What's Wrong With This Picture?

Okay, people. You tell me what’s wrong with this picture.

First, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hits the island of Haiti on Tuesday, effectively destroying the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Brick and concrete buildings lacking rebar reinforcement tumble to the ground, trapping thousands of people in the ensuing rubble. The presidential palace collapses along with the parliament building. Haitian President René Préval escapes fairly unscathed, but many of Haiti’s legislators, along with hundreds of government workers, are buried in the wreckage.

Everywhere you look, the story is the same. Schools filled with children lay in ruins throughout the city. Five-story hotels are reduced to leaning piles of stone while stores are flattened like pancakes. Most tragically of all, hospitals are destroyed or so badly damaged that they are unsafe for use.

By nightfall, the city is in chaos. There is no electricity, but people continue working madly to rescue survivors trapped in fallen buildings. Doctors from Doctors Without Borders set up triage and treatment areas on land free of rubble. The Red Cross works with them, but quickly runs out of medicine and supplies to treat the wounded. People huddle in the streets, afraid to return to damaged homes. Many of them settle down to sleep wherever they can find room under the stars.

And then morning comes, and with it a promise of aid from the United Nations. International rescue and relief teams mobilize as Venezuela, Mexico, France and Italy commit rescue workers, medical supplies, drinking water, and canned foods to Haiti. Here at home, President Obama pledges the full help of the United States, saying, "Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas and at home. We have to be there for them in their hour of need."

So far, so good. Several nations are already responding to the crisis, and more help is being sought by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. In the U.S., concerned citizens are digging deep into their pockets and, like Americans always do in times of trouble, they are donating money to relief organizations like the Red Cross, CARE, and Doctors Without Borders.

But now the other shoe drops. The spreaders of hate, the nay-sayers and complainers, and the religious bigots of the world thrust their ugly mugs in front of microphones to spew out their messages of divisive intolerance.

And this is where the picture goes wrong.

Taking a lead role in the “quick lip” action is college dropout, admitted drug addict, and convicted felon Rush Limbaugh. Born with a glib tongue, Limbaugh is a self-made millionaire who earns his money by using the radio waves to make fun of anyone whose political opinions differ from his. He is adept at creating conflict, as when, in an attempt to undermine the 2008 Democratic primary campaigns, he asked listeners to cross political lines and vote for whichever Democrat was behind in the race. He called this effort to cause disunity in the Democratic Party "Operation Chaos". He subsequently said, "The dream end of [Operation Chaos] is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a recreation of Chicago 1968 with burning cars, protests, fire, and literal riots and all of that, that is the objective here."

As you can tell from the above, Limbaugh is not interested in promoting love and brotherhood. On the contrary, he thrives on the adulation of listeners who approve of his racial intolerance and socially disruptive discourse. Today this self-proclaimed voice of American conservatism pandered to his followers by chiding President Obama for his rapid response to the crisis in Haiti. Limbaugh indignantly claimed it took three days for the President to make a formal statement to the nation concerning Umar Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up an airplane, but less than one day for Obama to pledge help to Haiti. He called Obama’s actions self-serving and said the administration will "use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, in the ... the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made to order for them."

Apparently Mr. Limbaugh can’t accept the fact that it took two days for government officials – the FBI, CIA, etc. – to amass all the information needed for the President to form a rational and informed statement concerning Abdulmutallab’s ability to avoid the government’s “no fly” list. Limbaugh once said of Obama, “I hope he fails.” I guess he would have rather watched the President fail by making a quick and uninformed statement re Abdulmutallab.

As for Obama’s rapid response to the earthquake, I would have to guess that Mr. Limbaugh is unaware that there are 45,000 Americans currently living and working in Haiti. These Americans expect their government to respond quickly when they are in desperate need of help, and so it will. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made that quite clear today when she told reporters in Honolulu that American citizens in Haiti are "our principal responsibility." She said that the U.S. Coast Guard would use helicopters to evacuate Americans to ships outside Port-au-Prince. According to a later briefing in Washington, the evacuees so far included eight wounded members of the U.S. Embassy staff – four of whom were in serious condition – and approximately 80 family members and non-essential personnel from the Embassy. I expect many more Americans were evacuated after that briefing.

