I consider descriptions to be one of my biggest writing weaknesses. It’s not that I don’t like writing descriptions or that I struggle with it. It’s just that I don’t do it.
First drafts are all about getting the story down for me. The main focus is character, action, and dialogue. Sometimes I’ll throw in a detail or two in there if it comes to me or if I think it’s important, but for the most part, aside from setting and seeing, not much gets put in. Which is fine. It’s a first draft. It’s not supposed to be perfect.
The problem is that when I do revise the story, the details don’t always get added in.
That’s the part I struggle with.
Soemties I forget to add in the details because I know what it looks like, I know what’s going on, I know the scene, but I forget that people can’t see my mind. I have to translate it to the page. It’s pretty basic, but I still miss it every once in awhile. It takes someone else pointing out the vague description that makes me realize that my brain has been filling in the details for me, but I haven’t been putting them on the paper.
There is also, of course, my tunnel vision problem. I sometimes forget that I have other senses that can be used. Sight and sound are usually givens. Touch gets used some, too. Smell and taste are often forgotten. Sure, they’re not always appropriate to include in every story, but sometimes they mention of a smell or a taste can really enhance the setting or the scene.
The stories I’m most pleased with are the ones that I’ve used sensory detail well in. To date my favorite line comes from “Such a Pretty Face” about the “scent of stale onions hanging in the wet air”. It’s subtle, a throw away really, but it adds so much to the story and the scene. It’s my go-to line when I need to remind myself of the need to pay attention to detail.
I am a selfish person. I admit it straight up. My parents railed against any sort of selfishness from the time I was little. They told me to share, told me to think of others, put the needs of others before my own. It was never to be about me and always to be about someone else. Other people should be more important.
Well, I got news for you: those lessons didn’t stick.
That’s not to say that I don’t share or I that I don’t help people in need. I do my bits and pieces here and there and I’ve been told I’ve been a decent help to friends and family when they need it. I share what I have when I can when it’s appropriate.
But I am still the center of my own universe.
I admit it. I am as egocentric as they come. I’m selfish with my feelings and my attention and my interests. If it’s not about me, if it doesn’t pertain to me, if I am not involved in some way, you’d better believe there’s a good chance that I don’t care about it much. More than once I’ve done things or gone places or said words that I didn’t really want to do, go, or say just because I know it’s more socially acceptible to do so.
Many times, though, I don’t because I don’t want to. I put what I want ahead of what other people want.
I am most selfish with power. I will tell you right here and now that I may be a good leader, may handle responsibility well, but you do not want to give me any authority over other people. I turn into a tyrant. I don’t mean to, but it happens. I’m selfish, so it’s all about me. If it’s all about me, then it’s all about my way and my way is the only way. And because I don’t give myself a whole lot of slack when it comes to getting the job done, nobody else gets any either. Their performance reflects on me and I don’t want to look bad. All about me.
Since it’s all about me it leads me to be unaware of the thoughts, feelings, and needs of other people. I’m focused so much on myself that those things have a tendency to slip by me undetected (to be fair, I think I earlier established that even if I am paying attention, I don’t always pick up on certain things). It’s not necessarily an intentional act of neglect; I’m not purposefully ignoring people. I’m just not paying particularly close attention to them because they are not me and what’s going on with them doesn’t pertain to me.
Because of all of this, I come off as unthinking. I already have the tact problem; the selfishness just compounds it. These two words combine with being unaware to make me appear so inconsiderate that the word doesn’t do it justice. I’m unthinking. I don’t bother to consider how my actions and words will affect other people. I’m that selfish.
Again, I’m not saying this out of pride. I’m saying it out of truth. I know I’m this way. I know I do these things. I’m not proud of them, but they exist. I’m not trying to excuse them, just acknowledge them.
The selfish things has given me a bit of a complex. Because it was drilled into me so hard as a kid not to be selfish, when I recognize my selfish behavior, it causes major guilt.
