Who Am I?

Welcome, all! You’re just in time for the monthly (1^st Wednesday) on-line gathering of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, where you’ll find helpful tips, handy resources, the latest trends in publishing, and a comfortable place for hundreds of writers – just like you and I – to  share our writing journeys! 

Feel free to meander and mingle. Our gracious co-hosts this month are:

Diane Burton, Kim Lajevardi, Sylvia Ney, Sarah Foster, Jennifer Hawes, and Madeline Mora-Summonte!

In a recent newsletter, Sci-Fi author and IWSG founder: Alex Cavanaugh, shared a cautionary post on the subject of writers voicing opinions on controversial issues and the possible effects of doing so while hoping the world will still love and buy your books. Having witnessed (along with the rest of the world) the devastating consequences of controversy, I agree with Alex on avoiding it altogether.

However, I do have one question: should the same precautions be taken with regard to a memoir? Do you dare tell generations to come that you always hated the holiday ham (not to be confused with Uncle Whoever) or that it was, in fact, Uncle Whoever who burned down the barn that fateful summer night? Of course, if you’ve been chronicling your life all along you have essentially recorded history; yours as you knew it. In attempting to write my own, and ghostwriting for others, I find there are contemporary constraints in recording life in retrospect. Should there really be an issue?

Of Quotable Note:

“Wherever I go, I’m watching” ~ Richard Scarry; renowned children’s book author and illustrator would be 100 years old today!  “You spell dessert with two “s”es cuz together they look like whipped cream!”  I still have a few of those Little Golden Books around the house. How about you?

“Girl in the wind blowing wide open the closed doors of my life,” ~ Christy Brown Irish author and painter whose autobiography was made into the Academy Award-winning film “My Left Foot.” He would be 87 years old today!

Optional IWSG Question: “Of all the genres you read and write, which is your favorite to write in?”

That thankfully brief, and sometimes painful period in life; so often referred to as “coming of age” when one day a stranger stares back at you in the mirror. Parents won’t ever admit that this is the real ‘Stranger Danger’ they were afraid of (ha!), and you won’t admit you’re more afraid than they are. So, you soar headlong into the realm of uncertainty, through failing grades and heartaches, dust-ups and break-outs, learning to swim on a bicycle, until the day you recognize that face in the mirror as having been yours all along, you’d just been away for a time – absorbed in self-discovery.

Fun fact:

Editor Bennett Cerf challenged Dr. Seuss to write a story using no more than 50 different words. The result was: “Green Eggs and Ham”

Happy Writing!

IWSG - Writing for Impact

“All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are”
― Niall Williams, History of the Rain

Happy February all! And best wishes for International Expect Success Month’. Now is as good a time as any for me to concentrate on National Time Management Month ;- and I expect I will -  just as soon as I take part in this first Wednesday of the month, when IWSG members convene through blogging, Facebook and Twitter to talk about whatever is on our writing minds and agendas. See what we’re all talking about here.

The optional question of the month “How has writing affected your reading?” is interesting to me since I spoke of nearly the same thing last year at this time. It’s amazing how magnified the view is, only one year later. Oh, I still read for the joy of it, even as I watch for grammatical errors (grin). When I realized I was also watching (or waiting) for impact, it occurred to me that it wasn’t just for my enjoyment, but how I hope to be enjoyed. Through brooding skies and silent tears, and nails bitten down to the quick, we must have our sun-buttered mornings to ward off the devil’s stick – with impact.

Do you remember the first book you just had to own? (For me it was “Miss Lollipop’s Lion”) Do you remember where you read it first? Chances are it was at your school or local Library, where nearly all great titles are shared at almost no charge. Small wonder there are ‘Starving Writers’, right? But consider this, according to statistics shown in a recent study by Codex Group, only a third of books consumed actually generate revenue for authors and publishers alike, whereas reader word-of-mouth increases awareness (and sales) – for free! Will yours be the next book everyone talks about?

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.” — Philip Pullman

Where There are Dreams

Where there are dreams, there is magic! And today it seems to be happening right here, as Audrey Mei graces us with a visit along her Diverse Historical Fiction Blog Tour for her fantastic new novel

Available on Amazon

About the Book:
Revolution rages in 20th-century China, a rusting container ship sails the world for two decades, and a tiny fairy is frustrated in a northern harbor town. “Trixi Pudong and the Greater World” is a family saga with a magical twist, spanning Shanghai’s Golden Age to Hamburg, Germany, 2015. It is a tale of four generations of a Chinese family, torn between their deepest dreams and loyalties.

Check out her awesome trailer:

Say hello to Audrey!

Audrey Mei was born in Oakland, CA, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area before studying cello and biological psychology/pre-med in Boston (New England Conservatory of Music/Tufts University). Following graduation, she received a Fulbright Grant for graduate studies in cello performance at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. Since 2006, Audrey has been dedicated to writing prose and poetry and has been published in Gangway Literary Magazine and Glimmer Train among others, as well as participating for several years in the Berlin English language literary scene.

The Anatomy of Productive Inspiration

Thank you Diedre for hosting me on my blog tour! 

My pleasure, Audrey! I know you've been really busy.

This week, I've posted about why I wrote my novel Trixi Pudong and the Greater World on Lidy Wilks' blog, and on Quanie Miller's blog about the secret to writing a page-turner that moves forward. Today I'm writing about Inspiration, how I use Inspiration as a concrete tool in my writing.

I'm one of those authors that writes backward -- to create something that moves forward. My inspiration comes from knowing where my book ends. And how the chapter ends, and how the paragraph ends.

But how do I find a good point of inspiration to work towards? Well, you know that feeling when you see a movie or read a book and that profound moment comes where you think, "This is great"? 

Like the scene at the end of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation where Bill Murray jumps out of the taxi in Tokyo to bid one final goodbye to Scarlett Johansson on a busy sidewalk. He whispers something unknown into her ear, but exactly what he says isn't important anymore; the moment is pure intimacy.

Or the scene in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's film The Lives of Others, where the Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler is wearing surveillance headphones in a drab East Berlin attic, spying on his enemy, but instead hearing a beautiful Beethoven Sonata from the apartment below. The moment is infused with Wiesler's tacit longing to be loved himself.

I try to capture this feeling -- what is it exactly, a feeling of emotional Quality? -- and I try to put together elements that will build this feeling. There's a point where I get obsessed with this inspiration and I can't let go. I start working backwards, filling in the story that sets up and prepares this moment. It's a true meditation and it takes concentration.

I didn't discover this process intentionally. It was more my obsession with powerful emotions that move an audience. But then when I finished the first manuscript for Trixi Pudong, and one of my hardest writing critics (a self-described Asberger personality) responded, "I actually cried a few tears when I got to the part where Trixi [spoiler information]. How did you do that, Ms. Mei?!" 

Then I realized that with enough focus and discipline in adhering to the rules of good writing, the emotional state while we are writing can be transmitted through little black-and-white words on the page.

What is your experience in using Inspiration while you write?