Why is really WHY we write...

If you are a writer, by which I mean you are writing something the world might see without having to find it in an archeological dig, then I know already that you look at the world through different eyes. You see things, do things, or events happen to you or someone nearby and sparks begin to fly around in your brain; it gives birth to something near tangible, whether it's the bare beginning of an imaginary tale or the answer to some mysterious part of a work in progress.

Writing never happens 'cause you sat back in your chair, pinched your eyes and wished something to life. If it did then it's BS (Baloney Sandwich), and you should make that sandwich; if you get lucky--in the process you might cut off a good portion of your finger; now you have something to write.

Just a little while ago, my boy Tobias and I are out adventuring headed for a ride downtown on the light rail, first searching out a place to park which ends up blocks away; the only two paths to the train platform are in the street or along the tracks. What's more fun for a little boy? Along the tracks of course. Among broken rocks, gravel and umpteen unusual items including one big, no huge, drain grating, possibly the largest he's ever seen in his three-and-one-half years. He always stops to look into the depths of dark holes for spiderwebs and perhaps whole worlds of things.

What I need to know is how come, in a universe full of reasons, at that exact moment, did his precious little Kazoo choose to leap out of his pocket and down that drain? 

Why not six or two feet before or following? I'll tell you why. Something otherworldly had to have timed and targeted it to go through those grates to land just out of practical arms reach.

I can only think of one reason the universe decided to gift me with such a spectacular event.

It was not about me or Tobias, not even the Kazoo. It was all about you and all about WHY it leaped from his pocket at that precise moment. It wanted me to wonder WHY. I'm not interested in the mechanics, but perhaps a little curious about mathematical probabilities. The possibility, I assume, is astronomical that along this path at this precise moment it would fall. A message? I like to think of it like that. 

Beyond fodder for writing, there is what many call a higher power, I choose to call him God, plucking away on the strings of this world. Here is the point where you to stop and say, "What a weirdo!" I don't care. I have heard worse.

But, if you in your sane, rational mind can walk away from something like that without incredible wonder, you are crazier than I and not a writer.

Something as fortunate as that happens and a writer figures he has struck gold. By the way I did retrieve the Kazoo. A little crawling on the ground, a couple of scrapes on my forearms from forcing them farther through than would comfortably fit and it was all worth it just to see Tobias' joy. The extra credit bonus was all the thoughts I get to process and blend into words, stories, tales and this blog.

If you aren't a writer, though, you just might've been pissed off or irritated. But, then again you wouldn't likely be reading this, would you?

Peace,

Mike

Sir...TweetaLot

Yeah! If you thought the title was corny, so did I...but it's all I got. This is a follow-up to a blog post titled, Tweet Tweet which had a much nicer ring. If you skip over and check it out you'll find it was about my experience gaining Twitter followers. I reread it and the small numbers seem near ridiculous now.

But, the principles are solid only the scale grew larger and I had to figure a way to cut down the time it took to keep up good relationships with an ever increasing crowd. After all, good relationships is what it is about.

In that previous post, I was all worked up and dancing on tabletops about gaining a hundred followers in ten days, good stuff. Since then I've seen steady gains of up to 50 a day. Like I said, same method. I'm now hovering around at 1800 followers (9,020 on 10/31/15 which proves my points) and most of these are good home-grown followers (real people). The reason I'm hovering: Twitter has a rule that if you follow 2000 people they won't let you follow any more till you get a lot more followers and that number seems mysterious and arbitrary. Without being able to follow everyone who follows you, growth is much slower. Update on 11/1/2015 I've discovered that once you clear that glass ceiling and can prove that you don't put out junk and real people want to engage with you, that mystery ratio goes away and you can follow as many as you want without regards to how many follow you.

Still, I thought I'd share a couple things I learned to make the work less time-consuming. I'm aware that I could pay a monthly fee for a company to do all my posting, but somehow that felt disingenuous, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. For a while, I let JustUnFollow send auto DM messages thanking new followers but after getting a bunch from other people, I couldn't stomach it any longer.

My biggest help so far is the Hootsuite SMMS short for Social Media Managing System; which allows me to schedule up to 350 Tweets or Facebook posts at one time to one account. If I put all the info for my message in a correctly formatted Excel spreadsheet (it's simple. They even give you a template) voila I have the next few weeks Tweets all set to go.

I set my posts at half past the hour so if I want to post anything else, I insert it at the hour or fifteen or forty-five after so it won't get crowded.