I don’t want to be selfish. I try not to be selfish. But I am and it still happens. As such, I don’t ever feel like I’ve earned any “me” time because I feel like I haven’t given enough time to other people, which has a tendency to make me more selfish because I haven’t gotten any “me” time. It’s a vicious cycle that I’m working very hard to break and not having a whole lot of success doing it.
And until I get my head out of my own ass, I’m not going to have much success at becoming more aware either.
The one thing I can say that I have improved is being a tyrant. I still have my moments, but I’m the first person to shun leadership and will only take it grudgingly. And then, I’m very, very careful about how I dictate and delegate.
The rest of my selfishness, just like the rest of me, continues to be a work in progress.
My first foray into the writing world was submitting my work to a local contest. The contest was cancelled due to a lack of interest and I got my story and entry fee back, but that was a pretty big step for me. It was the first time I let someone outside of a very specific group read something I’d written and judge me on it.
That contest didn’t pan out, but it gave me the courage to submit my work to others. My first real success as a writer was winning 10th place in the genre category in the 77th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. Imagine my surprise to open up my copy of the magazine and see my name listed among the top ten as I hadn’t been notified yet.
My story didn’t get published, but I saw my name in print. Someone thought my story was good enough to beat out at least 90 other people (the top 100 was listed on the site). It was an incredible ego boost and it encouraged me to move beyond contests and start submitting to publications.
Submitting to contests was a good first step for me. It let me ease into things. Not placing in a contest wasn’t the same as getting rejected in my head. Submitting a story and getting it rejected was more personal. My hide wasn’t thick enough to handle that yet. But losing a contest was different. I’d not won lots of things. That was easier to deal with.
Those first few contests and that first win really helped set the tone for me when it came to dealing with rejection. Let’s face it, submitting to a publication is a lot like entering a contest. You hope to win and get the prize, but lots of times you get that letter that lets you know that you’ve lost.
I’ve found so many ways now to deal with rejection that, while I get bummed and frustrated sometimes, I’ve never been devestated and rarely thought about giving up.
And I still have an appreciation for contests. Now that I’ve got that regular income from the day job, I can afford the fees once again. I once again entered the Writer’s Digest Story Competition. I’m hoping for a repeat of last time, if not a straight out win.
But if I lose, no big deal. I’ll just move on to the next contest and try this one again next year.
That’s what winners do.
Story By The Numbers
Submitted: 2 (“Another Deadly Weapon” is my contest entry; “Such a Pretty Face” is still out)
Ready: 9 (“Soul Sister” joins the growing list)
Accepted/Rejected: 0
To close out unofficial Papa Week here a Kiki Writes About, I’m focusing on some of the good times. Papa was the funnest grandpa a couple of girls could have. There was always a good time to be had when Papa was involved. Maybe they weren’t grand or expensive or even a big deal, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
1. Going to the fairs. We went to the county fair and the Decatur Celebration every year. Papa and Grandma would take us and let us ride whatever rides we wanted to and buying us funnel cake and lemon shake-ups. Sometimes Papa would ride some of the rides with us. There might be albums of pictures from out times at the fairs.
2. Playing computer. While most older people shun technology, Papa was ahead of the game as president of the Decatur Computer Club. He got us our first computer (a Commodore 64) and taught us how to use it. Whenever we’d visit his house, we’d all get together in the bedroom to play computer games. Lode Runner, Family Feud, Concentration, Motor Mania, and the Olympics were some of our favorites. He, my sister, and I would crowd around the desk and crack each other up while we played.
3. Cooking. When Papa retired and Grandma moved her dog grooming business into the garage shop at the house, Papa took over the cooking duties. He had shelves full of cookbooks and he’d always have the two of us help him no matter what he was making. Even something as simple as pudding, he’d have his girls help him. I licked a lot of beaters in my childhood.
