put in your email then choose NONE for the free version or if you want to invest the cost of a meal or more you can choose the monthly, annual or my founders membership. 

There is a year’s worth of articles at that website along with the “15 Questions Potential or Published Authors SHOULD Be Asking” because many times we don’t even know the questions we should be asking. Even vintage authors need to remain curious and open to asking better questions.

If you have a question about any aspect of book publishing please email me at lizbookcatalyst@gmail.com or follow me on any social media platform and message or post a comment.

Good luck on your author journey.

Creatively,

Author Liz Lawless

L.A. Starks

Why Write? A Story from the Trenches

For LeConte Publishing website

By L. A. Starks, author of the Lynn Dayton thriller series

 When Bill Carl invited me to write about creativity, I was elated and despairing. Elated at reprising satisfaction I’ve gained from writing thrillers for publication by small publishers, being recognized with writing and professional awards, and most of all, connecting with so many readers. Despairing because each person is differently motivated. Providing useful generalizations is a challenge.

Writing is hard. Writing well is harder. Writing well and getting commercially published—particularly in print--is far rarer than it should be.

So, with that warning—why did I write? Why should you?

Introduce yourself and your books. L. A. Starks. I write the Lynn Dayton energy thriller series—three books so far and I’m working on the fourth. They’re global energy thrillers with strong mystery subplots.

*13 Days, The Pythagoras Conspiracy, Lynn Dayton Thriller #1

*Strike Price, Lynn Dayton Thriller #2

*The Second Law, Lynn Dayton Thriller #3

*work in progress, Lynn Dayton Thriller #4

Growing up in a small town in northern Oklahoma with supportive parents, I gained the inspiration to try anything, learn anything. Much has been written about the limitlessness of the Great Plains, and yes, it was a blue sky I saw and felt every day. It was there I first realized I could pursue the two different tracks that interested me so much: engineering and fiction writing.

Ultimately, I learned the two careers are not oppositional but complementary: in both I am constantly judging, working with, and writing about risk. Engineering and writing share traits of exactness unto OCD (numbers and words) and megalomania. (Megalomania=I can figure out how to fix anything; I can figure out how to write anything.)

In this small town, my global sense developed by meeting scientists and engineers from around the world—Poland, Japan, or Belgium. Developing a global sense helped me understand the world, useful for writing thrillers. Energy is an international business; thrillers are written with an international perspective.

So, from this small town, I learned I could try anything. The can-do/will-do positive attitude of engineers and small towns is reflected in my books.

Why do I write? I’m first a reader. Authors are my rock stars.

And the simple non-explanation: I write because I must. We yearn to communicate.

I wanted to portray realistic characters seldom found in fiction, from Native American businesspeople to engineers from all backgrounds to brilliant high-tech computer scientists from India. Thrillers, with an overlay of mystery and suspense, are the genres in which I create these characters.

The global energy business features high-action, high-power (wars), high-touch, high-drama, high-stakes, high-dollar (trillions), and high cultural-conflict scenarios, all of which drive thriller plots.

Take cultural conflict, for example. Places limn stories of the people who live there. From my days selling (invisible, odorless) natural gas, I learned about customers by traveling to see them, be it winters in the Iowa farm belt, steel foundries in Pennsylvania, clay companies in the red hills of Georgia, or gargantuan Gulf Coast chemical plants. Energy is important to everyone everywhere. So, I literally have considerable latitude in my choice of settings. Any ocean or country you name, I can set scenes there.

What inspired me to write this particular series? The real-world energy business is full of fascinating people, and I didn’t see them represented in fiction except as one-dimensional, stereotypical villains. Yet energy is the hidden, massive factor in all we do, from buying truck-farm lettuce to traveling cross-country by airplane to keeping premature babies alive by powering hospitals.

I was convinced that stories needed to be told. No one else was telling them.

Indeed, because I am thinking about conflict and risks—what can go wrong--what I write can be predictive, prescient. At times I feel like Cassandra.

Real-life stories behind your books? With my training and experience in engineering and finance, I inhabit the world of my books. I am familiar with its risks. The risks are not just the trillion-dollar global stakes but more importantly, how lives of millions or billions of people can be impacted by just a few wrong moves. Risks can be as small as being trapped on a narrow walkway inside a barred-from-the-outside cooling tower or as massive as a deadly ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) explosion.

