Month: December 2016

Alt Tag? and 2 More Stupid Questions That Will Make Your Blogging Great – ALWAYS WRITE

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 2 Comments

Don’t you know what an alt text is? Don’t you hate asking stupid questions? Even if it will help your blogging? Let me do it for you. I mean everyone knows about alt text by now, don’t they? Do you even know where to find alt text? I did not. And who thinks up keywords … Continue reading “Alt Tag? and 2 More Stupid Questions That Will Make Your Blogging Great”

Source: Alt Tag? and 2 More Stupid Questions That Will Make Your Blogging Great – ALWAYS WRITE

Just discovered Marsha Ingrao at the above site. Super tips on blogging, writing and formatting images.

Ghostwriting: Expressing Your Author’s Authentic Voice

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 2 Comments

I am an American woman with a Humanities degree and a background in languages, literature, and the arts in general. My client is a naturalized German-American, retired spinal neurosurgeon. You would be correct in assuming we do not share a common voice when it comes to expressing ourselves. So, when it came to writing what eventually traveled the trajectory from life story to medical memoir, one of the most critical lessons I had to learn was how to muffle my voice and allow his to ring out.

I was reminded of this lesson today when reading a post by Nicola Krauss on Writer UnBoxed, From Bestseller to Ghostwriter. In describing the art of capturing an author’s voice, Ms. Kraus writes that:

Each person has their own natural lexicon and rhythm of speech. It’s essential to stay confined to that. I will never impose my own way of saying something when I’m editing, because it would stick out. I would advise anyone interested in doing this work to spend as much time with your client as possible so that when you sit down to edit their words you can “be” them.

Such great advice, especially for someone who is naturally a wordy writer, as I am. I tend to throw everything in at the onset and then reduce, refine, and sculpt during the edits and revisions. This is evident in passages from an early draft of my author’s book. As one writing friend pointed out, the overall tone was not only verbose and flowery (another problem to be addressed later), it also struck his particular ear as the voice of a female.

To illustrate just how important it is to develop an authentic authorial voice for your client (something that realistically requires months of collaboration), let’s look at the following passages, in particular the lines in italics. The first one is from the draft that eventually became the first book, a life story:

Sports grounded me in those years. No matter what was happening at home, once I got on the court or the field, I focused my attention and energy on the goal in front of me. And when my mother put the kibosh on football my sophomore year . . . the main thing I did was run. I ran in track and field meets. I ran cross-country. I ran at Central and at competing schools. One spring, I ran up and down the wooden bleachers until my shins burned, all the while trying to outrun dire images of falling through the open spaces between the benches and breaking my neck. I ran the mile again my junior and senior year, but only broke five minutes two or three times and never won a race again, or even came in with the top three. Before every race, I got anxious as hell. I didn’t know which was worse, the butterflies in my stomach or the sense of dread that lodged in my chest and chased all rational thoughts out of my head. The thing is, though, that once I started running, all those negative feelings disappeared. In action, they were transformed into fuel.

In the medical memoir version, the passage was reduced and, in the final line, connected to the primary theme driving the story :

I also knew, inherently, that physical fitness was essential. I had played soccer from my earliest boyhood in Germany, but sports in the US were much more organized and competitive. I went out for the usual athletics: football (my mother put the kibosh on that after my freshman year), basketball, and track. I didn’t know what I was good at in track, but I ended up running middle or long distance and eventually ran the mile. Now looking back, it seems I was running figuratively too, towards my identity as an American, towards my future in medicine.

Now, this is a mild example. I murdered many darlings in the rewrite. Consider the following lyrical waxings:

The scenery we took in on those drives never failed to affect us. When you climbed a low rise and looked out over the land, you couldn’t help but be moved by the immense landscapes, the way the mountain ranges unfolded one after another in the distance; the way they changed from a pale gold at noon to slate blue and finally deep purple in the evenings.

And this, a description of life at sea:

Each day was the same. Each day was a surrender to nausea and monotony, punctuated by brief sorties to the upper deck. My world had shrunk to a thin mattress in a sea of beds. For the others, it was waking up to an icy wind that continued all day and then finding a way to pass the time until evening brought some diversion. Except for the large day room, there was only the deck; the choice was to endure the noise of a thousand foreign tongues reverberating off the bare, damp walls, or brave the raw elements outside.

