I don’t know about anyone else but the summer always gets my travel itch going. I used to love summer vacations each year growing up, the freedom of the day fully determined by whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it. But back then I never understood why we didn’t use our free time to travel more. My parents, like most folks, were hard-working blue collar people and they reserved their limited traveling for time to visit with family in Nebraska, usually around fall/winter holidays.

Now as a hard-working adult myself, I understand I’m limited to choices that fit my responsibilities not my desires. So while prices continue to rise (along with the thermometer) I thought I’d spend some time imagining what kinds of vacation I would take if I had all that freedom from childhood, combined with some serious financial fantasy fulfillment to not limit myself.

Here goes:

#5- Ashikaga Flower Park (Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan)

The picture really says it all. Beautiful flowers creating a lovely atmosphere. This is best viewed in late April/early May so I’m starting my imaginary summer travels here.

#4- Douro Valley– Portugal

Stay in a castle with river AND mountain views, surrounded by vineyards? Yes please! The oldest region in the world to grow wine grapes, this is a must visit for any reader/wine lover.

#3-Zentralfriedhof– Vienna

Okay if you know me this one’s not that weird. I studied music when I was younger and still dream of visiting the Musicians Graveyard in Vienna. The number of prominent musicians resting here deserves the honor of thanking them for the gifts they left the world to this day.

#3-The Pink beaches of Harbour Island, Bahamas

Not really a “beach” type person, I just really want to see if the sands are a pink as they appear to be in photos.

#2- Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland

This is pretty self explanatory so moving on to …

#1-Mon-Saint-Michael, France

If I only had the chance to travel one time in my entire life, the totality of France would be on my bucket list. I want to plant my feet in the dirt that grows Chateauneuf de Pape, I want to see the Eiffel Tower, sit in one of the Café Terrace chairs featured in a Van Gogh painting and watch the world go by. But the one place I would love to stay is the monastery at Saint Michael. Yes there are roads to drive you there but as the tide comes in each night you have this lovely, historic, almost fairytale island to rock you to sleep. What could be better?

What dreams may come? Who knows. I’ll keep you updated.

For those in the know W.I.P is writer shorthand for “work in progress”. Whenever I get a quick text/chat from another author friend there’s usually some variation on “WIP? How’s it going? W.I.P good?” So I thought I’d give a quick blog update on my WIP so far.

I honestly know very few authors/writers with just one W.I.P going at a time. Most always have one or two and even something just forming in the background that they are leaning toward researching/daydreaming/sketching out, etc. I am in the multi-W.I.P group myself, so here’s a summary:

W.I.P # 1 (Completing/publishing Book Two in the #hiawathafallsmysteries series): The Title of Book Two is “The Case of the Floating Foreman.” A big goal I have is to get the books in my series set and to align Books Two’s release (which has a summer theme) and Book Three (being drafted now, with a fall theme) more on track with a seasonal marketing campaign. But to achieve that goal, Book Two must be completed first. I had to reread my first book in the series as I had wanted to bring some of the small elements from there back into Book Two but couldn’t remember things since its been two years since it was published. So yes, believe it or not, I had to re-read my own book this month. That’ s not as embarrassing as it sounds, right?

W.I.P #2: For NaNoWriMo I set the challenge of creating something to honor my grandmother, who taught me to love writing as a separate act from reading. It’s a sort of combined story between the two of us, but I haven’t decided specifically what to call it yet. The book begins with a short story my grandmother had written me as a child in an effort to teach me to how to build tension in a story. She wouldn’t have considered it much and NEVER would have tried to submit it publishing, but I saw it as a chance to show how all her hard work at trying to help me get better had turned out. I’m on my half of the book and I think its going well. If I used this time of the long Thanksgiving break for my “paycheck-job” I should have my portion completed and read for publication before the end of the year.

W.I.P#3: Or as I like to call it, THE LONG SHOT. This project, in fact, is not a book but a screenplay. I’ve been picking at it for a while now, honestly can’t remember when I started writing it, but it was and has been my first true case of what we call “Muddle in the Middle.” Yes I know how it was supposed to start, and have a clear view of what I want the ending to be, but somehow everything in the middle sort of got foggy on me for a while. This little project means a lot so I want to get it right, but didn’t know how to break this bog I was stuck in. I think I found the answer this week in a book on writing called “Mastering Character Arcs: How 15 Universal Journeys can power up your Novel Cast” by Lewis Jorstad. Its was wonderful, like taking a deep breath after holding it for a long time. He gave me the answer on how to get this long-stuck character a change to move forward. Now, I have to find additional time to get back to this work while trying to meet the two goals I’ve set above.

