Day 91 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY CAN TURN YOU INTO A ONE DIMENSIONAL TWIT!

or

Put Your Hands In The Air And Step Away From The Terminal, Sir.

 

With everything I put up on-line about writing something everyday...Write your way out of block...Write a mountain of crap to find the grains of gold, the last thing you might expect from me is to tell you to Turn Off, Unplug, Go Out! After all, haven't we all heard about your first five hundred thousand words just being the warm up? Aren't the first five novels just the road to finding your authentic voice? Why, then, would I suddenly be yelling at you to get the hell away from it all and go take a walk?

 

Simple, you cannot sit in front of a computer screen day in, day out, and expect to remain fresh. A writer needs input from his world and its inhabitants. Even if you're creating from whole cloth those brave new worlds where no human being will ever set foot, it's vital that you be able to base your interactions and descriptions in REALITY! (As Robin Williams said, "What a concept!") You can create something as deeply personal as you wish, if it doesn't talk in language and symbols common to your audience, it's just so much psycho-babble.

 

In order to carry off effective characters, settings, and moods, you have to marinate in the prime sauce! You have to take your bony ass into the world and STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN. Don't dwell on what it is you're working on. Meet some friends and make a concerted effort not to bore them with your latest project. Hell. They're your friends! Why not enjoy their company without ego humping the get together to death.

 

Listen to the world around you. The sounds and silences. Eavesdrop on the conversation at the table next to you in the local taqueria. Go down to the beach, sit on the sand and shut your eyes. (And your big mouth!) Listen to the ocean for ten or fifteen minutes. What does it sound like? Is there surf? Birds? A big damned growling Pit Bull? File it all away and  let the dog have your taco as a distraction to facilitate your escape.

 

Go to the park. Check some fine looking lady. Really look at her...Okay, stop staring, that's just friggin' creepy. What is it that makes her so attractive? The way she dresses? The way she has her hair done? Her smile? Maybe it's the way she interacts with her kids? Or the look she gets when she smiles at her six foot four inch truck driver boyfriend? Watch the staring, he's looking this way!

 

What's this all about?  No matter how hard you try, YOU CAN'T OUT CREATE REALITY! There are times when you just have to soak it in. Later, when you get back to the desk, you can break out the notebook and see how much of it you recall. Describe it in a way that makes it as hyper-real for you as possible. Do this regularly and before you know it, you will have more material than you can use in a lifetime. What good is that? Perhaps a friend or someone who sees you as a mentor (there's a scary fucking thought, huh?), is looking for a way to describe something in a piece they're working on and you just happen to have a paragraph or two that might apply. Go on you egotistical bastard, share it! Remember, "What goes around, comes around." There's more truth to that than poetry.

 

 

Meanwhile...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

 

Dane F. Baylis. Author.

Day 90 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

WHO OWNS THE IDEAS?

or

What's a Little Borrowing Among Friends?

 

Okay, this has possibilities of finding me strung to a gibbet by morning! My only defense is that what I'm doing isn't an original IDEA but one I am borrowing from a posting on Big Think  by Johnathan Keats.  To say Keats is out of the mainstream of thought is probably understatement at its most ludicrous, but it's the derivation of ideas we're talking about here. If you can't wander out onto the lower forty and hold a conversation with your demons, where the hell else are you going to get them?

 

As a blues musician I come from a long and honored tradition of blatant thievery (Most players will tell you they 'borrowed' the line their playing. Are they going to pay it back?). There isn't a melody, bass line, lyrical turn, lick or riff that isn't, if not totally, then influentially, attributable to someone else. The southern states, where the musical form originated, are the home of free range ideas. Someone heard someone, who heard someone, and eventually ended up penning a chart topping hit for The Rolling Stones or Joe Bonamasa.

What Keats proposes, and I see his logic in it's wonderful, twisted clarity, is that we all adopt this sort of free range mentality when it comes to ideas. Not the whole cloth products that are created from them but the basic ideas themselves.

I'm one of the first to admit that I will lift an idea out of a story in the morning paper (Come on, you couldn't make most of that crap up!) and run with it. It might come out as verse, or prose, or be twisted to be applied in something I'm knocking out in this space. Names, dates, places get changed, I extrapolate plots or endings and diddle the details. But still, the idea is something I pulled from somewhere else.

