Mar 08

Little Free Twisted Plot

read box libraryOn my latest plotting pilgrimage, I discover plot in a Little Free Library. How can I resist free books to read and a hastle-free return? An amazing 36,000 little free libraries populate the world. My discovery of this little treasure changes everything I have done in the past.

Plot Playgrounds

Plot resources exist in many places. My first name basis with the librarians and circulation desk clerks at my public library hints to how often I go there. All my childhood years in Bible-belt Sunday School classes lend to parables and paradigms for short stories. Small bookstores and writer-friendly Barnes and Noble win my dollar votes. Digital journals and Twitter deliver content at the swipe of a few keys.

Plot in a Box

A Little Free Library, however, is open after hours and on holidays. I never pay shipping or late fees. I never waste gasoline or get stressed about parking. The library is art—a four-sided painted montage inside and out. My heart beats a little faster at the sight of the box. Yes, there is the thrill of the hunt aspect, but I’m usually walking or jogging to the library—getting genuine exercise. I can’t drive past without yielding to a pressing curiosity to stop and check what’s inside. It is a sad day when my passengers decline my invitation to stop and get a book.

Jeffery Deaver TwistedPlot in All the Right Places

My hand trembles as I slide the latch open. Glimpses of good books show through the glass. Anticipation is key here. Inside, I find a book, Twisted, The Collected Stories of Jeffrey Deaver. It’s short stories with plot twists—perfect. The author writes, “Though I love to make evil appear to be good (and vice versa) and to dangle the potential for disaster before my readers, nonetheless, in the end, good is good and bad is bad, and good more or less prevails.”  Deaver experiments with short stories. “Short stories are like a sniper’s bullet. Fast and shocking. I can make good bad and bad badder and, most fun of all, really good really bad.” I find plotting gold in this Little Free Library and discover more Little Free Libraries are within walking distance. Should we go?

 

 

 

Mar 06

Story Starters #4

“Ripped from the headlines.” Origin unknown.

Robinson Crusoe, a bestselling castaway tale written by Daniel Defoe, was published in 1719. Defoe based his story on the real-life Alexander Selkirk who was rescued after being stranded for five years on an island off the coast of Chile. Numerous versions of Robinson Crusoe, as well as other castaway stories, have been written.

The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescue, a book by Michael J. Touglas and Casey Sherman, tells how four members of the Coast Guard rescued men off a broken oil tanker. The movie invented characters, imagined dialogue and added drama to emphasize the brutality of the storm.

Eddie the Eagle is a movie based on the real-life British ski jumper, Michael (Eddie) Edwards. He wore thick glasses and leg braces as a child but dreamt of participating in the winter Olympic Games as a downhill skier. Although the screen writer took liberties with the character of Eddie’s coach, the story is a true feel-good story of determination.

Miracles from Heaven: A Little Girl, Her Journey to Heaven, and Her Amazing Story of Healing by Christy Wilson Beam tells the story of a girl with a rare, incurable digestive disorder. On one of Annabel’s rare chances to play outside, she fell three stories headfirst into a hollowed-out tree. The fall cured her.

An episode of Chicago P. D. depicted a six-year-old boy being shot three times in a Chicago alley. The story, taken from a recent Chicago murder case, changed the plot significantly to allow the redemption of key characters.

If you think your idea has to originate from a big headline, you’re wrong. CSI: Cyber presented an episode that involved a fitness wristwatch, stalking, and harvesting organs from unsuspecting donors. The writers took three separate ideas and combined them into a suspenseful story.

You don’t have to write a castaway story, a daring sea rescue, a triumph over adversity, or even about a miraculous medical miracle. Try taking the elements from several different headline-making stories, combine them, embellish the drama, add a surprise conflict, and you’ve got your plot. Tell the spectator’s version of the event and how it affected you. Give that person an even better storyline than the main participants.

Think about reading your newspapers and magazines with an eye for plot ideas. Are you ready?

 

Mar 01

Editor’s Log: Writing is a Muscle–Exercise

People running in desert at dusk, side view

Exercise is hard work. Running, in particular, is tough to get started. I can find lots of reasons not to get ready until there is not enough time to do it. Yet when I do get dressed and step outside, and run…the feeling I have afterwards is one of appreciation. It feels good to have run a route. The energy gifted from the exercise helps me write.

Writing can be similar for many would be writers. Crafting essays and literature is a dream that many share, but few pursue on a regular basis. The major excuse is “not enough time”, but like exercise, we can find 20 minutes out of a day to write. Also, an added benefit is that one can write anywhere and at any time. There is no reasonable excuse not to write, unless one is not truly interested in writing.

Writing is a muscle that requires frequent exercise. For some, starting slow is okay, so long as the practice happens along a routine such as 20 minutes four times a week or 10 minutes daily. Start slow to be smooth, and smooth will become fast. Ignore the voice in your head that finds sudden interests in doing chores that you normally avoid.

The writer athletes at Deadwood Writers share posts based on regular exercise of word-smithing. Many would tell you that their start with writing was erratic. “Post monthly? Really.” These athletes, including myself,  at one time enjoyed watching and thinking, without actually pursuing. What you’ll find in the recent posts game-time displays of athleticism that writers do. The effort and study of words is a constant drive so that each month’s post is smoother than the previous one. The purity of writing, like exercise, is not winning accolades—the purity of writing is to become better at it during each run.

Hope you enjoy the efforts of our deadwood writers. May they inspire you to comment and continue your writing journey.

