Listen to Understand

As writers, we listen to understand - whether it's an interview for an article or just eavesdropping on an interesting conversation that may be fodder for fiction, the goal is always to understand the person and their situation.

About thirty years ago, my brother divorced the family. A couple of years ago, we sat down and talked for eleven hours and mended our relationship. He said he'd had to get away from family for his health - he'd always had high blood pressure and family made it worse. Given my experience of our family, I found this believable as a reason.

We listened to each other and ended on good terms.

His relationship with our father was particularly acrimonious - they're both gone now, so there's no opportunity to mend things. Unfortunately, their lack of communication led to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Especially sad is that my nieces thought their grandfather didn't care about them, while he was hurt that their father wouldn't allow them to visit and that they didn't reach out when they got older. With good communication, none of that hurt would exist.

Which brings me to the country's situation. We've got angry people on both sides screaming their opinions and a great big quiet group in the middle crossing their fingers, hoping everything works out okay. We need productive, calm communication to avoid a world of hurt.

The first step is for each of us to speak up and ask questions when someone's view doesn't make sense to us - questions intended to help us understand. Then we need to actually listen to understand, rather than skip-listen for points to attack. If you do think they've missed something important, ask if they're aware of it.

Our family missed out on a lot by not listening to each other. I don't want to see our country make the same error.

A Satisfying End to 2023

Happy New Year.

I'm getting this post out a few hours later than usual because I spent New Year's Eve refining and submitting an anthology of my short stories - with a Dec. 31 deadline. I'd been thinking of creating an anthology for a long time, but didn't realize I had more than enough stories to do so. Once I sent it off, I stayed up until morning working on copyrighting stories that hadn't been yet. As I was doing that, I realized I wanted to swap out one of the stories for one that hadn't made it into the manuscript. Since it's already submitted, that's not an immediate option, but I've made a note for pre-publication. Whether or not that publisher takes the book, their deadline got me to pull it together - a satisfying end to 2023.

Looking back, I accomplished quite a bit this year:

1. I helped my son move twice - first from near me to about ten hours away, then a little closer (but not much). At least he's near his brother now, so I can visit both at the same time. It's only one long day's drive.

2. I put my place up for sale, thinking there was nothing to tie me here, looking at real houses and applying for jobs back in NY. After a few months in a sluggish market, I decided to settle in and make the place mine. I painted the roof with insulating paint and remodeled the sunroom.

3. Meanwhile, I got books and screenplays into contests and kept several short stories submitted at all times. The screenplays don't announce winners until sometime in the next couple months, but Tough Times made it to the finals in the YA category of Kindle Book Awards. The anthology decision will be announced later this summer.

4. I also updated my website, and then got this blog going twice a week and linked it to Facebook and Instagram. I even "boosted" a couple Facebook posts. First steps on the way to improved marketing.

5. I found a critique group online that's helping me with a novel I first wrote in 1981 - I'm aging the characters and making it more contemporary.

6. I started going to a local writer's group and unintentionally became the leader - though I've drafted an executive committee to assist.

7. My income improved primarily through writing gigs, a few editing gigs, and teaching an online reading/writing course for the community college as an adjunct - and developing another course for them. Royalties still trickle in as much as can be expected with virtually no marketing.

So, looking back:The first two items above were unexpected and demanded focus for months - and they were not part of my 2023 plan. Neither was taking charge of a writer's group, which is time-intensive. Seeing the request for anthology manuscripts was a December gift that spurred action on something from the back burner.

Lesson learned: whatever I plan, however I prioritize today, expect to adapt.

Writers Revise

Looking back, I accidentally pulled my first all-nighter in fifth grade. When my parents went to bed, I told them I just had to copy my essay one more time - yes, I am a dinosaur who had to write my essays in cursive and hand-draw any illustrations. I kept finishing, seeing a small error or drawing I could do better, and redoing the whole paper, until I heard my father's alarm clock go off. I still have that essay - it looks childish next to what kids can produce today with computers, but the writing was excellent.

When I was in high school, most finals included essays, often heavily weighted, and you couldn't do a bunch of revision and still finish on time. So tests during the year also included essays. Organization, coherent presentation of ideas, error-free grammar and spelling - all the elements of good writing had to be present in first drafts to do well on those tests. Again, this was all hand-written - no word processing to make corrections quickly and cleanly. It was excellent training; my first drafts are usually clean - especially when I'm working on the computer.

But I don't publish first drafts. It's not just spelling everything right and using words correctly; it's also the flow of the piece. I'm writing this just before posting, but I've already revised the beginning a few times and I'll read through it all at least twice more before hitting publish. When I write a grant proposal or social history or any kind of non-fiction piece, it's always been revised and fine-tuned before I send it out.

And that's just revision on my own.

When there's time, and especially when I'm working with fiction, I prefer to have feedback from other people. They haven't read and re-read it and gotten stuck on one way of telling the tale. They'll tell me if I've started in the wrong spot, or included unnecessary information that starts to lose their interest. If I've revised and ended up with tense changes or other errors that make it difficult to follow, they'll tell me - or I'll hear it myself if it's a group where we read our work aloud. Sometimes they'll make suggestions that I reject (it's always the author's story in the end) but not without considering their feedback and their reasons.

Writers revise.