What it's taught me... by T. Lynn Ocean

My Best Advice for Aspiring Writers… following the theme this month for the blog, I'll give it a go. I recall—and it wasn't that long ago—being crazy excited to learn that my first book had been picked up. I did the happy dance. And then I learned that I didn't have a clue about much of anything in the publishing world. If you're an aspiring writer, or a newly published writer, you may not either. But, seriously, don't let that stop you!!! My fifth novel, SOUTHERN PERIL, is due out this week. And the more I've learned over the years, the more I realize I still don't know. Hey, it's a process.

First and foremost, if you love to write then by all means, do it. Read a lot of whatever genre you want to write. Go to writers' conferences and mingle with those in the business. Subscribe to some applicable blogs and magazines and podcasts. But most importantly, sit your butt down at the computer and pound out some words until you've formed a story! It's never gonna happen if you're not actually…WRITING J

My other advice is that for newly published folks: learn how to self promote. Figure out how to market and sell your work (without spending a ton of your own money). Even if you're with a major publishing house, you'll need to be creative and stay on the ball looking for avenues to sell your book. Network. Get blurbs. Traditional book signings are great, but think outside of that box. Your publisher will do some promotion, but you' must be willing to pitch in. Sell yourself and your books. There are a lot of choices in the bookstores—plenty of ways for people to spend their dollars, in other words. Figure out how to get a bigger share of those dollars.

Personally, I love to write and I get grumpy if I'm NOT working on a project. I haven't made it to the big list yet. And even though that's my hope and my goal, my main priority is doing what I enjoy. Write because you love it.

Cheers, T. Lynn Ocean
www.tlynnocean.com

The Writer Flies Alone By Andy Straka

www.andystraka.com

A hawk flies alone.  Hunting to survive.  Keenly aware of its surroundings and driven by its hunger. 

Each spring, thousands of new red-tailed hawks hatch from their eggs and, after being nurtured for a time by their parents and learning to fly, are pushed from their nests.  Over seventy percent of these juveniles, known as passage birds, will fail to survive their first winter on their own.  In fact, despite being at the top of the food chain--proud and noble creatures that they are--the five-year mortality rate for wild red-tailed hawks remains around ninety five percent.  

            I wonder what the metaphorical mortality rate is for those of us who fancy ourselves as writers?  We die every time we receive those rejections, don’t we?  Every time we fail to meet those self-imposed goals or deadlines?  What about when we fail to live up to our potential as artists?   

            Camaraderie among writers is a wonderful thing.  Consulting with others about your work is a time-honored tradition, and as published authors, we may even enjoy the consultation of a trusted editor or agent. Conventions, writers associations, and group blogs such as this, have also become great tools for the working writer.  Some of your best friendships may even be with fellow writers.

             But when you come right down to it, when the friends, mentors, and colleagues have all gone home and the door is closed, no one else is going to sit down in front of that keyboard but you.  No one else can tell your story.  No one else can offer us your insights or place your particular spin on the human condition.  In the end, armed only with imagination, an ear for prose, instinct, guts, and sometimes just downright stubbornness, a writer, just like the hawk, must fly alone.

            The good news is I can testify from personal experience that red-tailed hawks are most definitely not extinct.  Nor are they endangered or expected to go extinct at any time in the near future.  Indeed, thousands of them are able to overcome the harsh realities of our natural world to survive and even thrive every year. 

So what can you and I learn from the hawk’s temperament that we can apply to our lives as writers?  What lessons can we draw that will not  only prevent our writing careers from going extinct, but maybe, if we are lucky, even allow us to soar. 

I think there are four traits the hawk possesses that serve to optimize its chances for survival.  I think if we’re to survive as writers we need to cultivate these same qualities in one form or another. 

Awareness

 A hawks predominate sensory input is visual.  Birds of prey possess binocular vision and can resolve minute detail and detect even the slightest movement at great distances.  This highly developed sense of sight gives them an edge when game is camouflaged and scarce, and as you can see from the statistics I quoted earlier, they need all the edges they can get.

            What is your awareness as a writer?  What is your vision?  What type of work are you trying to create and sell to publishers and what is the reality of today’s marketplace for that type of work?  Sometimes the minutest detail can cause us to miss an opportunity.  Take my own case as an example.  For many years St. Martins Press in New York has offered an annual contest for unpublished private eye novels.  First prize is a $10,000 advance and publication of the book in both the United States and in England.  Now here’s the ironic part. Last year I was asked to serve as one of the judges for this contest, but back when I was  trying to sell the unpublished manuscript for A WITNESS ABOVE, I never entered the St. Martins contest.  Why not?  I’d never heard of it.  That was a big lack of awareness on my part. 