Given Mr. Limbaugh’s history of verbal indulgence in racial bigotry, it’s not difficult to understand why he would oppose swift support for the people of Haiti. They are, after all, black and poor. It's not likely they'll be lured by the promises of American conservatism, especially the type of conservatism espoused by Limbaugh.

It’s more difficult to understand the rantings of Pat Robertson, a man who claims to have dedicated his life to spreading the good news of God’s love. Today there was little mention of God’s love by the wealthy televangelist. Instead, Robertson told viewers of “The 700 Club” that he attributed the destruction left by the earthquake to past sins of the Haitian people. "They were under the heel of the French,” Robertson said. “And they got together and swore a pact with the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' " He went on to say that decades of poverty, natural disasters, and political unrest in Haiti can all be traced back to this pact with the devil.

It would be kind to say that senility has reared its ugly head in the case of Pat Robertson. What else could account for him coming up with such an unprovable and ridiculous story? We know God didn’t whisper it in his ear, and I doubt he’s been speaking to any Haitians lately.

Unlike with Limbaugh (who is certainly in command of his mental faculties), one can despise what Robertson says, yet forgive the man for saying it if senility is the cause of his foolishness. But one wonders if everyone around the man is equally senile since they allow him to spout such nonsense on national television. If not senile, then they are either ignorant fools or greedy underlings eager to share the limelight – and the money – earned by their boss. They, then, are far worse than Robertson. They’re in Limbaugh’s league, consciously agreeable to doing or saying anything that will give them power through wealth.

Limbaugh and Robertson and others like them are what’s wrong with this entire picture. What’s right with it are all the caring citizens of the world who are offering help, directly or indirectly, to the people of Haiti.

Bigots and power seekers may command the air waves of America, but in the end, the voices of caring people will drown out the memory of their bitter words.

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Christmas in Chicago

"I've got the lights upon the Christmas tree, I've got the candle lit for you and me..."

Those words are from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's CD, "The Christmas Attic". It's my favorite Christmas CD, and I'm listening to it as the snow falls outside while I write this post. Christmas is one day and a wake up call away. I should be making the fudge and wrapping the last presents. But my mind is elsewhere today. I've gone back in time to another Christmas season, one that occured 41 years ago. The Christmas tree was up then, too, and the presents were wrapped and waiting beneath its branches.

But I wasn't home to see any of this. Instead, I was in a hospital, having just given birth to our first child. Joseph Frederic came into the world at 3:30 PM, and what a Christmas present he was! Fred and I couldn't have been happier. So today I'm thinking about my oldest son Joe, who himself is now the father of four beautiful children.

That's a picture of Joe above, and to the left is a picture of two of his children, Ashley in the brown coat, Christopher in front, along with my daughter Sarah's daughter, Cinnamon Rose in the pink coat. Yesterday, Joe's wife Melissa and I took the three of them to the Chicago Botanical Gardens to see the Wonderland Express, a special exhibit featuring hand-made buildings made out of natural-only material -- twigs, leaves, flower pods, seed, etc. -- nestled in a living landscape of trees and plants and made more intriguing by twelve trains that run through and over the exhibit to the delight of the Garden's many visitors.

Before going into the exhibit, we visited the two indoor conservatories where the children were duly impressed by the cacti, the orchids, and the banana trees with their green bunches of fruit.

As you can see by the pictures, even the consevatories were decorated for the holidays, with large red glass balls interspersed among the plants and huge poinsettia balls hanging from the ceilings.

With many of the plants in bloom, it was a sight to remember. I've never grown an orchid, but the one shown here took my breath away. The giant allium plants were pretty impressive, too.

And then it was time to check out the gingerbread houses created especially for the holiday exhibit. They included a train station and tunnel, a fire house, apartment buildings flanking a toy shop and candy store, and several houses surrounded by snowmen and decorated pine trees.

