My Word Count and Stephen King

by Rachael Phillips

 

Today my word count will multiply like dandelions.

Like the amorous rabbits who devour my newly sprouted green beans.
Like the number of unanswered e-mails in my exponential account.
Well, all right, I’ll answer the important ones.
Ninety minutes later, I’ve subtracted twenty-five from eleven thousand and two.
And I’ve liked all the people who already finished their books.

Today’s word count stands at zero.

Well, actually at negative two.
I deleted an adjective from yesterday’s writing.
I wrote “The” to start today’s chapter,
Then decided that if the previous seventeen began with “The,”
I should start the eighteenth some other way.
Not that I’ve completed three-fourths of my book—
I’ve rewritten chapter one seventeen times.

Today my word count will multiply like the screamers

Who inhabit the neighboring school playground
Like the phone calls from telemarketers who can’t speak English
Like the lawnmowers in my neighborhood with arrhythmia
Parked outside my window.
Along with four dozen cars suffering from spastic car alarms and
Three off-key ice cream trucks.

I usually don't read Stephen King because his stories

Make me want to hide under the sofa.
However, he once said something to the effect that
Writers are like oysters. Oysters do not create pearls
By going to pearl-making conferences,
They make pearls by turning life’s irritations into something beautiful.

True, and quite poetic. At the rate

Irritations are multiplying today,
My word count should grow enough to
String necklaces for the entire population of Indiana,
Plus one,
Which I will send to Stephen King.

However, the pearl-making miracle hasn’t happened today,

At least, not to me.
How about you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             

      

 

Happy Labor Day! (Sort of.)

Source: Wikimedia Commons

 Labor Day!

The kids are out of school. No one has to work.

Right?

Uhm, not if you're a writer. Writers making a living at writing are almost always writing. Deadlines are deadlines and if there's a deadline, it may mean you're writing on a holiday.

And if you're not writing, you're scheming, planning, plotting, dreaming.

At least that's how it is with me.

Because of my type-A personality, I have to make myself take a break. Get out of the chair and do "real life" things. I need to do these things because life is the stuff stories are made of.

I can't take my books with me to heaven--but I can take those I love.

Life is about loving those around us and most people spell love T-I-M-E.

If you're the kind of writer that has their nose to the grindstone and is more task-oriented than people-oriented (like me), then you'll have to get wisdom on the issue. Pray about it. Ask the Lord to help you stay balanced.

Our families and friends need us more than our books do. But then, we also have to know when to say "no" so that our writing isn't neglected.

If we seek the Lord first, He will provide all the time we need (not all the time we want). If we delight ourselves in Him, He will give us the desires of our heart, and if that desire is to be balanced, then He will not fail us.

 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes..." 

Proverbs 3:5-7a.

 Karla Akins is a pastor's wife, mother of five, grandma to five beautiful little girls and author of the best-selling Jacques Cartier (that went #1 on Amazon in its category) and O Canada! Her Story.  One of her columns on MNN.com was featured on the CNN homepage. Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, she lives in North Manchester with her husband, twin teenage boys with autism, mother-in-law with Alzheimer's and three rambunctious dogs. When she's not writing she dreams of riding her motorcycle through the Smoky Mountains.

Writers are weird.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Recently I drove a friend of mine to a downtown Indianapolis hotel because her son had an early appointment at Riley Children’s Hospital the next day. On our way there, on downtown Meridian Street, a police car zoomed out in front of our car and stopped. The officer jumped out, drew his gun and shouted at a suspect to get down on the ground.

My passengers (my friend and her mother) screamed and ducked.

I grinned ear to ear and took in everything. “Oh this is awesome. Check out that gun!”

I memorized every detail – the size of the gun, the stance of the officer, the way he held his weapon, his tone of voice, how neatly pressed his shirt was, and his tall, skinny frame. I studied everything carefully, thrilled to be witnessing a real-time live crime drama.

My friends, frightened and shaking, stayed on the floor.