And I’m not just talking about marketplace awareness.  It should go without saying that if you want to write a science fiction novel, you should have read and continue to be reading piles of science fiction, particularly the classics; but have you gone beyond just reading works in your chosen genre?  Have you ever attended a science fiction readers convention or gone to a science fiction writer’s conference?  How many scientific  periodicals do you subscribe to?  Are you merely looking to dabble in science fiction or are you hoping to make this a career?  The time to ask yourself these questions is before not after you’ve spent six months or six years slaving away to create your first or your next opus. Because we fly alone, too often we writers are guilty of working in a vacuum, and that lack of awareness can sometimes cost us. 

Persistence

A mature red-tail hawk, skilled at taking prey, will stalk and continue to pursue a particular quarry via multiple dives called stoops until it has either taken the game or exhausted all possibilities of doing so.  This persistence isn’t just blind stubbornness either.  The wise bird will continually adjust its angle of attack, probing for weaknesses, looking for opportunities, whereas a juvenile often lacks these skills.

Are you persistent with your writing?  Do you make the time necessary to pursue your goals?  Do you even set word count or production goals?  Most importantly of all: are you willing to rewrite and revise, rewrite and revise, rewrite and revise again and again until you have made enough of your own literary “stoops”, as it were, to know that you’ve gotten it right and that the work is as good as you can make it.  It’s hard work catching game in the wild.  It’s hard work, this business of being a writer. 

And while we’re on the subject of persistence, let’s talk about rejection.  Every writer has their work rejected.  Generally, the more commercially successful the writer, the more rejections they have received.  But ask yourself: are you still taking your rejections personally?  I know I am.  I’ve never met a writer or author who at least on some level didn’t.  But we also know we need to try to move away from this, don’t we?  Do you think if the red-tailed hawk spent two or three days sulking on a branch over just missing that big fat juicy rabbit, it would survive?  Maybe you’ll have to forgo the rabbit for now; maybe you’ll have to settle for a mouse.

What about when you receive rejection letter after rejection letter regarding a particular manuscript or query?  Do you blindly just cross the latest one off the list, label the rejecter as an idiot, and go on?  Or do you adjust your angle of attack, perhaps seek some outside help or opinion, try something a little different?  You’ll need to, if as a writer you hope to survive.

Patience

 It can take time to produce good writing.  Just ask Charles Frazier.  He spent seven years full time writing COLD MOUNTAIN.  I’m not suggesting we all need to do that, but I am suggesting that as writers we need to cultivate more patience.  Well, you may argue, some of today’s bestselling authors seem to be able crank out two, three, or even more books per year.   But even among those authors I would suggest that a certain amount of patience is necessary in order to produce the volume of work they put out.  Many of these authors have dozens of projects percolating at any given time, most of which will lie dormant or in various stages of development for years.

In trade publishing today, commercially published books generally have a shelf life not much longer than a loaf of bread.  We can wail and gnash our teeth all we want about this state of affairs, but it isn’t going to get us very far.  Better to be patient, to develop our visions and plans, and to produce our work at the pace that will best optimize its chances to be accepted and communicate what we want to our audience. 

Speaking of acceptance, if you’ve had an experience at all in the book publishing world you know that publishers, like lawyers brewing a legal battle, tend to respond to new opportunities at a glacial pace.   Why should they move any faster?  Publishers today are basically gamblers looking for diamonds in the Himalayas without any maps.  Not only that, authors hoping to make a name for themselves in the mainstream marketplace often take multiple books over many years to reach such a status, usually with very little economic return before they manage to finally “break out”, as booksellers like to say.  For every overnight success, there are thousands of published mid-list authors, and even for many overnight successes the path to long-term brand name status is often a long and painful one with many ups and downs.

Adaptability

The last of the hawk’s qualities we need to try develop as writers is perhaps the most difficult.  Successful hawks are not only able to make the minor adjustments necessary to capture a particular quarry, they can adapt on a larger scale to the particular hunting environment in which they find themselves.  They will take a wide variety of game, depending upon what is available at that location at a particular time of year.  They’ll hunt near major roadways, where the slightly warmer temperature of the pavement causes many rodents to build burrows.  They’ve even been known to soar overhead following combines in the wheat fields in the Midwest, knowing that the huge machines tend to flush out all the ground animals in their paths.  And, unlike the vast majority of raptors, a couple of different species of birds of prey, Harris hawks and Golden Eagles, even break my opening premise.  They become wild collaborators, not just hunting alone, but cooperatively in packs lives wolves, because that is what is needed for them to survive in their particular environment.

