Writer's Notebook

Looking Back over 2009

As the year ends, I'm saddened by the Christmas morning death of my wife's favorite Aunt at 79 in Rome, Georgia, after a long illness. It will take a while for our loss to dawn on us full force because we're in the middle of a hectic countdown getting Jefferson Georgia's Crawford W. Long Museum ready for its grand reopening on January 9th after a two-year building restoration and exhibits update project.

My wife is the museum's acting director and the project manager. A lot has been accomplished. The three historic buildings that house the museum have been stabilized and repaired, including a new roof, rewiring, repaired historic brickwork and a lot of paining. The exhibits have been updated to reflect modern best practices as well as putting things on display that have been out of the public eye for years. This includes a new history of anesthesiology exhibit.

I'm pleased that my new comedic thriller novel "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" was released in August and that an article of mine about the Montana flood of 1964 appears in "100 Years, 100 stories," the new National Park Service book celebrating the 2010 Glacier National Park centennial. In preparation at Vanilla Heart Publishing for 2010 are a new edition of my novel "The Sun Singer" and an Earth Day anthology called "Nature's Gifts" that includes an article of mine about Glacier National Park's Swiftcurrent Valley.

Meanwhile, I'm still seeking a publisher for my novel "Garden of Heaven" (finished in 2008) while getting ready (finally) to write "Sarabande," the sequel to "The Sun Singer."

Like many of you who write, I submit work to various contests and then usually read that other people have won them. The contests, though, are an incentive to keep working on new stuff. While it's nice to hope that one day I might get past the Glimmer Train Magazine barrier and see some of my work in print there, I think one grows as an author by just working on the material. The work is done, basically, as soon as the work is uploaded to a magazine's online submission system.

Most writers work in obscurity. Seeing one's work in print is, I suppose a fulfilling thing, for it's a validation of sorts and the culmination of many months or years of work. On days when my mood is bad, I'm human enough to wish a few people in the town where I live might have thought to pay the $5+ to buy the "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" e-book, the $9+ Kindle edition or the $11+ paperback out of (variously) a desire to read a funny book, out of interest and support, or even as a "turn about is fair play" thank you for my supporting their projects and local businesses.

I am not without dreams, naive and otherwise, about such things as a bestselling novel or seeing my work appear on the big screen or small screen, or even being able to earn a living doing what I love.

Love is blind, and for a writer the love of the work shines so brightly that most of the time it blinds him to concerns about low sales and friends who don't buy his books. Every book is, for me, a much more exciting experience that, say, a cruise to the Greek Islands or an African safari trek. While some avidly journey around the world, my worlds are contained within my writing whether it's my 240,000-word "Garden of Heaven" Odyssey set in Pakistan, the Philippines, Montana, Illinois, and Florida or my recent Glacier Park Centennial post about Helen Clarke, the first woman elected to public office in the Montana territory.

Sometimes people ask me while my eyes glaze over while watching routine TV shows; usually, I say that I've been up late and am simply very sleepy. The real reason is that my inner worlds that are finding their way toward print are, as journeys, much more exciting to me than the weekly episode of "Ghost Whisperer" or "Survivor." Yes, writing is both a mission and an addiction. Perhaps it's all escapist work to take me away from the hard challenges of the "real world."

Whatever it is, I must say that while I'm having fun helping out at the museum and hope to spend many more July weekends with my brother and his wife in Daytona and many more October weekends with my Granddaughter in Indianapolis, that when I look back over a year, I'm most likely to remember first what I spent the most time doing: sitting at this 70-year-old desk traveling with words.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Some days, there's just no fuel in the tank

Does this happen to you?

You sit down at your desk, turn on the PC, and finally you have some free time for your writing. Yet, you have nothing to say. I'm not talking about writer's block here, I'm talking about a pure vacuum.

After spending the last week writing a 4,500 word article about Glacier National Park, I was looking forward to catching up with my blogs today. I haven't had time to post anything. Now that I have time, there's just no fuel in the tank.