I value all my followers old and new and I schedule some of their book links in my bulk uploads so they come up regularly as retweets. As for my new followers: after the initial nice thank you Tweet and a courteous retweet of one or two of their messages, I wait a few days or a week and gang up all the new followers in a message thanking them again. They get a mention and I usually get a retweet with more exposure.

Ganging up 'Thank You for Following' Tweets gets time-consuming when the follows are coming in hot and heavy 100-220 in a three to four-day span.

Thank you Mighty Google! I went searching for a program that might help me... I didn't find one that would do it all for me without relinquishing my sovereignty, but I did find an excel spreadsheet that you register as an app with Twitter and it feeds you all your followers in a neat little list, newest at top. Martin Hawksey, God bless him, has made it fairly easy for the average Joe to accomplish this. Now, I run this spreadsheet every few days and give all my new followers a mention.

All I had to do was paste that list into a notepad and put little @ symbols in front of each screen name. Way better than before but tedious. So, I DM'd a follower @tianyuxu who is an Excel Guru Data Cruncher and asked if he would help me with the formula to add the @ symbol before each name. He was only too happy to help. Wango Tango it's now as easy as 1-2-3 to put together the bulk thank you tweets.
I could go on, but it's getting late. If anyone has something to add or comment please do. I'm no expert, but I am good at learning.
Peace All,
Mike
If you'd like to leave a comment and find the form tedious you can comment on my twitter feed @mikeyznsacto or Facebook/M. Matheson

No Longer a New Author

So, I am guilty. I did it. I am no longer a new author. When does that happen? It might be when you forget that you even have a blog, and find that said blog is so lapsed that your profile says "Upcoming book" when the book has been out for a month. I have been so wrapped up in promotion for 'No More Mister Nice Guy' that it is no longer new.

I've also been writing a long short story, OK possibly a novella, 'The Eagle Claw Hack' about an indie author who is so frustrated with his constant readers for 'their' lackluster performance he sets out to hack Amazon and make them buy at the point of a gun. Is the fiction truth or at least a reveal on the twisted inner workings of yours truly--Maybe and maybe not. I'll never tell.
 In the meantime, news from the front:
Lettered- a short story is at 200+ downloads and you can get your own by clicking the title or here.
No More Mister Nice Guy is on all eBook retailers. At SMASHWORDS you can find any filetype you want for your particular reader and here's a code to get it for free-YD98L.
BUT and that's big but- If you pay full price I will donate my royalty to The Wounded Warrior Project for the rest of the month of September.
That's the news for now.
Peace,
Mike

What Inspires You?

I was recently asked on my Goodreads author page: What inspires you?

I'm easily inspired, so I'm afraid I might come off a bit garish to those that struggle with "getting inspired."

Truthfully, I was inspired by the question because it gave me a moment to think about something I hadn't given much thought to in a while.

This is my answer to the readers question.

I make myself an observer of life going on around me, from the seemingly mundane to the marvelous, from the dreadfully boring to the amazing. There's a story hidden behind every person and every act. If I forget that, it's only because I permitted myself to become weighed down and distracted by the cares and worries of my own life, and even those bear stories worth telling.

Now that brings a more detailed question to my scary little mind:

If I am working on a particular project, story, book, or what-have-you, and I need some inspiration to continue on or fill a certain bill, how do I get it?

My answer for myself and any who would ask is, stop trying so hard. I know, I know, it all sounds very antithetical to what we are trying to accomplish here, but inspiration is not some kind of galley slave you can keep chained to the oars and demand it row when the wind fails your sails. Neither can inspiration be tricked into giving up its treasures at a particular time.

What I do in times like that is work on something else, read a book entirely unrelated to what I am working on or do some research on some aspect of what I am working on. Often inspiration comes walking by whistling a liesurely tune and acting as if he would pass by my house entirely without noticing me sprawled on the porch gasping for breath.

Very seldom does the particular dose of inspiration I need at the time come from the internet, Twitter, Facebook or other social media. Go for a walk instead, no matter where you live. Call a friend and have no agenda. Go play at the park with your child.

Then you just might find that your inspiration had been hanging out with them and waiting for you to join the party.

Origin and history of the word, Inspiration, from dictionary.com:

c.1300, "immediate influence of God or a god," especially that under which the holy books were written, from O.Fr. inspiration, from L.L. inspirationem (nom. inspiratio), from L. inspiratus, pp. of inspirare "inspire, inflame, blow into," from in-"in" + spirare "to breathe" (see spirit)

There you have it. Beathe in something fresh. Chill and try not to try to hard.