Admittedly, I was enthralled with my client’s story and the dramatic possibilities. And he enjoyed the embellishments, keeping many of my descriptions in the life story he published for family and close friends. But when it came to the more commercial version, it was clear that my love affair with language had to be reined in.

Enabling your client/author to tell their story in their words while making the text engaging and colorful involves many more elements. A sensitivity to the way your client really speaks is just the beginning. My job also entailed suggestions for changes that would not stray too far from his natural speech but that would replace commonly overused and empty words such as “interesting” and “nice” with words that were true to a particular character or experience. But that requires another post.

What about you? What has been your experience in telling another person’s story? If you write fiction, how have you arrived at an authentic voice for your characters?

 

Working Titles

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 4 Comments

Having struggled with titling a book (and subtitling it!), I appreciated today’s post by writer Lance Schaubert on Writer Unboxed, and his “quick manual on how to title a work.”

If writing a novel is like having a baby, then titling it is like naming your kid. And parents fret over the names of their children. Big time. Have you seen the sheer number and size of baby name …

Source: Working Titles

The Memoir and Christmas: Finding Meaning in Family Memories

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ Leave a comment

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays all! Following is a post from my “latent” blog, Memoir Crafter, that speaks to the season and to the craft of memoir.

The Christmas season is upon us like snow on North Dakota. With it comes a sleighful of memories. But how to write meaningfully about this most evocative of holidays in a way that engages the reader?

In a first draft of my client’s memoir, I mined a five-page document he had written about the Christmases he remembered from his childhood in Germany in the early 1950s and inserted it into the memoir in chronological order. I found the cultural details colorful and fascinating: the walk through the snow to the Gothic Stadkirche in the center of town; the candles on the tree; the Christmas Eve rollmoepse (rolled herring); the recitation of poems and the small tables of presents for each child. I researched Christmases of the 1950s and found a cache of wonderful photos on the Internet from which to draw for authentic descriptions of street scenes and interiors. My client loved it.

When it came to using the memory in the memoir, however, it was too much. It slowed everything down. It became a “travelogue” of a German Christmas.

I cut the entire section. Later I asked myself several questions: How does this anecdote advance the themes that are emerging in the book? Where is the best place to insert memories about a childhood Christmas (or other holiday or event)? Can these memories be tied to a later event?

In the rewrite, the details that are important to my client reappeared but in much shorter form. And in what turned out to be a second book entirely (a medical memoir), they had shrunk to one single paragraph in a chapter about his mother’s death decades later. Juxtaposed with a description of the mother’s last Christmas, these childhood memories have attained a poignancy that they did not have in the earlier draft. They deliver a message about the importance of family and tradition and the cultural transmission of values and family lore from one generation to the next.

So, now I invite you to think about a favorite Christmas memory and to write it down. I invite you to approach this exercise within the framework of a theme: family, friendship, regret, parental sacrifice, romance…whatever emerges as you think about it. How would you make a memory meaningful to a reader? How would you flesh out the significant people–what details would make them come alive? What reflections from your adult perspective would add meaning?

If you have trouble beginning, take out an old photograph. Nothing stirs our memories better than those glimpses into our past. And while you are mining that photo for details, don’t limit yourself to the visual. What were the smells associated with the scene, the sounds and the tactile impressions, even the taste?

Towards that end, I have illustrated today’s post with a photograph of my siblings and me (and a cousin in the upper left) taken circa 1958. This photo was shot at a time that precedes memory for me, but the simplicity of the tree and the fact that my parents had us kneel says much about the place and time and culture I was born into.

And by the way…I am the impious child who will not kneel. This detail is what I might use as a jumping off point if I were to write a memoir scene of Christmases past, how that little girl, her older, uber-pious sister in the middle, and her prayerful twin on the left would become, respectively, a quarter decade into the future, a free thinker, a lesbian CEO, and a nun.

How have you used Christmas memories in your writing?

Blogging: Purpose, Focus, and Value to Readers

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 4 Comments

So, what is this blog about? I admit that if I look at my list of recent posts, it’s all over the place. I see posts about writing, memoir, flash fiction, personal challenges, social justice themes, politics. In short, I see a recipe for mental fragmentation and confusion. I am grateful for those readers who have stuck with me through my faltering steps on the blogging pathway, but as the time approaches for New Year’s resolutions, it’s clear I need to bring some focus to this site.

