Jul 21

Why Go to Switzerland?

Just as suspense keeps a story going and your audience interested, there comes a point when you have to tell them what happened. You have to answer the questions you’ve implied or asked directly earlier in the piece.

Why did Abram insist on stopping off in Switzerland first and then coming to America second? The world was at war. He was in Beirut, Lebanon. Switzerland was a long way away. The Nazis controlled many of the countries he would have to pass through and he was a Jew. All good reasons, I would think, to come to America immediately now that he had the Visa and could do it. There was nothing more to wait for.

The excuse he gave my parents and grandparents doesn’t make sense. He needed to stop off in Switzerland first because he had some medical problems. After the Swiss doctors helped him, then he would come.

The world was too dangerous for him to make a stop like that for health reasons. The chances of him being killed were too high. There were plenty of doctors in America he could see after he arrived. No, I believe he had another, much more important reason for going to Switzerland first and then coming to America.

Abram had been a very successful businessman. He grew up in Bucharest, Romania. Later, after he became head of an Italian-American shipping line, the King of Italy knighted him. He was important and wealthy. He was also very generous with his family. He took care of his mother for many years, supporting her in Bucharest and later moving her to live with him in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Abram was also very generous with his oldest sister, Clara, my grandmother.  World War I ended on November 11, 1918. Abram came to San Francisco sometime in 1919. He invited Grandma, Papa, my Mom and Maximillian, his younger brother who was traveling with him, to travel around Europe for a year, visiting family and seeing the sights.

Everyone was thrilled at the opportunity. From the stories my Mom tells, they had an absolutely marvelous time! They started by taking the ferry from San Francisco, across the Bay to Oakland, where they caught the train to New York City. From there, they sailed on the RMS Aquitania, one of the most luxurious ocean liners of the time.

Mom was six and Maximillian sixteen, not exactly a child but not all grown up either. He used to take her to the park, the circus and out for ice cream while the adults went to shows like the Folies Bergère or out for drinks.

They traveled to France, Switzerland, Rumania and Turkey. From my Mom’s stories, Paris was one of the highlights of the trip: the Louvre, the shops, the people, and the atmosphere. I grew up always wanting to go to Paris, walk down the Champs-Élysées and see if it was as wonderful as she said. It is!

At some point they took the Orient Express to Constantinople. The trip took 80 hours—three days, eight hours. They had a sleeping car and ate in the dining room. Mom talked about how exciting and wonderful everything was!

They stayed a while in Constantinople visiting family. Mom became fast friends with her cousin, Eva, who was about the same age. I’ve seen pictures of them standing together, dressed the same—two cute six year olds with smiles from ear to ear.

Later they went to Romania. One night there was a birthday party at Papa’s mother’s house, with lots of singing and dancing. The highlight of the evening was Papa dancing a Viennese waltz with his mother on her 80th birthday. Many people had tears in their eyes.

Then, in 1929, just before the Stock Market Crash, Abram came again to San Francisco to visit. He also brought Maximillian. Mom was now sixteen and Maximillian twenty-six. Soon they and Grandma and Papa were off for another year in Europe, traveling and visiting family.

Mom had just graduated early from Lowell High School so she could make the trip. When she came back a year later, she started college at the University of California in Berkeley.

When I think about this, it seems clear that Abram was a very generous man, who was also well off, and was happy to share his good fortune with his family. I also think, like many other well off Europeans of that time, he put his money in Swiss banks. It would be safe and secure and the Nazis couldn’t touch it.

When my Dad got Abram the American Visa in 1941, and let him know that the family in America would take care of him, Abram must have thought, I’ve got money in Switzerland. There’s a war going on. Hitler may win. I may never be able to return to Europe. I need to take it with me.

There were no computers in those days. Abram couldn’t just go online and transfer his money from one bank or country to another. He must have found it hard at that point in his life to leave all his wealth behind and be dependent on his America family for the rest of his life. Why not try to bring it with him?