But it's just a newspaper article you say! Oh, my thievery doesn't stop there. Give me a good line out of a book, or a subplot that can grow up and become it's own entity, and sure as John Dillinger held up banks, I swipe it, repaint and reupholster it faster than a Tijuana chop shop and sell it back to the original owner...And I expect the same. They're ideas, I mold the ones I use and they become something different and someone reshapes mine and the process goes merrily on its way.

Who knows what might come out of it? Maybe I get that total spark that results in a creative forest fire and , BAM, a million copy best seller and a house in Costa Rica to write the next one in. Or, down the road, I pick up a copy of Joe Smith's latest and, right there in black and white, is something I JUST KNOW first breathed life in the convoluted back alleys of my gray matter. Damned good show! I never thought of it that way.

I'm not saying plagiarise your way to a fortune. What I am saying is that a little judicious 'borrowing' is good for the art. You never know what you might find at another party's intellectual yard sale!

Meanwhile...live, love, write.

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

Later,

Dane F. Baylis. Author.

Day 89 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis
 

THERE IS NO GAIN WITHOUT PAIN

OR

Whoever Said This WASN'T Work?

 

There you are, you just put fresh ink cartridges in, you bought a couple of thumb drives (maybe even an external hard drive dedicated to your creative endeavor), and stocked up on a good, heavy weight, bright white paper. So what's next?

 

While you think that over you go get a cup of coffee. On the way back to your desk you stop to water some plants. Oh yeah, you forgot to return your mom's/sister's/girl or boy friend's phone call! It'll only take a minute. Maybe a snack to tide you over. Then there's your Twitter/Facebook/Google + feeds binging away on your phone. Perhaps a walk will stir your juices? Well. you've got all the stuff. You can pick it up tomorrow. If you could just get inspired!

 

If this sounds remotely familiar may I offer the wisdom of one of the greats? It was Ernest Hemingway who said, "There is nothing to writing. You just sit down at a typewriter everyday and bleed." The key part is the sitting down. If your butt's not in the chair, you get nothing done. End of story. There's a world of distractions just waiting to seize your attention and hide it someplace you'll never find it. The ONLY way to avoid this is to get to work. You have to literally tell yourself, this is my job, I AM A WRITER and that's what writers do, write.

 

Steven King says the most important tool you should have is BUTT GLUE. What's that? The simple discipline to sit in your chair and work. Let's get over the silly delusion that this is somehow a magical process full of glamour and light, airy background music. (Mine is more like a slightly out of tune barrel house piano. Go figure, huh?)

 

But Dane, you say, the inspiration's just not upon me. Yup, get over it. The muse is a slut and he/she/it is out running around with a certain magic and fantasy writer who shall remain unnamed. You got stuck with that nagging inner voice asking, "Maybe I can get my office assistant job back?" Or...You can just face it, this is NOT about inspiration. This is about writing a ton of crap and then going through it with a coke, uh, teaspoon looking for the diamond. That gem may be no more than a catchy phrase or location but, if you're lucky, it's an entire sentence. Lord be praised if it comes out to a paragraph or page!

 

Writers write. Right? They sure do. Then they rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and spend incredible percentages of any advances they receive on therapists, who will immediately slay your demons and ruin your writing career. Rewrites = GOOD...Therapy = NOT SO MUCH! Except for you people out there with the voices talking to you about going back to office work. You guys need an industrial strength shrinking.

 

I've said it before but it's worth repeating. The  ONLY place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Unfortunately, it falls between shit and syphilis. So slap on some butt glue, put your tush on the cushion, and write something! You'll become a writer one word at a time.

 

Remember...live, love, write.

 

 Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Until tomorrow,

 

 

Dane F. Baylis, Author.

Day 88 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

IS THERE ANY SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH HONESTY?

Or

Can You Spell Ostracized?

 

Considering I've spent a good amount of time the last several days suggesting that less experienced writers should actively seek out critique groups, workshops, and open mic's, I thought it might be a good idea to toss out a caveat. If you're really going to invest time, effort, and emotional currency in your writing then you need to be ready for the inevitable. Somewhere along your path you'll push one of your babies out there into the world and, like it or not, another writer or an editor or just Joe Nobody is going to offer their unique take on YOUR work.