This used to frustrate me a lot. But I'm accepting reality a lot better these days. I understand the need to get Glacier National Park out of my head for a few days and then allow space for something new--other than thoughts about why Natalie rather than Russell won "Survivor Samoa" or what we're having for dinner tonight.

My muse and I need to recharge. Is this how you experience it after a rush project? I've decided I'm not going to worry about it. If I were writing something new, I'd probably miss Christmas. I'd be going around in my writer's fog, oblivious to everyone around me. My eyes would be open but nobody would be home.

Whether you're busy or sitting back and recharging your batteries, have a Merry Christmas.

--Malcolm

Frivolous Friday

No, Frivolous Friday is not a new meme, challenge or competition. It's my current frame of mind.

After fighting ants in kitchen cabinets and one of the bedrooms all day, I'm ready to sit back with a glass or two or Merlot and do something frolicsome, lighthearted and astoundingly flippant.

Low grade flippancy is, in fact, boring. So, I can't sit here and kill a couple of hours playing Free Cell, hearts or solitaire. A little bridge, maybe, but the other players in my Bicycle Games cards package do stupid things. (If you're a bridge player, you'll cringe when I tell you that the computer-generated players all lead kings from their hands and take them with aces in the dummy.)

A great movie might work. Something unexpectedly good like, say, "Moonstruck." Even a bad movie works, because as I watch it, I think of the ways it could have been better. Suddenly, I'm busy creating new scenes in my mind, bumping off annoying characters who say "Like, you know" 20 times a minute, and maybe adding some aliens from the far reaches of the universe.

Being frivolous is an art, I think, and when frivolous Friday afternoons are well played, I'm all the better for it. Without intending to put too strong a spin on the matter, I'm better off than I would have been if I'd spent the afternoon hard at work.

It's as though I've taken the casual Friday some corporations permit and turned it into a transformational retreat without the need for anyone to sing Kumbaya or share feelings with sock puppets or, worse yet, their oldest friends. Right now, I don't have any feelings other than the beautiful malaise of pure inconsequential modes of thought.

Surely you will tell me "I've been there and done that." If not, it's a pity. Some of a writer's best moments come when he or she is goofing off. Suddenly, the muse speaks and the world is reborn in a new book.

--Malcolm

Monday Madness

Apparently, it's a sign of madness to destroy the envelope.

We're told to push it. When we do, it's a sign of our agility, our ability to lead and to anticipate the needs of our readers.

Need I say, though, that if one pushes the envelope a little too far or a little too fast, prospective readers become frightened and they would start applying pejorative labels like speculative, experimental and just plain weird. 

When I tell people, for example, that I'm reading a 912-page novel, they see that as a sign of dementia on my part--or, if not that, then as evidence I'm just being difficult because, for heaven's sake, why stick with one book for so long?

My response: "If a novel's good, why would I want it to end?" Their response: "to find out what happens sooner and then get on to the next book."

What's the hurry?

That 912-page novel by Roberto Bolaño called "2666" probably destroys the envelope. A lot of people run like hell from it as though it's a grenade of some kind that will go off about page 666 and destroy the reader's mind. I like it because it's new territory.

I have no clue what drove Evel Knievel to get into the daredevil business. Maybe it was the rush. Maybe it was the boredom of doing the same thing over and over. No doubt, once he jumped over three buses on his motorcycle, there was little point in doing that again. He'd been there and done that. So heck, let's try for four buses and then keep incrementing the number.

That's me when it comes to reading. I don't want to read a new book that's "just like" some other book I read last week or five years ago. That book has already been done. I know the plot, the characters, the themes, and the trite scenes and phrases by heart. Been there, done that. I push my reading envelope because doing anything else makes me feel like I'm stuck in a "Groundhog Day" movie with just one darned book.

What's the worst that could happen trying to read something new?

If the answer is, "well, you'll go mad," then it's too late now.

