A Passage From the Haunted Pen…

Here is a reality people do not seem to understand. When writing from one perspective,  one only reaches THAT targeted audience. Whether the subject be the universe, money, politics, whatever…People have their own reality and that is what they will base their judgments of any writing on. It’s the same way when it comes to life, politics, etc…People base their judgments on their own life experiences and it is not fair to condemn them based on those experiences. Everything in life is about perspective and people need to get it through their heads that not everyone will agree with what their perception of the world around them is. It is like viewing the same car accident from 2 different angles. People will see it happening slightly differently every time.

While perspective has to do with art, and how the artist sees it, and perception is about how one interprets something, both fall hand in hand when it comes to writing and/or life experiences. The writer puts the pen to paper and shares his/her interpretation of what is being discussed. It is the audience perception that determines the effectiveness of a writer’s words–and audience members will perceive the same lines differently each time!

Writers will be often misinterpreted, misunderstood and even at times maligned for the words they choose to put to paper. It comes with the territory.  They will also be maligned and such for their own personal views regardless of what they are. That is why I said in an earlier post, there is no need for anyone to have to justify what their opinions are or why they have them  to anyone else.  They are what they are. No writer, artist, actor or whatever is obligated to say, “I feel this way because I…” to anyone, be it a reporter or an armchair expert.  It is not like anyone would be able to change the mind of the author anyway.

My number one rule is as a writer, I will never try to justify what characters represent, why plot lines are written as they are and/or why I do not concern myself with being politically or socially correct when it comes to them.   That does not matter. What matters is being that they represent something from my own life’s perspective, the real question should be “Why reveal them in the way I chose to?”  That is something I have yet to see asked of any writer.  Much of the time they have been asked to justify why they have their characters say or do certain things.  That is the part the reader gets to figure out. I use them to point the direction in solving the entire puzzle. I certainly won’t divulge it in my notes either. It is easy to get lost in the real purpose if one gets hung up on the attitudes/actions of one or two characters.

Why read a book and then ask such a question about it anyway? All characters can be used to drive home several points within the same plot, I believe–as long as a writer does not write a long, drawn out work that is as confusing as Cubist art can be…Yes, it’s about PERCEPTION and Cubist art confounds me and amazes me at the same time.

 

Now you KNOW why it confuses me.

What I will say is that the characters, to me are real. They have a life of their own and they haunt me, and when they do, they come out through the pen.  They can fend for themselves once out there on the page. All I do is play God and bring them to life and/or kill them off when they’ve finally incurred my eternal wrath.

 

Less is More…

I am moving away by choice. I am moving closer to my work and taking my faithful friend–BUDDY with me. Buddy is my dog that I’ve had for almost 14 years & wasn’t about to part with him. He still thinks he’s about five, too… 😉  I’m going to have to part with a lot of stuff because it is a small place, but I will have my privacy.  I will also finally be able to sit back and do a lot of thinking–and actually be able to cook.  However, fear not!  I test my food before I let anyone else have it. If I can get around a kitchen without blowing it up, it is a miracle totally equal to the immaculate conception!

My books, dvds, jewelry and a few other things are going with me.  However I do have to part with some things to get smaller things–like my TV and stand. They are too big to fit. Other than that, I have several things I will NOT part with that are smaller, and if no one comes to stay in the other bedroom, that is going to be my writing/computer room., but I’m sure Buddy is going to claim a corner to crash in!  He always does!

I also look forward to living alone again.  I actually look forward to being able to watch my Banshee dvd’s and such, which should arrive in July or the first part of August.  I’ll have to change the order up to get it shipped to where I’m going.  I’ll probably have them shipped to my workplace. I am going to get the poster and T-Shirt too. I love shows with good acting and logical plots–and despite the nickname of the Cinemax channel, this show has those things.

The only main drawback is that I will not get to see my grand kids as much.  They are moving in the opposite direction.  However, I hope they come to Midland to visit once in a while.   I would  lay down my life for my boys or the grand kids in a heartbeat. However, I always love a quiet evening sitting outside in a lawn chair,  where the only sounds I hear are the wind, the birds and the occasional roar of thunder before I have to go back inside.