Four Christmas trees decorated by various gardening groups occupied the corners of the gingerbread room that led to the Wonderland Express exhibit. Picured here is a cleverly constructed copy of Navy Pier backed by the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower, all of them part of the downtown Chicago part of the exhibit. Not shown is a much smaller version of the Chicago River flowing past the buildings.

This is another view of the downtown Chicago part of the exhibit with the Chicago Water Tower, one of the few buildings that survived the great fire of 1871 that destroyed so much of the city. Next to the Water Tower is the Harold Washington Library with its gorgeous rooftop decorations.

Next is a truly gorgeous replica of one of our many museums. Again, all these buildings were created by hand and took weeks to make. Each year a few new buildings are added to the exhibit. One of the new ones this year was a replica of President Obama's Kenwood home.

This picture shows a neighborhood of typical Chicago-style bungalows. The train running past the home is somewhat blurred, but you get the idea of how the trains were incorporated into the exhibit.

This is a close-up picture of the Harold Washington Library, named for Chicago late Mayor. This new library (well, it's not all that new -- it's been around for a few years) replaced the old downtown building as our main library. It's a fantastic piece of architecture.

Lastly, this is a replica of Soldier's Field, home of the Chicago Bears, before the recent renovation. This is the only building in the exhibit that comes with sound: the Bears' fight song plays in the background.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these pictures. The kids loved the trip, which means we'll all be back in spring when the tulips and daffodils are in bloom in the gardens and hopefully all the snow has melted away! I hope you're able to do some special things with your family this holiday season, too. For us, it was a fun way to help count down the days until Christmas. :)

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When Life Throws You a Curve

I last posted to this blog on Thanksgiving when I listed everything I was thankful for. Included on that list were my children and grandchildren, most of whom celebrated the holiday with my husband and I at our house.

Missing that day were daughter Jennifer, son-in-law Jay, and grandsons Dan and Zach. They had driven to Florida to celebrate the holiday with Jay's parents and weren't expected back in town until late Saturday evening. Nevertheless, Jen called on Thanksgiving, and since her birthday was the following day, Fred and I and the rest of the family sang a merry "Happy Birthday" to her over the phone. Hearing that all was well with them, I didn't expect to talk with Jen again until the following week when life for her family had returned to normal.

But the phone rang very early Sunday morning, and that was the end of normal for all of us.

It was Jenni on the line asking us to come as quickly as possible. Jay, a long-time Type 1 diabetic, was experiencing numbness on his left side. She was taking him to the hospital and needed us to stay at the house with the boys.

Having been a nurse for a long, long time, I knew in my heart as I drove the thirty miles to their home that my 43-year-old son-in-law had suffered a stroke. Waiting and praying for the best, while hiding my fears from 6-year-old Zack and 7-year-old Dan, was one of those awful things no mother wants to do. While waiting for a phone call from Jen at the hospital, I kept hoping my gut diagnosis would be proved wrong.

Unfortunately, I wasn't wrong. Jay's MRI showed he'd suffered two strokes, one sometime in the recent past and one overnight on Saturday. Known as lacunar strokes, they occured deep in the brain and were most likely the result of complications caused by his diabetes.

The good news is, Jay's strokes were sensory in nature. He is home now and has full use of his limbs. His speech was unaffected, and his mind is as clear as ever (which means his jokes are as corny as ever!). What he's experiencing now is a lack of normal sensation on the left side of his entire body. Instead, he has painful burning sensations in his arm and leg, and he cannot actually feel anything he touches with his hand or foot. His walking is improving with the use of a cane and daily physical therapy; he's getting accustomed to not feeling the floor under his foot as he walks.

It will be a long time before life seems "normal" again for Jenni and Jay. But faith and the support of family and friends is easing the way for them. The entire family will be celebrating Christmas at their house this year with Jen preparing the turkey and the rest of us bringing all the side dishes. It will be a happy Christmas this year because Jay is with us and the family is still intact. His strokes could have been much worse, and we're tremendously thankful they weren't.

We're also thankful because Jay's sense of humor is one thing he didn't lose. He may not like having to walk with a cane, but he enjoys swatting Jen with it whenever she walks by. (His latest prank -- removing all the towels from the bathroom while she was taking a shower -- earned him a swat from her in return!)