Truth be told, I take a few liberties with the writing envelope as well, but all in good fun.

--Malcolm

Expressing spirituality in your fiction

Another author on a writer's forum I frequent started several threads about art, creativity and spirituality, focusing on how we express such things in our lives and work.

My answer was essentially that I don't try to express it. That would seem forced to me. Sure, I think up plot ideas and create many files of research notes for my writing--so, I consciously choose to write about one thing while rejecting notions about writing about another thing.

But my values, I think, are part of myself and come to be expressed in my life and my work while I'm being true to myself--as trite as that old admonition sounds. Yet, through being me, that which I care about appears in my work. When the writing flows, I am connected to spirit. Much of what I see appearing on the screen is unplanned, especially when certain symbols and themes become part of the work.

(Rachel expresses these concepts so well in the poem "you are the prayer" in her blog.)

One way or another, the value I find myself echoing over and over is summed up in this quote from James Allen: "A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life."

When it comes to your work, do you overtly decide to write about topics that synchronize with your spirituality? Or, do you find your values appearing--as though out of nowhere--as you write about a myriad of apparently unrelated subjects?

This banner, which is not clickable, is part of a pilot study called geekthelibrary that's being conducted in selected areas around the country including north Georgia where I live. The campaign seeks to raise public library awareness by saying that the library is many things. It geeks what you geek. You can even leave your own story on the site as well as create a banner like the following about your own passion.

How Much of Your Life is in Your Fiction?

The autobiographies of some novelists often read like a James Bond novel. No wonder they have things to write about.

What about the rest of us? We've done a lot of living: it just doesn't make dramatic front page news. Yet, that living--on a quieter scale, perhaps--often finds its way into our books in various forms, usually with the names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.

The worst stuff and the best stuff are obviously dynamic for page-turner books. But a lot of tears and joys are tangled up with everyday, garden variety lifestyles. It's just as well we don't feel larger than life: how vain would that be! But we can ramp up the little things, fine-tune the middle of the road things, and cautiously use the more exciting messes we've gotten ourselves into.

By fictionalizing bits and pieces of our life's stories, we not only bring passion to our work, we bring honesty. We're telling it true because we've been there and we've experienced it. This sincerity comes across to the reader.

I set my novel "The Sun Singer" in Glacier National Park. Why? I wanted a mountain environment, so I picked a place I knew. I knew Glacier because I worked there at one of the resort hotels and had fallen in love with the place. Consequently, I had a sense of the place and also knew where to go to find any facts I was missing.

My protagonist in "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" is a journalist. While I've done very little work as a journalist, my father was a journalist who taught reporting and editing at the college level; many of his friends were journalists and they were around the house a lot telling stories when I was growing up. I taught journalism for several years myself. So, it was natural to write about a reporter.

My yet-to-be-published novel "Garden of Heaven" is set, in part, aboard an aircraft carrier in the 1960s. You guessed it. I served on a carrier--as a Navy journalist, actually. Many of my experience aboard ship and in liberty ports have been fictionalized and placed in the novel.

I don't know whether everyone does this or not. Maybe their first kiss in in one of their books, and that's it. Maybe they had an argument with a math teacher, so they put that in. Or, perhaps their car ran off a snowy road during a long Wisconsin winter, so they put that in. Maybe it's one little thing here and another little thing there.

While my life will never read like a James Bond novel, I use myself as a source for a lot of stuff--and then I punch it up, so to speak, so it makes a good story. Maybe my novels represent the life it would have been fun to have lived.

--Malcolm

The Sacrifice of Writing

"Have you finished writing your new book yet?"

Writers are asked that question a lot. If you're a writer, how do you answer?

Since most writers are employed at regular jobs, writing that new book means sacrificing something else, giving something else up in order to free up the time needed for research, writing, sending query letters to publishers, marketing, and promotion.

