I ran across this advice today, from a twitter feed… yeah, yeah, I should have been finishing that short story, but … anyway, here’s the post, called Eight Simple Tips for Editing Your Own Work.

Most of them, I agree with, and most of the bad things, I do- at least once, like editing as I write, but sometimes, I find a new direction that way.

I had to revisit the Write or Die site, as it’s been a while since I went there- here’s a quote from the site:

“As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but if you become distracted, punishment will ensue.”

Ok, hotshot, want to try it yourself?

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. and  yeah, I totally downloaded it to the i-pad2.

 Go HERE.

then come back tomorrow.

Not Waving, Drowning earns a Kirkus Review!

What Kirkus had to say:

Sands, Linda NOT WAVING, DROWNING CreateSpace (224 pp.) $14.99 Paperback $2.99 e-book September 26, 2011 ISBN: 978-1466409736

The lives of three women, separated by time and connected by loss, are woven together in unexpected ways in Sands’ debut novel. The seductive Southern charms of Savannah, Ga., provide the backdrop for Sands’ tapestry of a novel that interweaves the lives of three women from starkly different eras.

In August 2011, photographer and grieving widow Maggie Morris arrives in Savannah after her husband’s sudden death in a boating accident. While investigating his mysterious drowning, Maggie becomes entangled in the lives of several local residents. One of these is a handsome, young lighthouse restorer who recounts the story of the famous Waving Girl—Savannah’s own maritime legend who greeted ships for over 40 years from the island home she shared with her brother.

In alternating chapters, the novel flashes back to the 1890s, when a feisty newspaper reporter named Bobbie Denton, who also happens to be Maggie’s great-grandmother, meets the actual Waving Girl, née Florence Martus, while on assignment in Savannah. Flora’s story, told from an intimate point of view, centers on one day in 1940 when the 72-year-old woman lays to rest her dead brother, George, while recalling her life’s dark secrets.

If this all sounds a bit complicated, it is. Sands writes with graceful lyricism about the longings and regrets that bind these disparate women, and the images of lonely lighthouses and windswept shores are often stunning. As a whole, however, the novel suffers from narrative interruptions, with the chapters alternating rapidly and often abruptly, and many threads becoming tangled as a result.

On their own, each woman’s story is rich and engrossing. In an ambitious novel spanning more than a century, Sands creates tension in small moments and haunting questions—many of which are not answered until the final pages.

Despite the awkward narrative structure, there is plenty of Southern charm to keep readers hooked until the end. Strong female characters and an evocative setting make this an enjoyable read.

What Bookwenches had to say:

Title: Not Waving, Drowning

Author:  Linda Sands

Author’s website:  http://linda-sands.com/

Publisher: BookBaby

Release Date:  September 26, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-61842-1715 Length:

Novel Format:  Electronic

Genre: Fiction

Language/Violence Level:  2 Sensuality Level: 3 Rating:  5+ Keeper

Reviewed by:  Clea

The stories of three women, spanning a century, interlink with one another in beautifully haunting ways. Flora, a feisty elderly woman, chooses to reveal a lifetime full of secrets to a complete stranger on the day of her beloved brother’s death.  Bobbie, a turn of the century reporter, travels for her job but is actually running from the trauma of her past, sacrificing her soul for scraps of love. Maggie, a woman who finds it increasingly difficult to express her emotions, goes to Savannah to look into her husband’s mysterious disappearance. ******** Savannah, Georgia, with all its quirks and traditions serves as a back drop to a multigenerational story of three unconventional women who struggle to survive the paths their lives have taken. Their stories are linked by beautiful poetry filled with love, hurt, death, grief, and life. The poetry serves not only as a tool to link the women and their experiences, but it also enhances the feelings behind each scene and draws the reader into the lives of these characters even more. Flora, Bobbie and Maggie are three unique characters that will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading their stories. They are strong, independent women full of heartache who struggle to survive and move forward with their lives the best ways they know how. Often that means making unwise choices in life which can lead to little bits of insanity, but sometimes that’s the key to survival. This book is overflowing with emotion and a lot of it is often sadness and loneliness, but the author manages to interject mild touches of humor even in the darkest moments of sadness. This may move you from tears to giggles in the blink of an eye, but the author does it in a way that is tasteful and serves to remind you that life goes on. One thing about this book that kept me turning the pages is how the story leaps from different points in time and takes us on a timetable throughout the history of the world from the late 1800’s, to the 1940’s then jumps to modern times.  I loved how the author uses this technique to show how the things we do, think and feel will affect people of generations to come. Not Waving, Drowning isn’t a happy-go-lucky story that will perk you up and make you feel good about life; instead it is a beautifully written, sad story that will leave a lasting imprint on your soul.

