Day 242 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

WHAT THE DAY JOB HAS TAUGHT ME ABOUT WRITING

OR

EVERYTHING TEACHES ME SOMETHING

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The first lesson is the most pertinent. If you want to get the job done, you have to show up. That means, on the days when you feel like it, and the ones when you don't. The latter are the days you really need to be there, on the job, or in your writer's chair.

 

Why is being there when you just don't feel like it so damned important? Because it's awful hard to get into the habit of sitting down like this every day. There are days I would rather duff out on my job and take the Harley for a long drive in the mountains. There are days I'd like to pull the same thing on my responsibility to this art. Hey, at least the former has the incentive of a steady paycheck.

 

So why not just shine it on when the muse is being bitchy? In my case, it's too easy to find an excuse. With a little dressing up I might even pass it off as a reason. The next time it's a little easier, and before you know it, bingo, just like absenteeism would cost me my job, I'd be out of a writing career also.

 

I work days in a fairly technical trade. This means I have to constantly be learning. The machinery and equipment evolves almost too fast to keep up with and lacksity on my part  means I'm behind the rest of the industry. Like, right now!

 

It's the same thing in writing. If you want to stay up with what's going on in the industry, you have to stay up with the changes. I see people all the time who have thrown up their hands and given up on the constant evolution of the modern literary environment. The minute you do that, you are definitely out of the game.

 

Some of the things I work around have the potential to take my grizzled old butt out. I've learned to pay attention to detail and to know when it's time to walk away from something until I can get my focus back. Writing may not kill you, unless you insist on putting an ex-lover or a former enemy in a thinly veiled bit of fiction. But not knowing when to back off and go do something else for a bit can kill your style and authenticity and that's a sure way to go to the writer's bone yard.

 

Lastly, let go of the slights and treasure the pats on the back. The slights can come from editors, publishers, critics or the public and they definitely sting. Unless you've got the hide of a rhinoceros some of them will leave scars. Remember, scars make for good stories. Suck it up and keep trying. No never means NO. Unless your on a date, then it means back your drunken ass off or I call a cop!

 

On the flip side, accept the compliments when they come, in whatever form they take. Someone invites you to join their writer's group? There must have been something they liked about your stuff. Someone tells you they really liked something you wrote or read? Be gracious, numb nuts! Even if they can't verbalize what it was they liked to your overly high standards. An editor send back a piece with the suggestion they might like to see it again, rewritten and at a later date? Get over yourself, this could be the break you're looking for.

 

Look around you. If everything you see, hear, say, and do doesn't in someway inform what you do as a writer...Well, maybe you ought to think of a real good field to seek alternative employment in.

 

Just a helpful hint from your Uncle Dane.

 

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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 241 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT, WE ALL STEP IN IT SOMETIME

OR

WRITING DOWN THE TRUTH IS A MATTER OF DUMB LUCK.

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Let's qualify that right now. Every moralizing twit in this world brandishes the damned word "truth" like a sort of philosophical, theological, or sociological Excalibur that only they were capable of extracting from the stone in which it was trapped. That some of these barbarians go on to write books about their brand of truth, claiming it to be a "Universal" variety, is just further evidence of how close we still can be to the apes we diverged from. That apes don't produce volumes on truth is probably viable evidence of their superiority.

 

Truth is never universal. Each person, even those most intolerant of the tolerant - the secular humanists, interprets those things they see, hear, and feel through the filter of their personalities and prejudices. The only difference from one individual to the next is the severity of their myopia. Combine that with the fact that all of us, to one degree or another, are full of shit ninety-nine percent of the time, and truth becomes less abundant than common sense.

 

If you are a writer of any merit or honesty, you will realize that everything you are imparting to a reader is your own OPINION. That it has any truth to it is a personal matter between you, your id, ego, and the ubermensch who, like The Great and Powerful Oz, is hiding behind the curtains of your insecurities pulling levers and turning dials. To accomplish something of power, you need to do what the Wizard did, come out from behind the curtain and try to relate to the strengths and weaknesses of someone outside of your own skinny carcass. It usually works better if it's another human being, but that would involve NOT imagining yourself as the hero of your own fantasies. Therapy might help in that case.

 

So, don't sit down to write about the TRUTH of something. Instead, write about the feeling of something. Write about the struggle to get through one more day. Write about the long slow fall to the bottom. Write about the finger and soul shredding crawl back up from that pit. Don't write about what love means to a character. Instead, write what it feels like. Write the highs and lows, the daffy obsession and the depraved pain at its end. Write about the act of overcoming the adversities, yes, but better yet, have the character show us what it means.