Jay's upbeat attitude combined with Jenni's courage has inspired all of us in the family. Life threw them -- and us -- a curve. We're not sure where that curve is leading us, but we're making the journey together. The way I see it, that's what family is all about.

I hope all of you reading this post will be as thankful for life as we are this year, regardless of the curves thrown at you by fate. May your Christmas be Christ-filled and merry, and may the Source of all life give you hope and peace.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I'm thankful today for all that God's given me. I deserve none of it, have done nothing to earn it, yet I've received it all nonetheless.

I'm thankful first for life, every single day of it. I'm thankful to wake up and see sunlight or clouds, rain or snow, outside my window. I'm thankful that I can see the sunlight or clouds or rain or snow, that I have eyesight that may require glasses, but I have eyesight nonetheless. And I'm thankful that no matter what the weather is outside, I am inside, safe and secure and fortunate to be in my own home.

I'm thankful for family, my husband and children and grandchildren and sisters and brothers and cousins and friends who are my extended family. I'm thankful we are all still together, thankful for every day we can still see or speak with each other, thankful I can hear their voices and still have a mind that remembers their names.

I'm thankful for colors that make the world around me bright and varied. I'm thankful for the natural world that gives me such pleasure, for the mountains I've seen and the rocky hills I've climbed, for the lakes and rivers I've dipped a toe in, for the trees and flowers that amaze me with their variety.

I'm thankful for sunrises and sunsets and sharing them with people I love. I'm thankful for the stars and the moon at night and the wonder of the galaxy of which I'm a part. I'm thankful for sandy beaches and backyard gardens and fields of corn and wheat and sunflowers.

I'm thankful for the good and the bad that's happened in my life. I've learned from both and grown because of it.

I'm thankful for mercy and compassion and laughter and tears. I've needed them all and shared them all.

I'm thankful for science and medicine, how it worked together to save my granddaughter. I'm thankful for education that made it all possible. And I'm thankful for all the people who give of themselves to make life better for the rest of us.

Most of all today, I'm thankful that I have faith in a God who created me and all that is around me. I'm thankful that while I often question the unanswerable, I still believe in the Source.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. May we be thankful every day of our lives and not just on this holiday.

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Fun Friday the 13th!

Welcome to Fun Friday the 13th on Cicero's Children! It's time to have some fun with weird news stories I've collected from around the world. These first two news bit were sent to me by my son Matt. I can't verify the accuracy of the reports, but true or not, they have to make you shake your head in wonder.

From Matt: Two animal rights defenders were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany. Suddenly, all two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence, stampeding madly. The two helpless protesters were trampled to death.

And: The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in Alaska a few years back was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.

This story comes from my own home state. The Kane County, Illinois Sheriff's Department orders plain white patrol units and has the graphics applied locally.
In this case, what they ordered was not quite what they got. This car was driven for one week before an officer noticed what the graphics company employee did on the passenger side of the car. The employee did this on his last day working for the graphics company before he retired.

As I always say, better retired than fired!

Worried about the swine flu?? So is my daughter-in-law Cheryl. She sent me this picture showing how she's making sure my grandson Christian is safe even at home.

Can't recall who sent me the following classified ads, but they tickled my funnybone. Hope they do the same for yours. These ads actually ran in newspapers.

FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER
8-years old. Hateful little bastard. Bites!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FREE PUPPIES:
1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor's dog.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FREE PUPPIES..
Mother, AKC German Shepherd.
Father, Super Dog...able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG.
Looks like a rat. Been out a while.
Better be a big reward.

Google Street View is responsible for documenting this sign discovered along a road in Vancouver, Canada. Apparently there's an outbreak of Elephantitis among the deer population there. I feel sorry for the poor critters, but even sorrier for the driver who happens to hit one! Be careful on the roads, all you Canadians!