Which got me thinking.

If the idea is that creativity is the same whether it’s cooking or painting or writing or gardening, then if you’re doing them all at the same time, will you only be giving a quarter of your talent to each one?
Maybe this is the reason that I can only do one of these well at a time.

( In my mind I see a woman at the stove stirring a pot with one hand, sketching with her right foot, planting a flower with her other hand and typing with her left foot.)

Yes, it is impossible to do them all at the exact same time. But in my every day life, I can either do one of these well, or burn a whole lot of food.

When I’m taking a break from writing a novel, I usually find some other creative outlet to feed me, like decorating a house, creating a garden, a crafting or building project, or baking something new. Sometimes I venture deep into the pantry and try my hand at an odd meal combination, where I feed another odd habit: the desire to use things up and toss empty containers.

sigh.

I am giving away all my oddities, aren’t I. But, seriously. Nothing pleases me more than to finish a tube of toothpaste and toss it out. I would never be a hoarder, or one of those pantry stocking coupon gals.

Anyway, Morris says- well, her character says, that easch of those things: cooking,painting writng, gardening take nothing and make something of it. Perhaps that’s the beginning of creativity. Seeing the possibility.

I like that.

Thinking about that led me here to read about  the 9 attitudes of highly creative people, which I totally agree with.

And, no, this whole blog was not a way to avoid writing. It’s just another kind of writing. Another outlet for Linda.

Many thanks in advance.

( you can also get ebooks anywhere you like to connect or buy paperback from Amazon- see links in red HERE )

Like this gal, Jackie. Check out her blog, and her comeback to the Amazon vs. Traditional Publishers dispute.

New World, Old World… or the best of both?

Get ready to hit the pause button and capture the QR code on your phone!

*insert hauntingly mystical soundtrack here*

Links to posts by David Gaughran, found on his blog: Let’s Get Digital.

all links are here…. download and be reading within seconds.

CLICK THE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR A LINK TO AMAZON/KINDLE

click the lower case words for a link to all e-readers, including phones, computers and high tech stuff yet to reach the USA

                  1. LEGAL THRILLER

         based on a true crime in 1970′s Philadelphia

2. ADULT THEMED FAIRY TALES IN SNIPPETS 

             ever wonder what someone is thinking?

3. LIKE YOUR BASKETBALL?  HOW ABOUT A REF WITH A FOOT FETISH?

           this is what I thought about sitting in floor seats at a Hawks game

4. TRAFFIC JAMS CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE- FOREVER

                   you’ve all been here- sort of

5. NOT YOUR AVERAGE BEACH READ, BUT THERE IS A BEACH, AND A GIRL

                           oh and there’s bad guys

6. JOUSTING, KNIGHTS, AND A WORD PUZZLE. ARE YOU GAME?

                                of course you’re game

Toni Morrison

INTERVIEWER
You have said that you begin to write before dawn. Did this habit begin for practical reasons, or was the early morning an especially fruitful time for you?

