you can always make shadow puppets on the paper.
When you have writer’s block
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Tag Archives: authors
Writers, DON’T GIVE UP!
After my first attempt at sending out my latest novel, the agent’s letter came back: 
So, how many agents should I send my MS to? Am I Capable of receiving more rejection letters?
Hell, yeah, I am.
Kathryn Stockett’s book, The Help, was rejected 60 times.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was rejected 38 times before it was published.
Carrie by Stephen King was rejected 30 times before it was published.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle was rejected 26 times before it was published.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was rejected 12 times and J. K. Rowling was told “not to quit her day job.”
Lord of the Flies by William Golding was rejected 20 times before it was published.
Not giving up, nope, not giving up.
‘Cause I got High Hopes (excerpt)
Next time your found, with your chin on the ground
There a lot to be learned, so look around
There a lot to be learned, so look around
Just what makes that little old ant
Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can’t
Move a rubber tree plant
Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can’t
Move a rubber tree plant
But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes
He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes
So any time your gettin’ low
‘stead of lettin’ go
Just remember that ant
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant
‘stead of lettin’ go
Just remember that ant
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant
-music by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Sammy Cahn.
The truth about my blogging “friends”
I blogged many years back and stopped. Maybe I didn’t understand it or maybe I just didn’t care. But I came back into “your” fold this past August because I was on a mission. I had a goal and I haven’t done such a good job achieving it.
But, as I like to say, “there goes that universes again” — because blogging has taught me things I didn’t expect.
I have to tell you. A few people in my life, including an attorney friend of mine, worries that “exposing” myself to the cyber world could be unsafe. That “many of those bloggers are not true to who they really are.”
If that’s the case with any of you, back up, Jack, and hit the unfollow button.
(But I think I “know” you.)
Unless I’m traveling, my world is a bit of a bubble. You know, routines and such. Not that I’m complaining. For the most part, I like my sac of familiar air.
But now I have cyber friends like you, who come from all over the world, who tell me through words or photographs about their life, and interests. Many of you share the same thoughts and ideals as me. And the ones who differ, teach me.
You are writers, strugglers, rebels, photographers, dancers, chefs, visionaries, travelers, poets, doctors, animal lovers, readers, humorists. You are mothers, fathers, new adults, aging adults, “in-between” adults.
And, here is the common thread: You are all thinkers who ponder and share the world as you know it.
So what’s not to like?
It’s not you. It’s me. I’m not so good at promoting my novels to make a “difference” in sales while sitting at this particular table.
But I like this wooden table. There is plenty of room for everyone.
And it’s round.
(And yes, it’s an electronic cigarette)
If Only…
Eleven-year-old Emma June just wants to Flee away from the bully and go to the flea circus . But she doesn’t listen to her instincts. And that’s when everything went wrong.
“Not over there, Carla. That boy gives me the creeps.” <Emma June>
“It’s only Rachael’s brother, for crying out loud.”
I remember the time I stayed overnight ay Rachael’s. Brandon kept peeking through her bedroom window trying to scare us by pretending to be an axe murderer.
“He’s a sixteen-yea- old bully,” I say.
“He’s not that bad. I’ve seen his good sides.”
“I’d rather go to the flea circus. They’re trained, you know. They can turn a miniature carousel two thousand times their size.”
“And they’re itchy.” Carla grabs my hand and leads me toward the Knock-Down-The-Milk-Bottle tent where Brandon stands motioning us forward with a bona-fide moonshine jug in his hand.
(excerpt from The Moonshine Thicket)
Cono’s Cigar Box
“A cigar box alone may have no meaning, but the Treasures inside tell a story.”
I go to bed real happy. It had been a real good honest day’s work. We’d sold three dollars and twenty cents worth of those little seed packets and after tomorrow’s sell day I know I’m just one step closer to having me a brand new geetar.
I wrap my money in a dish towel and stuff, tie it up with a string and put it in my box of specials hidden under my bed. Nothing like an honest day’s work to make a feller wore out. I put my head on my pillow and go straight to sleep, out like Lottie’s eye.
The first thing I do next morning after waking up is pull out my cigar box. My other specials are in there; my Devils Claw, toothbrush, Tiger, my pocket knife, my piece of boxing glove lace, my penny from Uncle Will. But my dishtowel of money isn’t there. I leave my room and find Aunt Nolie sitting at the kitchen table eating a biscuit.
“It’s gone!” I say.
“What’s gone, Cono?”
“All my money’s gone. It ain’t where I put it!”
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
Entering the Insane Asylum
The Pungent smell of an insane asylum.
