I've Moved!

I've been hanging out over at www.helenhdavid.com. Follow me to my new home! :)

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Visions

The visual environment influences
Each child from infancy.
When I arrive on this planet
These are the first things I see:

Marching in Alabama.
A man called Martin Luther.
Four dead at Kent State,
Our soldiers, the shooters.

You can ride the bus.
And yet, we're line walking.
You can surely lose your life
For simple truth talking.

They're shooting down marchers
And civil rights fighters.
Show up to protest and they
Squeeze the blue line tighter.

The poor and hungry call for help
Too weak to dance or sing.
They're nuking in Nevada,
Life don't mean a thing.

There's riots down in Watts.
There's more junk in space.
Yet some still only see the color,
And not the HUMAN RACE.

A Buddhist sets himself aflame
Way over in Vietnam.
But even that's not gonna stop
The planes, the war, the bomb.

They're throwing stones at Martin.
But he won't stop, it seems.
You can kill the man,
But you can't kill the dream.

Arrests go down in Oakland,
And that will happen again,
In the year 2012, when
This world's predicted to end.

History will keep repeating itself,
Of that you can be sure.
Until each and every one of us
Decide to end all war.

I look in the mirror and
I don't know what to do.
First I have to clear my mind
Of everything I ever knew.

Programmed from the day I was born
To hate and have no heart.
Somehow, I still have love,
And yet, we're still apart.

But how can my mind survive
Living in today's world?
Love for hate, joy for sorrow.
Art lets the truth unfurl.

It was never my dream to be
A New World Order slave.
This is no longer the land of the free,
But it's still the home of the brave.

To be a 21st century freedom fighter
Was never a goal of mine.
But I'll forever cast my lot with those
Who cross the propriety line.

Will we ever come together
As one complete humanity
To live as one, to live our lives
As they were intended to be?

The truth will out all the lies
That we've all been told.
Occupy your heart, let freedom ring.
Live strong, live free, live bold.

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In Support of a Free and Uncensored Internet

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DIY MFA Week 3: Check In & Assignment

• Did you meet your writing goals this week? How did it feel? 

Yes. I’m in first pass revisions of my first novel and I’m on Ch. 5. I’d hoped to be further along, but I’m at least making progress. It felt good, and I’m getting more comfortable and less resistant to editing and revising. I’m very uncomfortable when doing something for the first time. The goal for the week is to complete the first pass (which is just for the big stuff like plot holes and character development) and start the second draft, and complete one short story.

• How’s the reading list coming along? 

My list overlapped so much I just condensed it into one for simplicity and to not trigger my ADD. Coming along very well, but finding it hard to get much reading done as working on the novel and short story are at the top of the list right now. I’m making progress but I’m mainly reading books about the writing craft, especially the couple I have on crafting the short story and the ones on editing and revising. I’m reading them more than I am fiction right now.

• Read anything interesting you want to tell us about? “The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle” by Steven Pressfield is really helping me work through my fears around my tendency to censor myself in my writing, and also to work through my resistance to editing. And I’ve started “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier. And also “Flowers” by Scott Nicholson, a collection of short stories.

Plus I’m preparing to participate in The Muse Online Writer’s Conference in October, and NaNo in November. NaNo plan this year is to try my best to salvage the second novel that derailed in Nov. 09 since I hadn’t edited the first in the series at that time. I’ll probably do another first draft for it this year. I was unable to participate last year as I moved twice during November.

I was going to say I have a little too much on my writing plate, but that is just resistance! Assignment: 

Where to find characters:

• Real life.
• Situations
• Pictures
• Quotes

Go out and look for interesting characters so you can start boosting your character stash. Where did you come up with the idea for the main character in your current work-in-progress?


My character Lily came from the idea that what if a person had the ability to raise the dead? How would she do it? What would happen if she did? Would what came out of the grave be the same as what went in, or would that person be different. If so, how? 


I tend to get the situation, and then have a character come to me that will not react well to the situation. I think that helps to build the tension in the story, and also gives me an excellent opportunity to develop the character throughout the story. 


Back to work now. :)

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DIY MFA Week 2: Build Your Reading List

Here's my list:

Books on the craft of writing:
"Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maas
"The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle" by Steven Pressfield
"Fiction First Aid" by Raymond Obstfeld
"Stein on Writing" by Sol Stein
"The Writing of the Short Story" by Lewis Worthington Smith

Anthology of Short Form in my genre: *some of these are collections, not anthologies
"Flowers" by Scott Nicholson
"Underneath" by Dan DeWitt
"The First" by Scott Nicholson

Competitive Books: *too many in my genre to list, but here are a few
"Anathema" (Cloud Prophet Trilogy) by Meg Jensen
"Beautiful Sins: Leigha Lowery" by Jennifer Hampton
"The Color of Night" by Jack Thomas"