In her ezine The Creative Penn, Joanna Penn writes, "Lack of time seems to be the no. 1 reason people haven't written their books yet, so it is the main thing you need to overcome. You can't have more hours in the day, so what will you give up to get that book written?"

If you have written that book, then you've already given up something. Sleep? Television? Nights out on the town? The number of hours a week spent on Facebook and Twitter? What?

There's a reason why many people don't attempt a book until their kids are grown and out of the nest. It's hard to justify skipping your son's debut in the school play and missing your daughter's recital, or driving your children to school or the next Cub Scout meeting. There are dinners to prepare, doctor's visits to keep track of, and perhaps a family vacation.

Whenever or wherever you decide to write that book, whether it's during November's National Novel Writing Month or just after the first of the year or right after spring break, you will be making proactive choice to sit down and write rather than doing something else.

It's a hard decision, it really is, and often a lonely one. Your friends will be sipping margaritas at the new Mexican restaurant on Saturday night while you're sitting in front of your PC. Your spouse will be at the George-Florida game while you're composing query letters to prospective publishers. Your children will schedule a visit back home on the same night your latest chapter is being discussed by the library's writers club. Something's got to give.

Time has a way of getting away from us. How many people have you heard say for years they want to start working out at the gym, take French classes, volunteer at the local museum, tutor a kid at the local middle school, or jot down their memories of an exciting childhood experience. But they just don't do it--or even try to start doing it. Are they asking you for permission to give up on such dreams? Or, do they want you to ask "Why not start tomorrow?"

What have you told yourself about your book?

--Malcolm

Thursday's Thoughts - on being remembered

"You may forget but let me tell you this, someone in the future time will think of us." Sappho, as translated by Mary Bernard.

"Someone, I say to you, will think of us, in some future time." Sappho as translated by Margaret Reynolds

"Someone will remember us I say even in another time." Sappho as translated by Anne Carson

The precise words, as best rendered in English may be in doubt, for they come to us in fragments of an obscure Greek dialect 26 centuries in the past. It's more likely the words were sung or chanted, intended more for the ear than the page or the surface of a vase. Though the details of the poet's life are also unclear, it's clear that we remember her.

As a writer, I feel a connexion with a writer who said so long ago that those in the future would remember her, however tenuous, however inaccurate, however brief: the kind of connexion that occurs when one ponders another in the quiet of twilight until images dance in front of him in his mind's eye.

She was right, though she had no concept of the how of it, much less of a medium of expression light years away from papyrus and stone, her words would live. We still sing, though with instruments unknown in Sappho's day, yet we seldom sing Sappho's lines because they do not come to us as words we know how to sing.  Most of us, that is.

Was writers, our hope is this: we will be remembered. True, it sounds arrogant, vain, insane, perhaps, to say our words will be translated by scholars from our ultimately obscure dialect of English from fragments that survive on scraps on copy paper, old books, some sheet music perhaps. We may seldom speak of it, but in the quiet of twilight we hope our words will have attained the value that ensures they'll be kept. One dear reader may be enough, or an old lover long gone, to be sure, before the words are discovered and rendered anew onto the disk drive or travel drive or--let's speculate--electron cloud many centuries from now.

Maybe Anne Carson's distant family members yet to be conceived will one day create a book or holograph with a name like If not, Winter: Fragments of Malcolm where she writes, as Carson wrote of Sappho, "I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Malcom shows through."

And you as well, dear reader, someone--I say to you--will think of us in some future time.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm, author of The Sun Singer and Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.

Movie and Book References Help Define Your Characters

References to popular culture can badly date a book or they can add atmosphere. Either way, when you write that character just finished reading Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" or took the day off to go see "Sorority Row," you're probably not doing so to advance the plot. You're showing the reader something about the character: what does he like? What does he like to do?

Personally, I prefer references to older movies and books because I know whether or not they had any staying power in the public eye. The names "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Graduate," for example, have connotations I can use to define a period or a perspective. Current books and movies may not last; mentioning them in a novel might do more harm then good if the reference ends up being meaningless by the time your novel reaches the bookstore.