I don’t know about you, but when I find a particular genre and characters, and techniques that are working with my writing I tend to want to stick with them.  But at the same time I’ve had to come to realize that if I fail to evolve in my writing, I may find myself writing sonnets in a world where very few, if any, are reading sonnets anymore.  To die with the sonnet, at least in the commercial sense, may well be a noble choice and one we decide to make, but we must also understand the consequences of our actions.  Commercially successful writers today tend to be adaptable in their writing, not to follow fads, but to stay aware of trends, what their audiences are reading.  What kind of book or article are you planning to write next?  Will you stick to familiar territory or strike out for new ground?  

 Next time you’re driving down the highway somewhere and spot a hawk, perched high in a tree or maybe soaring skyward on a thermal, think about the qualities that allow it to survive and how you can apply them to your life as a writer.  Ironically, each time the hawk flies after game it risks its own life as well.  A broken primary flight feather, a nasty bite from a squirrel that can lead to infection—any of these can mean its imminent demise. 

In your writing career, every time you put your words on paper and see them published, you too are taking such a risk, are you not?  Spend some time in the next day or two at your favorite bookstore.  Don’t stop to read anything—just spend a few moments walking the aisles and perusing the covers of all the brand new books, magazines, and newspapers for sale.  All those words, headlines, and titles calling out to you—they are there because some writer took the risk to create them and some publisher took the risk to invest in the paper and ink and myriad other costs of production and distribution to make them available. 

All of them are seeking an audience.  All are competing for attention.  Unfortunately, most will fail to gain a large enough audience within the short sales cycles offered by many big box retailers to justify continued presence on store shelves.  Thousands of copies may end up being remaindered eventually, be burned, or reduced to pulp, while their authors must learn to live and write another day.

The great news is that, like the hawk, many authors will.  Many will even learn to exhilarate in the thrill of the hunt.  There has never been a better time to be a writer.  It’s pretty wild and wonderful out there.

As I Stand Speaking...

Hey Y'all, let's chat...~smile~

This may be a TMI moment, but here goes. A bunch of people live in my brain. This wouldn't be so bad it they weren't all storytellers, and if they weren't all bent on telling their stories at the same exact time. We get along fairly well in private but this group thing can be especially trying when one is speaking before live audiences. Every story I begin reminds the individuals that comprise this interesting fellowship of another story-- and what's worse-- everyone thinks she should go next as her story is better, more appropriate, more interesting. As I stand speaking the audience sees one person. They do not see the full out mud slinging cat fight going on inside my head. This is good. It could be the sole reason I haven't been put away. That, and the fact that I am Southern, which explains a lot to a lot of people, at least the type that generally book me. This, too, is good. Note to self: Do not travel outside the South without your papers, or your people, or both.

The south is full of storytellers. Some have to write them down. What happens that causes the first to become the second? It's a question I like to ask other authors on my live show, All Things Southern LIVE at http://www.fox927.com/shows.php?id=12 that was born out of my website, http://www.allthingssouthern.com. I never tire of hearing their answers. (Did you see those shameless plugs? It's a gift.)

So, how would I answer my own question? You mean after I wrestled "the group". I'd begin with one of my all time favorite quotes on writing: "Everyone says they'd like to write a book. What they mean is that they would like to have written a book." Big. Difference. I think the folks who cross the line, the storytellers who write 'em down are the ones who have to, flat out have to. Most little kids write play words before they can read, pretend words, squibbles. Some never stop.

By now, if you're still with me, you may have scooted over to my website. By now, you may think you know the type of stories I tell. I understand that you would feel that way, but you don't. You can't know the words spilled all over my house. If you hold my latest book in your hand you see the words Penguin (God love 'em) decided were worthy of the light of day. There are so many others that, and this is probably good, will never be seen. Novels, short stories, and poems that jump indiscriminately from one genre to another. And since I don't think the poetress is ever going to wrestle the others down long enough to perfect her craft, I think I will now give her a moment in the sun.

What follows are thoughts of my paternal grandmother who saw in me a famous writer. She gave me a typewritter when I was eleven. My siblings thought it the strangest gift. I was elated. I used it to write my first novel,"Martha and her Horse".

Grandma was a Kentucky woman who came to the Delta in a horse drawn carriage and kept house in a tent until she and her husband could afford a home. She didn't have an education, but she was enamored with words. Finding a grandchild who loved to write them made her glow with pride. I wish every child knew the feeling of having some one think his or her words are worthy. I post these now because Grandma never saw my words in print. Or did she.