4. Going to the store. Yes, even something that mundane was fun with Papa. First of all, it was a quaint little corner store down the road from the house. Second of all, a trip to the store before lunch meant that Papa would buy you a Hostess fruit pie that you could eat for dessert. And, of course, it gave Papa an opportunity to show off his granddaughters.
5. Any car ride. Papa had a big old green boat car he called Nelly. It had afghans for seat covers and a woven leather steering wheel cover, all made by Grandma. It didn’t have much of a radio, so Papa would sing while he drove. Old songs, usually Hank Williams. I thought it was kind of cheesy at the time, but now I can’t hear “Hey, Good Lookin'” without thinking of him.
I never thought about writing being a family trait. I thought I was the only one who felt the urge to tell fictional stories in the written down form. Don’t get me wrong; my family loves to tell slightly embellished tales of yore, but no one else ever wrote fiction.
Until Papa.
After Grandma died, Papa needed something to do to fill up some of his time. He’d always loved reading (I come from a reading family, truly) and had done a little writing when he was younger. So when after Grandma passed away, he had the time to try his hand at writing again. It became the way he spent his mornings.
He wrote a few short stories, but it didn’t take him long to discover the wondeful world of novel writing. He wrote a couple of them before he decided to try his hand at self-publishing. He didn’t want to be a best-selling author. He wasn’t looking for great success or great millions. He wrote a book and he wanted to see it in print. He wanted tangible evidence of time well-spent.
Papa wrote several other books and stories, but these he published as ebooks. He was always on the cutting edge of technology and liked the idea of ebooks (he bought a Kindle before I even considered one). He made a little money from his writing endeavors, but I think he was happier just knowing that his work was being read.
My cousin Nancy even arranged for him to do book signings of his the first book he self-published. It was a nice way for family to come out and brag on him and tell him how good his stories were.
In turn, Papa has always been my biggest fan when it came to my writing. He was thrilled when I got my first short story published. He posted my few writing victories on the family website and read every story I showed him, whether it was published or not.
Writing became just another way grandfather and granddaughter connected.
Now that he’s gone, I treasure that first self-published book that he wrote. Maybe it’s not that best written book ever put into print, but the story is Papa’s and it’s a tangible reminder of the bond the two of us shared.
A special thanks to my granddaughter, Christin Haws, whose own wonderful writings were the sparks that re-ignited my latent desire.
At 4AM the morning of Saturday, May 7th, my beloved grandpa passed away. As luck would have it, I woke up at 5:30 that morning thinking I had to go to work and the resulting confusion woke me up enough that I decided to go to the bathroom before trying to go back to sleep. It was no surprise to find my dad awake in the living room as I passed through. It was on my way back that he told me the news and I realized that my roommate Carrie was in the living room, too.
The first word out of my mouth was “Really?”
It wasn’t that this was completely unexpected. Papa had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure years before and had a pacemaker/defibrillator. He had a slow progressing form of leukemia that he chose not to treat. He was on oxygen. He needed a scooter/wheelchair to get around. His health had been slowly declining since my grandmother died, partly because he wasn’t taking as good of care of himself as he used to.
He’d also been in the hospital for the past few weeks. Once the current trouble with his heart was straightened out, they realized his kidneys were shutting down. There was nothing they could really do for him. The goal was to get him strong enough to go home with my great-aunt so she could take care of him the rest of the way.
Papa never made it out of the hospital.
Part of that was because Papa didn’t want to do the therapies they were asking him to do. And he was being downright hateful about it. He was being nasty to everyone and wasn’t cooperating and they finally decided to move him off of the therapy floor and onto the fourth floor before moving him to hospice care. Without doing the therapy, there was no way my aunt could take him home to take care of him.
They moved him to the fourth floor on Friday night. He was dead Saturday morning.
I didn’t go see him in the hospital. I don’t regret that. The last visit I had with Papa was a pleasant one. He was in a good mood, feeling pretty good that day. We enjoyed a nice day of family and laughter and conversation and food. The last time I saw my papa was definitely a high note.