Example of your motivation to finish and push through to publication?

One example, critically, is STRIKE PRICE, Lynn Dayton Thriller #2. This book is dedicated to the memory of my younger sister, who died from metastatic breast cancer. I stopped writing for about two years to spend time with her. After her death, it was difficult to resume writing. I pushed through to completion precisely because I’d promised myself this was her book.

 In the first book in the series, 13 DAYS: THE PYTHAGORAS CONSPIRACY, there was a character my sister felt deserved a different fate. Naturally, I took that into account when I wrote STRIKE PRICE.  

YOUR WRITING AND CREATIVITY

First Principles Find the ways in which you best communicate and create—the ways most satisfying to you and most meaningful and easily understood by others. This can be making videos, singing, recording podcasts, composing music, taking photos, painting, sculpting, dancing, or writing, to name a few examples.

An author’s or creator’s first obligation is to herself or himself—to get the words down, the sketch drawn, the vision planned, the score composed.

Your second obligation as a creator is to your readers, viewers, listeners. This is where training, mentoring, and editing come in. You need the second set of eyes, the third pair of ears.

I cannot count the revisions I made to my first book, 13 DAYS: THE PYTHAGORAS CONSPIRACY. (Although to be fair, this is partly because without an outline, I wrote too many wayward tangents. Writing with or without an outline is a choice all authors make. I have since changed my approach.)

Yet it was critical that others, first readers and editors, read this and my subsequent books. Editing is part of the process. First readers are like audience samples—an alert first reader catches many issues an author simply can’t. Conversely, yet as importantly, an experienced professional editor has read many books like yours. She or he understands what you are trying to say and helps you say it more clearly and meaningfully.

Dealing with creative block? The best spur is a deadline. The best environment is a quiet space with as little internet connectivity as possible.

Every parent has the skills?  Anyone who’s raised children has enough experience to write thrillers. Having children, especially small children, means you’re always thinking about what can go wrong or when your kids are older, their narrow escapes.

Similarly, Plot Keys: Emotion. (“Emotion” sounds obvious, but remember I’m joined at the hip with my engineering training). Family. I paraphrase- a famous author said, “all great stories are about family.”

Write what you know? Sure. But second, write about what you don’t know yet find interesting. Third, write about what you THINK you know—you’ll find far more depth than you initially imagined. For example, in writing STRIKE PRICE I knew the Cherokee Nation was significant in Oklahoma history, culture, politics, and business with far more agency and power than most realize, but even I didn’t know the tribe’s budget was $3.5 billion.

Another creativity trick: Turn off the negative meta-voices. Agents and publishers are in the rejection business and reject books for all kinds of reasons. It is especially important to separate story and writing quality (and marketability) factors from a given publisher’s political platform. For example, the “bad oil/good renewables” myth (in fact, all energy is equally dirty and equally good) is monolithic in publishing—even fiction! Early on, an agent told me I could only get commercially published by making monsters of all my characters, which both contradicted my experience and would have made boring reading. For a long list of reasons—especially because most of the people on the globe suffer energy poverty—my expertise informs my books differently from this agent’s view.

Edit for reader interest: In early drafts, it’s vital I like what I am writing. During revisions, translating characters, plot, and storyline flow to appeal to readers is key. I use dialect, jargon, and foreign phrases as approaches to give characters personality and scenes credibility. However, as much fun as coded tech words are, I only want to add context and color. I don’t want to pull readers out of the story.

What about those edited-out wayward tangents? Keep them on file somewhere else. They may not fit your current work but they can become stories or characters in your next.

Tell us two secrets from one of your books. Doppelgangers. A doppelganger is “an apparition of double of a living person.” As it turns out, I have a doppelganger for whom I am occasionally mistaken. There are two sets of doppelgangers in THE SECOND LAW. I didn’t want actual twins, but instead two somewhat-similar people who take different paths.

The second secret is (yes) bacon can be used as a weapon.

 L. A. Starks’ thrillers are available through Amazon (print and Kindle), Barnes & Noble (print), and independent bookstores (print).

