G is for 'Good golly, Miss Molly . . .'

Seattle. 1958. Once we were inside, 
past the young men smoking 
and standing by the door in clumps, 
past the lines at the bathrooms,
the cloakroom, down the long hallway 
and into the darkened ballroom, 
strobe lights flashed through the crowd. 
It was never about the words: 
we couldn't start dancing fast enough:
the wailing saxophone, that stride piano,
the drums, everyone pressed close, 
feeling the music, just letting go.

Those were the days of innocence, 
well before marijuana, cocaine or meth. 
Our parents feared rock and roll; 
but we were the baby boom generation 
with pocket money. We bought those vinyl 45's,  
treasured them, traded them, danced after school. 
The music moved us through those teen-aged years 
when hand-held transistor radios were new 
and the sound tinny, but, my God, 
don't move that dial. Listen! 
That's Little Richard right there,
back in the day when we monopolized dial-phones
for hour-long conversations, 
and Viet Nam was a tiny country 
no one had heard of.

Little Richard in concert, 1956 (Youtube)

I'm wondering when did your parents' music stop being your music? What are your earliest memories? Who were your favorites?

ROW80 UPDATE: From being on the road all last month, I'm somewhat disconnected from my regular routine of writing. This A to Z Challenge (along with a poem a day for National Poetry Month) is taking me right back to the early days of rock and roll. But my office (somewhat messy) presents a fine workspace, and April promises to be productive. Not quite back to routine yet, but today I rolled out of bed at 6 am, ready to work. 

So for this fine ROW80 Sunday check-in, I have little to report but plans, plans, plans. Biggest achievement these last few days -- recovering from that 400 plus mile drive, finishing an 'inspirational' article for ROW80, and finding several resources to build a list of indie publishers. Sometime today (between finishing laundry and replenishing groceries in the empty fridge), I get to read the 7's for ROW80. 

May your writing week go well.

To read what others have written:
NaPoWriMo at http://www.napowrimo.net/participants-sites/
A-Z Challenge at http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/2012-to-z-challenge-sign-up-list.html
A Round of Words in 80 Days at http://aroundofwordsin80days.wordpress.com/

A little about Sister Rosetta Tharpe

From the very first moment that Sister Rosetta Tharpe picks up her guitar and begins to sing, you know a master of timing and passion is at work. Here she is in 1964, singing in the rain to a packed audience. "Didn't It Rain."

PSB American Masters presented highlights from her career and life. We took a break from packing (tomorrow we leave on a 1,400 mile drive to Tucson at the crack of dawn), and we were simply enthralled at this wonderful celebration of her beautiful bluesy voice. Her guitar slides from gospel to early acid rock.

ROW80 Update: In spite of all the efforts we may make, at moments, we lose confidence in ourselves. Listening to someone like Sister Rosetta sing reminds me that we begin with faith and continue with hope. Even the earliest tapes of Sister Rosetta show her singing with power, an inspiration to any creative person. So my ROW80 update is simply that I'm making progress and will persevere.

Writing debate/tip/question: I'm reading two writers now who almost completely dispense with "he said" or "she said," using dialogue tags (also called 'action tags') instead. The resulting pace of the story picks up remarkably. Since a recent critter suggested I use "Deidre said" instead of "said Deidre," I'm rethinking entirely how I use those tags. Anyone have advice?

For more about Sister Rosetta, Wikipedia has a nice overview.

Feeling smart?

Too many inducements. I now have an i-phone, one of those smart phones that's smarter than me. At least I figured out how to make phone calls, though the darn thing buzzes and rings at the same time. Probably it knows I need both. The speaker feature is kind of neat. I can put the darn thing down and just wander away.

Here's my Sunday night update for ROW80, A Round of Words in 80 Days, a truly lovely writing community.

WRITING: I'm reminded of the first paint-by-number picture I tried at about age 8. Very quickly, I began  to paint the colors I wanted, not those itemized on that careful list of numbered colors. And then I began to paint outside the lines. The result was impressionistic and not as pretty as my sister's tidy painting. Now I begin writing each morning and nearly straight away begin to deviate from my ROW80 goals. Does anyone else do that?

ROW80 goals are supposed to be measurable, but I can't measure the words I'm editing or the new pages I'm writing. My goal is simply to finish editing Years of Stone by the end of this round.

Since Wednesday, I've been doing a bit more research on several supporting historical characters who appear in my story. What I've found is that letters, newspaper articles, speeches, and portraits help me to visualize these folks more fully. I begin to know their internal worries and hopes, sometimes the formidable obstacles they faced. What spins out next is a mystery but reads true.

Naming characters is always a challenge. So much goes into a name. But to be historically accurate meant one of my major characters had to have a name change this late in the story! Mary was a very common name in the 1840s. But Mary Hutchinson, matron of the Cascades Female Factory, cannot be confused with Mary Dallow, that mouthy, blue-collar lady who has fallen in with a bushranger and most likely slept her way to Van Diemen's Land.

