Cathartic Writing

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I'm easing into writing tonight. It's writing group night and I'm actually at writing group and eating my chicken ceaser salad avec French bagget. While I've made it to a few over the last couple months, I don't think I've actually written at one, unless it was marketing stuff for the photography business. Getting back to writing after long gaps is always difficult but I'm finding it a bit easier this time around.

I think that's because I eased myself into it with fluff pieces. Well, they weren't really fluff per se, rather they had no purpose other than relieving stress. You see, my perception of part of my world, the real world, has been flipped on it's head. Actually, it has sort of been dropped on its head. That has left me . . . cranky.

I found myself wishing I could do whatever I wanted. If only I had demi-god status and could manipulate the whole of the space time continuum. Then I realized that I could. All I had to do was sit down and write.

Because what I was writing was for me and me alone, I could not only do whatever I wanted but I could write however I wanted. Typos, stumbles, bumbles, not setting things up, jumping around to whatever I wanted to write rather than trying to keep things contiguous. It was great. I even found myself thinking silly things like, “If I go to bed early I can get up before the little one and do some writing.”

If you find yourself in the same spot, if you've been hibernating all winter like I have, then you might want to give the cathartic writing a shot. Have a character who just so happens to be built just like you, with the same hair color, same mannerisms, same . . . everything, walk into work and give the boss what for. Have them orchestrate the demise of that annoying cheerleader in the next row over. I wouldn't suggest keeping names the same, and I definitely wouldn't do anything way over the edge just in case something does happen to your characters FOIL and the cops find your little story. But definitely have fun with it. I think that if you do, you'll realize why you were writing in the first place and get back on the path you were on before all the rules knocked you off of it.

Now, I have to try and steer that forward momentum towards one of my WIPs. So, here I go. I'm going to find a picture to put up with this post and then navigate away.

Your Writing Secret Santa

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Who Keeps You Going?

“My wife.” “My family.” “The Crit Nazis.” “An angry little voice inside my head named Sergio Velasquez of Pompedore.” These are common answers to the title question. And we often give thanks to these people around this time of the year. I know that Sergio was very happy that I mentioned him over Thanksgiving dinner prayer. But I also think that there are other people in our lives that deserve thanks for keeping us going and we don't often acknowledge them.

I'm not about to chastise you about service members or the Red Cross or something like that. I'm talking about people who don't even intend to help you out. They're just being themselves and for some reason that's all it takes. Something about their presence in your life, no matter how small, helps your inner voice to sing, “What I do really does matter.”

For my wife it would be the one in a hundred former student that chimes in on Facebook to say, “I used to love it when you'd read to us. That was my favorite time of class.” For you it's someone different, maybe a waiter at your favorite restaurant that knows your order by heart. Could be that manager in another department that makes sure to stop and tell you what a good job she thinks you're doing.

For the past few weeks my unknown motivators have been a couple of high school students. We'll call them David and Heather. Back when I was just about to let this entire blog thing die altogether, my wife stopped to ask me about it.

“So what's going on with the blog?”

“Eh, I'm not worried about it. If I feel inspired I might post something, but at this point I'm pretty much burnt out.”

She gave me that sad look as though she was witnessing a dream die in front of her. “That's too bad. My students asked me about it the other day.”

I looked up from my laptop. “Your students? Why would they ask you about it?”

“Some of them enjoy reading it and they wanted to know why you hadn't been on in a while.”

A few days later I took our son into school with me so that my wife could take pictures of a play. Heather happened to be in it, and Aiden loved Heather. He'd run across the stage to where she was standing on the ground below and jump off into her arms only to have me follow him all the way around to guide him up the stairs and then do it all over again.

At one point, while the little guy was distracted, she mentioned that she enjoyed reading what I put up here and said that she missed my posts.  

Honestly, that was all that it took. A couple of inquiries from David and Heather was all that I needed to get that little voice inside my head to sing again.

So here's a great big thank you to you guys for sticking with me. I think that everyone reading this should go out an thank their secret inspiration, that person or persons who keep you going without their knowing it. Tis the season after all.   

You Are Beautiful

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Here's another writerly thought from the vacation of television viewing. On one of the days we were in Denver over break (what? I didn't tell you we went to Denver? Well of course I didn't. Do you know how many loonies are out there waiting for a public broadcast about when a person is not going to be home for an extended period of time? Sheesh.) my sister-in-law had a marathon of some fashion show on. It was some makeover show where two totally obnoxious people, a gay guy and a fashionista, makeover a woman and throw out all of her clothes while they make fun of her for not dressing like they do. It's really rather disgusting.  

During one of the episodes my brother chimed in with how he thought that all of them women were unattractive. His reasoning was that just about every one of them cried during their makeover and that to him was an ugly thing. He likes strong women who are sure of themselves and don't need clothing to feel important or worthy.

What troubled me about this was that my brother, the big NRA, Ron Paul, motorcycle mechanic, who I love, is not really all that in tune with the feminine psyche. While women will always be an enigma to me, I do seem to understand them a bit more than most men (even if I try not to let on like I do). Growing up in a divorced home where all I wanted for my mom was to find true love, I bent my will to trying to become the perfect man for some woman someday. I'd horde my mother's issues of Glamour and Cosmo. I'm sure that others in the family thought I was doing it for the pictures of the gorgeous models when in truth what I was doing was reading all of the articles pertaining to men and what women wanted. After many years of teenage research, all of them spent bumbling through failed interactions with women, I discovered some truths. The first truth is that you shouldn't believe what you read in women's magazines. Often times a woman's expressed desire does not match with what she takes action on. Years later I would finally understand why.

What my brother was seeing as a weakness, and even a rarity in women was in fact quite the opposite. Hell, it's not even confined to women, we're all that insecure. It's just that these fashionistas and their producers have found a way to break down the walls of defense so that they can get tears on film. What my brother doesn't seem to get is that almost all women feel that way. They struggle with weight, apply makeup, shave, spend thousands on clothing, work on posture, mannerisms, all the things that he would think are silly plague women from the time they are little girls. That's why Twilight even for as bad a production as it is, has captured the minds of so many women.

Here you have a girl who is insecure, unsure of herself, not the prettiest, or smartest, or most loved and then suddenly one day it all changes. In steps a man who sees her for her inner beauty, who loves her unfailingly, willing to give up everything to be with her and will even “wait” for her.

It struck me as rather sad that so many men don't get it. Heck, our entire culture doesn't seem to get it even though half of it is suffering from it. It has inspired me to delve into it more in my writing. Strong female protagonists are fun and sexy, but unless we show how they struggle with what all women struggle with, and possibly suggest ways for them to get past it, we are doing a disservice to our readers, to truth.