Feb 23

Not So Famous Leapers

LeapingFrogsA Leaper is someone born on February 29th. In the United States, 187,000 people have this distinction. Worldwide, it’s about four million. The odds of being born on February 29th are roughly one in 1,461. I say roughly even though 1,461 is not an approximation because three times every 400 years we suspend the practice when the centennial occurs on a date not evenly divisible by four. The years 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not have leap days but 2400 will. This is to account for the few radical leap minutes that sieve out of every orbit around the sun.

Not many famous people were born leapers. No Presidents or Kings or World Champions of any sort that I could find. This seems to be a birthday devoted to also-rans, supporting actors and bronze medalists. Cases in point:

  • Writer Stephen Curwick (Police Academy), born 1960
  • Actors and twins, Mark and Paul Easton (All Mine to Give), 1956
  • Writer Howard Nemerov (The Homecoming Game), 1920
  • Dinah Shore (American singer and actress), born one hundred years ago this month
  • Jimmy Dorsey (American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader), 1904
  • Writer Stephen Chalmers (Looking for Trouble, etc.), 1880
  • Pope Paul III, 1468

You could argue that Jimmy Dorsey and Dinah Shore grabbed the brass ring, but the rest were soon forgotten. Even the Pope looks like a typo at first glance.

You could say this day is cursed in some regards as it was on this day in 1692 that the first warrants were issued in the Salem witchcraft trials in Massachusetts. It was also on this day in 1504 that America’s first adopted Son, Christopher Columbus, used his knowledge of the lunar eclipse that was to occur on this day to convince Jamaican Native Chiefs to continue providing his men with provisions or else the gods would turn the moon blood-red. It worked, and it has got to go down as detente’s greatest magic trick since the Trojan Horse.

If that’s not scary enough, guys, consider yourselves lucky not to be living in Europe where some countries still consider this Bachelor’s Day. That’s the day the gals can propose to the gents. If the gent declines he must buy the gal a pretty dress, or twelve pairs of white gloves to hide her ring-less finger.

If you’ve ever wondered why it’s February that gets bequeathed, it’s not because it started life as the runt of the litter. No, you can thank Big Ego for the backhanded privilege, Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus’s specifically. He nicked two days from February to begin with and gave them to his own namesake month because Julius Caesar’s namesake had 31 days. Et tu, Augustus?

Responses to what you plan on doing with your extra day this month varied, but most writers said they would spend the day writing, or doing nothing different. The 29th falls on a Monday this year so a long weekend could be in the cards if you have some vacation time coming. If not, call in sick and do something different next weekend, something totally sporadic. Why not? What boss is going to dock you for taking a sick day that’s only symptomatic once every four years? Besides, February 29th should be groundhog day, not February 2nd. Make it the National Labor Lottery Day and if Punxsutawney Phil wakes up and sees his shadow on the 29th, we all go to work that leap day. If he doesn’t, we all take the day off. Hint: put the rodent in a den on the north slope and don’t let him sleep in.

In other news, I had a couple of good suggestions for what to include as a freebie for buying my book, Broken String, when it comes out. The bookmarker idea won because it is such a good fit and very cost effective. And, it can be sent out digitally. That won out over the book of matches, (ouch!) but it was close!

Read On!

-Phil

Feb 21

Freedom’s Daughters

Freedom’s Daughters

FreedomsDaughtersI read somewhere recently, if you want to really re-experience a past event in your life, listen to some music from that era. I know whenever I hear Happy Birthday Sweet 16 *, I’m immediately transported back in time to my sixteen-year-old self.

Recently I read a book that did the same thing. It took me back to the 1960s with all the dreams and hopes that I, and many others, had for the future. Freedom’s Daughters by Lynne Olson tells the stories of “the unsung heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970”.**

She talks about the fact that most people, when they think about slavery, the Civil War, Negro, Black or African-American people standing up for their rights, think of men. There’s Nat Turner, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Julian Bond and Maynard Jackson to name just a few.

Very few books have been written about what women did, the risks they took, the boycotts they organized, the sit-ins they participated in and the many, many times they were beaten, arrested and sent to jail.

Freedom’s Daughters tells the stories of more than 60 of these women. There are the ones we all know about like Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hammer and Eleanor Holmes Norton. But how about Pauli Murray, who on April 22, 1944, organized and led a group of 50 Howard University students to sit in at Thompson’s Cafeteria in downtown Washington, D.C.?

 

Diane Nash

Pauli Murray

Diane Nash

Diane Nash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you heard about Diane Nash, who as a student at Fisk University, in 1960, led a successful sit-in of the lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee? She went on to become a leader of the Freedom Riders, co-founded SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and helped organize the Selma Voting Rights Movement.

 

Penny Patch

Penny Patch

 

Lunch Counter Sit In

Lunch Counter Sit In

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does the name Penny Patch ring a bell? As a white Swarthmore student, she sat in at a segregated Pennsylvania roller skating rink and at whites’ only restaurants on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She was arrested, spent the weekends in jail and then returned to class on Monday mornings.

Freedom’s Daughters tells their stories as well as many others. The book jerks you back to the past and puts you in the moment so powerfully that it’s almost impossible to put it down before you’ve read the last sentence.

* Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, music by Neil Sedaka, lyrics by Howard Greenfield, 1961

** Freedom’s Daughters by Lynne Olson, Copyright 2001, A Touchstone Book, Published by Simon & Shuster