Visual Motivation to Write

Just a little visual aid to motivate you to put butt in chair and write that book or novel that you've been 'meaning to' write. This is a photo of Linda Swink, author of In Their Honor at her publisher's office during her first book signing.

I've known Linda for years and she's struggled just like the rest of us. But, when she finally settled down in her chair, turned on her Mac and got down to work -- she created a book that will greatly add to the military history of the United States. No small deal, but she did it one word, one day, one rewrite at a time. She might have had a bit more hair before starting this project. I received several emails from her saying "I'm pulling my hair out!" And a few others that said, "Why did I ever start this?" And here she sits in her classic camel tan suit signing her name to copies that people are buying and taking home and THANKING her for writing the book.

I know they say that writing a book is like childbirth, but in this respect I will say that the memory of the pain of the creation process fades quickly once you hold that new baby/book in your hands. I believe she'd do it all over again. But right now, she's devoted herself to the marketing aspects of the process.

This photo brings back memories of going to a reading by my dear friend Peggy Vincent in Iowa City and celebrating afterwards. Her book Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife still gives me goosebumps. The euphoria!

And a few years later Gary Presley read from his Seven Wheelchairs at the same podium at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City. I could close my eyes and see the room, feel the enthusiasm even if I was a thousand miles away.

It does happen.

It does happen to people we know and respect.

And -- it can happen to us.

A new year is fast approaching -- it is the year for us to finish our projects and get them out there.

Forget all you hear about the doomed publishing industry. That has nothing to do with your book. Your job is to write whatever it is you are compelled to write. The book only YOU can write.

Write it and they will come.

Veteran's Day revisited

What did you do to celebrate Veteran's Day? If you're like me -- not much. Most continued the work week uninterrupted -- I work a government job so I sat at home and got paid for it. I can only imagine what someone in the military felt. I've never been there. Maybe they felt a reverence for those brave brothers and sisters who died or sustained wounds for their country; may be they felt the heart breaking pain of rejection, their contributions unappreciated.

I'm often reminded that I have a Polyanna perspective of war. Or perhaps it is more a one-dimensional, read-it-in-a-book kind of feeling about it. I tick off the cost of the war with a counter on this website. That doesn't begin to count the cost.

Now and then something crosses my path that makes me sit up and stop taking for granted that people will continually be there to put themselves in harms way to preserve my freedom, my country. Today it was the realization that volunteers continue to devote their lives to the care and maintenance of strangers' graves. All of these years after the end of World War II, people maintain graves for soldiers -- American, English, Australian.... Men who died and were buried on foreign soil. One web site "In Honored Glory" drives that message home and provides a few stories behind 'he gave his life for his country.' The photo below shows the well kept Margraten Cemetery in the Netherlands.

A dear friend is compiling information in a book -- the stories behind the names that grace military installations around the world. Fort Hood. Ramstein Air Force Base. Camp Lejuene.... The men and one woman who performed beyond all expectations and are honored with their name linked to a military installation -- yet we have forgotten who they are and what they did. I hope she soon gets the book out in stores so we can read it and never forget.

Looking through the 85 stories on In Honored Glory, I met Carl Genthner. He was probably the first man shot at a picturesque Belgium town, Malmedy. Carl Genthner was a medic, an ambulance driver, one of the few people out there bent on saving lives, not taking them. Malmedy will aways be associated with Carl's death and those of more than a hundred American prisoners of war.

"By about 1400, 113 Americans had been assembled in the field by the Café. They included 90 members of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion (all except three from Battery B), 10 men from the five ambulances, the military policeman who had been on traffic duty at Five Points, the 86th Battalion engineer and 11 men who had been captured by KGr. Peiper before reaching Baugnez–eight from the 32nd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, two from the 200th Field Artillery Battalion and a sergeant from the 23rd Infantry Regiment." -- History Net

These men were herded into the center of a field and German soldiers began shooting them, one by one, like target practice. They were infected with the blood sport and took more and more pleasure in their shooting prowess. A convoy of German soldiers drove by during the massacre.

