A JURY OF MY PEERS

I won another NC Press Association award last week. This was for Investigative Reporting. The story (as you can see from the photo) was about the drought.

I'm not the kind of person that cares much for awards. Mostly they feel like popularity contests that the same basic people win year after year. It's a lot like being picked first for softball when you were kid. You always knew who'd be standing there looking stupid after all the popular people were chosen to play.

People I've interviewed in the past 3 1/2 years of my journalistic career always say the same things when I ask them about winning an award. "It was humbling to be chosen." "It was an honor to be chosen by my peers for this." "I never really expected it." When I interview them, I always wonder of they were chosen first for softball too.

So winning three press awards in 2007 and another one this year makes me feel uncomfortable. I KNOW I'm not one of those first softball choices yet here I am holding these awards. Hmmm . . . wonder what a shrink would make of that???

It's kind of exciting to win, at first, like many things, but then it all comes down to the day-to-day stuff again. The woman who called me last week about people dumping trash in her yard and the farmer who wants me to interview him don't really care about my award. They have a story to tell and can't tell it by themselves. They need me to tell it for them.

In the end, it all comes down to telling the story for me, whether it's with my books or the articles I write for magazines and the newspaper. As long as I can tell the story (and make a little money!), I'm happy. The popularity, the awards, can all belong to someone else if they will let me keep telling those stories.

Joyce Lavene

Our guest blogger is Mark Phillips who wrote
The Resqueth Revolution

What makes writing worthwhile for you?

By training I am a philosopher. I am convinced that the Great Philosophical Debate is now taking place in fiction rather than formal philosophy. I learned as much genuine philosophy from reading Heinlein’s works as from my classes in college. Even in genre fiction, philosophical world views, aesthetic arguments, ethical dilemmas, and political debates collide in fascinating ways, made pragmatic, meaningful, and personal by the profound magic of narrative structure. I’m addicted to reading and analyzing fiction for these insights. But I’m also incapable of sitting silent while the most important issues of the day are debated—I have to get my two cents in. Philosophical discourse is more fun when you actively participate.

Are you an early writer (wrote as a child) or a late bloomer (didn't start until an adult)?

I still have all the various attempts at fiction that I wrote as a child. I didn’t attempt to get published until high school and still have some very nice rejection letters from that period. In college I minored in film and thought that my future lay in filmmaking. But I’ve always wanted to be a creator of fiction.

Are you a plotter or a character writer?

I try to do both well. They are different sides of the same coin. Getting my characters to react to situations and influence events with meaningful, realistic, and philosophically interesting motivations requires a great plot that forces the protagonists into the kind of inescapable moral dilemmas that advance the Great Debate. On a more prosaic level, when I write in the detective and science fiction genres, I spend a lot of extra time on plot—if the plot doesn’t logically hang together, no one will read long enough for the philosophy to come across.

Do you write every day?
My day job is as a high school teacher. I teach precalculus and political philosophy. I try to write every day, but my most sustained creative writing occurs on weekends, holidays, and, of course, summer vacation. During the school year I’m more effective at research and editing. For The Resqueth Revolution, I spent nearly six months researching. When summer vacation started, I wrote the entire first draft straight out in about six weeks of marathon, twelve-fourteen hours days, seven days a week.


Have you ever had writer's block?

I’ve definitely been afflicted by writer’s block, but I rarely beat myself up over it. I have a great deal of faith in my subconscious writer, my muse, my daemon, whatever you want to call it. I research, ponder, and when I sit down to write and nothing good comes out, I figure that my subconscious writer isn’t done processing the problem. I go read, watch movies, take a nap. When I’m ready to, the prose comes out in unstoppable torrents of words that are just right (in terms of content, certainly not in terms of spelling, grammar, or style). The goal of schedulable creativity is a perverted ideal of our over-mechanized, over-commercialized world. Writers are not factory workers. I can schedule editing and research, but writing follows its own dictates. What I would like to do is keep several works going at the same time, so that if I’m in down time with one I may be more successful with another. But that would cut into my reading, movie watching, and nap time, so maybe not.

Run for Mayor? I think not!

It seems hard to believe that some people where I live think I would make a good mayor. I don't know if it's because I work for the newspaper or if they just don't know me. I'm a far left leaning anarchist who could never agree with all the compromises and crap that mayors put up with. Not to mention that the mayor of my town doesn't even have a vote! That's SO not going to happen!

I suppose I appreciate all the people who have offered to finance my campaign (you know who you are). My editor, (SH) tells me that those people mean well. They think they can trust me to do what's right for the town. I don't know. Most of the mayors I know are a little shifty, to say the least, and some are downright irritating. What does that say about me that they think I would make a good mayor? (Sorry, SH!)