Whoever Liked Grammar?

Grammar and punctuation were not many peoples favorite subject in their early educations, and in later college educations was only taken seriously since without it you'd fail. Admittedly it wasn't something I was very interested in either, until I decided to get serious about writing.

If I wanted to improve my craft, I needed to go lower to the roots and not start at the top of the tree. I remember taking a community college class in basic grammar, only because I had procrastinated in signing up, and College Composition was already closed. When I showed up the professor asked, "What are you doing here?" which didn't do much for my self esteem, but he was wondering why I would take it at all.

But, I learned many things in that basic course that helped to improve my writing. The first two sessions were wholly taken up by the professor, younger than me, lecturing the mostly teens and burgeoning adults on the importance and value of COMPLETING the ENTIRE class, while I sat starving for his knowledge and hoping he would teach me something. I was the old man in the class (my early 50s).

At this point I'm finding it hard to transition into my intended subject so I'll just leap.

Three books every aspiring writer should read and keep on their shelf:

Strunk and White's 'Elements of Style'

If you were stranded on a desert island and needed to improve your writing this would be the book to have. It takes a no nonsense approach to STYLE, not flair but style. Not just die to the rules grammar, but syntax people would like to read,which is not dissimilar to properly penned words. My copy of this book is dog-eared, bent, folded and near mutilated.

Next on the list of top hits I would put 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. 

I know reading a book on punctuation sounds like one of the torments from hell, but Lynne makes it worth your while; it's very humorous style leaves you grinning and learned.

Wikipedia quote-

The title of the book is an amphibology--a verbal fallacy arising from an ambiguous grammatical construction—​and derived from a joke about bad punctuation:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

"Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"Well, I'm a panda," he says. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Irrish-American author Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, wrote the foreword to the U.S. edition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. In keeping with the general lighthearted tone of the book, he praises Truss for bringing life back into the art of punctuation, adding, "If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic I'd nominate her for sainthood."

I can't improve on that.

Last but not least is 'Sin and Syntax'

Now, it has been quite a while since I read this last one, but I remember it being like reading something that suddenly enlightened me on some finer points of deep spiritual life, only this was on crafting prose; the two not too unlike each other.

These three books were important primers on grammar, style, punctuation and prose. I'm sure there are many others. I am also sure not everyone is dying to read a book on any of those subjects.

Do it. You will be glad you did.

Peace,

Mike

For Goodness Sakes, Be Brief

"For Goodness Sakes, Be Brief" - I thought it was a cool title, and could think of nothing else to put there. There I go again. I could have left off the first sentence, and come to think of it, this one too. Left them out in the cold cold darkness of never existed and if it did, leave it in the garbage can or dustbin, you choose.

I've struggled all my writing speaking life with being brief. I love words. I love the sound and sight of them, especially my own. But, alas, I have had to learn to clip, truncate and edit my words down to the 'only necessaries.'

I found it wins more hearers, readers etc. People look at an article, and unless you are famous, really famous, they will not read more than a sentence, if that, unless they can see the end from where they are sitting.

Blessed is the preacher who preaches short, for he will be invited back again.- from my circle of friends.

If no other bit of advice stuck into my heart it was this: Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings   -Elmore Leonard quoted by Stephen King but probably originating with William Faulkner's “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

Have you ever found yourself infatuated with a sentence of your own creation, yet down in your heart you knew it was Frankenstein's Monster, which he wanted to be great but was horrendous. I have.
I have hovered over the delete key as I've edited my work, knowing it needed to go but doing everything to keep it. I have spent countless wasted creative minutes maybe hours trying to make that sentence work. You too? I thought so.

So, in closing I'm reminded of something learned from the author I admire most for his storytelling ability, Stephen King.
He received a scribbled comment at the bottom of a rejection slip that changed the way he rewrote his fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this note: 

“Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. 

Formula: 2nd  Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”

I've taken this to heart and it has served me well. Twitter has helped with its damned 140 character limit.
Still I came back and added this next line.

I am so well know for going long, I've requested this on my headstone when I die, because it's what i am guilty of saying at the end of every conversation- "Just one more thing..." 
I never stop. God help me.

If you'd like to leave a comment and find the form tedious comment on my twitter feed @mikeyznsacto or Facebook M. Matheson

Great Cover for 'No More Mister Nice Guy'

Designed by Nichole Smith (this is smaller than final)