And just in case you're a guy out there or a tough as nails woman in denial, I'll add a note from the photography world that I happened upon. While I was researching posing women for glamour shots, I happened upon a female photographer whose profession it has been to take glamour and fashion shots of gorgeous women for over a decade noted that the most difficult part of her job is simply this: getting her model to believe that she's beautiful because even the most gorgeous women in the world don't believe it.

Photo two is from Cheryl McLaughlin, titled: My Insecurities.

I'm Stereo Typing

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Just finished the dog kennel here at the house. The fencing has been up for a year, but I've been trying to find the time to pour cement around the bottom because the dogs are notorious diggers. Matter of fact, the strip across the bottom doesn't even keep them in, they dig under that as well. So, I also had to create a border of discarded cement chunks from demolishing old things around the property along he entirety of the inner perimeter.

They're still trying to dig out. But at least they're failing now, and I was able to take them off of their runner cables and let them play together, the mamma and her two boys. It was nice to see them play, but it also made me a little sad.

Siska, the little black menace that has been banished to live in the back with my folks, would have loved to be playing too. Unfortunately, she likes to get into terribly viscous fights with the other dogs, mainly Mihka, our loyal and lovable brown lab.

Siska, like Mihka, was a stray that I took in. She's a little black runt that looks like a lab but is way too short. The vet marveled at her tongue when I took her to get shots long long ago. It has a black spot on it, which baffled him because that is supposedly a hallmark of a Chow, but she looks nothing like one. I, on the other hand, have always thought she was mixed with a Pit because of what she looks like when she gets into a fight.

Now, a couple of weeks ago we were at a friend's for dinner and he was telling me about a stray dog that he had to have put down because the shelter wouldn't take it. You see, it had a black spot on its tongue indicating that it was part Chow. Apparently, Chow's are known for being a jealous dog and become very attached to their owners.

A little bell went off in my head. “Maybe that's what's wrong with Siska.” Siska is totally loveable, she'll roll over on her back and let just about anybody rub her, but as soon as you start petting another dog or playing with another dog she turns mean. And that got me to thinking about writing. I thought about how you can do that with a lot of animals. You don't pick crows to use as homing pigeons, nor do you try and convince a poodle to be a sled dog. Certain “breeds” are wired specific ways.  

That led me to thinking about humans. If we were to say something like “blacks are better at basketball,” it would be considered extremely racist. Yet in fantasy literature we have dwarves that mine, gnomes that invent, elves that convene with nature and so on. There seems to be no thought to how that could be considered racist.

Indeed, even when we pull back and go in a SF route, we find readers going into an uproar when white authors don't portray black protagonists as “black.” Meanwhile there's a separate debate that says that defining certain things as being attributed to one race or another is actually racist. Or is it the limits that we put on people as defined by race?

I'm rather conflicted about it myself. I think that it is possible that we are all simply wired a certain way based on genetics. I believe that DNA can play a lot larger role in a person's life than we care to admit. I think that some people end up being more violent than others not simply because of how they were raised, but because of how they were bred. If breeders can pick out traits that are best suited for fighting dogs, why can't the same be said of a woman who had an abusive father going on to find an abusive husband of her own and having kids with him? Are we not taking those aggressive genes and combining them?  

The question is, where does that fit in to our writing? Do we avoid it and hope to somehow erase “stereotypes,” or do we simply accept that maybe stereotypes are more like genetic traits? After all, whether we care to admit it or not, we all stereotype. We do it all the time.

About a month after finding out the mysterious missing link in my own heritage, we took a trip up to visit my brother and sister-in-law. On our way to get a bite to eat I told him about my latest discovery about being an eighth black. He was just as dumbfounded as I was.

His wife's response? “No wonder you like girls with big butts.”

My response to her extremely insensitive, narrow-minded, racist stereotyping? “Hey, me too!”  

The Spark of Truth

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And it's done. That story I kept whining about, promising a completion date for and then never delivering. It's finally done. Well, save for the final touch ups, but it's there, from start to finish: Spark.

My eyes are still red rimmed as I write this because the ending was such a tear jerker. I think that's a good thing because the ending has changed. It was sad before, but I somehow found a new meaning in the story that made it even sadder. That is, it's sadder for me.

What's strange is that I don't really know how it happened. I know what my original hang up was, the badgal. I've even talked about it here. She was cruel and cold hearted, and flat, very, very flat. She was a one dimensional whipping girl built up in the likeness of someone who once broke my heart. Then I decided that she needed at least one more dimension and took her in the complete opposite direction, and tried to pin things on another character, but that didn't sit right.

The biggest problem was that I never fully explored the final scene, I didn't delve into the confrontation between Silas and the badgal and for some reason I couldn't conjure up the scene to save my life. During my floundering a series of things occurred. While I worked on the story at writing group, specifically trying to figure out the infamous badgal that was giving me all the headache I overheard one of my partners talk about K.A.R.A. grief counseling. That doesn't sound all that weird until you consider that the name of badgal happens to be Cara. The story also deals with the death of an infant and over the past few months of blockage there have been three reports of little ones dying in the nearby area. When you have a little one of your own, such news hits all the harder especially when the ages of those children seemed to almost mimic the age of my own during the times of their parting.

As a little background, the first baby, a little 10 or 11 month old, rolled off a bed while under the care of a nanny, bumped its head and died because of a concussion. The second had been picked up from daycare by the babysitter and brought back to her house (the children were supposed to always go back to their home, not to the sitter's) she had a pitbull, the screaming sitter chased it through the house trying to get it to let go of the 15 month old. The third, 16 months as my son is now, was sleeping soundly in his crib while his mother took a quick bath. He tried climbing out, fell between the crib and the wall and suffocated by the time she got out.

It's a fear that non parents can't understand. Actually, I think the fear lies deepest in the hearts of first time parents. A friend of mine who hasn't had kids yet called it first time paranoia. I think the stories above illustrate how it is much more than mere paranoia. It's something that nags at you every time you leave your child with someone else so you can get a moments peace. It haunts your dreams at night so that you spring from bed at the slightest cry. It's what gripped me when my wife was pregnant, back when I first started writing the story. That kernel of truth is what earned the original story publication in the annual that I had thrice failed to gain acceptance from. And it was that truth that I lost in the edits.

I needed the fragility of life to remind me what I was writing and my own crisis of faith with regards to continuing writing to jar me awake.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to say that I'm finally back to my old self. I might not blog in the same capacity as I did before, my priorities have changed. Whereas before the blog took precedent over much else in life, now it will only occur when I really have something to say and the time to say it in. But I'm writing, and that's what this has always been about.