So there it is, these are the point and focus of my mind going forward. I’m interested in seeing where they will all eventually lead me.

As traditional and ubiquitous with the season as turkey and pumpkin pie, I’m taking the plunge again this year at attempting to complete NaNoWriMo 2022, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month.

For those who are new to it, this is the time of year set aside for all writers (and those attempting to become writers) to put real focus into the goal of creating your book (or screenplay, poems, etc.) This will be my third year to try to achieve the goal of 50,000 works written in a month. The actual goal is different for everyone but that’s the stated goal for the group.

My first year, I had just completed writing and published my first book, “A Study in Sod: a Hiawatha Falls Mystery” and wanted to focus in on getting started on my second book in the series. I found, later, that this may have been too big a goal because I didn’t get anywhere near the target. To be fair, I was just beginning my journey at that point and still needed to focus more on building my skill set and basics habits. But this is what the goal is for; finding what works and what doesn’t for yourself and your style. Hats off (BTW) to everyone who did get a book written in a month. I stand in awe of your glory. I fell short by half the mark that year but I logged it as a win.

Year Two was a little tougher. I had just had breast cancer surgery and was still recovering, and at the time I was focused on my mental health as well and with the work I was doing there, my brain was almost as exhausted as my body. Don’t get me wrong, I did okay, but again my goal shifted into something other than the specific number of words each day.

This year, I now have a better understanding of what I should be using this time for. I’m working on the second book again, and this time I have a short story too. I’ve lowered the personal goal number down to 35,000 and am accepting a combined word count from both projects to achieve that goal. I’m shooting for daily writing but accept that as a lesser goal. If it happens okay, if not that’s okay too.

Why are you repeating this crazy effort you may ask? I’ve gotten fond of the idea of setting aside time for something just for my own self, especially something I’ve put off, or may seem unachievable even for me. I’ve found I simply like the idea of trying. I think that we’ve forgotten the importance of just daring to try. We suggest it to our kids all the time, “just try”, “you won’t know till you try”, so when did we stop taking our own advice?

So this is my time, this is my time to try. Without judgement, without guilt, without expectation on myself. No matter the end result I can confidently say I’ve re-taught myself the Art of the Try again.

#ArtoftheTry #nanowrimo2022 #writingagain .

Just as every reader has a “to be read” pile somewhere in their life, every writer I know has a “to be written” pile of their own. These are the stories, ideas, inspirations that continue to bounce around inside our brains even as we try daily to focus on the work in progress in front of us

An interesting topic came up in my online writers group this week about the idea of writing in more than one genre. As you can imagine, the split on if this was a good idea or not was about 50/50 with most of us. Some felt that you spend all this time writing and trying to create your own unique voice that you are somehow diminishing your talents by “splitting” your focus by jumping between genres. Others took the view that exploring more than one type of story, or theme, or really any type of writing was part of the beauty of the art and allows a certain level of playfulness to what we do.

Can a truly great author of children’s novels suddenly turn and become just as good (or better) at writing hard-core adult suspense? Seems to have worked out well of JK Rowling, who also writes under then name Robert Galbraith. (I highly recommend ‘Cuckoo’s Calling’ as an intro to her street tough detective, by the way.) It’s easy to find a list of authors throughout history who’ve done it: Nora Roberts writes a J.D. Robb, Steven King wrote as Richard Bachman, etc. I once heard a story that Nora Roberts publisher had been pushing her into writing in another name/genre. Nora wasn’t really interested at first, but the publisher put it to her this way: “Have you ever heard of Diet Coke? You think Coke makes all that money just selling one kind of drink?”

When asked, I always tell people I’m an “all the crayons in the box” kind of person. I loved coloring as a child, and when I find time as an adult, I still enjoy it not just because of the simple fun of putting color on paper but for me it was about getting as MUCH color on each page as I could. If there were 64 colors in my box, I was sure as shootin’ trying to get every color on the page.