It reminds me of the time in Kansas many years ago (okay, over 30 if you must know) when my boyfriend and I had a gun held to our heads for being parked in a farmer’s field looking at stars through my boyfriend’s zoom lens camera. (We really were looking at the moon and the stars. Honest. Really. Why don’t you believe me?)

The owner of the field pulled his muscle truck up behind us and put on his fog lights. Minutes later his son pulled up and did the same.  They got out of their trucks and walked up to our car.

They were drunk.

They had rifles.

They cocked them, held them to our heads and yelled at us for being in their field

I prayed while my boyfriend cried.

Somehow we negotiated our way out of the drunkard's line of fire.  As soon as we escaped unharmed I turned to my boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to write this down!”

He left me because of that.

Writers are weird. They can’t go through anything without filing it away as “research.”

Some writers scream when they see a stick up and then there are those of us who just can’t wait to write it all down.

Are you as weird as I am? What experiences do you remember hurrying to write down?

 Karla Akins is a pastor's wife, mother of five, grandma to five beautiful little girls and author of O Canada! Her Story.  Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, she lives in North Manchester with her husband, twin teenage boys with autism, mother-in-law with Alzheimer's and three rambunctious dogs. Her favorite color is purple, favorite hobby is book-hoarding, and favorite food group is cupcakes. When she's not writing she dreams of riding her motorcycle through the Smoky Mountains.

Character Sheets: Fun or Intimidating?

I have a love/hate relationship with character sheets. I love getting to know my characters, and I know the predetermined details come in extremely handy during the writing process. But, they are so, so ... well, the phrase 'Just the Facts, Ma'am,' keeps coming to mind. Once I sit down – and force myself to fill in every minute detail about my character, from their date of birth to their favorite food - I love my character sheets! I keep them in a handy spot, and refer to them often - making sure I'm staying true to my character's nature. (So much so, that I've considered laminating them to make them last longer!)

However, I find that I still dread filling them out - only slightly less than those dreaded forms the dentist makes you fill out before you can proceed with a simple cleaning. Yeah, it's that bad.

So that's now got me thinking ... what could I do to make the process seem less like filling out something boring like a medical form? Well, here's another factoid - I also hate filing paperwork. You are so shocked, I'm sure . . .

The solution I found to cure my issues with filing, was to use the money I get back from my favorite office supply store's ink cartridge recycling program to buy folders, binder clips, binders and other colorfully designed supplies that appealed to me. Now I actually enjoy filing! And, by using my recycling money, I don't have any guilt for spending extra money on something attractive, instead of the standard blah supplies. (And yes, they make folder designs that appeal to a guy's personal style too - in case this is sounding all too girlie.)

Yeah, a few of you are now thinking I'm a little wacko. But because I know many writers are also visually stimulated, like the crazy graphic designer/writer that I am, I'm betting a lot of you also 'get it'. So I am considering spending some design time on creating visually appealing blank character sheets that I could share with my writer friends on my web site.

My idea so far, is to create a pair of sheets for each writing genre; either a male and a female sheet, or a protagonist and an antagonist sheet. Each pair would be designed to match a particular writing genre. So a mystery sheet might have fingerprints, evidence bags ... shoe prints or something of that nature surrounding the information area. Fonts would also be grungy and colored to match.

I also want to include a space for an example photo if someone has found one for inspiration, and I'm also hoping to make it so that it can either be printed and filled out by hand, or it can be opened and filled out on screen if people prefer to keep everything on their computer. We'll see on that one - I know it can be done in Acrobat Pro, but I have to figure out if it can be opened and altered in the free Acrobat Reader or another free Mac/PC application, so that more people could use it.

I'm hoping to make them interesting enough that if I wanted to keep them posted on my wall while I write they would be somewhat decorative. Which is why I'm thinking other writer's might find them inspiring too? I'll likely post them on my site for free or for a small amount like 25 cents each. Would anyone even be interested except me? Or am I really more of an oddball than I think I am?