So if you're lost with what you're working on, maybe you too are having a difficult time remembering what that little truth was that first gripped you. Find it and the words will flow again.

My Own Wings

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I sit down tonight with a strange sort of purpose about my writing. One of those surreal moments of clarity that comes only after great tribulation. Indeed, it feels like some forty days and forty nights ago that the critique group experiment imploded taking with it my will to carry on.

NaNo, was to be my reemergence, the stretching of my writer's wings after a long hibernation. This past week alone should have brought countless a writing hour my way what with canceled photo shoots and a cold that kept me indoors. That was not the case. Photos needed editing, a baby needed tending, guests needed to be entertained, or at the very least cleaned up after. When it came time to write I found not the energy to unfold my wings.

Soon we'll be off to Denver again. The last trip marking the beginning of my writerly tailspin. As usual, others are piling on even more tasks for me to complete before we even board the airplane. All this leaves me thinking that the tailspin might finally come to an end with a glorious burst of red and orange flame.

However, this time, when I look back from the cockpit and peer through the smoke and sparks I see that there is no one to save. The plane is empty. It seems that the seats were all peopled with my imagination. The lives I was trying to save never needed saving, duties and responsibilities mere ghosts.

I don't have to save the plane and its passengers . . . save one.

I step towards the door, air rushing past as the lifeless mass of metal hurtles towards its mother. It seems too easy. I should have to fight, claw my way inch by inch towards the blue ski above, but it is a dream after all, isn't it?

When I reach the opening I find that I no longer have to strain to unfurl my wings, I have but to try. The slightest gap provides enough room for the air to whirl up around me, forcing the wings to let loose from my body. They burst open with a pop of sails catching wind, lifting me up. I float away from the ghost ship and its flames, watch as it smashes into the ground. Onlookers oo and awe, point little fingers this way and that. They're all too caught up in the spectacle to notice the tiny fleck floating above them.

Here I'm left, alone in the great blue ski where imaginings go to rest once we've forgotten them. I have no passengers to weigh me down, no fuel gauge to dictate my starts and stops, only the beat of my wings and the drive of my heart and so many pretty little imaginings to play amongst. Where I go from here is up to me.

Write on.

Excuses

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“Excuses,” that's what I thought today as I drove around running errands. I was thinking about all of the reasons pertaining to why I'm not writing, and not blogging. In the end I simply said to myself, “excuses.”  

It's pretty easy to come up with them. Heck, just tonight I thought I'd sit down and write, but then the baby started crying and refused to go to sleep. As I was failing at comforting him, I said to myself, “See, every time I try to write I get interrupted.”  

So what did I do after my wife took him and nursed him to sleep; I watched the latest episode of “V.” Yup. Excuses.  

I was about to try and find something else to watch, but I stopped myself. Maybe it was the imaginative kick to the head delivered by “V,” but I was feeling like something needed to get done. My own imagination needed to be recognized.  

While it happens to be nearly eleven o'clock here, I'm going to actually sit and write more than just a short blog posting.  

I hope all of your writing is going well. Although, when I check in on the NaNoWriMo page I find that people's numbers aren't really going up. At least not the numbers of those that I know on NaNo. Heck, I know that mine definitely haven't gone up. But I think I'll change that tonight.  

If you're also participating in NaNo, feel free to look me up. It's easy, 'david.noceti'. Now stop making excuses and get back to writing.  

Ambitextrous Artistry (not really)

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It seems to me that most writers tend to be artistic in some way other than just writing. I've mentioned before my stint in art school, graphic design, comics, and sign making. I also took a year off of school after graduating high school to play in a garage band (don't ask).  

My wife, who used to write when she had the time to do such things, is into oil painting and heads the yearbook at her high school. I have a writing group partner who participates in Ren Faire and enjoys drum circle. Crit partner 1 used to be an operatic singer. Crit partner 2 takes photographs. And Maggie Stiefvater, author of Shivver, and the object of both my crit partners' eternal and undying affection, is a bag piper, and even created her own animated trailer for one of her latest books.

During my break from writing, I still needed to get some form of artistic expression out. Instead of picking up one of my previously developed artistic veins, I ventured into a new one with my wife. We've gone into photography! I know, I know, here we go again, right? Well, one great thing about this new venture is that my wife and I get to do it together. Rather than me working away in the office and her at her desk, we're side by side interacting and helping each other get better at the craft. But I won't talk too much about that here. Melody has started us a photography blog that we'll be updating from time to time. If you're into that kind of thing, check it out at http://www.melodyanddavidphotography.blogspot.com/

So what's your artistic outlet that's not writing? And more importantly, why do we have them? I'm curious about that and don't really have an answer to it. Is it just that we're artistic people and we need to express ourselves in as many ways as possible? I don't know, you tell me.

Writers Are Known For Their Writing

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I grew up with a man that can do anything. When I was little he was a bus mechanic, I got a little older and he started building houses, older still and he went back to college to become a science teacher. My dad knows way too much about politics, dietary health, and exercise. When other dads were buying their first computers my dad was bringing home the components so that he could build his.  

That same can do attitude has haunted me through much of my life. There's never been something that someone else can do that I looked at and didn't think, “Anything you can do I can do better.” Some might call that conceit, but I think it's a great attitude to have in life, just so long as you don't let it go to your head.

I honestly believe that anyone can do anything they put their minds to. It's not that I think I'm amazing, it's that I really don't think that there is much that separates two people in what they do aside from the time that they've spent working on it. And there in lies our problem. Time.

You see, each one of these new tasks that I take on requires an investment in time. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the time spent learning something new would be better spent furthering progress in something you already know. Concert pianists don't learn their trade, get some diploma, and then stop learning and practicing.

If you want to be the best at something, or even noteworthy, you have to dedicate yourself to it. There is no special Jack-Of-All-Trades award presented every year. Thomas Jefferson might have been a great politician, architect, and thinker, but he only became recognized for the second two because of his dedication to the first.

So as you're getting ready to code and design your own website and blog, then quickly pick up Photo Shop so that you can design your book cover, and oh, while you're at it become a master at digital photography so that you can shoot all of your own photos, try to figure out how much of that time might be better spent on honing the craft of writing. You know, that thing on which all the others hinge upon.

If you have the money, it might be a wiser decision to find someone who has chosen one of those aforementioned fields and made it their own. Especially when it comes to marketing. Take it from a graphic designer turned carpenter turned writer turned. .  . okay, so I don't practice what a I preach. Sue me. But wait till after I take the Bar. (Kidding)  

What To Do With A Clichéd Character

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So I was struggling through the end of Spark this weekend, as promised. I got to thinking about it and realized that part of my hangup is that I don't know who one of the characters is. Actually, no, that's not right, I do know who she is, she's based off of someone I've known. But when I go to write the character she comes out so clichéd.