I also love the sound of rain hitting a tin roof, and the sight of the stars and the full moon–which I’ll also be able to enjoy.  These are some of the things people take for granted.  For me, it will be almost like a return to known territory–almost like a sanctuary, which I need so, so badly right now.

I will have a quiet place of my own so that I can get back to writing as well.  I need that type of space to work on “Centuries Under the Moon” anyway.   I really like the idea of having a female lead, with a female perspective on the modern world–despite the fact she died well over 200 years prior…

Anyway, have a great night.

Nana is on a Rant! ***HATERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***!

I have to be brutally honest here.  It is shameful when any writer uses their forum to abuse a child. PERIOD. I don’t care what the person’s credentials are or anything of the like. If I can tell they are writing in an irresponsible way, they will be called out on the carpet for it. I’ll be the first to do it because they make those of us who take our craft seriously look bad and we all get lumped into the same category after time has passed…

I cannot stand it when writers bully a child in the media, write an article on a movie or series they obviously did not watch all the way though, critique a musician’s album when they obviously only listened to one track, etc…These are not writers or journalists, they are bullies and armchair experts who don’t know what they are talking about. It’s that simple, and if they have a degree–shame on them.  They just made their own college look VERY bad when they do this garbage.  The reality is, a lot of them ignore what they were taught once they have the degree in their hand.

We saw this type of bullying when Gabrielle Douglas was attacked for her faith when she won the gold medal at the Olympics in London.  They also criticized her looks this week rather than praised her for her accomplishments.  Shame on those so-called reporters who brought it up. I lost respect for several of them.

They often mistake opinion for truth, diatribes for journalism and perception for reality–if they are not deliberately distorting it to suit their own purposes.

That being said, the negative commentary made about Gabrielle Douglas by these so-called “adults” is nothing more than cyber-bullying in my book. They have attacked a 16-year-old child for her faith, her hair, her looks and anything else they can think of to take the spotlight off what she accomplished in London.  The people that write such tripe also put down soldiers, honest people who work to make change in society and they play armchair expert on almost any subject known to man.  One can’t argue too much with them. They think they know everything. All one can do is when they find the place where they have distorted the truth, use their own words on them and make them eat that article for lunch.

I don’t care if someone worships Allah, Vishnu, God, the Great Spirit, little green men from Mars or whatever–there is never any reason on Earth to attack one’s faith, looks or their person, rather than focus on their achievements.  Anyone who has nothing better to do than launch personal attacks on someone has wasted this reader’s time.

I’ve called these so-called writers on the carpet for their tripe many times and will not stop doing it as long as such irresponsible writers abound…I don’t care if it is a so-called movie critic that didn’t watch the film or series past the first few minutes (or the first episode), a music critic that OBVIOUSLY only listened to ONE track on an album and then judged the entire thing, OR the mere bully who wants to attack a person who has achieved much simply because they don’t have what it takes to get out from behind their keyboard and make a difference themselves.  There are obvious ways to see who these people are. I learned to spot them years ago. They are a shame to the craft.  I may not be perfect at what I do, but that is what my friends are for and they see my writing LONG before  put it out there.

I feel better now…I shall now leave to go see the little man:

and he ALWAYS brightens my day!

And to all the haters,  racists and such out there–KISS MY FANNY!

To Younger and New Writers: A Cruel Blow and How It Helped Shape My Own Writing…

I find it great that my sons now view me as tough, fair–and unwavering.  I had realistic expectations of them, but I always let them be the individuals that they are and they later thanked me for that.  I vowed never to try to mold my kids into an image that was me and not them.  I grew up in a strict home and individuality was frowned upon to a degree, but I do not think my parents realized that this is what was going on. As I got older, they realized that I thought differently and had different ideas of how the world works, and then they started to listen to me more.  As my writing took on its Frankenstein existence, they definitely began to respect me more after that.  I am sure that I was born at the perfect time on this planet because had I been born, let’s say, 20 years earlier, I probably would have been given a lobotomy for my thoughts alone after being subjected to many rulers and whippings by teachers in front of a classroom for my free-thinking attitude.  My free thinking, as said earlier, always got me in a jam…I am never one to conform to anyone’s ideals of what they think I should be.  No writer should ever get locked into a box from which they can never escape.