Feel free to tell me if I am. I can take it.

(I'm trying to determine if it's worth spending the time on more than the genre I am personally working on - for my own use. Any input would be extremely helpful!)

Confession of a Freelance Writer

A cold, blustery wind blew from the west, sneaking its way through the crevices in my hundred year old farmhouse. Earlier that day I’d bustled the children off to school and hubby off to work. A rare day with no call from the school to substitute and no place to go until that evening, I was home alone. With just the dog and a steaming cup of coffee to keep me company and keep me warm, I snuggled on the couch with my laptop and wrote. And wrote some more.

The blowing wind and the hum of my computer masked the crunch of tires on gravel. Suddenly the hair on the dog’s back went up and then came a thundering knock on the back door. My heart hammered with panic and I shushed the dog, remaining completely still. He’ll go away if he thinks no one is home. There was no way I was answering that door. I was still in my pajamas…and it was 2 o’clock. In. The. Afternoon.

There’s a dirty little confession for you. Sometimes when I’m home alone and the day looms gray and drab and my calendar is blessedly empty, I get involved in my writing and just don’t bother to change into something more professional. It appears I’m not the only one.

At the same time that clothing companies are catering to teenagers and adults who like to wear their jammies every day, all day long, some opponents are raising an outcry. Some rail against the public wearing of pajamas calling it everything from slovenly (saying if you’re dressed for bed you won’t be at your best) to a health hazard (because people usually don’t shower before they put on nightclothes and bacterial infections could lead to death—seriously, this is what someone argued!). They wonder what will become of our nation if we permit people to wear their pj's in public. Will underwear be acceptable next? Maybe we’ll become so lazy as to not wear clothing at all? I think not. (And for the record, when my kids were little and we had “Pajama Day”, they always took a bath that night and changed into clean jammers. Take that, Commissioner Williams!)

Michael Williams (see health hazard reference above), a Louisiana parish commissioner ,even went so far as to negate the wearing of nightclothes in public by proposing a law. (At this writing it has been put to bed for the time-being.) How would you like that job added to your list of duties if you were a Louisiana police officer? Upholding the peace, responding to emergencies, risking your life, and barring the wearing of bedclothes.

I won’t be sporting my sleepwear to the grocery, the bank, or my child’s sporting event. But to say that people who don’t change out of their nightshirts into neckties are lazy or unproductive? To this I say, “Hogwash!” If I can get an entire day’s worth of work or writing done, not dirty more laundry, and stay comfy in my flannels that’s a win-win-win. The only thing I can’t do is answer the door to the UPS guy.

Nikki Studebaker Barcus

Writing on the Run

Gone for me are back to back hours to write. These days I’m learning to write on the run. (I’m pursuing another degree.)

Agatha Christie got her start writing that way. During World War I she worked as a nurse and later at a dispensary. She spent every spare moment during her down time and in between patients writing.

I may be getting a degree, but I find that first and foremost, I’m a writer. There are too many stories in my head that I’ve got to get out, so I plot and write during boring lectures. While I’m waiting in lines or doctor’s offices, I pull out my notebook and begin to write where I left off during a dull class. When I’m in the car and Mr. Himself is driving, I pull out the notebook and take up where I left off while in the doctor’s waiting room.

I’ve found some advantages to these writing spurts:

• When I rewrite it on the computer, I do an immediate rewrite.

• It gives me a new perspective when I’m typing it out – I think of new things to add or delete.

• My brain is able to slow down and think deeper when I’m writing long-hand on paper than when I’m typing a story. (Of course, the flip side to this is that I can’t write as fast as I can think.)

• I’m becoming an expert cryptologist as I work to decipher my scrawl.

I do miss having long delicious hours to languish at the keyboard and write. But to be honest, writing for long blocks of time can sometimes be frustrating. Writing in small spurts is really fun. I never have writer’s block. And when I have to stop, my brain is more free to ponder what I’ll write the next time I get to pull out the notebook.