Through the various versions she's seen a few different incarnations, one closely based on reality, the next pure evil, the last a bit more caring and concerned. So when I sat down to write her big scene I had to come to terms with these different aspects. That's when I wrote an interview in her voice, basing it off of things that I've heard in real life.

The surprising thing was, when I got done I found that, no, she is just as clichéd as she sounded originally before I tried to add to her character.

I mean, clichés and stereotypes come from somewhere, don't they? I guess, the key is in finding that bit of unique truth hidden within the cliché. For Cara it's this misguided mothering. She can be so cold and cruel with her work, but at the same time she sees herself as a mother figure, the rock to which her brothers can tether themselves to.

I'm wondering what other characters I have that are coming off as clichéd and what unique truth I can find in them.

Does this give anyone any thoughts on their own characters?

And I'm sorry about another short post. I'm desperately trying to catch up and then get ahead in preparation for the out of state wedding this weekend. So much to do and such little time. Sigh. I almost decided on taking a week off from the blog, but I won't fall off of the wagon now, I can't. I've been making too much progress to toss in the towel, even for a break. 

Pitfalls Of Putting Yourself Into Your Characters

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Write what you know. Right? And what could you possibly know better, than yourself? Probably a lot of things. You see, I don’t think we really know ourselves as well as we think. We have issues and hang-ups that we haven’t even begun to discover yet. They are what holds us back, ties us down, and clouds our minds. And I don’t think anyone lets those things carry on knowingly. 

But here’s the thing, even when we don’t think we’re writing about ourselves, we are. And when we do so unknowingly, the writing gets harder. Sure, your character is more interesting because they’re actually dealing with real issues, but you have to be willing to deal with those issues yourself before you can get your character to.

Case in point: Spark, the infamous never finished but always mentioned short story. I finally realized why I’m having such a hard time moving forward with it and putting it to bed. I don’t have the issues that I had when I started it. Sounds pompous, right? Hear me out.

Spark came to me one night as I crept into bed after a long day’s work. I snuggled up to my wife, placed my hand on her belly and tried to feel my son dreaming away inside her. Like most writers, I had a dream of my own. That dream led to Spark, where a young man, too afraid of the commitment, challenges, and responsibilities of having a child causes the death of his unborn daughter. The story is his quest for retribution.

Here I am over a year and a half later working on a revision to the ending and I can’t think like that frightened father-to-be anymore. Not only am I Dad, I’m Stay-At-Home-Dad. I spend more time with my son than most moms get these days, let alone dads. And you can call me conceited on this one if you want, but I’m a damn good dad. At this very moment I’m watching a baby monitor while my boy sleeps and though he’s three rooms away, were he to pop up and make a move for the edge of the bed, I’d be there before he could fall. (LOL, he must have heard me thinking because he just woke up. Don’t worry, he’s fine, just needed to know I was nearby and went back to sleep.)

I’ll eventually be able to put myself into that frame of mind and playact what it was like, but I fear that it won’t be as powerful. But that's what's holding me back, fearing that I won't speak truth to the character any longer.  

And what about the other instance, the one where you don’t even realize you’re writing about yourself? You know your character’s problems, what holds them back, what they have to deal with, but you can’t write it. It could be that one of the reasons you can’t deal with your character’s issues is because yours and theirs are one in the same.

Have you considered that? Have you looked at your character’s flaws and considered that they might be your own? Are you ready to deal with those flaws in your own life so that you can write your story? Maybe that’s not you, but it is definitely something to consider.

 

Behaviour & Communication:
How To Be The Best Dad In The Galaxy

One last thing. A little patting myself on the back. This marks my 100th post and come Friday this will be my 15th straight week without missing a post. So yay me. I shall celebrate by poring cement, preparing dinner, washing clothes, washing dishes, and writing another blog post. :) 

Collective Angst and Airplane Gremlins

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So I had something else in mind for today, but honestly, I'm exhausted. A late night storming session yesterday with a writer friend to get her book going, my wife's open house tonight that brought me and the little guy out to her school with dinner (and that means entertaining him by chasing him around on the grass for hours), the Novel Crit group started yesterday, I'm helping my wife photograph a wedding on Saturday, my sister's wedding is in less than two weeks out in Colorado and I am performing the ceremony (have NOT practiced), the house is in no way ready for the rains and the cold, a friend is coming to stay the night, the dog kennel needs to be finished or a separate dog house built for the third dog, the garage is decades from completion, money is tight, queries to write, stories to finish, the blog, the house, don't get me started on the house –

And that's what today's post is about. You're not alone. It seems like everyone is going through all kinds of stress right now. Another writer I know just got back from a relaxing two week vacation only to find that her daughter is going in for surgery and another relative had a stroke. She's missing her favorite annual event. And to top it all off, she's got the flu so she can't visit any of her loved ones.

It's everyone right now. You. Me. Everyone.

Forget the Collective Unconscious, this is like Collective Angst.

I mean, what the hell? Is there like some evil gremlin out on the wing of flight 607 nonstop to Happyland and we're all on it or what? (Wanna see something creepy? I picked 607 off the top of my head, wrote that sentence about Happyland and thought, “I wonder if I'm using a flight number from a recent crash and that's why it's stuck in my head. That would be wrong.” So I googled it. No way I could have known ahead of time what I ended up finding. No known cause. Just creepy. Really creepy.)

Really, that's it. No long winded post today. Not because I don't think you deserve the best I can give you, but because I think that everyone is running a mile a minute right now and we all just need to slow down, collect ourselves, take in a deep breathe, and relax. Maybe think back to better times, when life was slower. For me, that's the beginning of the 80's when I was two and you can't possibly have fewer cares.

And you know what always makes me feel a little better when I'm stressed . . . THE MUPPETS!

Just something about it. My folks used to record episodes on a cassette deck so that we could listen to them way back before there were VCR's. Or maybe there were VCR's and we just couldn't afford one. Remember those? Back before they had clear plastic for cassettes? I can still hear that Muppets Star Wars episode they did.

So remember, when life tortures you with gargling Gershwins be ready with a good song and dance number. “You are my lucky star. I saw you from afar.”

Speak Truth

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I wanted to do a brief follow up post to yesterday's post about censoring your online existence. After a long debate with my wife about where we would be if folks like Emerson and Thoreau had heeded my advice and kept their yaps shut, I decided that I need to make a point clear: Understand what you want to get out of this.