“My Father’s Mother”

climbing four cracked steps

as the bus plods off

first grade reader in hand

I knew I’d find you

in your green chair

near the window

voices whisper

she does nothing

but watch the flickering lights

of make believe lives

I don’t care

I liked you there, in your chair

worried faces

her feet, too heavy

ankles swelling at awkward angles

I didn’t mind you being heavy

I needed you solid

like a rock

let ‘em frown

did they come to the delta

keep house in a tent

birth a baby alone

while the youngest tugs,

his dress held beneath the bed’s leg

bending and picking scratchy white cotton

with ten of your own

baby waiting in the shade

see, you talked

they listened

but I heard

Anxious hearts

they say he died at lunch

with crops waiting in the field

broke her heart in two

she threw in the towel

sat down for good

house was empty

noses wiped

bottoms cleaned

meals cooked

Grandma, did you quit

or were you through

later they wiped you with the others

old and tired

and wondered why you hung on

I wondered how you’d feel

who your spirit would be

when your body wasn’t tired

from babies

and cooking

and scrubbing

I missed you then

I miss you now

I wish I could sit in your chair

Hugs,
Shellie

The Deep, Down, And Dirty South

Well, I went and did it. People asked me to and I said I would, and then with the hard push and shove of my cousin, dang if I didn't live up to. I compiled a selection of essays, reflections, and favorite postings to A Good Blog Is Hard To Find and wrapped it up between some covers to take to the Pulpwood Queens shindig in Jefferson, Tx. It just a few true tales and takes on growing up in the south coupled with old family pictures. Here it 'tis and if you are at the Girlfriend Getaway Weekend this weekend you can find a copy there.

Going through those old photo's with my cousin has been a hoot and an education. I mean - there it is in black and white and there is no denying any of it. My southern roots are right out there in the wide open. I am reading the back of some of them that tell the most amazing story and I'd call Momma and say - who wrote all this stuff? And she'd say, "Oh, that's your aunt Aggie. Should have been a librarian." Aunt Aggie wrote on the back. "Here is my brother. He always wore a hat and jacket year round and looked like this. He seemed to always be cold." Well, obviously he is kin to this Florida girl up here in Nashville in 10 degree weather freezing her rear off! Aggie's brother, some distant, cold but not forgotten Uncle of mine is standing in front of a sugar cane field and I must say - it looks sunny and sugar cane is in and my guess is it is Summer and he really does look rather toasty in the hat and jacket.

Or just one shot of this man (who I really think was my grandaddy) says more than many of my words could muster. Looks hot. Looks like cotton. Looks so dusty and dry I can't swallow. And it explains why when my sister stopped to pick a few stalks of cotton to bring home to my mom because she thought it was so pretty and would make a nice little present (like a bouquet of flowers) she found that cotton thrown down outside behind the house. "Do you know how hot and dry it is out in the field picking cotton? Do you know how many hours and years I spend out there in that sun? I'd be happy if I never saw any cotton again for the rest of my life." All righty then. Make note. Momma doesn't want any cotton. Prefers flowers.

Or this one - check it out. That's me sporting the overalls look with with one shoe off and one shoe on but when I asked Momma who the people were holding me she told me, "Honey, I don't remember their names. They were just some people down on their luck that needed a place to stay till they could get back on their feet and find a place to live." Really? Just needed a place and they moved into our little house with not much room and shared with us and we didn't have all that much and you didn't even know them?

That's what I call The Deep, Down, & Dirty South. Where people would open a door, set another plate on the table, share what was in their field or in their pocket. Its where we come from - and I hope it's where we're going. In this day and age when we have so much more, bigger houses, belly's pretty darn full and pockets wide - I hope that the changes in our society, the dangers that we truely face and the changing face of our nation - doesn't cause us to change from the principles my mother so well set as a standard. And she wasn't the only one. There was a long, strong line of people working hard with their hands and yet, with the softest of hearts, putting food on the table and willing to share.

For anyone who might want a copy of The Deep, Down, and Dirty South - there might be a few copies available for personalization through my website next week at And don't forget that Saints In Limbo surfaces May 19th, and can be preordered now, in all its backwoods, southern glory set right smack down on my Daddy's creek and in the house he grew up in. My stories? Fiction or fact - they come from my people. And I'm proud to be a Southern Girl - oh, yes I am.

River Jordan is storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee. Jordan's writing career began as a playwright where she spent over ten years with the Loblolly Theatre group and received productions of her original works for the stage including Mama Jewels: Tales from Mullet Creek; Soul, Rhythm and Blues; and Virga.

