Greece: In the Footsteps of Paul the Apostle

Mykonos

I found this picture and decided to share it with my readers. Look at all the white buildings! Beautiful.

In the near future I will be traveling to Greece. Our main purpose is to see some of the places which are mentioned in the  Bible as places the Apostle Paul traveled. However, everything about Greece interests me, from the fascinating stories in mythology to the ancient philosophers. Athens represents culture and the wisdom of the ages. One of the places we will visit while on a cruise of the Greek Isles is Mykonos, the whitewashed jewel of the Cyclades Islands. This is the way the island is described: "This charming, mountainous island is known for the hundreds of tiny chapels, white-washed buildings and beautiful windmills that dot the island." Okay, I'm ready to go! I'm hoping to get some ideas for something to write about. 

It's interesting how writers find ideas. When I travel with groups I often see things that inspire me, but I also find that often it's not just the scenery but it may be a comment that some fellow traveler makes that gives me an idea for a poem or story. In the future I will be writing more about my writing process and how ideas come together to form a story.

Breaking out in Poetry

I have been struggling with the term marketing people call my "Personal Brand" lately. It's supposed to reflect who I am and what I can contribute to society. I've done all sorts of things to figure this out--like getting all my friends to give me six adjectives that describe me, answering all sorts of questions about what I've done, what I like, what I write about, where I've lived, etc., etc. I am still working on it, but I may eventually get it.

One of the things which I've thought about through all this is that I love words. I love a play on words; I love to try new ways of saying things; I like reading books that are structured in a way that I've not seen before. And when I get inspired to write a poem about something, it usually comes as a line or phrase that sticks in my brain. Last Sunday, for example, our Bible study teacher wrote a phrase from Tony Cartledge that I kept thinking about. We were studying Mark (Chapter 14) where Jesus asks the disciples to keep watch while he goes to pray. He comes back to find them asleep. Tony Cartledge  said, "He calls us to be faithful, but we just keep nodding off." It was funny to me. It also had a ring of truth to it, and the phrase kept running through my head. So by Monday morning I had a kind of plan for a poem. I am posting it below because it may help you to understand what I am talking about.

Trying to Stay Awake

“…Could you not keep watch for one hour?” Mark 14:37

At His darkest hour, Jesus told us to “Stay here and watch.”

But honestly, I am exhausted.

I really love Jesus, and I truly meant it when I pledged to follow.

But the day is long.

So many people have made demands before I get to the store.

I am in a hurry.

I lash out at the cashier before I see her tears.

I don’t know what to say.

But Jesus forgives me, and tomorrow is another day.

I’m early to work.

I am ready to follow Jesus anywhere he leads.

My boss is expecting more.

By five o’clock my head is pounding and I just want to get home.

I’m at the intersection.

What is that? A mother and three children stand with a sign.

“Need food for family.”

Well, that’s sad, but I just can’t do anything about that tonight.

I drive on by.

Jesus wants me to be faithful, but I just keep nodding off.

                                                            --Merrill J. Davies (2015)

Quit, Start Over, or Just Travel On?

Many of us who write attend writers' conferences in order to get ideas, network with other writers, and often get feedback from editors and/or agents who might tell us how we can be more successful. We also enjoy listening to authors who are a little (or a lot) more successful than we are and try to determine if we're doing it right.

Saturday at our Rome Area Writers' Forum we heard four excellent authors who were accomplished and write in different genres: Mignon Franklin Ballard, mystery; Victoria Wilcox, historical fiction; Lauretta Hannon, memoir; and Terry Kay, mainstream fiction. They were all excellent presenters and gave us much to think about. Although they write in different genres, much of what they said applied to any good writing.

When I hear someone like Terry Kay, who has published numerous novels and short stories and received many awards, I look for ideas about how I might improve my own writing. And Terry always gives me plenty food for thought. One of the things which he said Saturday made me think that maybe I just need to start over--or quit. He was talking about how he always starts with character and then decides what to do with the character(s). I realized I don't really do that. I have heard other successful writers say they start with plot (what if someone did ...?), and I don't always do that either. Anyway, I thought back to the way I have written my own and decided that my method is a sort of blend of the two. When I hear a great writer like Terry speak of his methodology, I rethink my own, but in the end I think each writer just has to do it his/her way. So I guess I'll just "travel on" doing the best I can. I did get several good ideas,  both from Terry Kay and the other three, which I'll use as I continue to write.

You're Never Too Old to Learn

It's been a busy week--actually it's been busy for several weeks. So busy in fact that despite the fact that our grandson Clifton has been in his baseball season at Maryville College since the first of February, Bill and I have not seen the team play. Friday we decided to go up to Covenant College (Lookout Mountain) to see his team play. It was closer than going all the way to Maryville. Anyway, although it was cloudy, we hoped for no rain and headed that way. The game was scheduled for three o'clock and we didn't get out of Rome until 1:30. Traffic slowed for construction around Dalton and by the time we headed out on I-24 in Chattanooga I was fairly sure we wouldn't make it by three. I sent a text to Clift (who was already there) to tell him we were coming but would probably not get there by three. His response surprised me: "We may be fogged out. It's very bad."