If your driving passion in life is to speak truth to a cause, then by all means, do so. Just understand that you will have to navigate your ship accordingly. If you are extremely conservative, believe that homosexuals should not have the right to be married, and so on, and not only convey that in your writing but also in your public persona, fine. Understand that you won't get your foot in the door with a very liberal agent from San Francisco whose best friend is a lesbian whose marriage was just disallowed by a state law that you backed (hypothetical, I have no idea if this person exists).

You'll also have a hard time reaching those in the middle of the road because they're not going to want to rock the boat. And depending on how you've portrayed yourself, you may have made it easier or more difficult to sell your work. They might perceive you as being difficult to work with because you come across as being so headstrong.

I guess I just look at it differently than most. I'll admit, I was getting very riled up and outspoken with the last election cycle. I spent hours researching my points, seeking the truth. Trouble was, no one else paid any attention to that truth. In the end I was left with a lot of anger and resentment.

That's when I turned back to fiction. I realized that I was so much happier dumping myself into the cause of good writing. I could tell my stories, show people the possibility of a better world through my words without trying to hammer it into their heads. At the end of the day I came away from it satisfied. I wasn't angry or fed up or left feeling helpless. I felt content.

For me, my biggest drive is to have my words read. I'm not going to change my message or beliefs in order to make that happen, but I will accept that I am trying to take on the role of an entertainer, not a politician or activist. Until I can make my own rules like Card and others, I'll keep quiet and let my stories do the talking.

So please, speak truth in your words. Just be sure that your words get heard. Otherwise, you end up speaking the truth of silence and those who knew how to play the game get to inundate the rest of us with their views.

Supporting Writers

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It seems that the way of things has been that I rant on Fridays. I choose something from the long week that got on my nerves and rail against it. I'm not going to do that today. A better idea came to mind, and so I'm going to go with it.  

This is one of those strange creative accident ideas that came to me over the last couple of days. A collision of events got me to thinking about things in a new light, so I'm going to share it.

I know that I often give all sorts of advice about how to do things, I go off on rants, I defend my opinion to the last, but there comes a point where you just have to stop. In this case it's when someone is going to give submitting a shot. There's a case of a guy that I and one of my crit partners knows about. He told everyone that he was going to stop working on his novel and start submitting it. My response, “That's great, good luck.”

My crit partner's response to me was, “What's the matter with you? Are you getting soft on me all of a sudden.”

Honestly, I don't think he should be submitting just yet. The story is good, but . . . it starts with a dream sequence. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn.

That said, I realize that the situation is sort of like when a good friend of mine made the decision to move away for school, or when my other crit partner had to move across the country because of a job opportunity for her husband. In both cases I really didn't want them to go. I wanted to keep them close by and enjoy in their company. But I didn't say so. What I said was, “That's great, you should go for it.”

We have to be able to stop and assess a situation, look at it, not from out view, but from the view of the person living through the decision. Consider when you've made your own mind up about things. You've weighed the choices, and though the decision you've come to is the difficult one, it's the one you're going to do come hell or high water.  

Once that decision has been made the people around us can choose to help or hinder. In all of these cases we want the people we care about to succeed. Although we would much rather keep them near, or help them polish their work a little more, we have to accept that this is the course that they need to take and we need to be there for them.

And on the same day that one author decided to dive into the submission process, another got back the dreaded pass on a second read of her book. In the same span of a week yet another writing friend is going through tough times with her family. As I was typing away at writing group, working on figuring out how I was going to get my character Cara to the hospital in Spark, I overhear her say something about Kara grief support. Mind you, I don't do much talking at writing group so there's no way she could have known that was what I was doing. So that's just . . . weird.

But it led me to their site http://www.kara-grief.org/ On the right hand side of the homepage they have a list of what to Do and Don't when it comes to comforting a loved one dealing with loss. It occurs to me that this is one of those cross over situations where we can take something from counseling and apply it directly to writing.

Indeed, losing a loved one is nothing like receiving a rejection letter. I'm definitely not trying to infer that. But I think we can learn from it. When we hear about that rejection our automatic reaction is to jump in with “I know how you feel.” If you check Kara's Don't list, the third one down reads:

DON'T say that you “know how they feel.” (Unless you've experienced their loss yourself you probably don't know how they feel.)

How true is that? We don't know. We don't know how much of themselves they pored into their story. We don't know how many of their characters are based on people from their life that they hope to pay homage to via their book. We didn't sit there with them through all of the revisions and doubts. So no, we don't know how they feel. But it's still the natural reaction to say so.

I think we can all learn a lot from the Kara site. Any time one of our friends gets that dreaded rejection letter for something that they obviously feel strongly about, we should high tail it over to http://www.kara-grief.org/ and brush up on how to be there for them. Maybe that will carry over to the more devastating losses in our lives and prepare us with how to be there for our loved ones as well.

This Friday I'm wishing everyone all kinds of success. I hope your ventures come back fruitful, that we can support you along your way, and if per chance that's not how the great divinity has it planned out, that we can be filled with the grace to be there for you in your times of need.

And don't forget to smile. :)

Today's Artists:

The Joy of Summer by trickell, trickell's doing site templates, logos, signatures, and typography design with names in trade for a three month subscription to dA.

Trickell's image is based off of stock art provided by the lovely ballelleb-stock.

Unfairy Tails: Grief by ShouriMajo, Want a unique mugshot? Shouri makes them for $10 a pop. Awesome deal. Follow the link back to her dA page for everything else she does.

Novel in a Day

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My first drawings as a child were of zombies, but this was not by choice. I started out drawing the typical disproportionate to heads, limbs of varied length, each character with the same facial expression, eyes hollow and soulless. I did this because I didn't how to draw, not because I liked zombies. I moved to tracing for a while, mapping my pencil over the lines of professionals until I could eventually draw by sight, but still the lines I drew were not my own, they were second rate copies of someone else's imagination.  

I never inked or colored any of my drawings. I never did anything more with them because I was afraid of ruining them. Each one I signed and saved for fear that I would never be able to draw another picture of equal quality again.

I honestly don't know what I was so afraid of. My young mind could not grasp the concept that I was getting better. Yesterday's work might have been better than today's but last month's wasn't. So I stayed trapped at the same level of artistic ability because I refused to take chances.

One of my problems was not having a mentor. I looked at art and assumed that it came out just as I saw it. I thought this all the way up until art school, and even then I didn't really get it. Slowly, as I watched and learned. I started to realize things about these godlike figures and their ability to produce art that made me look like a hack; they were hacks too.

I'd been out of art school for about five years when this finally dawned on me. I was watching videos on YouTube of comic artists working at their craft. All around them were reference drawings. Facial expressions, hands, bodies from extreme points of view. These guys didn't sit down and have excellence spill from their pens. They brainstormed, sketched, narrowed their ideas down, then drew from reference materials. When they did produce a fantastic sketch on a whim it was of a character that they'd drawn a thousand times before in a position they'd drawn ten thousand times.