 

That's part of the reason we write, so everybody can have an equal opportunity to take a shot at our puppy. If we're lucky, they've had enough recent experience (and a stout leash on their ego monster) to do it with tact and constructive input. Even so, we birthed this beauty, we nurtured it through sickness and adolescence, and we are damned proud, if not always knowledgeable parents. Those critiques can leave us wondering if we really want to continue in this field. As a matter of fact, we just might feel like telling our benefactor where to jump off.

 

Before you do that...a small piece of advice. Grow a thick bit of hide around your heart, do your best to shave excess bone from your skull, fold your ego into a tight little package, then put it in your pocket and sit on it! Hear out whoever this person is and graciously accept their input. You should thank them and, if you didn't quite get it, ask them to elaborate. Does this mean you are bound by some unwritten law to incorporate their suggestions? Only if it makes real sense to you. Otherwise, apply the grain of salt you've heard about and move on.

 

Why not just tell them to PISS OFF? You never know, one day they may be in a position to purchase something you've written or, better yet, promote that same article. Remember the old adage, "The toes you step on today may be attached to the butt you need to kiss tomorrow." Diplomacy is another name for the little white lie. Just a pointer there.

 

There will come a time when you will encounter someone whom, because of insecurity, insensitivity, or just a really bad case of divorce settlement blues, really lights into you. Public brawls are unsightly and never leave either party in a truly good light. Sun Tzu said the most successful battle was the one that wasn't fought. We have all met this person along the way and all you really can do is smile, nod and move on. Eventually you learn that even bad reviews don't count as much as receipts.

 

The flip side, of course, is to remember none of us is really ever as good as we think we are. When it comes to someone else's work there is a very fine line between disappointment and decimation. I have had to find ways of being helpful with some very amateurish work. It can be a struggle, especially if the listener has already decided you're an idiot. You've probably had these same feelings, so try to recall them and try a little harder. There will come a time when you will be faced with that story, poem, essay, or article that is just GOD AWFUL. So, do you allow a fellow writer to blithely go about making an ass of themselves? No, unless they seem pig headedly intent on that course. So what to do? Smile, thank them for letting you look at their work and kiss them on both cheeks...Just like the French used to do before any public execution. Save the blindfold for yourself, this will not be pretty.

 

 

Remember...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Until tomorrow,

 

 

Dane F. Baylis

Day 87 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA VOICES

Welcome To The First Wednesday Edition Dedicated To Other Voices And Events.

 

This first posting for other voices and happenings is, as you can see above, a Southern Californian Event. On Sunday, April 14, 2013, at 1 P.M., in Clare's Place, Mission Renewal Center, at the Old Santa Barbara Mission in Santa Barbara, California, there will be a reading by three outstanding poets. The event is part of The Mission Poetry Series which is celebrating its fourth season.

 

The poets featured are Laure-Anne Bosselaar, author of A NEW HUNGER, Ausable Press, 2007, klipschutz (Kurt Lipschutz), THIS DRAWN AND QUARTERED MOON, Anvil Press, 2013, and Marsha de la O, BLACK HOPE, New Issues Press, 1997. All three of these authors are of sublime quality with truly original voices and strengths.

 

Admission is free, there will be refreshments, discussions with the poets, author's works on sale, and complimentary broadsides. This series is sponsored by The Mission Renewal Center, POOR SOULS PRESS/Scaramouche Books, and Instruments of Peace. If you are in the Santa Barbara/Southern California area and want to attend you can get directions to Clare's Place/Mission Renewal Center by calling: 805-682-4713  x133.

 

If you are reading this from somewhere else (and I hope enough of you are) then be sure to check out these poet's works from the presses through whom they've published.

 

 

In the meantime...Live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

 

Be back tomorrow,

 

 

Dane F. Baylis



The 86th Day of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

EXPLORING NEW GROUND!

or

How much Trouble Can This Be?

Yes, I've said it before, though probably not in these words, I'm opening my blog to other things besides my own rants and raves, and, being a true Neanderthal, I'll probably pound my way through with a sharpened stone. So, please, bear with me, it may not be pretty but it will get better.