Fogged out? I grew up in the hills of Eastern Kentucky where there is a lot of fog, but I had never heard that before! When we finally got to Covenant College at the top of the mountain I understood what he meant. We could barely see the sign at the entrance, and nothing else. We finally flagged down a girl in a car (a student I guess) and asked her the way to the baseball field. She said "just follow me" and led us (we could just barely see the tail lights of her car) almost to the field. We saw nothing on the way. When we got to the field, we DID see Clifton for a few minutes. He said, "We can't even see their dugout or the score board!" So everybody hung around for a while until they called the game off and planned to return on Saturday--which they did, but we didn't. Fogged out! Like my grandpa always said, you learn something new just about every day!

SCBWI Southern Breeze Conference '15

First, I'll give you the good news about "Springmingle" (SCBWI Southern Breeze Conference) in Decatur this weekend. We had fantastic presenters and leaders all day Saturday and a half-day Sunday! (My friend Martha and I did not attend the Friday intensive sessions.) We had Meg Medina,  Elise Howard, Karen Grencik, and others who were not only accomplished professionals, but were very good presenters. (As a Toastmaster, I notice that!) Also, Neal Porter, the editor who did my picture-book critique was phenomenal, both in my critique session and in a number of presentations about picture books. Mr. Porter has been working in the industry for over 30 years and has been an executive with some of the big companies such as Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is now publisher of Neal Porter books. Anyway, you get the idea. He is very knowledgeable and very personable. So the whole conference was well worth our money and our time.

Now, the bad news. I actually felt that I wasted this man's time in asking him to look at a manuscript that was not anywhere nearly good enough to submit to anyone. It's funny that it never occurred to me BEFORE I submitted it. He was a kind man and very professional. However, he did point out to me what I had already thought about during the other session on "101 Reasons for Rejection": It didn't have all the elements of a good picture book. I like to dabble in all kinds of writing, so in addition to writing novels, I write nonfiction, poetry, short stories--and occasionally (once) I try a picture book. At the time I actually read a good bit about how to write a picture book, but apparently I didn't pay a lot of attention except for things like word count, etc. The thing is, I forgot to give specific attention to some common elements that are true in any story--like plot and character development. Having said that, I will say that everything is subjective in this business, and sometimes the editors give us all these rules and then give us examples that don't really follow them. Anyway, he said my picture book "feels more like a poem than a satisfying story"--so I guess IF I do revision, I'll just try to make it a better poem and go back to working with my novels for the present.

The Apprentice Harp Maker

We had a great meeting at the Rome Area Writers meeting tonight--some wonderful readings were shared and we had some insightful discussions about how we could support one another. In a discussion with Karli Land, I was reminded of my last blog where I was relating how I got the idea for my first novel, The Welsh Harp. As I told you in my last blog, the cover features a photograph of a harp the Davies family brought with them from Wales. It is almost two hundred years old now and was played by Bill's grandfather and great grandfather. It was in bad need of restoration when I last saw it a few years ago in Harlan, Kentucky.

 I want to share a story about what happened at one of my book signings for The Welsh Harp. The signing was in La Grange, Kentucky, at Karen's Book Barn. Just before the signing started, a girl walked in with a harp and played during my signing. She had seen my card and learned that I would be there, and she just wanted to come in and play while I was there! It turns out that she was an apprentice harp maker at a music shop not far from La Grange in Crestwood, Kentucky. My husband and I decided to go and see what all they did. They restore a lot of old musical instruments and actually make instruments as well. It's a really neat place called Hewn From the Mountain.  Anyway, several months later, I was telling my brother-in-law about the shop. He asked if they restore harps, and I told him I didn't know. He said that he and his cousin were hoping to get the harp restored. He ended up contacting those people and in the end he took the harp to them to restore!

Isn't it interesting how things can happen? By the way, the apprentice harp maker is Sami True and she has a beautiful CD of harp music called Blue Fire Sky.

Getting Ideas

I'm all excited about this weekend because my friend and I are attending the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) "Spring Mingle" conference in Decatur, Georgia. Children's books have not exactly been my focus, but then neither has anything else. I just write whatever I want to at any given time. SO, I do have a children's picture book which I will have critiqued at the conference (I'll tell you about that next week!). But today I wanted to talk about something else.

The question I get asked most often is "Where do you get ideas for your books?" The answer is "just about everywhere." I wanted to share where I got inspiration for my first book today. The Welsh Harp was published in 2012, but I actually got the idea and wrote it (the rough draft at least) in the mid-1980's.

Two events came together to give me an incentive to write the book. First, I decided to take a correspondence course in "Writing for Children and Teenagers" through the Institute of Children's Literature. At the time I was still teaching full time and I worked through the course in about eighteen months, including two summer breaks. Anyway, the last assignment (#10) was to plan a book-length project--not write it, just plan out the chapters, etc. The second event was that during the time I was working on the course, Bill (my husband) had received a copy of a 250-page, hand-written, family history handed down after his Aunt Ellen had died a few years earlier. He decided to type the history into the computer and have copies made and bound for him and his brother. When I looked at the history I was captivated by his Aunt Ellen's precise descriptions of the family's immigration from the Rhondda Valley in Wales to the mining towns of Eastern Kentucky in 1902.

 I knew of course that I could not write the history, because Aunt Ellen had already done that. So I got the idea to write a novel, using many of the facts she had given about their experiences. Having just been studying about how to write for children and teenagers, it seemed natural to focus on the children, using his aunt (who was twelve when they came over) as a model for the central character. Since one of the things I remembered most about Aunt Ellen's home was the huge harp in the corner of her living room, it became a central image in the story and a large part of the story plot. I eventually decided to use the photograph of that harp as the image on the cover.