So back to the start of this blog, as a writer isn’t telling different types of stories, in different ways just us simply using all the crayons in our box? I know that if I’m writing an adventure/coming of age story its going to include a lot of Raw Sienna, Sepia, and Tumbleweed browns, cast against Granny Smith Apple, Olive Green, and Sea Green with plenty of Cornflower Blue along the way. Romance, you ask? Magenta, Wild Strawberry, Champaign White and Tickle me Pink should work, only if I can go deeper and a bit darker with Plum and Orchid purples, and Periwinkle Blue to set the tone.
Science Fiction/Fantasy allows me to include lots of Purple Pizzaz, Razzle Dazzle Rose, Electric Lime, Laser Lemon and Mango Tango to light up the universe. The new metallic crayons must also be represented as well so let’s add some Blast Off Bronze, Cyber Grape, and Sonic Silver too.

Even if you never write a best seller, or make the top of anyone else’s chart, at the end of the day you’ve created something beautiful and colorful to add to your own, and maybe someone else’s life. And isn’t that part of what we are all trying to do with both our lives and our work?

So I’ve had a really productive month. I’ve left my job as a librarian and have started working in customer service again. I will miss the job and patrons of course, but will always be connected to my library somehow so it doesn’t really feel like a loss.

I’m trying to establish a new “normal” for myself. Finding time to continue with writing, doing research and all the stuff that makes me want to be an author. To support that effort I decided that I would become more active in my online writing groups. A lot of time it’s simple requests to read someone else’s rough draft, or to give an opinion on an action plan someone is thinking of taking. You know general stuff, offering support when its asked for.

For the last 4 weeks I’ve really committed my Saturday mornings to this task. Saturday mornings were always easy when we were kids. Grab your favorite bowl of cereal, yell at your brother for taking your favorite spoon, and watch Bugs Bunny, Hong Kong Phooey and Captain Caveman. You’re good to go. I wish it was that easy now that I’m older.

I get up about 5:30 am and I jump on the social sites and start scrolling through whatever may have been posted in the last week. I have midmorning online classes so I have to get in and out fast. Sometimes you see a lot of repeat questions like, “What inspires you to write?”, or “Do you really care how the reader feels about what you write?”, and other topics like that. I’ve reached the point where its asked so often that I’m come up with my typical responses and saved them so I can just copy and past them into the comments, rather than typing the same thing over and over again.

While I’ll probably feature my typical responses in an upcoming blog, I did want to note one that is really important and at the same time kind of frightening at the number of times I see it being asked by other authors. I answered the same variation on this question 5 different times in 2 hours:

“How do you know when you are ready to give up? Not just on writing, but on everything? Especially your life?”

It continues to amaze me how many times I see this same question posted by all types of authors, all over the world, whether during the day or night. It’s a constant reminder that at any point somewhere, someone is thinking of making the ultimate decision about ending their own life. It’s scary, it’s common, and it’s really scary how common it continues to be.

So this is the answer I share with others, copying and pasting it at least 5 times this morning alone:

“I’ve watched many friends and family members suffer physically and mentally in horrible ways that made them consider taking their own lives. I understand your question. I’m a big advocate for right to die. But I also believe if you are reaching out to ask the question, talking to others about doing something, then you aren’t ready to let go yet. Your actions, not your words, tell me that you want to live.

Seek help, call a friend or anyone you trust, call a hotline or see a doctor. Take the meds they offer, drink water every time you have “those” thoughts, light a candle and take 10 deep breaths, check yourself into a facility and let someone care for you like you’re not able to. Just please wait five more minutes, and then after that wait another five more minutes.

As writers we are born/cursed with incredibly deep feelings that can sometimes lie to us. Understand that and keep reaching out. Blessings.” 🙏💙

A depressing thing to think about I know, but I feel that if in the middle of all that darkness they had the strength to send that message into the Internet bottle, then someone MUST answer them back. We can’t continue to scroll past the parts of life we don’t understand, relate to, or make us uncomfortable.

Maybe my method of copy and paste is too simple, maybe the words are wrong, maybe I’d do better to alert Facebook to their comments, but I think my method proves that they are being heard across that void and that they are not alone in their feelings.

Five has always been my magic number, favorite number, lucky, whatever you want to call it. Once I’ve copied that message five times, I have to get offline. I can’t take it anymore, it becomes too painful to think about. At least I can justify to myself that I tried helping five times today. I tried reaching out and connecting with five people in need. That’s it, that’s the best I can do.

So today I’d ask you, how do you spend your Saturdays and what’s your magic number?