Considering all the odds against him, I don’t know how he thought he could do it. He did know a lot of people and maybe he thought some of them might help him. He spoke a number of languages and he might have thought that would help too.

Abram’s always sounded like a very optimistic person; someone who believed they could succeed against all odds. It must have been awful for him to come so close, Trieste, less than a day’s travel from Geneva, only to be captured. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him when the Nazis took him off the train and to the Savoia Hotel, where he’d lived for so many years. Did he think he could make some kind of arrangement with them until the very end, or, once they took him off the train, did he know it was over?

If my interpretation is correct, what happened to the money? Abram was murdered in his hotel room at The Savoia Hotel in Trieste, Italy sometime in late 1941. He never made it to Switzerland. So he was never able to send his money to America.

For that answer, you’ll have to come back next month.

Jul 18

Yes, you can publish a book

My thoughts on self-publishing

 

What is stopping you from publishing your book?  You are.

I have self-published two books so far, and I am thrilled about it.  With the introduction of eReaders, writers have complete freedom in their craft.  You have the ability to post anything online through a blog and various social media, and now you have the socially-accepted ability to publish a book.  But that was not always the case.

As recent as 10 years ago, the only way to buy a book was as a printed copy in a brick-and-mortar bookstore.  The only way to get your book into those stores was to sign a contract with one of the traditional publishing houses headquartered in New York.  These companies controlled physical book distribution, and they didn’t make the process of acceptance easy.  Even with well-crafted query letters and strong sample chapters, you still needed a smidgeon of luck that your manuscript found its way to the right editor or agent to believe in you.  If you made it through that professional vetting process, then you had the validation of being a “real” writer.

If your work wasn’t good enough to be accepted by the industry, then the only way to get your story to readers was to fake professionalism.  You had to print it on your own, with the stigma of “vanity press” trailing your byline.  I believe that was a phrase created by publishing houses.  If you had to print and peddle your wares yourself, then you weren’t a professional writer.  This legitimized publishing houses and enhanced their aura of attraction.  Without any sense of quality control or standards, what was there to keep the sludge out?  Such a book was an ego trip, and the only sales would come from family and friends.

On a base level, I understand that perception, especially after my experience at a 1998 independent publishing convention in New York City.  Unknown authors sat at tables just as if they were at a real book signing, so I figured there must have been some judging or invitation to be there.  I came across a hardback book with a colorful cover protected by a clear plastic slipcover.  It was a subject I was interested in writing, so I bought it.  Anyone who looked good must be good.  However, after reading the book, I learned that if you flip to a random page, any page, you will come across a grammatical error, a spelling mistake or a bombing of the F-word.  I’m serious.

No wonder people didn’t trust vanity press authors.  How could you tell a skilled writer from a sloppy ego trip?  Anyone can slap pieces of paper between a sturdy cover; professional-looking photography on the outside doesn’t guarantee that editing and grammatical care was taken on the inside.  I fell for that with the college book.  For all I know, those writers paid to rent table space, so anyone with money could have been there.  Reputable publishers guaranteed those services and more, so you took your chances with independents.

I didn’t have extra cash to toss around just to be labeled a phony.  If I wanted legitimacy as a writer, I would have to play the publishing lottery.

Now welcome to the brave new world of indie publishing.

“Vanity press” fades into obscurity as “self-publishing” gains legitimacy through e-pioneers like vampire series author Amanda Hocking , fantasy writer H.P. Mallory  and mystery-thriller author J.A. Konrath . Self-publishing is now a viable, accepted method of getting books to readers, especially with the popularity of eReaders.

Self-publishing gives anyone the opportunity to be a Published Author.  Young or old, newbie or established, there are no arbitrary opinions guidelines to keep otherwise-successful writers out of the market.  There are no external factors in this enterprise.  No one is sandwiched into a particular subject matter because new genres are created all the time.  Established genres are combined.  There is an outlet for niche topics directed at specialized audiences.  Story length is not limited to traditional page counts. These fringe elements, un-tested and un-proven as even mildly popular, are things traditional publishers would never touch. But you can.