YouTube 1-minute videos and buy links:

13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy – L.A. Starks Books (lastarksbooks.com)

Strike Price – L.A. Starks Books (lastarksbooks.com)

The Second Law – L.A. Starks Books (lastarksbooks.com)

Website, including free newsletter signup: L.A. Starks Books – the author of the Lynn Dayton thriller series (lastarksbooks.com)

Gordon Lindsey

Writing Poetry: A Personal Postscript

 It is notoriously difficult to define what constitutes poetry. Many poets and academics have tried. William Wordsworth, for example, defined it as impassioned expression of emotion. Wallace Stevens described it as a revelation in words by means of the words. And T.S. Eliot thought poetry was marked by intensity of feeling and gravity of import.

            I have tended to gravitate to more provocative answers. One comes from the French poet, Paul Valery. He said, A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words. Of course, this definition begs for another. What is a poetic state of mind? That may be just as hard to define as poetry itself.

            Maybe it is just sensible to admit that we cannot define an art whose effect on us exceeds any rationality. Emily Dickinson did just that. She once wrote a friend:

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

            As a poet who considers himself still something of a neophyte in the art, I would be foolish to hazard a suggestion. But through my limited experience in writing poetry, I have come to two convictions that govern my own practice.

The Challenge of Craftsmanship

As an art, poetry works in the medium of words, spoken and written. The poet must master the skills of working with words. They are skills that can only be learned by constant practice and critique from more experienced practitioners. So, the first rule I have learned in mastering the craft of poetry is write, then write more, day in and day out. Make your writing a hard-to-break discipline.

            When I practice that discipline, I sense myself becoming progressively more liberated. But if I take an extended break from writing, I find that when I try to resume writing again, it is a painful slog. My imaginative muscles have become atrophied. It takes real effort to get fit again. Many great writers report this practice. They set aside in each day a time to write. They abide by that schedule religiously. It matters not what they accomplish that day. The important thing is that they are at their desk writing at their set hours.

            Many people assume that the craftsmanship of poetry consists in writing fluent meter and rhyme. Both characterize most of English poetry written before the 20th century. Modern poets, however, tend to drift away from them in part because they find them too artificial and in part because they find them too constricting.

            I find it helpful, however, as a student to write in these old traditional forms. Learning to express poetic thoughts using meter and rhyme without losing the tone of natural speech is not easy. Here Robert Frost serves as my tutor. He did it exceptionally well. When I write in traditional forms, I am trying to develop my skill in writing poetry as patterned speech.

            I use the word speech deliberately. Poetry did not emerge in human history first and foremost as a written art. Its origins are rooted in oral speech. Homer’s epics, for example, did not emerge in an indoor study. They arose as oral recitations that bards sang or chanted at warrior banquets and other public occasions. The power of the words was to be found in large part in the effects created by oral speech.

            The craftsmanship of a poet can be measured to some degree by the effectiveness of his or her linking of sound and meaning. One who did that well was Alfred Tennyson. In his poem The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls Tennyson writes these lines:

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

To pronounce the words blow and bugle, one must actually explode a puff of air. This puff of air reflects in a way the blast of a trumpet. The word dying in pronunciation has a sharp refining sound followed by a dying away effect, much like an echo fading among the hills.

            Learning to become comfortable with the musical quality of words is why I continue to explore some of the old historic forms of poetry that involve meter and rhyme, as well as alliteration, assonance, and parallel structure. Parallel structure was the basic rhythmic core of all ancient Near Eastern poetry. The most obvious specimen is Psalm 119 in the Hebrew Bible. Its 176 lines of parallel thoughts play a multitude of variations on the theme of the surpassing value of the Law of the Lord.

Parallel structure is very significant for modern poetry as it offers one of the most fruitful rhythmic devices in free verse. It creates that somewhat hypnotic quality I sometimes experience when I read the poetry of Walt Whitman. As I experiment with these old tools, I hope that I am building up my poetic muscles so that I can write more robustly when I choose to depart from them. The bulk of my work is in free verse, but I hope it has been strengthened through my forays into more traditional forms.