Talk about weird stories! This one takes the cake. A 22-year-old Norwegian citizen was arrested for smuggling in Kristiansand, Norway after arriving from Denmark with 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos hidden under his clothes. The pythons were hidden in stockings duct-taped to the guy's abdomen, and the geckos were in boxes taped to his thighs. A tarantula was also found in one of his bags.

Did he really think he could get away with it???

Well, that's all the weird news for today. Fun Friday returns next week with more strange and wonderful stories. Until then, if you have a weird news item you'd like to see posted on Fun Friday, email it to me at kleworks@aol.com. Fun Fridays will run until the week before Christmas when YOU the reader get to vote on the best story. The sender of that story will receive a free copy of my Christmas mystery, A MERRY LITTLE MURDER. Until Monday, have a great weekend!

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Barbara DeShong (cont'd)

Welcome back to Cicero's Children where Barbara DeShong is our featured guest today. On Monday, Barbara began telling us how she started on the path to publiction. Today she's finishing up what's turned out to be quite a unique story. At the close of Barb's blog I'll be providing a review of her book, TOO RICH AND TOO THIN: NOT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I hope you enjoy Barb's blog and the review.

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"Extreme Writing for Publication"

Phase two of Extreme Writing for Publication involved submitting work at conferences where pre-conference reads were available. This was a very important element as these conferences provide a wide variety of views on the quality of writing and marketability of work. The temptation (and I did this in spades) is to want to only submit work at pre-read conferences to agents—as a way to maybe be accepted as a client. While this can happen, often pre-reads by non-agents can be really helpful. Pre-read results can also be discouraging, in fact, if you pony up the effort, discouragement is to be expected.

The next step after I had a completed and edited manuscript, was to put together the dreaded synopsis and gasp—a pitch. As I’ve learned is often the case, when I sat down to write a synopsis, I would be gripped by an attack of what is best described as ‘situational retardation’. My sentences made no sense and my attempts came out as ‘kitchen sink’ paragraphs or over-generalized, meaningless clichés. Having benefited from my conference-going fury, I returned to the Net and signed up for a couple of New York Pitch and Shop weekends.

When I gave my first three-minute pitch, the moderator said, “I have absolutely no idea what you are even talking about.” I took his suggestion and spent lunch in my hotel room redoing the pitch. The workshops focused on ‘pitch’ were very helpful and meeting at the Greer Studios was a real kick. Not all the benefits of conferences were inside meetings. Each one offered chances to talk with other people from all over the country doing the same sort of projects. Those of us suffering and learning in the pitch workshops put together on-going email groups.

The last step of Extreme Writing was taking my pitch on the road to conferences with agent and editor feedback. I met Karen Syed at a Southern California Writers Conference…I know…where I started by walking into that hotel by accident…and Echelon bought and published “Too Rich and Too Thin, Not an Autobiography.”

I know not everyone has the time or ability to do all the travelling I did, and I don’t think it’s necessary. Since I’ve calmed down, I’ve discovered programs in my own area covering the same topics I flew across the country to attend. My decision to seek help outside the state is more the result of my wanting to accomplish a lot in a short period of time.

My goal in writing this is to speak to others who don’t have twenty years to get published. The way I see it, you can speed things up if you make a plan and go at it in a concentrated and relentless way. Relentless means not allocating time to dawdling away years in a snit after a deluge of rejections. The main thing I learned was I needed to learn to write, but even more I needed to learn to listen, even when what I heard and still hear is painful. After all, I’d like it so much better if I already knew everything.

But then, you’d think I would have stayed with just one profession. If you’ve read this far, you have the urge to write, too. And what a fabulous way to go. For me, since I was a kid, books carried me away. And what a privilege to write. I remember a line from the film about Virginia Woolf (paraphrased) when one of Virginia’s sisters remarks, “Virginia is lucky. She has two worlds to live in. The one’s she’s actually living and the one she is writing.”
So, there you go.

Barbara DeShong
Mysteryshrink.com

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A Review by Mary Welk of TOO RICH AND TOO THIN: NOT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Psychologist Jessica LeFave is not high on the "Favorote Persons" list of her local Texas police department. Ever since her husband's car was dragged out of Lake Austin -- with her dead husband in it -- Jessica has been insisting that the police investigate what she claims is his murder. The cops think otherwise, calling the death an unfortunate accident and pointing to a Hilton hotel receipt and another woman's wedding ring found in his pocket as proof that he was cheating on Jessica.