Jordan's first novel, The Gin Girl, (Livingston Press, 2003) has garnered such high praise as, "This author writes with a hard bitten confidence comparable to Ernest Hemingway. And yet, in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, she can knit together sentences that can take your breath." Florida Toda y. Kirkus Reviews described her second novel, The Messenger of Magnolia Street, (Harper Collins/Harper One) as "a beautifully written atmospheric tale." It was applauded as "a tale of wonder" by Southern Living Magazine who chose the novel as their Selects feature for March 2006 and by other reviewers as "a riveting, magical mystery" and "a remarkable book." Her most recent work, Saints In Limbo, (Random House/Waterbrook) arrives in stores May 19, 2009. Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on 'The Passion of Story,' around the country and produces and hosts the radio program, Backstory City Limits with River Jordan, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville every Saturday at 4:00-6:00 CST.
She lives with her husband in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us

Good Old Boys Make Good Daddy's

My Daddy was a man's man, a mama's boy, and a good old boy. Folks who make fun of those good old boy’s down south don't know what they’re talking about. They'd be lucky to meet one, befriend one, or marry one. A real one. Not that Hollywood game.

In 1933 my Daddy was born in the back woods of North Florida. He was born there to a life that never came easy. Raised on a creek in the woods that offered him a magic so strong that it became his touchstone. An army man for life, he traveled the world over on duty and on leave and when asked where the best place in the world was he laughed and said, “Right here,” standing there on that swampy piece of creek in the backwoods and he meant it.

When my mother first met him he was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne with ‘those pants tucked tight into his shoes and I mean to tell you,” and she raises an eyebrow and smiles as if to say, “what choice did I have?” Of course, when she first met him it was at little bar and restaurant on the beach called Jimmy’s which has now turned into the infamous Breakers Club but back then it was just beer and barstools and hamburgers and the living was easy in the summertime. All waves and sunshine and southern boys on a quick three day pass. When she first laid eyes on him, and I swear this is true, he was teaching waitresses how to jump out of airplanes by taking them up to the roof and holding their hands while they jumped off into the sand dunes below. The true tale goes that the waitresses were more than just a little lovin’ it. He took one look at my mother as she was dropping her niece off that morning for work and made her the same offer. She said, ‘no thanks.’ Even to the tough pants, the green eyes, the easy smile. She was a serious woman after all. Had real work to do. No jumping off roofs for her that day.

He was waiting for her when she returned that afternoon. Apparently, he had come up with a different offer. Apparently, one she ended up jumping at in the end after all. And the rest, as the man says, is history. And a part of that history was in me coming to be.

I saw my Daddy jump out of planes thousands of feet high, and saw this tough man cry with a broken heart over an open coffin.

Saw him return from Vietnam with a Silver Medal and stories he wouldn’t tell except to say years and years later, “We had no business over there.” But he was a soldier and a soldier follows orders, fulfills the promise of his oath, and my Daddy was a good Soldier. Even if he was a good soldier followed by all the ghosts of young boys who died too young.

I've seen him make a small man feel important. Make the lost feel found.

He had a heart tattoo that said, ‘MOM’ on it. And I know no matter how many beers he might of had at 19 to get that engraved there, my Memaw must have loved it. She being the one that made those Peanut Butter cakes for him that were seven layers tall and who always called him ‘my boy’ long after he was man.

We didn’t always travel with my Daddy. We (my mother and me and later me, her, and baby sister) stayed put and kept the home fires burning, took care of two sets of elderly grandparents, made care boxes to send here and there and overseas. Then Daddy retired and came home to stay full time in this strange house full of women who had strange female habits like sleeping late in our most unmilitary ways.

And I can say these things to my Daddy’s credit.

He didn’t try to change us. He didn’t bark orders. (Although he could give us a look that meant we better shape up quick faster than a thousand words from Momma). He taught me by example not to judge a man by his skin color, by the size of his wallet, by who his Daddy had been, or which side of the tracks he came from, but instead by the look in his eyes and by his actions.

He taught me to go easy and to know that sometimes what might seem insurmountable was just a bump in the road. He taught me, by watching him, that growing older can be good for a man’s soul, align his priorities, help him to say, “I love you,” as easy as a breeze.

When I told this backwoods good old country boy that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, he didn’t laugh. This man with a tenth grade education and a GED under his belt, this man who didn’t read much, believed me. Believed in me. And sent me a huge old Thesaurus from Ft. Polk Louisiana Army camp with a note that said, "I heard all good writers need one of these."

I had hoped with all my heart that my first novel, The Gin Girl, would make it to print before Daddy died but it didn’t work out that way. Such is life. But he knew it was on its way.

“So it’s really going to happen?” he asked me in those final days. And I said, “Yeah, it’s really gonna happen, Daddy.” And so it did.