Every artist has reference material. If they get a character into a position that they can't remember how to draw, they look it up. When I'd get to that same point I'd throw up my hands in defeat and admit to myself that I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't an artist, I didn't know how to draw. I could mimic someone else's work, but couldn't create my own.  

Those videos helped me to realize that I was holding myself back with my own perception of how art was created. And just the other day I was watching the video included in this post. I watched how the artist repositioned the nose, drew and erased lines, added and tweaked, took away. I related it to my own writing, how I'll write out a story in one go, likened to a sketch, then have to go back and tweak it, polish it off. I'll jump around, reworking the beginning, then hopping to someplace just after the middle.

I think all artists have a tendency to forget this, especially writers. Writers can't look back over a sketchbook and say unequivocally that what we produced today is better than what came before it. We can't sit down and watch a video of another writer's process in hyper speed. We don't go to classes with other artists, set up our easels and write out stories that everyone around us can see taking shape as we go, with an instructor walking around the class and whispering over our shoulder compliments and suggestions.

I think that we too often assume that the words have to come out perfectly. If we can't achieve beauty in a single stroke then it's not art. If anything, I've found that art is not so much an expression of perfection, it's an experiment in patience and perseverance. It's hanging in there to make all the little corrections and changes necessary to make the end product look effortless. It has to do with that notion of not actually being an expert but making it look like you are. Remember this as you pull out something you shoved into a desk drawer long ago. We all have those stories, stories that we were so enthralled with until we realized that what we'd created was crap.

Unlike an oil painting that dries and can't be reworked after a certain point, our stories can always have life breathed back into them. We can always come back to those soulless eyes once we've learned how to draw them, once we've found reference material to pattern them after. So allow yourself to sketch and experiment and remember that writing is an experiment in patience and perseverance.

Images: 1) Zombie Tramp by toxiccandie, 2) terrible sight drawing done when I was 13, 3) Quick sketches I did during a literary criticism class back around 2002, I was not nearly as focused as the young lady I sketched :).

Directing Story Criticism

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This post wasn't going to be about that, but I had a dream. And as we writers do, when we dream, we write it out. No, not that kind of dream. What kind of blog do you think this is? Sheesh. I'd actually be making money if it was that kind of blog. (Image: Strange_Dream_by_Sander_Seto)

In the dream my father stops by with a new truck. Well, it's sort of a new truck, new to him anyway. Let's just call it a different truck. It was a monstrosity of a machine. Late model American nineties when things were built “Ford tough” and not “Like a bailout.” On the back where the bed should have been was some kind of hand made shanty house. It wasn't an old shanty house that some one picked up with a crane and dropped there, it wasn't being moved. No, my father had built it.

In typical dad fashion, he didn't build it like one of those wooden tear drop trailers that some people make, it wasn't aerodynamic, didn't meet any kind of safety standards (no cardboard, no cardboard derivatives, paper's out, no cellophane or rubber . . . you really should watch the Monday funny, it was great). Nope, his knowledge of house building and applied it directly to this truck design.

I groaned but humored him when he invited me to check it out. We stepped in through a regular sized door and looked in on a kitchen area. Now mind you, it's the size of a truck bed on the outside, but on the inside there are standard size rooms. The guy's freaking amazing.

Then he takes me on the “tour” because this place is two stories with what I would say are two 12 by 20 rooms. Very spacious. And each of the rooms serves a double purpose, like kitchen and dining, then living room and sleeping. I think they were 10 foot ceilings too. He's still working on it, but what's there is impressive and I tell him as much.

Then I woke up.

I know, I know, what does that have to do with anything? Right? Well in real life my dad is very sparse with praise. He feigns interest in anything your working on just long enough to tell you about what he's working on. While my mom reads the blog, I have no illusions as to my dad reading it. It's not that he's not a nice guy, and it's not that he doesn't love me, it's just that he isn't interested and has too many of his own projects to worry about. And it also likely has something to do with his not having a father in his life when he was growing up, so he simply doesn't know how.

The dream reminded me of all of this. I'd been thinking about it a week or two ago when I was working with my dad on the garage. I noted how important it is that we give praise to others, how picking out positives can inspire a person to push forward where as criticizing will only lead to dragging them down. Often the criticism comes in the form of “helping,” we're just trying to point out the things that need work, but too much of that can be detrimental.

Then again, too much positive is also detrimental. We can't go around thinking we are the best that ever was either. That's just be delusional and it doesn't lead to growth. Or, conversely, it leads to our not respecting the opinion of the person giving it. It becomes a mother's unconditional praise (don't worry mom, mothers can get away with it, others can't) and therefore loses value.

Now, while it's all fine and well to talk about how we can encourage others in our life, this blog is supposed to be about you. How does me telling you about this help? Quite simply, you have to be able to recognize these things when you run into them in life. You have to be able to not only see it when it happens, but be able to predict it.

I no longer go into a situation with my dad hoping that he'll take note of something that I did and say, “Wow, you did that? I'm really impressed. Tell me about it. How did you get those miters to match up so well? And you say you built the entire door frame from scratch? That's slick.”

No, I go into those situations expecting this: first he's not going to recognize anything unless I point it out, and second he's going to have this kind of response, “Looks good. How long did that take? I'd of just bought a pre-made one. Why waste the time doing it yourself? Looks good though.” That's not a compliment, it's a euphemism. My ability to recognize this doesn't shield me from it entirely, and understanding why he does it helps some too, but being able to predict it helps most of all. Combine them and I can pretty much shield myself from any ill effects by avoiding the situation altogether.

Does this mean that I never go to him for advice? Not at all. I am fully aware that there are things that he knows much more about than I do. And so I ask for advice knowing that I will likely get good information that can start me off on my path, I just don't turn to him for encouragement while I'm on said path, or praise when I finally reach its end unless of course it's a path of his choosing.

As writers we need to learn to notice these traits in others, understand them, and then understand for ourselves what we need from whom. Don't open yourself up to everyone's criticism, figure out who is good at what and then turn to them at the point in your journey when you need them. Say you're all finished up with your story. You've had it critiqued a hundred times and revised it a hundred more. You can't look at it anymore. It's as good as it's going to get. Don't then turn around and take it to your most critical of friends whose pastime it is to find flaws in the Mona Lisa.

In our stories we can simply make characters act the way we need them to or come up with the appropriate character to put in the situation. In life we don't have such luxuries. We have to look around at the cast of characters available to us, figure out which roles we need them to play, and then turn to them when it's time for them to say their lines.