Anyone can be a fantastic storyteller.

Now we can legitimize ourselves.  All writers have egos.

With such ease, there is still that initial concern: how to navigate through the slush to ferret out the gems.  Well, how do you do it now?  When you walk into a bookstore, what do you gravitate towards?  Is it a particular genre, the bestsellers, the sale items or the staff picks?  What makes you pick up a book: cover art, the subject material, the title or reviews and recommendations?  Online browsing is no different.  The book’s “back cover” summary is listed above the reviews.  Just like flipping through pages in a store, many writers offer the reader a sample to download and preview.  Ultimately, you don’t know how good a book is until you read it, just like any traditionally published book.  What is “good” and “bad” is subjective, but now you have more options, authors and books to discover.  It is more likely you’ll find a story worth reading, one you’re interested in.  This is a good thing.  It’s a great thing!

Given that, does a publishing house matter?  Nope.  Readers do not need publishers for distribution because eBooks are available electronically.  I’ve always bought books based on my interest, not the publisher.  Quick, without looking it up online, who publishes Stephen King?  Dean Koontz?  Danielle Steel?  Nora Roberts?  I find that people are brand-loyal with dishwashers, coffee, laundry detergent, cereal and soda pop, but not books.  Think about movies.  Have you ever heard anyone say, “Oh, I won’t see that movie because it’s not produced by 20th Century Fox.” ?  In fact, it’s an honor to have your film selected for the Cannes International Film Festival.  Is that called “vanity filmmaking”?  Many unknown filmmakers are introduced there because artistic quality (good storytelling) is the key there, not the big-name directors (best-selling authors) financed by big-name production studios (publishing houses).

Some writers need that perceived validation.  Some may not want to be involved in the details of work outside of the actual writing.  That’s personal preference.  I’m not one of those people.  I prefer the creative freedom.

Think about it.  You create the cover art you want.  You choose your editor, or make the decision not to use one.  There are no printing costs outside of any print on demand (POD) because publishing is electronic.  You set the price, and you can change that any time and as often as you wish.  At this time, royalties are higher than with a traditional publisher so you earn more money.  You can upload a story of any genre or any length because today’s readers accept both.  You publish on your schedule.  You can upload new versions at any time, thus customizing or updating content.  All it costs you is your time.

Note the theme above?  It’s control.

For all those reasons, I chose to self-publish.  Why not?  As of this post, I have two books available on Amazon.  At short stories that are 21 pages each, no publishing house would waste the ink and dead trees.  I don’t blame them, and I don’t fault them, so I took the power and launched them myself.

Remember that ego thing I mentioned earlier?

Does self-publishing my work–the lack of a traditional publisher– make me less of a writer?  Does having a book in print make me more of one?  I don’t think so, but it’s a fun thing to do.

So far, my self-publishing journey has been a positive one.  I hope you’ll follow me along this adventure because this is not the end.  I’ll continue to share my experiences.  Feel free to share yours in the comments below.

Will I be successful, whatever the definition of “success” is?  Would you be?  How will you ever know if you don’t try?

Nothing is stopping you but you.

 

 

Jul 16

Perfect Endings Belong to the Quotation Mark

Picky Penny said, “I’m studying The Chicago Manual of Style.”

Misplaced Mark replied, “I hope I never have to read that”.

Penny is attracted to Mark because of his gifted story-telling. He’s prolific with his ideas. Mark thinks Penny is really cute, and he likes that she always seems to know how to spell words without having to look them up in a dictionary. He notices that she’s good at applying the rules of grammar, too. Their common interest in writing is what first brought them together. Each realizes that, if they were to blend their talents, they would have a beautiful marriage in which they create compelling stories through clear, consistent communication.

Before they can live happily ever after, however, our two lovebirds have some issues to overcome. Penny is a stickler for the rules that she studies so well. In her quest for perfection, she corrects punctuation errors, fixes parallel construction flaws, and battles to avoid inconsistent verb tense while she’s composing first drafts. Her compulsion to be exact gets in the way of production. She would notice the mistake in the opening dialogue above and abruptly stop to fix it before moving on with another thought. Heaven help her; she can’t let anything go.