I never wanted to see him in the hospital. It had been hard enough watching the active, jovial, fun person I’d grown up with fade into the unkempt shadow of his former self. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true. A lot of the life went out of him when Grandma passed away.
And judging by the stories Dad brought home about Papa’s behavior, I definitely didn’t want that to be my last memory of him. He was acting like an ass and my papa was never an ogre in my life. He read me and my sister stories, played with us, took us to the fair. He wasn’t this hateful, nasty person he’d become in the hospital, barking orders at people, bitching and complaining about everything, ignoring family because he was mad. I’m glad I never saw that. That tyrant wasn’t my papa.
Papa was a sweet, kind man who would go out of his way to help a person. If he liked you, you were family. It was just like that. Even though he was the youngest of ten kids, he was head of our large clan. Everyone looked to Uncle Jimmie for guidance. He kept the family in touch with each other, first with a family newsletter and then with a website.
Papa was a smart man. He never graduated high school and got his GED later in life, but he loved to learn. He loved to read. He loved technology. While most grandpas shunned the idea of computers, my grandpa dove right in. He was president of the Decatur Computer Club and is responsible for teaching me and my sister how to use them. I was one of the first kids in my school on the Internet, thanks to him.
Papa was a great cook. He used to have a New Year’s Day celebration at his house. He’d cram a hundred people in that tiny place to serve biscuits and gravy, ham and beans, and all kinds of pie. He’d spend days cooking to get ready for it and then spend all day in the kitchen while other family members took turns doing the dishes. He liked doing it and he just had a knack for it. He had scores of recipe books and there wasn’t a meal he wouldn’t try if it appealed to him.
Papa was my biggest fan. He was my sister’s biggest fan, too. You couldn’t ask for a more supportive, involved grandpa. I think that’s what I’m going to miss most of all. He never seemed to have trouble saying that he was proud of us.
It’s a comfort to know that Papa is back where he wanted to be: with Grandma.
Well, it’s a comfort to me. It’s probably not a comfort to him right now. There’s no way she’s going to let that last bout of hatefulness slide. I’m sure she was waiting for him with flyswat in hand to give him what for.
But once she’s done scolding him, I know it’ll be happily ever after.
Rest in peace, Papa (as soon as Grandma let’s you).
In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.
Are you humming the theme song yet? If not, that’s a shame.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I pity you, fool.
They pity you also.
The A-Team was one of several 80’s action shows I watched as a kid and it remains one of my all-time favorites. It’s the best cotton candy for my brain ever.
The set-up was just as simple as the intro suggested. The team was comprised of the plan-making, wise-cracking, disguise-loving Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith (George Peppard); the smooth, charming, sometimes unsure, always a ladies man Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck (Dirk Benedict); the tough on the outside, soft on the inside (well, sometimes) Sgt. B.A. Baracus (Mr. T); and the ever crazy, same outfit wearing (read the shirts!) pilot Captain H.M. “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock. In the first and second seasons they were joined by Amy Allen (Melinda Culea) and Tawnia Baker (Marla Heasley), respectively, and chased throughout most of the series run by first Colonel Lynch (William Lucking) and then Colonel Decker (Lance LeGault). In the fifth season they attempted to reinvent the show by changing the premise somewhat. They added Frankie Santana (Eddie Velez) to the team and forced them into working for the vexing General Hunt Stockwell (Robert Vaughn).
The show is probably best known for the iconic build scenes (montages of them building something out of nothing; my favorite was the cabbage cannon), the gunfights in which no one was killed, and the car chases in which at least one car would flip wildly, land on its top, and the dazed occupents crawl from the car hardly scratched. Oh, and the explosions. Sometimes the storylines were a little out there, particularly in season four, but it was all in good fun.
With all the action, it’s easy to miss the dialogue, which as far as I’m concered, is where it’s at. These guys had some great, funny lines. This show gets the credit for my all-time favorite insult: “Your mother works on street corners and you’re so ugly, flies won’t land on you.” The show as a whole is incredibly quotable.