What about you? How do you write on the run?

Karla Akins is a pastor's wife, mother of five, and grandma to five beautiful little girls. She lives in North Manchester with her husband, twin teenage boys with autism, and three crazy dogs. Her favorite color is purple, favorite hobby is shoes, and favorite food group is cupcakes.

It's True--Writers Are "Catty"

Maddox the Assassin Cat

You can’t dictate when or where your “muse” will hit. In the dim, early hours one morning as I stumbled in a NyQuil-induced haze back to my bed after tending to a sick 8 year old, I passed our kitten. In the glow from the hallway nightlight, he rolled and dodged batting one of the kids’ “lucky” rabbit’s foot key chains. As I rounded the corner, bracing myself just a little in case his sadistic sights turned toward my bare ankles, the idea for this blog entry plinked into my brain.


I wonder when that cat sleeps. I mean, he’s always doing something—day or night. Kind of like a writer, hee hee.

So, instead of counting sheep, I snuggled under the warm covers and went through the other reasons my cat reminds me of a writer. I believe I got through the first three before sleep settled once again around me. Since then I’ve added a few more. See if you can relate.

1. My cat never sleeps. Well, technically, he does sleep, but never fully, deeply, it seems. Even in those moments I catch him taking a catnap, his ears twitch with curiosity and attention. If something really interesting happens, I see his open just a slit as he gauges whether it is worth his time to investigate. Even tonight as I type this after everyone else has gone to bed, the cat is sitting in the bathroom sink looking at himself in the mirror. No rest for the weary, they say.

2. My cat looks for unusual ways to kill and maim people. We lovingly refer to our 8-month ball of blond fluff, Maddox, as The Assassin Cat for his stealthy attacks upon unsuspecting family members. Just like in some of the best heart-stopping stories, you never turn your back on him or really relax while in the shower. Mystery and suspense writers are always planning or plotting ingenious ways to do away with characters.

3. My cat is a master at creating tension. No sagging middles with this feline teenager around. Whether it is his weekly dodge out the front door just as the school bus squeals to a stop or when he races in and out of the covers as I make the bed in the morning, he keeps things interesting. And just when you relax and settle in thinking the tension is behind you, he ups the ante—like when he recently knocked the plant off the stairway (and on to my cream-colored carpet) at 3:28 in the morning.

4. My cat finds wonder in everyday things. Give him the ring off the milk jug lid and he happily plays all morning long. Leave a laundry basket in a strategic place and he hops in and out, amusing himself. A balled up sock becomes a mouse; a shoelace turns into a snake; a binder clip doubles as a slippery fish. He is not hampered by what is, he simply sees what could be in every situation. Just like writers I know whose eyes light up at the mention of sheep farmers, bomb-making, or Italian immigrants, and their imaginations runs wild.

5. My cat possesses an insatiable curiosity. He runs toward anything that scurries across the floor or past the window. He sticks his nose into every opened closet, cabinet, or drawer. We even had to dig him out from inside the wall when he found where my husband was running wire. Kind of like writers I know who read the dictionary and the encyclopedia for fun, who pick the brains of people in any profession, and who actually care enough to research the name of that doohickey on the shooter’s rifle in Chapter 4.

6. My cat spends a large chuck of his day stalking things. He stalks the dog’s tail, the slipper dangling from my foot, and the birds outside the window. All the writers I know are also stalkers. While “stalking” may be a little heavy to use, it’s still kind of what they do. They “stalk” editors and agents and published writers through websites, Facebook, and Twitter. They “stalk” that next idea. They “stalk” people farther down the publishing road at conferences and book signings. And they “stalk” that elusive book contract or major feature article.

A few times a week Maddox plays the piano by walking across the keys. He’s pretty good, too. And while I haven’t seen him type anything legible yet, I’m not putting that past him either. He is fairly amazing. Okay, your turn: What are your favorite quirks in the cats, or the writers, in your life?

Nikki Studebaker Barcus