Mark is overly distracted by his surroundings. He keeps a notebook on hand to jot down tidbits from the conversations he hears, peculiar behavior he sees, and story lines that come to him. When he writes, he knows what he wants to say and how he wants to say it, but he has little patience for Penny’s nagging about following the rules. In his opinion, those are really just suggestions that slow down his creative process. To Penny’s horror, he finds revision to be cumbersome. He wouldn’t care to change anything in the same opening sentences above.

KellyDeadwood-20147July-PrincePrincessPhoto

Penny and Mark’s relationship is complicated. Both have strong opinions and skills in different areas. Is there a way to help the couple get along despite their individual styles and abilities?

I relate to both of them. As a writer, I admire Mark. He is comfortable with his craft. He’s confident, capable, and inspiring in his creativity. He knows how to set a scene, develop characters, and engage audiences. He paints entertaining images, even with discrepancies in protocol. From him, I’m learning to let the rules go for awhile, write what I need to write, and fix the grammatical issues later.

At least I try to fix them later. When I’m revising, I’m aware that I’ll never master all of the idiosyncrasies that pertain to good writing. There’s just too much information to remember. But certain things pop out to me. Either I know how to make those items conform better to the rules, or I have to look up advice in a style guide. Taking a cue from Penny, I most often rely on The Chicago Manual of Style for three main reasons. First, it’s widely recognized by writing professionals as a reputable, Standard English resource. Second, each subsequent edition evolves to keep up with changes in the writing industry. Third, through my online subscription, I can get answers to questions that stump me.

Generally, I’ve heard it said that once you know the rules, it’s okay to break them. This applies to writing. For instance, consider the difference between conversational language and more formal communication. Suppose you draft the following e-mail to the high school composition teacher: “I am wondering to whom I should forward the paper.” Doesn’t it just feel a little awkward? It sure sounds that way to me. Few people, often not even the English teacher, talk like that. In relaxed, everyday conversations, I think most people simply bend long-standing rules and ask, “Who should I send the paper to?” It may not be perfect grammar, according to Penny, but it’s perfectly acceptable, as Mark will point out.

While I’m okay with text that reflects the way people naturally talk, I’m increasingly concerned about certain grammatical mistakes that are making their way into e-mails, messages, and online articles. One of the most common offenses I’ve noticed is misplaced quotation marks. Having seen so many, I started to doubt my understanding of the basic punctuation rules.

I went back to the books to brush up, and I’m relieved to say that some things never change. We still only have three rules to consider when determining where to place our ever popular quotation marks: inside, outside, and sometimes inside/sometimes outside.

Of those three, the rule I wish Americans would agree with and apply is: periods and commas always go inside quotation marks. The Chicago Manual of Style, Associated Press Stylebook, and MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers say so. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) concurs and further notes that this punctuation is standard in the United States but not necessarily in other countries.

For many reasons, we just don’t do things the same all throughout the world. Consider the following ways we in the US differ from the English. Here we write gray versus their grey, and practice instead of practise. We go on vacation, and they go on holiday. We can try to emulate the accent in their speech. But we don’t follow a king or queen and we shouldn’t follow foreign punctuation rules. We simply don’t want to confuse our American audience.

If you look back at Mark’s statement to Penny, you may notice that it’s improperly punctuated for those of us in the US. I should have written: “I hope I never have to read that.” The ending quotation mark is now correctly placed outside the period. Whew! Hopefully, I’m not the only one breathing a sigh of relief.

I recognize that it’s difficult for us writers to come to consensus over all the little details we face. Even within our own U.S. borders, we are bombarded with inconsistencies in how things are done. For instance, I used to cringe every time I read an article on Wikipedia that looked to me to be incorrectly punctuated. That organization has American roots and computer servers located in the US. So, why are its articles littered with periods and commas flagrantly outside quotation marks?