 

Somewhere in this, you might find a note that plays long and clear in your conscious mind. This is the type of thing that could reach into another person's life to find a similar  resonance. One that has the possibility of telling them a story with more meaning than  diversion. You may accomplish this with no knowledge whatsoever that there was even a flea fart of a chance of pulling off a challenge that grandiloquent. But be careful, you might be asked at a reading or in a letter whether you knew you were going to touch someone in such a profound way and you'll have to perform the greatest song and dance of your career just to keep from disappointing that reader.

 

All of it's okay. We stumble into more shared emotion than we actually navigate our way towards. The truth part of it - well, it probably can be said that two or more people can share a common feeling about something.  In that discovery they might feel there is community or bonding. I'll defer any stand on that. You see, every time I think I've got a handle on something that may be misconstrued as empirical truth, the world humbles me pretty damned quickly. Which is why I stay with the messy terrain of human emotion instead!

 

Just a little something from your Uncle Dane.

 

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PERKINS SQUARE, SOUTH BOSTON

by

Dane F. Baylis

Three quarter black leather coats, collared shirts, tailored slacks, Cuban heels, fedoras and

slouch caps. Waves and whistles (friends and ladies), nods to the heavies, KINGS of twelve square blocks. It’s the hustle, above all else, the moving and shaking, no roadmaps or manifestoes. It’s brownstones on Broadway, tomorrow. The whole damned town, someday. Trying to get connected. In the car, and back in thirty, half a C-note richer, or poorer, EVERYBODY owes, EVERYBODY pays. It’s ALL about the rep, have you got the stones, try me on for size, whispered conversations, I’ll be back, no destination. The longest journey, covers the shortest distance, pennies pitched and dimes dropped, you EARN the stand-up name. Swirling figures are moving targets, harder to hit, on the stoop, in the alley. WHERE am I? Graduate, to junkyard hotrods, the emperor’s rusty ride, bats in the trunk, piece under the seat. Saturdays, tell the priest, EVERYTHING - and nothing - make an offering, buy some conscience. Move out, come back, and swear off the life. Swear off swearing off, got to find the rhythm. Singing doo-wop in the drizzle. We can’t leave now, it all might be coming - or not - but only suckers sleep.

 

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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 240 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The authour, Dane F. Baylis

LIKE LON CHANEY AT THE TOP OF THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME SCREAMING, "SANCTUARY!"

OR

SOMETIMES GO AWAY DOES MEAN GO AWAY!

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So I'm a curmudgeon. Of course, there are people in my acquaintance who use stronger words than that to describe me. In a world full of egos, attitudes, mouths, and tempers that are rarely connected directly to that gob of gray matter wedged inside the human skull, I have only two words for that approach.

 

When I have had my fill of them - when the weather, machinery possessed by evil spirits, and the attitude d'jour, have hit the limit on my fed-up meter, I retreat here, to my office and keyboard. Even when there's that e-mail that politely thanks me for letting the editors at whatever journal, magazine, publisher, or wherever read and reject a particular piece I thought they might be interested in - I can sit down and know that, no matter how hard anyone tries, no one bats a thousand. Thank god my strike out record isn't perfect either!

 

Whether you work in a room in the back of the house like I do - or at a dining room table, or  coal bin converted into a den in the basement, or a private corner of the attic, your creative space should, above all else, be where you leave behind the mundane crap the world wants to heap on you. This is where the ideas come to be born. Granted, some of them won't survive the birthing process, but even the stillborn are useful. They let you stretch and grunt and do a little creative writing lamaze. The world can hang out in the waiting room until they hear that first full lunged cry!

 

After a day of more whining than I could stand, by people I have little honest feeling for, here I am. Yes, I did get a rejection notice today. Was it that hard to take? Not after I reminded myself that my ass-backwards approach to publication is to start at the top and see how far down the cliff of obscurity I have to fall before something breaks my fall. It just means that a different editor gets a chance to enjoy my gem! In the meantime, that person sitting on the peak I slid down from will see one I just finished - for the sixth time. (I can be like a pitbull with a pork chop.)

 

There are always ideas. There are always stories to develop. There are always truck loads of assholes in the background. The barrier of my studio door insures that, in here, all I have to deal with is the joy of putting words down and sharing them with the rest of the world. I really have no idea how many words remain, but, on the other hand, I'll never run out of jerks.

 

Just my humble opinion.