Also, if you’re in the mood for a show to jolt you out of your safe, politically correct world, this will do you. The early to mid-80’s weren’t nearly as sensitive (and you might feel bad for laughing).
The guest cast on this show was fantastic. Great stunt casting during season four. Boy George and Hulk Hogan. You can’t get bigger and more 80’s than that. But even the more low key guests were fab. Richard Moll, Alan Fudge, Red West, James Hong, Keye Luke, John Saxon, Dana Elcar, Dennis Franz, Markie Post, Alan Autry, Wings Hauser, and Claudia Christian, just to name a few.
Most of the kids my age loved BA, as they loved Mr. T. I loved him, too, but my heart belonged to (and still belongs to) Murdock. He was funny. He was crazy. He wore Chuck Taylors. He flew helicopters. He was the coolest of the cool in my eyes. To this day there’s still a little part of me that wants to be him.
I’ll settle for owning the entire series on DVD.
Side note: When I first heard about them making an A-Team moving, I was not on board. It was going to be far too difficult in my mind to recreate those characters and that chemistry. I had no interest in seeing it.
However, after several favorable reviews from friends, I was persuaded to see the finished product in the theater. I was pleasantly surprised. I liked it. It was fun like the show. It kept a lot of the show’s canon. And the new actors made the characters their own without completely alienating them from the originals.
I just wish the original cast could have played bigger roles.
April was neither a rousing success or a crashing failure. Adequate would be the best word for it. But getting the job done puts me in a good position for May.
Of course the big project continues. I only got one chapter revised on The World (Saving) Series last month so I have some serious ground I’d like to make up. I’m shooting for two, maybe three. Minimum.
I’ve got two short stories I need to review. “Another Deadly Weapon” and “Soul Sister” are on the agenda.
A new Outskirts story will be going up this Saturday (get “Wait ‘Til Next Year” read while you still can). I’ve got two that need to be revised and one of them will be going up.
It doesn’t sound like a lot of work, but with falling behind on the novel revisions, it will be some serious work to not only catch up, but also get ahead. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been slacking on it and I need to change my ways. I need to rededicate myself to this project if only to say that I got through the first round of revisions.
Keep plugging away.
Stories By The Numbers
Submitted: 1 (“Such a Pretty Face” is still out)
Ready: 8
Accepted/Rejected: 0
Like most kids, I wanted to be a lot of different things growing up. Unlike most kids, I never grew out of that changing career state of mind. Whatever it is I find that I’m interested in, I want to do that.
My first big career choice came early in junior high. I wanted to be a meterologist. Weather and storms fascinated me. I didn’t necessarily want to be on the TV talking about the seven day forecast, but being in one of those weather centers, tracking tornado spawning storms appealed to me. I thought it would be a fun, exciting gig.
It wasn’t very well received. Saying that I wanted to be a meterolgist conjured up the images of people pointing at maps on the TV and I got a lot of teasing for that. I decided that keeping meteorology as a hobby was better for my self-esteem.
Then towards the end of junior high I set my sights on being a marine biologist specializing in sharks. I love sharks. Shark week was made for me. I read a lot of books about sharks and shark attacks. It was particularly the attacks on humans that fascinated me at the time, but really all aspects of sharks and shark behaviors held my attention. There’s an air of mystery about them that makes them fascinating and makes me want to learn more about them. Being on boats for weeks at a time didn’t really bother me. In fact, my cousin’s grandma offered me a place to live if I wanted to pursue my degree down in Texas.
But, it wasn’t very well received by everyone else. The one thing I kept hearing was “do you know how much math and science is involved in that?” despite the fact that I’ve always been told that I was smart and held to the highest academic standards.
So I changed my mind and looked elsewhere.
I wanted to be a surgical technician.
Too much blood and guts.
I wanted to be an actor.
You won’t make any money.