            Another important tool a new poet must master is the use of figurative language, especially similes, metaphors, and personifications. It is here where I think poets move from mere craftsmen into artists, for it is metaphor in particular that transforms verse into art. Art communicates the immaterial through the material, whether that be through paint, stone, or the images evoked by words.

            Thus imagination, which links the two, is the highest gift a poet can enjoy. It shatters the frosted glasses through which he or she views the world and enables the poet to see a unity in experience that was not seen before. This leads me to speculate. Does the poet when she seizes on her metaphors actually brush against something metaphysical? Scientists are increasingly illuminating the cosmos as a finely wrought network. All is tied together from small atoms to gigantic galaxies, including the worlds of spirit. When we create our metaphors, are we possibly joining hands with God in the task of cosmic integration?  

            A student of poetry has said, A poem is not an elaboration, but a condensation. Puzzling as it may seem, this is the implication of the word metaphor. The metaphor is not be used to express a thought in a more florid, exotic style, but to communicate a thought through comparison and linkage.

            The metaphor implies that the meaning cannot be fully communicated except in reference to the metaphor. This is why it is impossible to adequately express the thought of a poem in a prose summary. Francis Thompson communicated the searching love of God for human beings through the metaphor of a blood hound chasing its prey. To express the thought without the metaphor plunders the poem of the richness of its meaning.

            Immature poets often assume that ineffable emotion is most effectively communicated by metaphors drawn from mystical, exotic settings like Coleridge’s palace of Xanadu or by passionate, fractured emotional phrases. Imagery is most artistic and effective when it is drawn from concrete experiences in time and space. Marianne Moore has written that real poets are literalists of the imagination, creating imaginary gardens with real toads in them.

            One notes this effect in these lines from Sir John Suckling describing a shy bride:

Her feet beneath her petticoat,

Like little mice, stole in and out,

As if they fear’d the light.

His simile draws upon the image of real live mice, concrete images from experience.

The metaphor is more penetrating if it draws upon the sensory experience relatively common to both the poet and his or her listeners/readers. This is the source of another common rule among poets. We are told to show our listeners/readers through our descriptions, not tell them. Rather than tell us a woman is ravishingly beautiful, describe her attractive features. Then let the listeners or readers to draw the conclusion. We leave space for them to complete our thought rather than our completing it for them. When we do, poetry becomes a collaborative art, in which both the poet and the listeners/readers have a role.      

The Challenge of Authentic Expression

 I opened this essay saying that writing good poetry presents two challenges to the poet. One is the challenge of masterful craftsmanship. Now I want to turn to the second: the challenge of the poem’s content or message. Certainly the power of a poem is communicated by the poem’s craftsmanship–how the poet expresses his thought–but equally, if not more, importantly the power of the poet’s message is found in what the poet is saying. The poet Babette Deutsch once expressed this distinction by writing, The distinguishing feature of verse is its formal aspect, that of poetry is its imaginative power.

            Some poems are forgettable because what the poem is expressing is so conventional. We’ve heard it all before. There is nothing that bites and sinks its teeth into our consciousness, then does not release its hold after we put the poem down. We consume it like cotton candy.

            We have trouble letting go of other poems because the poem surprises us, delights us, startles us, troubles us, soothes us, charms us, stirs us to action, causes us to ponder, causes us to laugh, moves us to lament, snags us in its ambiguity. Often such poems take universal experiences and expresses them in words of such power that we feel we look at life with new eyes. They feel authentic to life as we live it.

            There is value, as I argued above, for the poet to imitate the verse forms of other poets. That is how a poet can hone his or her craftmanship. But the personal voice coming through the poem seldom sounds authentic. Poetry’s power is tied in some inextricable way to the poet being his or her authentic self, speaking with a voice as unique as one’s fingerprint.

            I also want to call attention to the values of ambiguity in a poem. Sometimes the ambiguity arises from lazy writing. The poet has not thought out deeply what she is feeling or is employing sloppy grammar and syntax. Other times the poet creates confusion by being pretentious. But real human experience involves a lot of ambiguity, especially when it comes to our feelings. None of us purely love, but then none of us purely hate. We experience multiple feelings tumbling one after another. A poem can preserve that authentic ambiguity.