In my latest novel "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire," I mention the dark, noir film "Farewell, My Lovely" (based on a Raymond Chandler novel) because my protagonist sees himself as a dark, gritty kind of newspaper reporter similar to those in 1940s detective novels. Older readers and film buffs will know the movie well. While most younger readers won't know the movie at all, they're probably aware of film noir and Raymond Chandler's style of writing. Here's my second reference to the film"

Jock retired to the recliner where he didn’t sleep well. He was still awake when “Farewell, My Lovely” reached the gambling boat gun battle. He dozed after that, but not thoroughly for it was the kind of night that called out for a watchful eye.

I'm looking for atmosphere here while I'm showing that my protagonist had insomnia due to recent, unsettling events. Had I said he flipped on the TV just as an ad for "Sorority Row" was playing, I certainly would not have had the atmosphere I wanted. Jock could have made fun of the film, but even that would have failed me if the film came and went without much public impact.

Quite often, I see references to popular culture shoveled into novels as the writers attempt to make their characters appear tuned in to the latest fads. This can work if you're looking for total immersion, but it can fail if readers don't know what the character is being immersed in. When they fail, such references end up looking trite and lame while cheapening the impact of the novel.

Consider using the names of books and films to show what your character is all about rather than using them as filler material between major scenes. The right title at the right time makes a very strong statement.

copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell

My wife is the time traveler's wife

My wife is the time traveler's wife.

If you're a writer, your siblings, parents, grandparents and spouse probably also walk in traditional linear time while you soar between here, today and tomorrow at the speed of thought.

None of us are characters in Audrey Niffenegger's wonderful 2003 novel "The Time Traveler's Wife." We simply follow our memories to those times and places and people in our lives packed with energy. If you remember your first kiss, our greatest sorrow, your first job, your most dangerous experience, the thing that frightened you the most, and the day you met your soul mate, then you will always be able to write about such things with power and accuracy.

Within the Huna tradition of Hawaiian mysticism, practitioners believe that cords of energy connect you to everything of importance in your life. It's like a spiderweb. Whether you feel the pull of long lost moments and half-forgotten people, that is where your power as a writer lives.

The window of the far right of this photograph of our house in Tallahassee as it was in the 1950s, was my bedroom.

There I had the aquarium that influenced the aquarium I put in "The Sun Singer." There I had the journalism books that influenced my views in "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire."

More important than that, in that room, I experienced all the hopes, dreams, goals, and disappointments that were common to every young man coming of age. Energy cords or not, when I need to write a scene that includes such experiences, all I need to do is return to that room. My fictional protagonists may be quite different than I am, but the power of my first kiss and my first lost love are strong enough for me to capture in print as I write about their first kisses and lost loves.

I have often used mountains in my writing, and that includes the very stretch of the Appalachian Trail was was exploring with my two brothers when this photograph was taken.

I remember the moments of that hike well enough to describe the way I felt on the hard, upward sections of trail, the sounds of the night, the awe when looking at magnificent views, and the feeling of accomplishment at trail's end.

Whether you hike or play football or ride for miles on a bike or served in the military, those experiences have the power to make your fiction come to life. Why? Because you are writing what you know. Not just the facts of it, but what it felt like to be there and see it and live it. As a writer and time traveler, you can go back to your best game and your worst day at boot camp and the day your bicycle broke down miles from home, and you can write about what it felt like. It's what you know. And it translates to thousands of plots and fictional scenes that may have no real similarity to your "real life" moments.

My wife knows when I've traveled far away. I act different, not quite there, slightly hypnotized, unhearing and unavailable. She's used to it and, like Clare in "The Time Traveler's Wife" all she can do is wait until I pop into the present again, different than I was when I left, but always the writer with a thousand stories from a thousand places that he never forgets.

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Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of the new comedic thriller, "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire."