Why Write?

In our projects at work, there is a lot of planning, designing, calculations, hard physical labor, hard mental efforts and specialized inter-personal skills involved. I tell the engineers that the ONLY thing that remains after the explosion, after a building lies in a pile of dust and debris, after a bomb is dropped, after a crater is dug out, turned inside out and examined, the ONLY thing that remains is their report. If it is not written down, it didn’t happen.

I think this philosophy spilled over when I (mostly) retired into the rest of my life, which is why I write. I want people to know me, at least in some small way. Not in some get-famous way, or get-rich way – that’s not at all what I’m looking for. But in a get-to-know-me-better way – know my loves and passions, my dislikes and anti-passions, my motivations and how I think the world does work, and ought to work.

This is why I write. And why I read. I want to know what others think. I’m not a “deep” person – my feelings tend to be on my sleeve, and I am pretty literal – but I try to uncover the truth and purpose behind stories. It is an adventure I feel like I’ve just begun.

I also like to challenge myself – which has led me to expand beyond writing, into graphic arts and website building. I barrel headlong into life, because life is a challenge and a mystery. So I write and learn to see if I can do better, dig deeper, find the truth in my stories and in other people’s stories. It’s a great feeling when I interpret and  illustrate a writer’s story or poem, and find a new meaning to it.

I hope with each word I write, with each image I use, with each passing day, I have added something to my inner self that is worthwhile, and have added something to the world, too, that might make a difference, no matter how small.

Digital (or Animated) Poetry and Flash

For me, Liquid Imagination Online is more than just another ‘zine (but I’m admittedly biased). It’s an opportunity, a challenge, and a way of giving back to a community that has given me so much.

Opportunities abound as the publisher of LI-Online (John “JAM” Arthur Miller), his managing editor (that would be me) and his team of fiction and poetry editors (the fabulous Kevin Wallis and Chrissy Davis), music and voice coordinators (astounding Brandon Rucker and Bob Eccles), article writers (legendary AJ Brown, Creative Coach Dare Kent and John C. Mannone), and a host of top quality fiction writers and poets, assemble each issue. I love the freedom we have to experiment and push the edge of what we, as a team, can do, and what technology will allow us to do, if we only take the time to learn it.

I’m in the process now of learning how to create digital poetry and flash. I’ve been fascinated by this art form ever since I first ran across it over a year ago. I love Billy Collins work (unfortunately, the link to the www.bcactionpoet.org site appears to be down right now. You can see his Forgetfulness poem on YouTube here). And Black Hole by Christina Vitelli (it takes a little while for this one to load, so you have to be patient). And I saw no reason that this artform could not be extended to flash. Ever since I saw these and other examples, I wanted to include this artform in Liquid Imagination Online. This is something that cannot be shown in print, something special for the online community. If LI-Online can put together enough of these, even though they cannot be in a print edition of LI Magazine, we could put them on a CD. It is exciting time for online and multi-media technology and I want to take full advantage it.

The technology, of course, is one of the challenges. I love learning new things. In the last few months I have learned how to use (at a basic level) some of the complex tools companies like Adobe provide: Dreamweaver, Flash Pro, Photoshop. It’s been a great ride and I plan to expand my skills in these and other applications. I’ve just touched the edge of was is possible and am excited by the challenges of learning, and by the possibilities.

Ancestry and Life

Even before I retired over two years ago, I knew what I wanted to do. Write historical fiction. At the time, I was researching the revolutionary war and my husband’s ancestors who had fought in it. It’s funny how life can change in a minute, though.

And that minute came when we found out my husband wasn’t related to all those hundreds of people I had been researching. His father had not been his father. His mother had allowed him to live in ignorance for over seven decades. That’s a long time to have been lied to. He reeled from the revelations, then recovered. He is after all, a pragmatic man. He knew, and I knew, at his core he remained the same person.

It’s a case of if you don’t want to know, don’t ask. I really wanted to know, though. I wanted to know if I was researching the right limb of the Babcock tree. So I talked him into taking a YDNA test. His DNA from a scraping of the inside of his cheek would be compared with other Babcock researchers who had documented proof of their ancestry. There are markers on the DNA strand that are passed unaltered from father to son, for all generations. So if I had found the right Babcock branch, the markers in my husband’s DNA would match others from the same lineage.

It didn’t. It wasn’t even close. There was no way he was a Babcock. A white guy from Europe was about all the DNA test could confirm. Through various means we were able to find his biological father (fodder for another day). But all my research of the revolutionary war and all those people, the soldiers, their wives, their children, their comrades, every single one of them, gigabytes of information, became meaningless.

There went my career writing historical fiction. Gone before I even began. Or so I thought.

Autism Speaks, Part II

Whew, the first stage is done. I finished the story. Now to edit and tweak and submit.

Writing stories have to be draining, or your whole being and your whole heart hasn’t be put into it. And a story without heart should not have been written. The heart of a story comes from the characters. We know that places and actions, described in riveting scenes, are essential. Without action, where’s the story? It is the character, though, that has to be at the core. Think of it as a bus. The bus, yellow and cumbersome and long, wanders without a goal through lush green meadows and enters a dark forest. The forest closes in around the bus. Engine grinds as it downshifts to start up a steep mountain. Birches and aspens sparkle in the sunlight, casting lacy shadows on the asphalt road. Diesel fumes belch as the bus downshifts again. It reaches the top and finds itself at an impasse. Two roads, equally wide, equally worn, fork. Which way to go? One goes into a meadow where thunderclouds threaten. The other disappears around a corner, its destination unknown.

At this point, the bus needs Driver, the main character. What kind of person is Driver? Is she an adventurous risk taker? Does he have children and a wife at home? Pick up litter he finds it in a park? Take a stray puppy home? Who Driver is, what motivates him, is essential to picking the right road for the bus.

And so I hope my story for Autism Speaks has characters that touch the heart. I hope the story is good enough for acceptance. Good enough to help Autism Speaks with their fund raising efforts.

Autism Speaks

Writing. Ah. Something I know how to do. But can I turn my experiences with my grandson into a fiction story. A story with a beginning, a middle and an end? For the story of autism has no end, but for the Anthology for Autism, just this once, I’ll pretend it does. It is, after all, a great and needed cause.

I put aside my web building toys, my complex applications that delight and amuse me. I put aside another story I was writing for an online magazine threatened with extinction, I shoved aside my need to read slush, review stories and develop a business plan. I put everything I could aside to write.

I hope I finish. I hope it is a good, even great story. I hope it is accepted. But right now my job is to write.

Liquid Imagination Online

Someone, who shall remain anonymous (except his initials are JAM), told me it was time to have a blog. So here it is. My blog will be partly about writing, editing and publishing, but mostly about life.

I’m the managing editor for Liquid Imagination (www.liquid-imagination.com), where reality and fantasy blur. So, I asked, what does a managing editor do? Well, I was told, she … um, manages … and, um, edits. Not what I would call a useful answer, but it did leave the door wide open. And I barged through.

I have a dream for Liquid Imagination. I want LI Online to be stunning, intense and as cutting edge as my poor internet skills can make it. I want it to pay its writers, a goal we hope to achieve soon. What else do I want? I want it to be easy to navigate, I want our stories, poems and articles read by as wide an audience as possible, I want it to be in print as well as online. Lots of dreams.

My recent endeavors to achieve at least some of my goals have included immersing myself in website building tools, including Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash. It’s been intense, but immensely fascinating.

My plan is post frequently, telling of my trials and triumphs to reach at least some of my dreams, as I let the viscous waves of my imagination take over.