"Bull!" says Jessica. Convinced that her husband -- also a psychologist -- was killed in order to bury a secret revealed in therapy, Jessica begins investigating his former patients. Luck smiles on her when the cops reluctantly ask her to profile the killer of Bernice Jackson, a wealthy Texan who twisted known historical events into outrageous melodramas for her soft-porn romance novels and films. It's not a secret that Bernice was hated by historical anti-revisionists, but could an outsider sneak into a gala party held at Bernice's mansion and lure her into her mirrored bedroom in order to drive a spike through her heart? Pretty doubtful say the cops, and Jessica agrees. It's more likely that a family member or one of the actors at the party did it. But the question is, why?

Jessica begins her own investigation when she discovers that her husband was counseling Bernice Jackson at the time of his death. Jessica drags her old friend George Ramsdale into her quest for justice. A lawyer who's more concerned about his new car's interior/exterior color combination than his practice, George agrees to drive Jessica to a remote town near the Mexican border in search of answers. With George busy oogling the local beauties (human and female only), Jessica must make nice with Bernice's drug-seeking son, her binge-eating daughter, a passel of actors and hanger-oners, plus the resident motorcycle gang, while at the same time winning the confidence of the only man who can lead her to the truth.

Texas may never be the same now that Barbara DeShong hit the writing scene. Psychotics abound in this humorous and nicely plotted mystery featuring gutsy Dr. Jessica LeFave and her off-the-wall buddy George. A sprinkling of red herrings may throw the most avid armchair detective off the track, but the ending is both logical and satisfying in this series debut. Amateur sleuth fans will look forward to more mysteries by DeShong after reading this fun and action-filled adventure. I give the book five stars for originality, characterization, and a setting that can't be beat.

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Barbara DeShong's Extreme Writing

I'm thrilled to have Barbara DeShong as my guest blogger today. Barb is the author of the humorous mystery TOO RICH AND TOO THIN: NOT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. A psychologist in private practice and consulting in Texas, Barb previously wrote a book on stress that led to speaking engagements both in her home state and across the country. Following the publication of that book, she exchanged the insanity and long hours of the writing world for the insanity and broken bones of showing horses. She credits her current writing style to having unexpectedly dismounted and landed on her head too many times without a helmet.

A blend of doing psychotherapy and writing humorous fiction is a perfect fit for Barb since she loves stories and is constitutionally incapable of staying out of other people’s business. Today she's going to share some thoughts with us on her writing style, or what she calls "Extreme Writing for Publication".

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What kind of crazy person trades in a two hundred dollar an hour indoor profession with all sorts of ego-patting perks for an occupation requiring infinite unpaid work hours and multileveled rejection?

A writer. My spiral into the writing world began when strolling through Old Town in San Diego a few years back, I stuck my head into the lobby of a hotel hosting the Southern California Writers Conference. In the sort of whimsical mood that comes with February sunshine in Southern California, I strolled up to the conference registration table. When the smiling woman asked if I was registered, I laughed, coyly.

“Oh, no. I’ve thought about writing fiction…maybe I will once I retire.”

“Don’t wait. Start now,” the woman said, looking straight into my eyes. (Those Southern Californians are stronger than the rest of us. It’s the freeway experience.)

“Who knows?” I said, slipping a brochure for the next conference in my jeans pocket. Any excuse to come to San Diego in February, right?

I should explain why I was more than naïve about what was required to complete a readable work of fiction and why I was oblivious to the perils of selling a novel. I wrote and sold a successful nonfiction on the heels of graduate school. The process was as follows: After presenting a workshop in New York, an editor from a respectable publishing company asked me to submit a proposal on my workshop topic. I did, they bought it, sent me a fat advance, and I wrote. Every month the editor flew to Texas to consult with me on how it was going. The book came out, the checks came in, and I received invitations to speak around the nation.