This poses a particular challenge to anyone who writes religious poetry, as I frequently do. T.S. Eliot noted this challenge in writing about the 17th century poet George Herbert, who wrote exclusively religious poetry. He said:

The great danger, for the poet who would write religious verse, is that of setting down what he would like to feel rather than be faithful to the expression of what he really feels. Of such pious insincerity Herbert was never guilty.

Eliot’s observation carries a real sting for a poet like me.

            Let me say one last thing on the challenge of content. We are often seduced by the idea that the most universal truths must be expressed in the most general and abstract propositions. We sift out the particularities of individual experience or happenings in an effort to say something that will apply to all, regardless of all the features that make up individual identities. But poems that take that approach always bore me. They feel lifeless.

Paradoxically I find that it is when we are most our particular selves and tell our most particular stories that we stand the best chance of approaching universality. That’s why I think stories fascinate and captivate people far more than philosophical discourses or scientific monographs. Christian theology, for example, holds that it is not in the tomes of theology, but in the birth of a particular baby in a Palestinian manager that the divine enters our world. Let a poet, therefore, choose his details carefully, describe them vividly, eschewing abstractions. When she does, she will link our spirits to our senses and bodies. The poem will then lead us through the door of particularity into the realm of the universal.  

 – Gordon Lindsey

Michael Shields

First off, I would like to thank William Carl for the invitation to be a mentor, alongside an assemblage of diverse, inspiring, and extremely talented writers, at LeConte Publishing. It is an honor. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael Shields and I am the Editor in Chief at Across The Margin, a role I have been lucky enough to embrace for eleven years. I can only assume that this introductory statement stimulates curiosity from many readers, and compels one to ponder: What is Across The Margin? Simply put, Across the Margin is an online Arts & Culture magazine, publishing company, and media group. Within the “pages'' of the website can be found an eclectic mix of fiction, criticism, essays, satire, and poetry whose aim is to explore the current state of the world around us, and the depths of our human nature. In the eleven years since Across the Margin's inception, I have had the distinct privilege of working with thousands of authors of varying experience and talent levels, and it is a thrill and gift in each and every case. With each passing year, I grow increasingly grateful to those that trust me and my team with their art, their passions, their poems, and their stories. I intimately understand the bravery it takes to hand over a piece of work that you have poured your everything into. But that bravery is just what I emphatically recommend as someone who has labored on both sides of things, as a writer and editor. It has been my experience that trusting and working with others in writing opens the doors to possibilities that one might not come upon alone. Allow me to elaborate. 

What I find so beautiful, and I am so appreciative of, is that I have learned as much (or more!) through working with writers as they have learned from me. Through having the opportunity to wade into their musings and analyze their stylistic approaches, I have grown. Through the discussions I have shared with writers about their approach, their mindset, and aims of their work, I have grown. An editor-writer (or writer-writer, whatever works for your) relationship can truly be a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. The trick of course is to find that writer or editor you are comfortable working with —  not such an easy task I know. But I do urge you to make the effort, to take the leap. With writing, you will often find yourself accompanied by little but a luminous computer screen before you, but in the end you don’t have to go it alone. There is help out there, this mentor’s listing is proof of that. 

I have had the fortunate opportunity to learn from well-established authors that I interview for Across The Margin : The Podcast. I cherish these conversations, ones where I inquire about process and technique. The nuggets of knowledge I walk away with are awe-inspiring. But these advantageous offerings are not for my ears alone. The sage minds and writers who we are lucky enough to share the planet with are out there sharing their wisdom in spades. Seek it out, and soak it in. 

You would think a “mentor” would be offering advice rather than talking about learning, but that there is the key I believe. Stay curious. Always keep learning. Be less precious with your work. Be vulnerable. Ask for help. Trust your editors and fellow authors. Writing can be and is a team sport, and the more you give over to the collaboration, and to the advice, and to the help and kindness of others, the better your work will be. And you might just have an outstanding time and experience collaborating with like minds.

Michael Shields

Editor in Chief, Across the Margin / ATM Publishing

Host, Across The Margin: The Podcast (Osiris Media)

Host, Welcome To The Party Pal (Osiris Media)

acrossthemargin.com

mikeshields13@gmail.com

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