When I finally got out of high school and into college, I first wanted to study English with the idea of being a proper writer, not just the amateur stuff I’d been not showing to people up until that point. No one said anything because by that point they weren’t interested anymore. I was in college (a community college that I was paying for) and that’s all that mattered.
The second time I went back to college, my eyes were on studying sociology. I’d become fascinated with it during my first college go round after I did a paper on prison rehab programs. I thought that might be a good gig for me.
That lasted as long as I was in school.
My last go round on the college merry-go-round, I was majoring in psychology with the ultimate goal being a forensic psychologist. There was no way I could be a therapist. I don’t have the compassion needed to succeed in that field. But analyzing and tracking down bad guys is something I think I could have excelled at. I was pretty dedicated to it, too. Took all of the psych classes I could get into (as well as all of the sociology classes; hadn’t quite given up using that) and was doing well in them.
Until I was looking into starting the math classes I’d need to get my associate’s degree so I could move on to get my bachelor’s degree, I realized just how long it was going to take me to get through all of the schooling I’d need (at least a master’s) to get my career started. That’s when I realized that I didn’t want to be a psychologist enough to spend years getting there, which would be even longer since I could only go to school part time while I worked.
It was also then that it dawned on me that the only thing I wanted to spend years struggling to do was what I’d been spending years doing all along: writing. I gave up on the idea that I needed any sort of formal education or validation and threw myself head long into making a career of it.
But that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about pursuing other interests as careers (most recently: helicopter pilot, personal trainer, and sports analyst). Of course, I always look at the time it will take to make those things happen and change my mind.
That’s why writing is the perfect career for me. With a little research and by living vicariously through my characters, I can be all of those things while spending my time doing the one thing I really love the most.
There are times when I don’t feel good enough. I look at what I’m working on and think it’s garbage and I don’t know how to fix it. I have no clue what I’m doing. Nobody is going to want to read this story. Everyone else is doing so much better than I am. Why do I keep bothering with this? I’m no good. I’m not a writer.
Ah, writer’s doubt. I know that feeling so well. It hits me at least once a month, sometimes just momentarily, sometimes it lingers for days. It could be a devestating, debilitating thing if I weren’t so stupidly stubborn and unable to leave things unfinished that I can’t walk away. Which works out in my favor, of course, as persistence is a big part of success as a writer.
But there are times when I’m not feeling very successful. I’m not feeling inspired. I’m not even feeling coherent. In those times of struggle, and like I said, they happen more often than I’d like, that doubt creeps up into the back of my mind like a spider looking for a soft spot to lay her eggs. Those are the times that I start comparing myself to other writers. I look at who’s getting published, what they’re getting published, and then I look at my little list of credits and wonder what the hell I’m doing.
Then I look at what I’m writing and wonder the same damn thing.
It’s a frustrating part of the writing game. I try not to let it get to me. I remind myself about the persistence factor. I remind myself to be patient. I remind myself that not every story I’ve ever written is crap and there is nothing wrong with the places that have published my work. They have good taste.
(Does anyone have that problem? Not only do you doubt yourself, but you doubt anyone on your side, too? I wouldn’t be surpised if I’m the only one and I hope I don’t offend anyone with my issues.)
I have no fool-proof method to combat it. I just keep plugging away and try to ignore that voice in my head that says I suck. I admit that some days the doubt manages to slow me down. It roughs me up. It makes me question my commitment to this writing life.
And that’s where the doubt stops. I don’t want to be doing anything else. I want to be writing something. Short stories, novels, blog posts, personal essays, non-fiction, articles, whatever. I want to be writing. I would be writing even if I wasn’t getting published.
Knowing that, recognizing it, really helps me get back on the mule and keep going.
And sometimes, if I’m lucky, the mule kicks the doubt for good measure.
Stories By The Numbers
Submitted: 1 (only “Such a Pretty Face” is still out)
Ready: 8
Accepted: 1! “Playing Chicken” will be published in the Library of Horror anthology Made You Flinch–Again!
Kiki Writes About... 