 

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PERKINS SQUARE, SOUTH BOSTON

 

by

 

Dane F. Baylis

 

 

Three quarter black leather coats, collared shirts, tailored slacks, Cuban heels, fedoras and

slouch caps.    Waves and whistles (friends and ladies), nods to the heavies, KINGS of twelve square blocks.    It’s the hustle, above all else, the moving and shaking, no roadmaps or manifestoes.    It’s brownstones on Broadway, tomorrow. The whole damned town, someday.    Trying to get connected. In the car, and back in thirty, half a C-note richer, or poorer, EVERYBODY owes, EVERYBODY pays.    It’s ALL about the rep, have you got the stones, try me on for size, whispered conversations, I’ll be back, no destination.    The longest journey, covers the shortest distance, pennies pitched and dimes dropped, you EARN the stand-up name.    Swirling figures are moving targets, harder to hit, on the stoop, in the alley.     WHERE  am I?    Graduate, to junkyard hotrods, the emperor’s rusty ride, bats in the trunk, piece under the seat. Saturdays, tell the priest, EVERYTHING   -  and nothing  -  make an offering, buy some conscience.    Move out, come back, and swear off the life. Swear off swearing off, got to find the rhythm.     Singing doo-wop in the drizzle.    We can’t leave now, it all might be coming - or not - but only suckers sleep.   

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

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 239 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

THINGS TO GET DONE

OR

SOMETHINGS I'M GOOD AT, SOME THINGS I NEED TO GET BETTER AT.

 

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Not to be too cliched about this, but it was one of those days. The weather's been abnormally warm and humid for Southern California and, in a house without air conditioning, I'm reminded what it was like trying to sleep in New England summers. I woke up dragging ass with a laundry list of things to do.

 

The Editor-in-Wife was nice enough to suggest a little take-out for breakfast so we could save some time. My motorcycle, which is my main mode of transportation, is a little overdue for scheduled maintenance. Not wanting to face the ribbing for bringing it in to the shop in its road worn look, I spent most of the morning cleaning, polishing, and tightening.

 

Then there was the matter of a goose-necked faucet in the master bath which had sprung a leak right in the curve of the spout. So off to the big box store to spend a few bucks. Back at the ranch, the Editor-in-Wife had already cleared away the accumulated cleansers, toiletries, and first aid items from beneath the vanity. In I crawled and, with a minimum of foul language, changed out the faucet.

 

After that came a chore I haven't been looking forward to. The neighbor lady passed away recently and her husband is moving in with his kids. He offered the Editor-in-Wife a nice glass topped patio table and four matching chairs. She'd made arrangements to take a look at it today.

 

It's not that I've never dealt with death. Let's face it, if you've lived my life, and for this long, you grow used to that part. What I never can seem to do is find the words I feel I should have when talking to survivors. Again, thank god for the Editor-in Wife. She ran interference while I provided physical labor.

 

Finally, or at least prior to sitting down here, we worked on a short story I had promised to send to one of my contacts. If you don't have someone reading your work and offering input, find someone. I have an annoying habit of arguing over some of the more substantive changes the Editor-in-Wife suggests, but, in retrospect, I almost always agree with what she proposes. Her suggestions have made a better author out of me, even when I won't admit it right away.

 

In your writing, as in your life, there are some things you are good at and some things that take a little prodding to get through. The easier things are generally the most mechanical, while the hardest are the intuitive and empathetic things. If you stick with just the mechanical qualities, you'll probably get by - in life and in writing. But, if you just shut up and listen once in a while, and then act on the things you hear, honestly and with earnestness, you will probably become a more appreciative and appreciated human being and author.

 

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LIMITING UNCERTAINTIES

There’s supposed to be a dependable gravity. A natural attraction through this passage of calendars. That keeps me from sliding away…Swooping through canyons, halls, or windowless rooms. Flitting up and down on the wings of a word borrowed for a moment from jealous ether, then spiraling gone like bebop and into wholly (as complete) or holy (as if any of us truly even then might comprehend such universes of falsehoods) or merely completely and we would be liars irreverent in a blaspheming surge of creative litany.

This…Plunging ride on a word wave…should be put aside to contemplate with atomic precision those imponderable realities of…How – and – When, this foolish mind will hush, this heart will cool and fade. Perhaps, but that depends on the sanctity tendered to each word. I have the acquaintance of the first…Lying like a tiger along my path, the mystery of stripes and dappled shadow, waiting for my back…Exposing the nape to sudden maw and ceasing…

All this, glimpsed in the universe of a blood drop, written as an inviolate description with all its proper measurement and severity. So simple is ‘HOW’. The WHEN left only as the steady tick, tock, ticking metronome to song and sonnet, overture and requiem…The wax to bind feathers and send a rhyme flying across a page - or a night - or a dream.