From The Last Bordello (voice of Sadie):
My limbs shook. My knees buckled. The men in white held fast to my elbows and pulled me toward a thick wooden door. When opened, the fragrant air vanished and was replaced with the malodorous smells of urine, vomit, rubbing alcohol, and something else I couldn’t quite place.
I saw only a few women, one being dragged in another direction. “Not surgery, not surgery!” the woman wailed.
The driver unlocked another door and pushed me into a small room that contained a stained mattress on the floor and a bucket for excrement. He told me to sleep well. I heard him laughing down the hall long after they had locked the door.
I thought it was a cruel joke, that my mother had followed behind and would now take me home with an “I told you so.” Before the tears had a chance to come, someone unlocked the door again.
Raw Journal Kernels – 5
Ooh! This was a special find! (See other Journal Kernels here) This was a dream that inspired The Last Bordello. See the short excerpt below.
Most nights, I see Papa in my dreams. In a slower-than-life pulse, in a not-so-common four-count measure, he smiles as he grabs the knob of our screen door and opens it to enter. His movement repeats. He smiles and opens the door. Smiles and opens the door. Each time, he never enters. He never falls.
But Papa did fall; collapsed before crossing our threshold into the house his neighbors helped him to build. Four years ago now, all of the notes of Papa’s life faded away with his last breath. A stillness so loud that my ears still burned.
If only Papa hadn’t died.
Sadie, before becoming a prostitute
At age fifteen, Sadie Sated Timothy – from The Last Bordello.
It started the day Timothy and me sat on a gentle slope on the banks of Geronimo Creek between the honey mesquite and Texas spur grass. He’d snuck a bottle of whiskey from home and had been thoughtful enough to bring crackers and a small chunk of cheese to our Sunday afternoon picnic. I was smitten with the boy, the twin to my best friend, Kat.
He spread the blanket and, for the first time, I spread my legs. The weight of him, slight as it was, felt like a made-to-fit blanket.
He was finished before I had the chance to feel him inside of me. “I might only be fifteen,” I said, laughing. “But I don’t think that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”
Offended at first, Timothy managed a grin. “Then I guess we need to try it again.”
Then I caught sight of the ugly housedress that Lucinda, my so-called mother, wore almost daily. Ugly like her character. Ugly like her words. Stupid like her Bible-mouth that preached how Jesus would protect her yet Lucinda wouldn’t get up on a ladder if her life depended on it.
She split us apart, yanked me up by the hair, and ruined my favorite dress as she dragged me home.
“You miserable bitch,” I screamed. “Just because you couldn’t keep my father at home doesn’t mean I have to be a spinster. I love him! Love him! Any time Timothy wants me to pleasure him, I’ll be willing and ready.”
Lucinda slapped me. I slapped back, harder. She fell on the warped flooring of our kitchen and dabbed a finger at the corner of her bloodied lip.
For the next two weeks, we didn’t speak. Still, I heard her mumble on occasion, “Ticktock, ticktock. They’ll put you under key and lock.” I didn’t pay attention to those words. I should have.
Meeting Dixie Dupree!
I rarely write a review on Amazon, but after reading The Education of Dixie Dupree by Donna Everhart, I had to. Here it is:
Readers will learn from Dixie Dupree’s education!
Like every great book, the first chapter of The Education of Dixie Dupree grabs the reader by the collar and makes us yearn to know more. Loved this book!
The author, Donna Everhart, blew so much life and guts into her eleven-year-old protagonist that Dixie Dupree leaped off the page and into my heart from the very beginning. I identified with this young girl’s sassiness and grit, wagged my finger at her mischievous tongue, and, later, screamed at her to speak up and let the words flow.
Set in a small town in Alabama in the late 1960’s, the story revolves around Dixie and her relationship with her mother, father, brother and uncle. Written in first person point-of-view, Dixie shows us the good in her life, and how to survive when it’s anything but.
Some readers may find parts of Dixie’s suffering too troublesome to read. But her suffering is also part of our education. What reader can’t identify with the emotions of guilt, anger, and sadness that may lead to (hopefully temporarily) damaging our being?
But these emotions do not depict the whole story. The Education of Dixie Dupree is also about determination, insightfulness, warm hugs, resolution, and wholeness.
Dixie Dupree deserves a degree for her education—and her creator, Donna Everhart, deserves to be wearing a cap and gown and handed a framed diploma for writing this outstanding novel.
A Gift to Frame
A friend of mine gave a copy of my latest book, The Last Bordello, to her mother, Del. She doesn’t email, nor does she know how to write a review on Amazon. So, she sent me a “real” letter! What a special gift!
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 