When To Be Satisfied and Submit

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Today I would like to totally contradict myself. You see, I love playing devil's advocate. I like arguing a point from as many angles as I can. It helps us to open our minds, to see where others are coming from. Without that ability we cannot know empathy. Without empathy mankind is no better than the basest of animals. Although, sometimes I think that even the basest of animals is better than some of mankind.

I also believe that it is impossible to be a good writer without empathy. How can we build rich characters whose actions are believable and heart felt, even if said character is our villain, unless we can honestly see things from their side? And so, with regards to yesterday's post, I was wrong. Be satisfied.

I Can't Get No

Sometimes we also have to be satisfied in order to find success. It's a balancing act really. Yin and Yang. Go too far in either direction and you find yourself with an empty life. I think we do this a lot when we date.

For years I had this idealized expectation of the perfect woman (I would like to take this moment to say that I ended up marrying her and that anything said from this point on is mere conjecture and hypothesizing and definitely not admissible in a court of law or the even less forgiving court of feminine analysis. . . love you, dear.) If any one of my preferred traits turned out to be missing in a prospective girlfriend I used it as a reason to start over or to avoid starting in the first place. More often than not it was the latter of the two.

Part of the cause of this was the common male attribute of fearing commitment, but we all fear commitment for different reasons. It was not until an ex of mine, who was getting onto the path of understanding herself better, snapped at me on our way back from my first and last joint visit with her counselor. “You know, maybe you should think about seeing a counselor too.”

Gasp. “What? I don't need to see a counselor.” I think I had been pointing out things that I felt were a part of what she was dealing with. That of course gets translated into “this is what's wrong with you.” Never a good idea. Women want to be heard, acknowledged, not analyzed.

“You have a pretty big fear of commitment,” she said. “Where do you think that comes from?”

“I know where it comes from. My parent's divorce.”

“And you think you're just going to fix it on your own?”

Damn her and her logic. We men have a different way of handling analysis, we button up and close ourselves off. At that point in time I brushed it off, but soon thereafter I started thinking about it. How was I ever to be happy if I wasn't willing to work on the things in my life that prevented me from finding happiness?

That's when I started searching for answers. I found a book called, Adult Children of Divorce, by Zimmerman and Thayer, a book that I suggest anyone dealing with divorce to read, both parents and children. It's very enlightening and a quick read.

I eventually postulated that I was using my great expectations as a way of preventing commitment. Not fitting my mold or finding impossible situations was my way of making sure that I didn't commit and therefore open myself up to abandonment later on.

Can we see how closely that relates to our own dissatisfaction with what we write? You've all heard me talk about Spark over and over again. I continuously revise it, making change after change. I just sent it to a friend as an example of my writing and told her not to worry about critiquing it because I wasn't going to be making anymore changes after I finished the ending. I need to be satisfied with it at some point, if I'm not it will never be submitted. There will always be something that I can do to make it tighter, more exciting, flow just a little better. Maybe there's a better hook for the beginning or an amazing twist for the ending that I missed.

And maybe, if I just sent it in, they would appreciate it for what it is and publish it. This weekend I am going to sit down and finish Spark. I'm going to be satisfied with whatever it ends up being on Sunday night, and then I'm going to start submitting.

I'll go through the process of dating. I'll court for a while and if I'm rejected too often I'll stop thinking that it's something wrong with them but rather with me or my approach. That's when I'll pick Spark back up and revise it again. Of course I might have moved on by that point in time, and that will be just fine.

That's the beauty of being on the path of self-improvement, there's always something better yet to come. Your best piece of writing won't be written today, only your best so far. So be satisfied with what you have, send it off, and start something new. If the courting process doesn't work out for that piece, when you come back to it you'll be a far better and wiser writer.

Here's wishing you a weekend filled with free flowing words. See you on Monday. I've got a good one in store for our funny and can't wait to share it with you.

Writer Satisfaction and Self Sabotage

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Satisfaction is another way of saying, “I quit.” Or at least that’s what I’m going to be telling myself from here on out. 

The thought occurred to me as I watched the analytics for the blog climb. More and more people are making their way here, far more than I honestly anticipated. Sure, I started the blog with the idea that it would be a way to reach out to others and make connections in the world of writing, but deep down I expected it to be a failure like so many other projects I’ve half started.

In fact, along the way I’ve tried to sabotage myself by saying things like “Oh, well those are just people I know who are nice enough to stop by.” Or, “Mom must have found a way to drive up page views.” And then there’s the, “Well those people aren’t really hanging around, they stop in for a second, think it’s a bunch of rubbish, and then leave.” But the numbers keep going up, and I’m finding fewer and fewer ways to dismiss them, (and trust me, I’ve tried).

So I went and found a new way to try and sabotage myself. “The blog is doing so well, why do I really need to keep worrying about getting my work published? It’s such a hassle. Why not be satisfied with what I’ve already accomplished?”

I stopped myself. Realized what I was doing. I was trying to get out of taking a chance, to turn something else into a non starter. After all, as an old soccer shirt of mine once said, “You can’t score if you don’t shoot.” And if you score, well, people might expect you to score again. Or what if you don’t score the next time? What will they say? It was just a hat trick. Nothing really special about that guy.

Then again, if we never shoot, never score, never try, we can never be told that we are not great. We can always fall back on, “Well, I could have gone places if it hadn’t of been for that knee injury.” And you know what, no one can say, “No you wouldn’t have.” And therein lies the beauty of never really trying.

“If I just wouldn’t have waited to the last minute to do that paper, it would have been great.”

“If I would have left on time for that interview I would have landed that job.”

“If I just would have gotten enough sleep the night before I could have won that race.”

Admittedly, being satisfied is a good thing. It brings a great deal of peace to our lives. We just have to be careful with what we decide to be satisfied with, or more aptly, why we choose to be satisfied. If you decided to be satisfied with the amount of money you earn because frankly the extra hours to make more would take you away from your family, I’d say that’s a good reason.

It’s hard to believe, but sometimes small successes stand in the way of the big ones. My small success senior year of high school was breaking the school record for the 400 yard dash. I grew cocky. Let my grades slip, dropped a class that I thought was too easy for me and then mid way through track season found myself cut from the team because of poor grades. I was able to get my physics teacher to change my grade for me after a few weeks of dedication to his class and being outright pathetic in everyone’s presence. But by the time I got back on the track I was weeks behind in training. The night before league I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning working on a Spanish presentation that I should have done earlier in the week.

The next day I broke the school record again. It was the fastest I had ever run. But it wasn’t fast enough. To this day I still hold the school record for the 400, but that doesn’t get your name on the gym wall, winning at league does. Not sabotaging yourself so that you have excuses gets your name on the wall.