Here’s the place where you laugh. I really believed getting a novel published would be the same sort of enterprise. I know, I know. And, perhaps, had I’d kept my coy smile and thoughts of writing until I was too old to actually try, I would be one more professional, like the many you’ve met, who smiles knowingly on hearing of your writing struggles…then says, “I’m thinking I should write a novel…maybe later when I have more time.”

Discovering my view of the profession was, shall we say, a bit off the mark, I set out to learn two things: how to write fiction and how to get published.

Though I’d written many professional pieces, I did not know enough about writing fiction to complete even the most common sort of fictional piece—an auto insurance commercial. I was informed of my deficits by my kind English professor brother-in-law who, bless his heart, actually read every word of my 170,000 confessional manuscript. We met for breakfast and I handed him the four-inch stack of brilliance. Tell you what kind of guy he is, he didn’t even cry. At least not until he was out of eyesight.

I waited, heart-pounding, for return of the manuscript…which I was sure needed a few, tiny corrections and maybe neatening of a couple of chapter endings. Okay, you can laugh here, too. Brother-in-law returned the manuscript at another breakfast meeting and I should have noticed he was staring at his coffee instead of looking me in the eye. On the cover page, he’d summarized his thoughts. The first sentence went thusly: “First, dear sister-in-law of mine, (‘dear’, that means trouble ahead) let me congratulate you on your courage and discipline…”

Yep. You’ve got the picture. That first paragraph ended with a hint that I might want to take a few classes on creative writing. Me? Classes?

Having gone through undergrad as pre-med with a biology major, I hadn’t taken an English course since high school. But, I’d taught psychology and had some neat ideas. I hope you’re giggling here at my folly, because I deserve it.

By the way, I’ve never gone back and re-worked that first manuscript because it just isn’t that good. I’d read over and over, as you have, that the first ‘novel’ written is often never publishable. When you’re writing that first novel, the very thought that the pages you are grinding out with drops of blood oozing out of your forehead…are going to end up on a shelf…is enough to make you want to stalk the author who even suggested such a travesty…that you are sitting there all those hours doing the best you can…and your plans for the work are never to be.

Thus, reality a bit closer, I decided to launch ‘Extreme Writing for Publication’. That is, since I was approaching the retirement I’d talked to the Southern Californian woman so cavalierly about, I knew I did not have time to go back for a creative writing degree or even to play around going to one or two local conferences. I needed to sink myself in the project.

Extreme Writing for Publication had several phases. Phase one was finding an editor I could listen to without threatening to jump out of tall buildings. I presented my plan to the nice lady in San Diego and she agreed to give it a go. I need to say, because I’ve since learned my experience might be unusual, the editor, Jean Jenkins, refused to accept a cent. That’s right. She thought the project sounded like something she’d like to work on and we hit it off.

With an editor who was willing to join my efforts, I launched stage two of Extreme Writing for Publication. I signed up for six Writing Conferences for the following year. I realize not everyone can afford that many trips, but I was seeing the project as consolidating ten years of conference going. I learned a tremendous amount, including that some conferences were more useful than others and that conferences vary in what is offered from ‘boot camps’ focused on hard-nosed all-day writing to ‘overviews of basics’, to conferences with inspiring speakers. If there’s an interest, I’ll make another entry on conference experiences.

The conference going stage of my process also included book-buying and movie elements. I bought around twenty books on fiction writing and studied like crazy. As with conferences, some were more helpful than others. The movie-going aspect had two parts. One, I went to several movies a week, good and bad, to learn how to follow story lines, highs and lows. Second I picked a few movies which I saw multiple times in the same week. Multiple views provided a way to see different elements of the story line. I saw “The Quiet American” daily for six days, taking something new away with each viewing.

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Barb will return on Wednesday with "Phase Two" of "Extreme Writing for Publication". I hope you will join us then for the rest of this delightful blog post and a review of TOO RICH AND TOO THIN: NOT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Barbara DeShong. Until then, click on the title of this blog to read about TOO RICH AND TOO THIN at Amazon.com.

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