 

The first thing I have in mind will be aimed at poets and events here in the Southern California area. There are any number of superb voices and promoters around me and I felt I wanted to do my small part in getting the word out. So, starting tomorrow, (I hope this flies. I'm really pushing up against a self-imposed deadline), I will be putting up the first notice. Down the road I hope to have interviews with writers and publishers. No, I'm not going to throw a spoiler out. Come on back and see what it is. If you're in SoCal let your friends know.

 

This kind of spins me back to yesterday's topic. For all you aspiring poets in the house... Look, no one is handing out oil wells or diamond mines. Making even a modest living as a poet is a real achievement. Something I was talking about yesterday is definitely helpful.

 

Get out there and find the open mic's. The poetry thing is all about exposure. You are not going to make a killing self-publishing on Amazon unless you just stun the knickers off your audience. You won't really know what works with others unless you engage them. The best way to do this is in person, one poem at a time. This saves you the trauma of having your first book left sitting there because a) Nobody knows who the hell you are and b) Your personal favorites aren't anyone else's.

 

The open mic's can lead to workshops and critique groups and, quite often, small press and journal publication. Hey, the next thing you know you're a featured reader and they're passing the hat for your benefit! (Don't let your ego get all hurt. They've passed the hat for all of us.) Soon you find yourself in unfamiliar venues facing a crowd of strangers and shaking so hard you can hardly speak. Congratulations, you've made it!

 

Before you know it...All right...Eventually, you've developed a body of work that has impact and a track record. Now you're ready to self publish...Or even better, someone along the way has asked, "Have you ever published a book?", followed quickly by, "We need to talk."

 

The point in this is, There Are NO Easy Paths. It's all one step at a time and a constant course of improvement. Of course, you CAN take a shortcut, if you're lucky you won't have to spend to much time correcting that decision.

 

Just some helpful hints from your Uncle Dane.

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

In the meantime...live, love, write.

Dane F. Baylis

 



Day 85 of the 365 Days of Blogging.

The author, Dane F. Baylis

WHAT MAKES A WRITER?

Or

The Really Truly Deep Dark Secret!

 

There are any number of people out there who will say that what makes a writer is that he/she writes. Period. I'll agree that, if this isn't occurring, then there's little else to be said. Writers write.

 

What this doesn't take into account is that, if this were all, there'd be damn few published authors. What isn't taken into account in that truism is that it's a two part process. A writer also takes a chance.

 

Sometime, somewhere, a writer has to expose his/her writing to other people. Yes, an awful lot of advice centers around keeping a journal, but a notebook full of observations is just that, a diary with a fancy name, unless it is put into a form meant to communicate with other people. You might have drawers full of manuscripts, but unless they see daylight they're just so much musty paper!

 

Do I mean you should be sending out submissions and risking rejection in all its harsh manifestations? Not unless you've got a pretty thick hide and a grasp on your craft. Form letters are pretty impersonal and usually close to useless other than letting you know you struck out again. So how do you get exposure and helpful criticism?

 

Well, there's the easy gentle route of friends and family. They will usually be the most receptive, if not the most honest, when it comes to your budding ambitions. Caveat here, if you have something particularly truthful and blunt to say about your sister or Uncle Bob, I wouldn't pick them as an audience. Save that for after the Nobel Award Ceremony.

 

Try joining a local writer's club. There are more of them than you might imagine, from some that have been around for decades and have a large membership, to others that involve just a few people and meet at their neighborhood library. You can Google search for these or try asking the librarian or at a bookstore. There are all levels of skill represented and more than a little desire to help. Just do your self a favor and check your ego at the door.

 

But you're a poet? Take a look around for open mic nights. Yes, it is scary and there's not much opportunity for discussion while people are waiting their turn. (Also avoid reciting your life's work tranlation of the ENTIRE Odyssey into modern English.) Afterwards, ask someone you heard to talk about their work. Poets are usually more than willing to return the favor. A number of these types of events have a featured reader as an opener. This is someone with a track record and, more than likely, publication credits. Get to know these people. Don't make a nuisance of yourself, just ask if they might have time to meet with you for some pointers.

 

As time passes you may find yourself being ASKED to submit work to small presses and literary journals. This will  likely involve having to pass through some kind of editorial process. Take a chance! Nobody bats a thousand but if they ask you then there's something they've seen or heard they like. Whatever is accepted, be gracious and thankful and remember, every door opened leads to another more grand.

 

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

In the meantime...live, love, write.

Dane F. Baylis