After a little research, I realized that the mistakes weren’t due to inexperienced contributors. The errors weren’t missed during half-hearted attempts at revision. They weren’t accidents at all. Wikipedia had established its own style and its own rules—which, as noted, are unconventional for us Yanks.

My Picky Penny tendency pushed me to get an explanation from Wikipedia itself. Why was a basic standard compromised? In an e-mail response, I was told that, “All of Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines are developed by community consensus…Wikipedia’s users are all over the globe, not just in American-English speaking places.” Yikes! That seems like a pretty big compromise to me, but I suppose if you make up your own rules, then you can rightfully claim that you’re really not breaking any.

I do concede some flexibility in what we’ll consider guiding principles. Remember my favorite resource, The Chicago Manual of Style? It discourages the use of italics for emphasizing words placed at the end of sentences, like I did in Mark’s statement to his betrothed. I could have written, “I hope I never have to read that.” The prevailing thought is that my readers would have naturally put emphasis on the last word, without a prompt from me. Was I wrong or breaking a rule to help the readers by forcing the emphasis and putting the final word in italics? Not exactly. The rule that applies is a pliable one. Not a hard and fast rule, like where to place an ending quotation mark. In this example, I was given flexibility to exercise a preference.

The hard part for writers is discerning between unbendable rules and suggested guidelines. It’s a daunting task. I’ve counted 35 different style guides used by just as many different groups of people. Lawyers, librarians, journalists, musicians, government officials, students, scientists, researchers, geologists, businessmen and editors all have their own style guides. No wonder writers struggle in deciding what to do under specific circumstances. Every industry, even every company, has the potential to do things differently.

If you pay attention, you’ll see how other writers address grammar issues. Be forewarned that they bring their own knowledge and personal choice—right, wrong, or just different—to their work. Personally, I have quite a bit of fun discussing fundamental principles with my father-in-law. He’s known to have a quirky way of punctuating sentences. Eventually, he convinces me of his unique logic, and I in turn try to persuade him to find a style guide that supports his view. (I’m beginning to think he’s British.) Picky Me suggests that if he can’t find one, then it’s time to conform to some published criterion. Heaven help me if he chooses Wikipedia or writes his own!

Let’s think back to Penny and Mark. In trying to help them blend their different writing worlds, I suggest that they, too, agree on one basic style guide. It’s less distracting to readers if there is uniformity amongst us writers. That’s one reason publishers and online sites post submission guidelines or indicate the manual of style they would like writers to comply with. At the very least, we don’t want to alienate or irritate their editors by ignoring the very tool they want us to utilize. We want our submissions to work for us, not against us.

Following the rules can be considered one of writers’ most basic job requirements. Consistency in applying them will make us look credible. Accuracy will generate respect; compliance may generate a paycheck. And Mark and Penny will have one less thing to argue about on their way to a fairy tale ending.

Jul 10

Finding the Mind of a Villain

Recently, a computer guru, otherwise known as my husband, replaced my hard-drive with a solid-state drive. Arriving the following evening at the local coffee shop to write, I realized all my files had been transferred to our computer network, leaving me without my manuscript.

“So now what,” I asked myself, taking a sip of my coffee.

It took a few minutes to decide what would be the best use of my time. I decided research stemming from my blog post titled Fear, appearing on June 10, 2014, sounded interesting. I wanted to delve into the psychology of a Villain. Why is he the way he is? I tapped Wikipedia for basic information, and found some good resources to read, regarding Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Frederick Irving Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory (A theory to improve job satisfaction, oddly enough).

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, combined with Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, made for an interesting dichotomy of how I could create sanity and insanity in a character, based on my interpretation of the theories. Look at Maslow’s theory of needs that include, self-actualization, esteem, love and belonging, safety, and finally physiological needs, and combine this thinking with Herzberg’s theory, using it as a life satisfaction theory instead of a job satisfaction theory. It makes things a little clearer as to what a villain’s motivation will be and where his life diverted from happy and content to one that dips into insanity.