There were five who lived to tell the story.

It may be painful to read, yet there's something powerful and even hopeful in knowing that we are part of a country that includes such people who can rise to the occasion even unto the point of giving their lives. The men who were senselessly used as targets and those who gave their lives to save innocents or their fellow soldiers. Each war has too many of these stories. Each person who died had lived and left a footprint on this earth and their contributions to protecting freedom should mean more to us than a date on a calendar.

Another website, The Red Cross Holiday Mail for Heroes offers the opportunity to send Christmas cards to our soldiers. If anyone missed celebrating our heroes during Veteran's Day, here's a second chance to let them know, if not how much we appreciate them, at least let them know they are not forgotten.

Birthing a book

The joy of bringing a new book into the world sets my blood swirling and my lips spreading into a big old grin. I love being privy to the back story, to the formation, to the creator's frustrations and triumphs when writing a book. I've been allowed to view this grand event several times and each time I get giddy with joy at their triumph. The fact that I may have contributed in some small way makes me content that I've not lived this life in vain.

Once again I've been watching a gifted writer put his words together into a new book. Today I read a piece he's compiling from his memoir to offer to literary magazines. He has the heart of a poet with a touch of bawdy humor here and there. My kind of writing.

And yet, the subject of his memoir, it could be so maudlin and oh woe is me or he could bluster his way through and say 'it ain't so tough.' But he does none of those things, he gives the reader total honesty. Sometimes more than perhaps you'd want because the subject does make us face our own mortality. The author was stricken with polio at the peak of his young life, as he was stepping from childhood sandals into adult dancing shoes. Well, he could say it better. But by the age of 20 he had spent time in an iron lung, gave up his hard fought, almost achieved independence, and became totally dependent, even more so than old Blanche Duboise, on the kindness of strangers. His memoir takes us into a world where he travels by wheelchair 'boob high' to the world. I think that should be his title, by the way.

He's been struggling with rewrites for the past few months. Next he will face marketing and book signings and all of the things in between that writers rarely think of when trying to get one book sold. I hope he sells tons of books, makes the best seller's list, and sits down to write several more books. He is a voice that will add greatly to those already shouting from the bookshelves.

Watch for the name: Gary Presley. He has several items available to read online, his website and his blog site and his offerings to the Internet Writing Workshop blog as well as their book review site. Here are a few urls to consider:

http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/su2007/presley.html
http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/su2004/presley.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2002/03/07/eating_ants/index.html

Gary isn't my first encounter up close and personal with the pains of birthing a book. I worked for a year with Peggy Vincent as she labored over her memoir Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife. Another voice that needs to be heard. And her sense of humor. I snorted my way through that book. Spit coffee on my keyboard, laughed out loud and scared the cat. And then so poignant. A life well lived. But oh, the book she could write NOW about the life she's living AFTER Baby Catcher.

And Linda Swink, a dear friend, and lifelong member of Toastmaster's and the book "Speak With Power and Grace" that she wrote about public speaking. One of the best and most helpful books I've read on the subject. It would have been longer, but she allowed me to do a bit of editing for her. "She's currently finishing up a much needed reference on men who have had a military installation named in their honor, titled Lest We Forget: The Naming of Our Military Installations." It should be published in 2008. The heroes she uncovered in her research -- it is a litany of bravery that has for the most part been long forgotten. A must read even if you aren't into military history and research.

I've reviewed a number of books through the years for various venues from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus to Crescent Blues E'magazine and Gumshoe Review. I like to think that my reviews may have contributed a bit to the authors successes. Well, there might have been a few that I might have been a bit detrimental.... But several quote my reviews on their websites and on the back cover of their books -- those help me feel, again, as if I'm contributing something good and worthwhile.

And maybe, just maybe, after having reached my Nanowrimo goal ahead of schedule, maybe someday I'll get to go through this process with my own book. Keep your fingers crossed.