As with any endeavor, it is important to learn from the masters. One go-to resource I use is Jane Friedman, whose blog and newsletter helps “authors and publishers make smart decisions in the digital age.” Jane, a Great Courses professor and contributor to Publishers Weekly and other outlets, has created a blog and website brimming with resources for writers, with links to her publications, classes, and related services. It was Jane’s webinar on WordPress that gave me the confidence to move beyond my first Google Blogspot blog, Memoir Crafter.

Through Jane, I have found other outstanding websites. Most recently, I followed a link in her post from October, “What Should Authors Blog About” that took me to writer, traveler, and unconventional living guru Chris Gillebeau’s blogging guide and manifesto, “279 Days to Overnight Success.” According to the statement on the manifesto page, Gillebeau’s blog is for “Bloggers, writers, online artists, and anyone otherwise interested in creating a new career or expanding their influence using social media.”  What the manifesto immediately did for me is get me thinking about the purpose of my blog and the possibility of threading the topics that are important to me into one cohesive theme. And if you are just starting out with a blog, his post on how to start one is one of the most succinct I’ve seen.

Another useful resource comes in the way of the bloggers and writers I follow regularly, those, for example, whose blogs support writers through the Literary Citizenship Model that Jane discusses in one of her posts. I follow several that are true to the goal of “celebrating and bringing attention to authors, writing, and books—the things you presumably love and want to support”:

Then there are author blogs. Among some I follow are:

And finally, the plethora of writing sites with blogs, such as:

These are just a handful of course, and I’m sure you all follow well-written blogs on topics other than writing that, despite their unique angles, convey a clearly recognizable theme and fulfill their purpose in giving readers useful and timely information. One blogger I follow that participates in the Carrot Ranch flash fiction challenges is early-childhood-educator Norah Colvin. Norah stays true to her purpose of inviting early childhood educators to support children’s learning through the use of her original teaching materials. Most recently, she is using her blog to launch Readilearn, a website that offers early childhood teaching resources.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for me. With today’s post, I plan to return to my original purpose and themes in blogging here. Those include topics related to memory and memoir writing; the craft of writing; and Word of the Week, exploring arcane and beautiful words. I’ll explore flash memoir through Charli Mills’s flash fiction challenges. And I’ll weave in two values in my philosophy of life—the pursuit of EXCELLENCE and the importance of HABIT—as they relate to the craft of writing.

If you blog, what have been your experiences in developing your online identity and themes? Have you found ways to incorporate seemingly unrelated topics into your posts without sacrificing focus?

 

Felons: Free but Still Shut Out

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 6 Comments

Felon. A word whose meaning seems so at odds with its sound. That soft fricative “f.” That sonic resonance with other lovely “f” words: feline, female, fellow. That rhyme with “melon.” A word whose first use was recorded in the 14th century to denote one who commits “an act on the part of a feudal vassal involving forfeiture of his fee.” Like “villain,” (one from a village), the word has evolved over time in meaning from a marker of societal status relative to a powerful authority to one denoting criminal activity and immorality. Though the original meaning of “felon” (feudal vassal) has gone the way of the feudal societies to which it was attached, the sense of forfeiture has survived.

I have spent a lot of time wrapping my head around the word “felon” this last year. Knowing a young felon intimately who was convicted of a non-violent crime, agreed to a plea bargain, did 8 months in a state minimum security prison, and was released in May, I’ve taken an interest in this growing segment of our population and of the post-incarceration fetters imposed on them by our criminal justice system.

First off, what numbers are we talking about here?  As of 2014, around 24 million people in the US (close to 10 percent of the adult population) had a felony conviction. This number is not surprising when we consider the fact that the US locks people up at a higher rate than any other country on earth.  Our prison population weighs in at 716 per 100,000 people. Alarming when you consider that more than half of the 222 countries with prison populations tracked in one study record a rate of 150 per 100,000 people.

There are many implications of this state of affairs, not the least of which is the very disturbing evidence for racial bias in incarceration rates and the clear connection to political delegitimization of people of color. (Note that state laws barring people with felony convictions from voting date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Southern lawmakers worked to neutralize the black electorate.)