The next two classifications for the list are Informative Books and Contemporary Books. I decided to just list a few more books that interested me. To me the informative would be the books on craft.
"Death Whispers" by Tamara Rose Blodgett
"From Within" by John M. Dow
"The Gateway" by Glenn G. Thater
"The Manicurist" by Phyllis Schieber
"Marysvale" by Jared Southwick
"Play Dead" by Anne Frasier
"The Abandoned" by Amanda Stevens
"These Things Happened" by Scott Nicholson

And we can't forget the classics:
"Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker
"Frankenstein" by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier

I'm loving this program so far. It's really helped me get in gear and get excited about writing and reading again. And hopefully it will help me decrease the inordinate amount of time I spend online. Too much reading and writing to be done to be surfing. ;)

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DIY MFA: Weekly Writing Prompt for 9/16/11

I discovered a wonderful website last week. It's DIY MFA. It lets a writer design their own advanced creative writing program. Since I haven't had the opportunity to pursue an advanced degree in creative writing, I jumped at the chance to participate, and use it alongside the Portable MFA in Creative Writing that I had the good luck to download for free from Amazon a few weeks ago.

No, I won't get a degree. Yes, I will get to improve my writing and knowledge of the craft. So, it's a winner with me.

Our first weekend writing prompt is: The Starting Point


Reading:
1) Do you read regularly? If so, how many books per year, on average?

I usually read at least two books per week, so that would be over 50 books per year.

2) What are your Top 3 preferred subjects or genres?

I mainly read fiction, and my favorite genres are fantasy, horror and paranormal romance. When I do read non-fiction, it's usually something about the craft of writing, meditation, or Buddhism.

3) List the last 5 books/magazines you’ve read.

"The Dharma Bums" by Jack Kerouac, "Switched" and "My Blood Approves" by Amanda Hocking, "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, and "The Bringer" by Samantha Towle. I am usually reading more than one book at a time. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's not.

 Writing:
1) How long have you been writing regularly? I've been writing for as long as I can remember, but I've been writing almost daily since 2008.

2) Do you have a project you’re focusing on? Or are you experimenting with various things?

Yes, I'm working on revisions for my first novel. I also have some short stories in progress, but the novel is the main project right now.

3) How often do you write? Is your writing schedule regular or sporadic?

I journal almost everyday, daily for the past week, but I don't work on my fiction everyday. I'm about to the point that I want to reverse that and make working on my novel the priority, and let journaling take a back seat.

Workshop:
1) Do you belong to a writing group or have writer colleagues who read your work?

I don't belong to a writing group, but I wish I did. I have four people who read and/or offer feedback and critique my work.

2) Do you participate in workshops at conferences or other live or online events?

I have participated in The Muse Online Writers Conference since 2008, and I participated in NaNoWriMo in 2008 and 2009, and I will participate in both events again this year.

3) Do you take time to evaluate the feedback and implement what resonates with you into your work? Yes. I always seek feedback to make my work better.

Community:
1) Do you have writer friends?

I have two daughters that blog, but as for fiction writer friends, not really. I wish I did, so I could whine to them about having to scrap the whole first chapter in my novel. They would tell me to shut up, put my big girl writer panties on, and get back to work on my novel by rewriting that first chapter. And we could sit at the same table in the Joe Muggs section of the local Books-A-Million, and write our novels while getting wired on caffeine, and cheer each other on during NaNoWriMo. That would be awesome. Sorry, I desperately crave Fiction Friends. Fantasy over. Moving along...

2) Do you engage with other writers either face-to-face or online?

Mostly online. I did get to meet another local writer, Kelly Kazek, last weekend at Art on the Square in Athens, so that was good.

3) Are you a member of any writing associations? No.

The above questions show where I spend my time in my writing life, and which areas need attention. Currently my time is spent like this:

After seeing this, I'll definitely be making some adjustments. I have a writer friend on Twitter that is willing to critique for me, so we are swapping manuscripts. That means I will be spending more time on writing and critique, and less on community and reading.

I'll still be interacting with other writers, but since I mainly do that on social networks, I will have to cut that down as it is a time suck for me. I created my Facebook Author page this month, so I have spent a good bit of time on Facebook promoting it. The time I spend doing that will be reduced. And since I would like to publish this novel as soon as possible, my time will be spent like this:

This will help me reduce the amount of time on social networks, get my work done on my novel, and get my critiques done. Win all the way around. This chart looks so much more balanced than the first one. I definitely need some balance in my life right now when it comes to my writing.

 And this DIY MFA thing is a win, too. Not only did it give me something to post about, but today I learned how to make a pie chart with Excel. Which will come in handy tracking my book sales in the near future. :)

And now, I'm headed back to work.

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