MORRISON
Writing before dawn began as a necessity–I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, Mama–and that was always around five in the morning. Many years later, after I stopped working at Random House, I just stayed at home for a couple of years. I discovered things about myself I had never thought about before. At first I didn’t know when I wanted to eat, because I had always eaten when it was lunchtime or dinnertime or breakfast time. Work and the children had driven all of my habits… I didn’t know the weekday sounds of my own house; it all made me feel a little giddy.

I was involved in writing Beloved at that time–this was in 1983–and eventually I realized that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more intelligent in the morning. The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.

Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don’t remember exactly what the gesture was–there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard–but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that’s a ritual. And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space I can only call nonsecular… Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.

I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?

INTERVIEWER.
What about your writing routine?

MORRISON
I have an ideal writing routine that I’ve never experienced, which is to have, say, nine uninterrupted days when I wouldn’t have to leave the house or take phone calls. And to have the space–a space where I have huge tables. I end up with this much space [she indicates a small square spot on her desk] everywhere I am, and I can’t beat my way out of it. I am reminded of that tiny desk that Emily Dickinson wrote on and I chuckle when I think, Sweet thing, there she was. But that is all any of us have: just this small space and no matter what the filing system or how often you clear it out–life, documents, letters, requests, invitations, invoices just keep going back in. I am not able to write regularly. I have never been able to do that–mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time.

INTERVIEWER
Could you write after work?

MORRISON
That was difficult. I’ve tried to overcome not having orderly spaces by substituting compulsion for discipline, so that when something is urgently there, urgently seen or understood, or the metaphor was powerful enough, then I would move everything aside and write for sustained periods of time. I’m talking to you about getting the first draft.

INTERVIEWER
You have to do it straight through?

MORRISON
I do. I don’t think it’s a law.

INTERVIEWER
Could you write on the bottom of a shoe while riding on a train like Robert Frost? Could you write on an airplane?

MORRISON
Sometimes something that I was having some trouble with falls into place, a word sequence, say, so I’ve written on scraps on paper, in hotels on hotel stationary, in automobiles. If it arrives you know. If you know it really has come, then you have to put it down.

INTERVIEWER
What is the physical act of writing like for you?

MORRISON
I write with a pencil

INTERVIEWER
Would you ever work on a word processor?

MORRISON
Oh, I do that also, but that is so much later when everything is put together. I type that into a computer and then I begin to revise. But everything I write for the first time is written with a pencil, maybe a ballpoint if I don’t have a pencil. I’m not picky, but my preference is for yellow legal pads and a nice No. 2 pencil.

INTERVIEWER
Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 soft?

MORRISON
Exactly. I remember once trying to use a tape recorder, but it doesnt’ work.

INTERVIEWER
Did you actually dictate a story into the machine?

MORRISON
Not the whole thing, but just a bit. For instance, when two or three sentences seemed to fall into place, I thought I would carry a tape recorder in the car, particularly when I was working at Random House going back and forth every day. It occurred to me that I could just record it. It was a disaster. I don’t trust my writing that is not written, although I work very hard in subsequent revisions to remove the writerly-ness from it, to give it a combination of lyrical, standard, and colloquial language. To pull all these things together into something that I think is much more alive and representative. But I don’t trust something that occurs to me and then is spoken and transferred immediately to the page.

INTERVIEWER
Do you ever read your work out loud while you are working on it?

MORRISON
Not until it’s published. I don’t trust a performance. I could get a response that might make me think it was successful when it wasn’t at all. The difficulty for me in writing–among the difficulties–is to write language that can work quietly on a page for a reader who doesn’t hear anything. Now for that, one has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it is what you don’t write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

INTERVIEWER
How many times would you say you have to write a paragraph over to reach this standard?

MORRISON
Well, those that need reworking I do as long as I can. I mean, I’ve revised six times, seven times, thirteen times. But there’s a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death. It is important to know when you are fretting it; when you are fretting it because it is not working, it needs to be scrapped.

INTERVIEWER
Do you ever go back over what has been published and wish you had fretted more over something?

MORRISON
A lot. Everything.

The Paris Review, Issue 128, 1993