But here I’d like to simply address the effects on felons AFTER they have served their sentence. In fact, I wonder why they are still labeled “felon” at all once they have paid their debt to society. As noted in a New York Times editorial in May of 2016, the very “vocabulary of incarceration — the permanently stigmatizing way we speak about people who have served time — presents a significant barrier to reintegration.” On top of this psychological barrier—and the many typical challenges felons face, such as limited family support, a spotty work record, low level of education, outstanding fines, and substance abuse and mental health issues—ex-offenders (note that “ex”) face myriad legal restrictions as well. Among many others, these include:

  • Restrictions on housing (most apartments, especially corporate owned, will not rent to felons);
  • Ineligibility for financial aid;
  • Difficulty finding a job;
  • Ineligibility for some professional licenses;
  • Ineligibility to enlist in the armed forces; and
  • Loss of voting rights

That last restriction alone has received much attention this election year. Consider that in 2016, state laws barred nearly 6 million Americans with criminal convictions from voting in the presidential election. About 4.4 million of those are people who are not in prison but were still denied the right to vote. And if you home in on the rate by state alone, the percentage can be even more alarming. For example, a whopping ten percent of Florida adults can’t vote due to felonies.

So, why does this situation continue when a national survey shows that most Americans think that people who have committed felonies and served their time should be able to vote? I have no answer to that question, but I suspect it has something to do with politics, economics, and a judicial system geared towards punishment rather than rehabilitation.

Certainly there are bad, dangerous, and, arguably, irredeemable people in this world. But too many times we think in black and white about convicts; we fail to distinguish among them; we have no time to consider narratives of how each ended up behind bars. The system is complicated. Just the other night, a friend of mine pointed out what “animals” so many of the incarcerated are. Perhaps this is true. But perhaps our “correctional” facilities have some hand in completing the transformation of a human being into an animal unfit for society.

I don’t think I am naive about the criminal mind or about evil, but I do believe real rehabilitation must be an option for the many non-violent prisoners crammed into our often for-profit facilities. And I believe those felons who have paid their debt and make real efforts to rejoin society as productive citizens should be given a better chance.

Witnessing the obstacles my own young felon faces has certainly raised my awareness of this issue. But Charli Mills’s recent flash fiction challenge prompted me to write about it now. The prompt happened to coincide with a visit I made to accompany my felon to a residential drug and alcohol rehab center last week. Waiting in the dawn cold with a few other early comers hoping to get one of the limited beds that day, I listened to a couple of middle-aged individuals talk about their addictions and about the cascading legal problems and social isolation that has resulted.

Here is that December 2, 2016 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about something or someone not allowed. Maybe it’s about gender, race or other intolerance. Maybe it’s the cat who paws at the door, but not allowed inside. Maybe it’s a trail where dogs are not allowed. Go light, go dark, go where the prompt leads you.

Closed Doors

Her name is Karen. She stands outside in the dawn cold hugging a drab olive overcoat around her. “I’ve got to get this bed,” she said.

“What will you do if you can’t get in today?” I asked. “No family to stay with?”

“They gave up on me. My sister helped, but I burned her out too. Too many relapses.”

“That’s rough,” I said.

“I’m not a bum,” she said. “I’ve got a degree. Got a job with Easter Seals this year. But when the background check came back, they let me go.”

She shook her head. “No felons.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing Against Adversity

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 13 Comments

notebook-and-ballpoint-with-laptop-in-background

I’ve been in absentia again with this blog. Part of the problem was the mania attached to the presidential election. I allowed my mind to be sucked into the black hole of endless headlines, op-ed pieces, Facebook posts, and news feeds. Post election, I went into mourning, battling my anxiety and dread with hefty doses of more bad media. When I did blog in October, the post was a political one, not what I want to use this space for.

Then there was the personal front. Since May, I have been rooting my son on as he struggles with his recovery from a heroin addiction. I could write a book on all the mistakes I’ve made: my failure much of the time to “detach” and live my own life; the unrelenting worry and pressing thoughts of how I might guide his decisions. And that is just one of my distractions. There are other adult children to worry about. There is my relationship with my husband, which has suffered from our sometimes polarized views on how to deal with the tensions. There are health and money issues. And there are our own goals for the good work we want to do together.

All this has provided myriad excuses to not write. I’m fatigued; I’m stressed; my mind is fragmented and I can’t concentrate. The “shoulds” push in: I should be helping my son find resources; I should be focusing on the positives with my husband, and on our shared endeavors; I should be bringing in more money—maybe I should take a teaching job to tide myself over.