Mary Hutchinson, on the other hand, grew up at Parramatta, a women's prison in New South Wales where her parents worked. She married young to a handsome Wesleyan pastor with poor health. When he left the ministry to become a superintendent at Cascades, Mary became the matron. Beset with overcrowding at the prison and the threat of riots, constant criticism from the local press, and the continued ill health of her husband, how would this mother who had lost several of her own babies react to the rising infant deaths at Cascades? Petulantly says one report. But there's more to the story.

READING/CRAFT: Finally caught up with reading. My office has returned to a semblance of order, and I'm currently reading Jeri Westerson's Veil of Lies (A Medieval Noir). So far I'm admiring her crisp storytelling, evocative settings, and neat plot twists.

MARKETING. Reading some articles, working on Book Club reading/questions. The "event" at a local bookstore has been postponed to April (travel intervenes). Some progress on quilting. OMG, the smart phone beeps me when I get new e-mail. Obviously I need training on how to change the settings! Even my computer doesn't do this.

Karen Huber's latest post , "A Matter of Practice," talks about facing into the "now" by accepting both light and dark sides of your self. We are all in different stages in our lives, but her words always resonate for me. Here, I'm thinking of my characters. Do I allow myself to understand their dark as well as light sides? Something to ponder. I appreciate Karen's vision of practice, her willingness to face fear, and her writing that builds from meditation. That inner stillness, so difficult to find, perhaps comes with practice.

My smart phone now feels like an intrusion. I shall turn it off!

ROW80 Check-in and shades of gray . . .

It's not always easy getting reader feed-back. We know that. Today's 'bon mot' came clear from the east coast with a suggestion I should read that 50 Shades of Gray book (classified as erotic porn) to add 'more emotion' to my characters.

Haven't read it. Don't intend to. Not my storyline. The person had read an old version of a story I'm working on. Intellectually, I know not every reader will like my stuff and that my story's a good one.  Best seller? Most likely not. But I was all excited to report in today for ROW80. Now, less so. I'm feeling gray.

In half an hour, we'll walk over to the wetlands near our house (where I caught this picture of a crane last spring), and life will be good.

Meanwhile, here's my ROW80 update.

WRITING: Just finished another round of editing on Section 2, Years of Stone. I'm excited because not only is the sequence tighter but so is the tension. I laughed and cried while rereading Section 2. I'm also excited because Donald Maass' acclaimed Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook just arrived, and those exercises look pretty good. The strategy behind his book is to take a 'nearly finished' book and put it through just one more round of thinking and editing. The first exercise is to analyze your personal hero (someone who influenced you) and identify those attributes that make that person heroic. First two people who came to mind were Frida Kahlo and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, both formidable women who created art/writing in spite of serious obstacles.

My other writing goal -- to begin researching Rivers of Stone sometime in 2013 -- is heating up. Looks like we'll be driving across Canada this summer to follow the trail of the Hudson's Bay Company's fur brigade, culminating at the York Factory in Manitoba (think polar bears). Notes, camera, action!

MARKETING: Even if I was not able to complete daily blogging for the Ultimate Blog Challenge, I learned so much about marketing from participating. My current favorite blogger to read is Rachel Abbott's down-to-earth description about what self-publishing strategies she, at first, bumbled into -- and then improved. And I found her via the Ultimate Blog Challenge AND Twitter.

One example: After reading Abbott, I doublechecked the categories listed for The Mermaid Quilt to find that the paperback version only listed Books > Literature & Fiction while the Kindle edition had four subsets of categories. After searching fruitlessly to find out how to change the categories for the paperback, I wrote to the HELP folks at Amazon's AuthorCentral. They quickly replied. My paperback version is now quite properly listed under Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy and I can add another category through them.

The point that Rachel Abbott makes is if your book is listed under categories that are far too general, people simply won't be able to find your book. Lesson learned with more to come. Because of Rachel's clear discussion of the importance of a marketing plan, my "morass" of information is better organized and far more specific with pre- and post-launch action steps.  Click on the link to read just one of Rachel's blog posts about the marketing plan.

So that's my ROW80 update. I'm already feeling less gray, and it's time for that walk. May your day (with SuperBowl?) and your writing go well! And if you feel so inclined, what marketing tips would you share?

Update: ROW80 Blogs I visited Sunday February 3:
Shan Jeniah writes this week about Truststorms
Annie Gray, A Force of Love
Tia Bach at Depression Cookies
Prudence MacLeod at Valkyrie Rising
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell, writer of historical fiction
R. Scott Steele, A writer in progress

And in case you are interested in joining the April A-Z Blogging Challenge, go here to sign up!