He’s been gone six years now but it seems like yesterday. Mother, sister, and I are still stepping easy around the empty spaces of where he isn’t. And, as I prepare this morning for a phone conference with my editor and agent on another new novel, one set right smack down on that creek in those back woods of Florida where my Daddy showed me all it's mystery and magic, I just want to say thanks to that Good Old Country Boy for believing in me.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy from your writer girl on this side of forever.

RIVER JORDAN is a storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee. The Messenger of Magnolia Street was applauded as "a tale of wonder" by Southern Living Magazine, who chose The Messenger of Magnolia Street as their Selects feature for March 2006, and by other reviewers as "a riveting, magical mystery" and "a remarkable book."

Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on 'The Power of Story' around the country and produces and hosts a radio program on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville Saturday's at 4:00 CDT, www.radiofreenashville.org. She recently completed a new work of fiction, Souls In Limbo. Jordan and her husband live in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us

The Rhythm of the Story

A few days ago I had the honor of sitting on a panel with fiction writers Darnell Arnoult and Robert Hicks and Martha Stamps, owner of Martha's at the Plantation restaurant, eatured at the Downtown Nashville Library. The subject was southern literature in all it's glory. Our wonderful moderator, Jeff Jacobs of the Borders Bookstores fame corralled us nicely and made us sound smart and thoughtful. (Okay, Robert and Darnell are smart and thoughtful anyway.) so we did a fine job of sharing stories not hogging the floor as ALL SOUTHERN STORYTELLERS, that being every man, woman, and half-pint child I know born and bred in the South is capable of doing. Shoving an entire crowd of people converging on a plate of fried chicken out of the way so they will hush up and let him tell his story! In the vein of NOT being a floor hog myself on this particular day I let one of the questions put to us go unanswered. Meaning I most likely looking liked an extra bump on a log for no good reason but I swear I was trying to mind my manners (so unlike me) - And so it goes.

Here's the question: "So, why is it with other writers from various points up north and beyond that when their novels or stories begin, they actually BEGIN, where as Southern writers seem to meander a bit and their stories start so SLOW?" (MY PARAPHRASE - FORGIVE ME JEFF)

Robert Hicks responded by telling a great story (as he is apt to do) saying that his stories start slow because he is slow himself (Which is soooo not true. The man's brain is lightning quick!) Darnell Arnoult answered the question with grace and intelligence and foresight. I kept my mouth shut sitting there thinking that was a really funny story and that was a really intelligent answer so what more is there to say?

But being that a few days have gone by and I still have this on my mind, this would have been my answer.

It's the earth. And that lazy old sun that got nothing to do but roll around heaven all day. That rhythm of the planets that sets the seasons in motion is something that Southerners and Southern writers are instinctively keen to. Just as you don't suddenly wake up one winter morning and open your window to discover - Why, it's SPRING! Because that's not the way that the earth rolls out from under us. But little by little, inch by inch, we feel it coming on. We smell the change long before it arrives. We have an awareness, this DNA in our bones, boiling in our blood, bless our hearts awareness of the seasons coming on and changing. Of babies being born and old folks dying. Of our dreams rising like smoke from the ashes. We know that life, and all the glory of it is transitory and bittersweet and breathtaking. We know it so much our hearts could break with the fullness and the loss of it.

So, it's not that our friends up North like New York and other wild exotic places are any less of the writers than we are. They are not. They are just different. We can color most of our 'Yankee' writer friends as down right brilliant in their execution of the written word on page. And yes, Robert Hicks, maybe we are a little special in that our brains just might work a little slower. I know when I read books like The Corrections I think - man, these folks are just so smart. And like I often say, when I read a writer from way up North I can hear their brains ticking. But when I read a Southern writer I can feel their heart beating. Slow, steady pulses that lead me into a deeper shade of life. At a pace that allows me to leave one world and enter into a place word by word, that will hypnotically reveal the glories waiting for me on the next page. Words that will seduce me so softly, or grab me so passionately, that time stops and I'm in the middle of the life my brother or sister has given birth to.

Why is Southern fiction slower, Jeff? Because this dance we call life is something so precious to us that we know the moments must not be rushed but savored. That the glow of a Grandmothers old wedding ring against her coffee cup at sunrise, throwing gold shadows against her well worn face, is worth slowing down to breathe in and take notice. And we help our readers step into a place where they can slow down and take notice, too.

So, we old Southern storytellers are always inviting readers to dance with us but just a little bit slower. Slow enough to hear the music, to feel the air move across their skin as they twirl one time through this earth - and to remember.