Anyway, I prefer to write about mayors in fiction and non-fiction. I understand that and I can handle it. I thought people were joking when they first started asking but now I see that there could be a write-in campaign. I just want to say that I would not welcome that, nor would I serve if elected.

Now now anyway. Maybe someday! ;-))

Joyce Lavene

A Writer Writes

How many time have we heard “I’d write a book if I just had the time” or “I have a great story and I’m going to write it someday.” If you’re like me, you’ve heard these excuses and many more a lot. Like me, you also know these people aren't serious writers.

How do we know? We know because writers write, they don’t talk about it happening in the future. Their future is now. Writers don’t wait until they have all the free time in the world. They don’t wait until everything is perfect around the house. They don’t keep putting off sitting down at the computer or typewriter or even with a pen and paper. It takes writing to be a writer and people who do this are the writers.

They’re writers because they want to write. They need to write. They have to write. Therefore they will make time to write. They get up an hour early and write. The stay up an hour late and write. They block out time on the weekend to write. They write on their lunch hour. They write when they have a few minutes anytime they get the chance.

Don’t get me wrong. There may be detours along the way in a writing career. You may get sick. A loved one may die. A job may be lost. A marriage may fail. Or a million other things can happen. If you’re a writer, you’ll continue to write through these detours.

Oh, it won’t be easy. Nobody ever said it would be. But what in life worth having is easy?

Is it worth all the sacrifice, the work, the effort and the pain? Oh, yes! If you’re a writer, when you hold your first book in your hand or see your first article or story in print and your name is displayed on this work it is worth everything you went through to create it.

So if you want to be a writer, the only thing you have to do is write - and keep writing.

Lynette

The Carolina Conspiracy Guest Blogger for today is author Jacqueline Seewald.



Tell us about yourself.

I took an early retirement so that I could write fulltime. I taught creative writing, expository writing and technical writing at Rutgers University.
I've also worked as an academic librarian, an educational media specialist, and a high school English teacher. I have two graduate degrees. I have two sons and a terrific husband who is very supportive.

Tell us about what you're working on now.

I've just completed several new novels that I've submitted for consideration. One is another romantic suspense mystery thriller entitled DEATH LEGACY. It's a novel of international intrigue and espionage, romantic and sexy with a strong mystery plot.
What are your work habits? I get up around six a.m. every morning and start to write while it's still dark and quiet. I'm very focused. I try to get out and do other things every afternoon.

Tell us a funny story about being an author.

I suppose what I find amusing is when people ask me how my "hobby" is going. I don't bother to tell them that writing isn't my "hobby," it's my life's work. I do put my heart and soul into my work. I write and rewrite until the work is as perfect as I can make it.

I'm excited about THE DROWNING POOL coming out and hope to reach a great many readers. I'd ask you all to look for the novel, check it out on Amazon. Two excellent brand new reviews just came out from Midwest Book Review and Crimespree Magazine.

In these hard economic times, I'm suggesting that readers request that their libraries order THE DROWNING POOL so they can read it without laying out for the cost of a hardcover book. And I'd love feedback!

The Drowning Pool Author: Jacqueline Seewald
Price:US $25.95
ISBN 13: 9781594147555
ISBN 10: 1594147558
Product number: 243771
Published/Released: February 2009

Do you Twitter?

A woman at an event last week asked, "Do you Twitter?"

I know what she meant but I was surprised she was asking. This wasn't a 20-something author but rather a middle-aged author.

When I confessed that I had never Twittered, she laughed. "You know,dear, you can't market effectively unless you Twitter."

I don't know. I have a Face Book page. I blog when I can. I send out tons of press releases, read and write on various lists of mystery writers. What would make Twitter so much better?

Of course, no one really knows. I guess it's the idea of doing whatever you can. Shortly after the woman had gone back to her table to sell books, another woman came by and asked if I had a trailer for my new book.

Hmmm.

"You know, dear, you can't market effectively unless you have a trailer."

One thing I DO know and that is you can't market effectively if you don't have a book to market. All the Twittering, trailers and everything else is only as effective as your next book. You can lose yourself in doing all the things there are to do that ornament your book. I know writers who have had to give back advances because they forgot they had to write too!

Of course, sales are important. It's always tough to say when you should write and when you should market. Sometimes, I feel like you have to do both all the time, kind of like juggling.

I guess I'll go find out how to Twitter.

Joyce Lavene

Do you Twitter?

A woman a an event last week asked, "Do you Twitter?"