However,  my younger son’s  father wanted me to profit from it and I refused.  It led to many fights because he would sneak into my notebooks so I stopped writing until we were divorced.  The final nail for that taking place was when one of my sons and I heard the man tell my best friend that he never loved me from day one.  Cruel isn’t it?  My son felt that he couldn’t love his own children if he couldn’t love their mother and it led to a lot of emotional wreckage which shaped my other stuff.  Some of my notebooks were stolen before and I didn’t want it out there because I write primarily for my satisfaction.  What looks like notes on here at times may very well come directly from my notes, but the ideas behind them work.

I write what I see happening.  It’s almost like watching a movie and it works for me.  It is the one thing that I never allowed anyone to take over or wrestle from my mental grasp.  It became a wonderful way to escape into other worlds I created and a way to punish those who did me harm.  In short, in those worlds I create, I am God.   There is something empowering about having the power of life and death in a pen–but there are times when writing off a good character has it’s purpose as well, so no…I don’t simply use it to kill off bullies and negative boneheads.

Some of my characters are actually what I refer to as closet exhibitionists for the simple reason that they would love to just say “Damn the torpedoes! Screw this! I’ve had it!” and then just let the other characters that tick them off have it!  However they don’t because they fear the unknown–the result.  Some never go into professions they wanted and are held back while others follow their gut instinct and are well rewarded later for it–maybe not in the way they anticipated, but they are rewarded.

However there is a reality that some people don’t seem to be able to envision simply  because they are too close to the soul of the issue…The rainbow….That is right…The rainbow.  In reflecting on my life and how all the events in it shaped me–my parents divorce, the wives Dad had that I knew of, and my grandparent’s influence, I did realize that at the end of this place a rainbow is present…When we see that rainbow, that is when  we finally believe that there is a purpose in all things and forms as well as in life itself.  It is also the point in which we realize in this life that it is not what you take with you, but what you leave behind that truly matters because like the ripples in a pond, those waves keep travelling–only that becomes your legacy.  It travels forever and others can learn from it, but the genealogy begins within your own voice–and emanates from YOUR own pen.  Two people got me to writing again.  I think they know who they are. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do in the process.

I have grown to understand that I do not have to please everyone, and for you younger writer’s you simply need to grasp that you do not have to either.  Your writing comes from your soul…When you write faster than a dust devil in a hot sandstorm in the Mojave Desert that is stretching its arms out and  throwing cacti specimens around at everything in its path, this is the point at which your blood is boiling as you bring your characters, your plots and your backgrounds into a three-dimensional realm.  Your paper is your canvas for this chaos and that’s what you should use it for. Show the world YOUR picture as you bring your creatures to life and move them through their plots.  When you let your imagination run wild, a pen is now a wand and you are creating your own magic too…

That rainbow has many colors–but the only one visible is what others who read your work see, unless they have that gift of seeing between those lines and into the souls of your characters…If you have done a good enough job of creating those life forms from the nothingness of the universe, then you have created a rainbow of many colors for them…Sometimes it is better to see with the heart than with the eyes anyway–and they will see all those colors if you make these characters real, feeling beings..

Now for those of you with a normal upbringing and existence that want to write nice things with happy endings, disregard this post because you can’t allow that dust devil to come through…It can be an angel, a beloved pet, Bugs Bunny or whatever but unless you’ve had to deal with more drama than what TNT offers, it is hard to write from that perspective…Again, WRITE FROM your own perspective and nobody else’s. You’ll be less likely to get ulcers that way.  And you also might lead someone else to their own rainbow through your pen a lot quicker.