River Jordan is a storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee. Jordan’s writing career began as a playwright where she spent over ten years with the Loblolly Theatre group and received productions of her original works for the stage including Mama Jewels: Tales from Mullet Creek; Soul, Rhythm and Blues; and Virga.

Jordan’s novel The Messenger of Magnolia Street, (Harper Collins, Harper One) was published in January 2006. Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as “a beautifully written atmospheric tale.” The Messenger of Magnolia Street was applauded as “a tale of wonder” by Southern Living Magazine who chose The Messenger of Magnolia Street as their Selects feature for March 2006 and by other reviewers as “a riveting, magical mystery” and “a remarkable book.” Her first novel, The Gin Girl, (Livingston Press, 2003) has garnered such high praise as these words from Florida Today, "The Gin Girl is like crossing that deep, languid stream into the land of milk and honey. This author writes with a hard bitten confidence comparable to Ernest Hemingway. And yet, in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, she can knit together sentences that can take your breath."
Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on ‘The Power of Story,’ around the country and produces and hosts the radio program, Backstory with River Jordan, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville every Saturday at 4:00 CST, www.backstoryontheradio.com .

She has just completed a new work of fiction and lives with her husband in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us

Let's Hear It for Laughter

Patricia Sprinkle here, in case you don't recognize the picture. I saw that most folks have been putting glamor shots on these blogs lately, so I thought I'd show you one of mine. I'm the one in the mini-dress, at least two decades ahead of her time. Are those great legs or what?

I've been thinking today about how serious some folks are about the most amazing things. Maybe that's why I write humorous books. I find people so incredibly funny.

Example: My husband and I live two doors from a lovely walking trail. On Sunday afternoons we stroll along admiring plants and trying to identify birds by their calls. We meander for an hour or two while discussing our week, pausing often to look up at striations in a rock face or down into a rushing brook. As we walk, we play a game. We rate other folks on the trail by their Earnestness levels.

Our local joggers, bikers, skaters, and even walkers are amazingly serious about what they do. Almost all wear the intense look of astronauts stranded on a dark and distant planet who must come up with the formula for repairing the space ship before their oxygen runs out.

They frown in concentration as they glide along on skates or pump those bike pedals before an invisible panel of severe judges who apparently preside over our trail. One short glide, one weak pedal thrust, and wham! Instant expulsion from the Serious Exercisers Club.

All the while they are competing for those unseen judges, they are also whizzing past us, judges of their E - levels.
“There’s a nine,” we say.
“She’s definitely an eight.”
“Give her a twelve on a scale of ten.”

Each summer, the trail is lined with bushes heavily laden with fat blackberries. Bob takes off his hat and we fill it for a cobbler or to top our ice cream. Amazing, as crowded as the trail is, that so few people except us and our grandson seem to notice the blackberries.

Some folks are so serious about their exercise that they involve their children. Joggers push triangle strollers. Bikers pull kids in rickshaws. The kids are asleep or look utterly bored, but their parents can’t see that, so they wear the pleased, intent look of adults who are seriously multi-tasking: getting exercise while spending quality time with their kids.

Most of those who run, walk, bike or skate in pairs don’t talk to one another, but some do bring their cell phones to keep up with current events, business, and the status of their divorce.

We gave the twelve to a mother who was simultaneously jogging, pushing a bored tot in a stroller, AND conducting an intense conversation with her ex-spouse on her phone.

The odd part to us is, these people seem to think they are having fun. How do they look and act when they are serious?

Some Sundays I want to call, “Lighten up! Have you looked at your expression in a mirror lately? You aren’t training for the Olympics out here. We've got a blue sky here, a nice spring breeze, new wildflowers since last week, and fascinating rock formations. Forget staying in the zone. Look around you and smile. Can you remember the last time you laughed out loud?”

I don’t really want them to change, though. If they did, what would I have to chuckle about on Sunday afternoons? And where would I get characters for my books?

My tenth—and last—Thoroughly Southern mystery came out this month. WHAT ARE YOU WEARING TO DIE? is about the deaths of two young mothers in a small Georgia town that finds itself drowning in methamphetamine. Not a humorous subject, but I find levity can help the pain go down. One reader wrote, “I laughed and I cried.” What author could ask for more?

For more on my books, visit me at my website, http://www.patriciasprinkle.com/

BREATHING WORDS

When I was a child I had this belief that when you were born you had a certain amount of words assigned to you and stored up (who knows where) inside your body. When you used up your allotment of words you fell over dead. Truth. I swear. I simply believed it with all my heart. It’s why I would sit wisely at my Grandmother’s feet as she and the old women who had come to visit from down the dirt road would huddle by the fire and talk and talk and talk. And there I am listening to all this gossip about whoyoucallit and whatshisname and whatshedid and I’d think to myself like a little sage, “So many words being lost, lost, lost. They are just wasting their lives!” But of course I never brought it up because I was planning to live for a long, long time.