Meanwhile, my own future as a writer languishes. And like many of those who dare to wreak out a living by writing, I can’t afford to let that future unfold without some critical planning. After a dream ghostwriting gig that has lasted four years (and resulted in two books), it’s time to capitalize on what I have learned and bring my writing life to the next level. I want to move beyond the editing jobs I’ve managed to develop. I want to get back to my own creative pursuits.

Quieting the Mind

So, what is the  answer when you cede internal control of your life to external forces? One solution is to permit yourself some personal care-taking. In her column, “How to Write When Life Sucks” on Writer UnBoxed, contributing writer Cathy Yardley recommends, first, some TLC: taking the time off to re-ground; relaxing in a favorite way; turning to the “trinity of self-care—water, light exercise, and sleep”; and taking advantage of your support group.

I would add to that list engaging in an activity that feeds your sense of control over your life. Aside from walking my seven rounds in a neighborhood park, I turn to housework; I tend to my plants. Cleaning and gardening are areas where I can impose order on chaos, where the care I bestow pays back with immediate benefits. And the physicality of those tasks relieves the tension in my body without making me worry more about being completely unproductive. Then what?

Ease Back into Writing

Once you’ve stopped the spin, you can ease yourself back into writing. As Yardley suggests:

The best way to do this:  set a small goal to start.  Ridiculously small.  For some, this may be as small as one paragraph.  “How am I going to get a book written if I’m just writing a paragraph?” some of you may ask.  The thing is, you’re not trying to boost your productivity. You’re trying to train your brain. You’re reminding yourself that yes, you set goals and achieve them.  That you can do this.  Once you start getting victories under your belt, you can start to increase your goals, but always within reason.  Slow and low.

That is where I am at now. This post is my “slow and low.” But while Yardley’s advice resonates, the inescapable truth of what it is to really write stares me in the face.

No Excuses for Not Writing

I live with a scholar/author whose unassailable focus sometimes maddens me. Every morning at 7:00, without fail,  after fortifying himself with a first cup of coffee and a cigarette, Tom plants himself at his desk and writes until lunchtime. His prescription for productivity is one I have read elsewhere, but I have seen few individuals who can stick to it. This despite the brilliant simplicity of his strategy, which he attributes to the years he spent weightlifting.

  • Identify the time of day you are going to work.
  • Do not allow any excuses to disrupt that schedule.

Where I give in to the knee-jerk urge to answer my phone when it rings, Tom ignores the jangle. Where I see a “few” chores that it will take me ” just a few minutes” to attend to, he is blind to them. Where I fool myself into thinking I can just scan my news feed quickly to get my brain “warmed up,” or navigate the sucking vortex of social media before starting on a piece, Tom dives right back into his current manuscript, open on his desktop.

The key is brutally simple. THERE ARE NO LEGITIMATE EXCUSES.

But, some will say, what if the house catches on fire? What if a meteor crashes onto your little corner of real estate? What if, what if, what if. Such a response is a shaky step on the slippery slope, one that just opens the door to more excuses. You must nip all such thoughts in the bud.

Modeling Your Writing Practice

So, I have this great model breathing in the next room. When I am not letting small marital arguments dilute the example my husband sets, seeing how he does it inspires me. As do the examples of other writers I’ve seen who have overcome the most disruptive of hardships. I frequently mention blogger and novelist Charli Mills here. In the last year, Charli has experienced eviction, homelessness, and dislocation. She has had to battle the soul-destroying bureaucracy of the Veterans Administration in advocating for her husband, a vet with PTSD. She currently writes from her new office in an old RV perched on the edge of Zion National Park. But write she does. Not only has she punched out one eloquent column after another on schedule during the ordeals of the last year, and made headway with her two WIPs, she has continued to inspire dozens of writers with her regular flash fiction challenges at Carrot Ranch.

So, heading into the last month of an “uncommonly shitty year” that Jon Oliver has encouraged his followers to dispatch with a resounding “Fuck You,” I resolve to carry on. And though presently my plants scream for a drink, and there’s a bundle of laundry languishing on the floor of my closet, I’m planted here at my computer, relishing the writing that is never far from my mind.

And you? What is your strategy for your writing goals as we close the coffin lid on 2016?