Maybe there was some part of me that thought that having an excuse would help. Honestly, it doesn’t. At the time it did. Oh the excuses I made: “the other runner was a year older than me because he was held back,” “I heard they oxygenate their blood before they run,” “I didn’t get enough sleep,” “I didn’t get to train as much.” While those excuses helped at the time, looking back on it, I see it for what it was, an embarrassment.

I can even remember being disgusted with the other runner for not showing up at subsections a week later as the top two spots always do. Third place got to run in his stead. First place didn’t show because he was sleeping off a hangover that he earned from a wild night of partying at their Jumping Frog Jubilee the night before. Maybe he was sabotaging himself too. Who knows. What I do know is this, he already proved what he needed to, I didn’t.

I’ll never know what would have happened that day if I’d given it my all, if I’d come prepared. And frankly, that hurts more than the losing, because you know what, I lost anyway. Better to lose but know that you gave it your all than to always have to wonder about “what if.”  

So I ask, are you standing in your own way? Are you doing things in your own life that amount to self sabotage? If so, be wary of it. Because in the end, we all want our names on the wall but we have to write them there ourselves.

Don't Inoculate Your Story

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Not all specialist know what the hell they're talking about. You’ll take this for granted up until the point you have kids, then you suddenly see through everyone’s bunk. That’s when people start telling you how to raise your child. They’ve all got different POV’s on how to do this. “Now I know that he’s small, but don’t let that fool you. They’re smart and they know how to manipulate you to get what they want.”

We got that gem when our son was about six months old. Darned manipulative little six monthers. I knew I shouldn’t have let him con me into getting him that new car seat. All that talk about, “Don’t you want me to be safe in case of a car accident?” Pfft.

You really start to catch on when you learn to see through professionals. It’s like pulling down the curtain on the wizard of Oz. I realized this the other day at my son’s one year baby well visit.

Scare Tactics

I have to admit, my wife and I had pretty much been caught up in the vaccine scare that has infected our culture as of late, so for the first year we skipped them. Now, that he’s mobile and starting to socialize, we realize that it’s probably a good idea to have at least some of the inoculations. And so, what do you do in a time of need like this, ask your doctor.

Ours is a very helpful guy despite his nearly hour wait to see him, grrrr. He’s very open to working with people no matter what they decide with regards to vaccines. After doing more research on my own I found references to a very touted book on the subject, so I asked him about it.

“I turn to the CDC and the government’s website on vaccinations for my information.”

Well, that’s not what I asked, Doc. I wanted to know if this guy was a credible source. But apparently you don’t do any reading on the subject. The debate with regards to vaccines is that the government is approving things that are dangerous or excessive, why would I take the governments word for it?

We talked about my doing a bit more research on the subject and then starting a modified immunization schedule. There was also a question about our son’s speech development and if he interacted enough. The doc sounded a little concerned, and of course I as the parent got all kinds of worried. But he assured me that “he looks healthy, we just need to watch some things.”

“Alright then, I’m going to go, I don’t like to be in the room when they give the shots, that way the kids don’t associate them with me.”

My brows furrowed. “Wait, what? What shots?”

“Don’t you have your yellow vaccine card?”

Was this guy not in the room with me for the last half an hour? “No.”

A look of slight annoyance as he was about to go get me one, then he saw his chart of scheduled vaccination shots on the wall. “Ah, here we go. It will be the 12 month shots, so . . .”

Clueless

I tuned him out, then reminded him that we weren’t getting any shots that day, I was going to research each of the shots and then we, as the parents, would decide which ones our son was going to get and that we would likely start the following week. He was fine with that, but I couldn’t believe the car salesmanship he wheeled out. The old bait and switch.

That day, I purchased the book in question, The Vaccine Book, by Robert Sears. And so far I’m very impressed with it. It’s the most unbiased info I’ve seen on the subject, simply laying out what each vaccine is, what it does, the side effects and the likelihood of having them, what harm actually catching said sickness poses, and finally it tells you the likelihood of ever catching the sickness. It basically lays out the pros and cons in as even a way as possible and says, “You are now empowered with the knowledge, you decide.” How a person in our doctor’s position could not know about this book or have an opinion on it one way or the other is beyond me.

I found this bit in the preface as most enlightening: “Doctors, myself included, learn a lot about diseases in medical school, but we learn very little about vaccines, other than the fact that the FDA and pharmaceutical companies do extensive research on vaccines to make sure they are safe and effective. We don’t review the research ourselves. We never learn what goes into making vaccines or how their safety is studied. We trust and take it for granted that the proper researchers are doing their jobs. So, when patients want a little more information about shots, all we can really say as doctors is that the diseases are bad and the shots are good. But we don’t know enough to answer all of your detailed questions about vaccines. Nor do we have the time during a regular health checkup to thoroughly discuss and debate the pros and cons of vaccines.”

Hence my doctors suggestion to just “go look at the CDC website.”

Enlightenment

The next day I took my son to Borders while his mom was getting her hair done. While there he met a 19 month old little girl, Emily, all pigtails and sass. They played and growled and grunted at each other. She stabbed her finger out at him and scolded him in baby talk when he tried to take Elmo from her. He ran around and found stuffed animals that he brought to her almost as if they were courting. What struck me about this interaction is that this little girl appeared to me to be just fine, but her speech development was on par with my son’s. So what does that make her if our doc thinks that my son is delayed?

I thought a bit more about it and realized, “You know what, that guy didn’t spend any time with my son. He didn’t watch how he interacted with people. He just came in and spouted off generalizations ” It came down to, “You should watch for this,” and “You should watch for that.” Well what the hell do I come to you for then? Here’s this specialist getting me all worried about my son’s development, something I did not question before stepping into his office, and the guy doesn’t really know anything about son.

The Moral of our Story

And that, my friends, reminded me of a critique I did recently for a friend from the message board. It was the first chapter of a novel. During the crit I couldn’t help but feel like I did not know enough about the story to weigh in on it, and I said as much. The reply I got back with regards to it was that some of the things that I took issue with were intended. I wanted an element explored more, the author wanted it forgotten about for a reason. Fair enough, it is her baby after all.

But, just like with my flesh and blood baby, our literary babies deserve more than taking the word of a specialist. While, in the end, we know what’s best for our children, we also owe it to them to inform ourselves as best we can with regards to their wellbeing. Seek answers from everywhere then weigh your choices. Not all advice is equal and not all suggestions can be trusted.

So go forth and learn. And be ready to say, “Uh, wait. What shots?” when some specialist wants you to obediently inoculate your writing.