Now when I mention this my mother asks me with a horrified expression, “Where in the world did you get such an idea?” I honestly say, “I don’t know.” I believed that way before I could talk which explains why I was such a quiet child. They thought I was simply well behaved. I was actually trying to remember to save the words for something really, very, important. This was easier when I was very young and content to be alone. It became tougher and tougher when I was taunted by Diane Bagget in the 2nd grade EVERY SINGLE DAY who promised she was going to whip my butt on the long walk home. (Now, I don’t remember why she wanted to do such a thing because like I said, I was a quiet and given to mindin’ my own business and had not TAUNTED her. But never mind all that because I had to waste some choice words to try to reason with her or to talk tough enough to escape a beating.)

It was third grade when I found out about the trees, those blessed creatures of God’s creation that feed us air. In other words - oxygen. “Which of course people need,” the teacher said, “TO BREATHE! (Emphasis mine). Something broke inside my mind, like an old, dusty, place being cracked open. The one that holds old ideas that don’t fit anymore. And a new truth replaced that spot somewhere in the Cortex of my brain. We breathe in oxygen. The trees feed us air. Our words are limitless! I can tell Diane Bagget to kiss my fuzzy head and drop dead without ME not dropping dead in mid-sentence! Oh, the wonder, the bliss, of possessing the freedom to communicate without self-censure.

I literally skipped all the way home from school that day. And I remember rushing up the stairs and into the house and explaining this glorious concept of OXYGEN and breathing and words forever to my Mother and her saying something like, “Well, of course that’s the way it works.” Just as if all people in the world are born knowing this. I bet I was a little more jovial and talkative than usual from that point on. Okay, maybe more talkative but no more jovial.
But now, here I find myself all these years later and words are still what I’m made up of whether it’s writing them, saying them, or just contemplating their purpose and their power. And that leads me to return to that childhood notion on occasion and dust it off, shake it and hold it up to the light. I mean, What if?

What if our words were as measured as our days and the two were intrinsically linked together? What would we say and what would we refrain from saying? As writers, as storytellers, where would we invest our courage and our passion?
With the turn of the calendar, I’ve been mulling over the old and the new, looking at 2008 and wondering what’s in store for us this year. And amazingly, for reason I’m not sure of, my thoughts turned immediately to this collective of jazzy, southern authors on, A Good Blog is Hard to Find. To the authors whose words grace these pages, and to the readers who follow those words like bread crumbs in the dark.

As the Good Book says, “Without a vision the people perish. Therefor, write the vision . . . ” and I thought of how I felt that this year, maybe more than any year that I’ve been aware of, I feel that people in our country are longing for a vision. That there are silent voices crying out for someone to paint a picture, to remind us of who we once were, to paint a picture of who we still could be. Maybe that’s why my thoughts straight here. As writers, particularly Southern writers, we are bridges to the past. There is no doubt or question about that. But I also feel we are conduits to the future. That just as surely as we can capture the past, preserve it, and breathe new life into it, we can reach out and touch a future that’s worth pulling into the present. I feel with all my heart that our words are meant to champion what is worthy of the human soul, to protect and promote it for all its worth. Whether we’re literary writers, mystery writers, writers of fantasy, sci-fi, true crime, or romance hot enough to make a girl blush, there’s power in those pens. And if there has ever been a season in all our sloppy solitude, in all our glorious, messy lives I think it’s now. I think the world needs its storytellers to act as mapmakers for the future. To paint a picture with our words that our children’s, children’s children can walk straight into. After-all, if our words did measure our souls in syllables, we would want a few of those to be a part of something larger than ourselves, and something that outlasts us for a very, very long time.

Hoping that 2008 brings wonders to your world. Happy New Year!


RIVER JORDAN is a storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee. Jordan’s novel The Messenger of Magnolia Street, (HarperSanFrancisco) was published in January 2006. Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as “a beautifully written atmospheric tale.” The Messenger of Magnolia Street was applauded as “a tale of wonder” by Southern Living Magazine, who chose The Messenger of Magnolia Street as their Selects feature for March 2006, and by other reviewers as “a riveting, magical mystery” and “a remarkable book.” The novel was also selected by as a major book of the month release for a major book club publication.Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on ‘The Power of Story’, and produces and hosts the radio program BACKSTORY, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville Saturday’s 4:00-6:00 CST. She has just completed a new work of fiction. Jordan and her husband live in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us