Knowing where the tiger hides, time becomes infernal, a beater gone ahead to scare up the beast when it must come. Unlikely there will be gun, or bow, or spear to offer chance to that moment of inevitable meeting, but move, I will, forward, I will, with my life’s resolution, I will…and I will bare my throat…and sing my way to nothing.

 

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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 238 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE THAT CONTACT MIGHT LEAD YOU.

OR

STAYING IN TOUCH IS EASIER THAN REBUILDING A BURNED BRIDGE!

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First of all, I'm running a little late tonight because I took a day to get out of my office, out of town, and enjoy a little road trip up the Central California coast with the Editor-in-Wife. Between the day jobs, family, and a really intense period of writing a new piece and editing a couple of others, it was time for a little R and R. So up to Morro Bay and Cayucos where we visited an Art in the Park event in the former and a Peddler's Faire in the latter. Some good food, antique crawling, and gorgeous weather was a real change and a thorough delight.

 

In the meantime I received some good news. A while back I had submitted a piece to a publication that didn't pan out for reasons well outside of my control. The editor I had been in contact with has since moved to a larger, more prestigious house and assumed the lead in a new venture for that organization. I had done everything I could to let that person know that there were no hard feelings over the earlier turn of events (which were out of their control, too) and expressed an interest in the endeavor they had just undertaken. I was invited to submit if I felt I had anything that would work in that genre. So, as the Editor-in-Wife says, being as I'm a triple A personality, I got to work.

 

I have just completed a new short story I feel has promise and that should be a fit for this new venue. I got in touch with my contact and let that person know I might have a possible submission. I was informed that what I had was the perfect length and that they would be glad to read it.

 

Does that mean it's going to get published? Not necessarily. But it does mean I have made a good and useful connection in the game. Instead of having to go the route of submit and wonder if what I was sending in would even be seen by anyone of consequence, I was invited by the person in charge to forward my new work.

 

Moral to the story? We all go through disappointments out here. Over the near forty years I've spent at this, off and on, I've learned that it is better to just suck it up and try to find the advantage in the situation. Not every "maybe" is going to metamorphose into a "yes" and an author's contract. Sometimes you will get damned close only to watch the opportunity slip through your grasp at the last moment. If you have had cordial communications with someone in this period, don't screw it up by throwing a sack full of "god damn yous" around. This is a very fluid industry and people move about at lightning speed at times. The person you insult or piss off today in one place may very well be the very person who sees your work down the road in a new situation. Do you really want to chance being rejected on name recognition? After all, we're all human beings.

 

Just a helpful hint from your Uncle Dane.

 

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LIMITING UNCERTAINTIES

 

 

 

 

There’s supposed to be a dependable gravity. A natural attraction through this passage of calendars. That keeps me from sliding away…Swooping through canyons, halls, or windowless rooms. Flitting up and down on the wings of a word borrowed for a moment from jealous ether, then spiraling gone like bebop and into wholly (as complete) or holy (as if any of us truly even then might comprehend such universes of falsehoods) or merely completely and we would be liars irreverent in a blaspheming surge of creative litany.

This…Plunging ride on a word wave…should be put aside to contemplate with atomic precision those imponderable realities of…How – and – When, this foolish mind will hush, this heart will cool and fade. Perhaps, but that depends on the sanctity tendered to each word. I have the acquaintance of the first…Lying like a tiger along my path, the mystery of stripes and dappled shadow, waiting for my back…Exposing the nape to sudden maw and ceasing…

All this, glimpsed in the universe of a blood drop, written as an inviolate description with all its proper measurement and severity. So simple is ‘HOW’.  The WHEN left only as the steady tick, tock, ticking metronome to song and sonnet, overture and requiem…The wax to bind feathers and send a rhyme flying across a page - or a night - or a dream.

Knowing where the tiger hides, time becomes infernal, a beater gone ahead to scare up the beast when it must come. Unlikely there will be gun, or bow, or spear to offer chance to that moment of inevitable meeting, but move, I will, forward, I will, with my life’s resolution, I will…and I will bare my throat…and sing my way to nothing.

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Meanwhile...live, love, write. With some grace and aplomb!

 

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.