With the list of human needs that Maslow speaks of, each of us makes the decision to be happy or not, but what if that choice is taken away from us by outside forces. Looking back to my blog Fear, the child seeing friendly ghosts is now a teenager. The boy would have turned out sane and well balanced if left alone, but instead is locked away in a mental facility by his evil stepmother. Drugged by the doctors on a regular basis, per the stepmother’s wishes, and mentally bombarded by evil entities like the one I described toward the end of Fear, it is easy to see why the entities follow him into adulthood. He has no shields against them. The evil shadow creatures have free reign to whisper their vile thoughts and twist the teenagers mind.

Based on Maslow’s list, what does the character lose? One, I can assume the character loses self-actualization because he is drugged. Two, previous friend’s label him crazy when they find out he’s in an institution, losing his respectability causing his self-esteem to plummet. Does he find love and belonging sitting in an 8×8 white room in a drugged out haze? No. This turns love and belonging into hate. The people that were supposed to protect him threw him away. He’s no longer safe. The entities voices slither into his thoughts, his drugged state causing him to lose independent thought. Top everything off with his physiology, he’s now skinny and white in pallor, because the doctors don’t let him get out for exercise, and the character has become something entirely different.

These two theories combined create a catalyst to the characters motivation. While he’s trapped in the mental facility, ideas spin, evil overwhelms. All he can think about is revenge.

Now a man, he escapes.

Whom does he go after? You guessed it, the family that threw him away. Only the stepmother is dead and the only one left is the daughter, his only focus. To make it more interesting, the evil entities tag along with our villain, attacking the heroin in the dark alley, which I described in my blog titled Fear.

It’s amazing how an hour of research, that wasn’t planned, is now motivation to develop a story based around a couple paragraphs from a blog post. How do you think a story might flourish once you do a little research?

Happy writing!

Here are some other subjects I researched regarding psychology of the human mind.

Phobias

Paraphilias

Motivation

Psychoanalysis

 

Jul 06

Writers Always Write

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” — Eugene Ionesco

As I was teeing up my golf ball one day, I noticed the name on the ball was Crystal. Aha, I thought. I know the perfect name for my character. She’ll be called Pearl. Stay with me. I don’t always do straight line thinking. Crystal reminded me of a pearl, which is a perfect name for the character in my historical short story. This demonstrates that I think about writing while in the midst of other activities.

When I first met my future in-laws, I was fascinated by the patriarch’s extensive stamp collection, his brother-in-law’s love of fishing from his motor boat on the lake, the small town they lived in, and the scary idea that most of the people knew each other and all their juicy gossip. In my mind, those details created a convoluted family murder mystery waiting to be written. I’m still working on that one.

As I was reading Claire Murray’s February 21st blog, “Finding Something to Write About,” I started thinking about how I find ideas for my stories. When I sit in a waiting room, on a plane, or in a restaurant, I sometimes overhear conversations that tweak my interest. I may discover a plot idea, an interesting scenario, an intriguing title, or see a person I feel would make a fascinating character.

Reading books or magazine articles sometimes gives me ideas. Because I also recognize some of the TV stories that are “ripped from the headlines,” I’ve started paying more attention to the news. Reading newspapers or listening to the news also gives me the opportunity to do a “what if” story. Tim Franklin’s February 27th blog addresses the “What if?” in a fascinating take on the demise of the dinosaurs.

My cousins-in-law were going through their aunt’s belongings helping her decide what should be given to family members, sold at auction, donated to the local historical society, or trashed. I was intrigued by the contents of an old, unwanted notebook. The cousins gave it to me. That notebook provided the plot for “Pearl’s Legacy,” which I’m preparing for a short story contest.

I keep a supply of notebooks, pens, and pencils in every room in the house and notebooks in various sizes to fit my purses, bags, and suitcases to catch any fleeting ideas before they escape my grasp. My handy, idea filled notebooks help jump start my writing long before I face that intimidating blank screen. Without my notebooks, I think I’d still be staring at a sea of white space without a clue of what I should write about.