Death of a Poet

Horror is not my genre. I don’t even read Stephen King novels. But several years ago I wrote a short story for a Halloween-themed Highland Writers’ Group meeting. I recently dug it out for a flash fiction contest and then decided not to enter. Rather than just file it again, I decided to use it here. And since it doesn’t come anywhere near the intensity of a Stephen King story, no warnings are necessary to keep children away.

Death of a Poet

by

Kathryn Page Camp

It was getting dark on the Pacific island of Tongatapu, and the poet lit a lamp before tucking his feet under him. He rested his notebook on his lap, wet the lead tip of his pencil in his mouth, and went back to his writing.

A bird in the hand gave me

The hair of the dog,

And a horse of a different color

Bled like a stuck pig.

Not bad, he thought. Back in the States, he always seemed to have writer’s block. But since he had moved here, the words just flowed. It must be the more laid-back atmosphere.

It was a bitter pill to swallow

As I watched the pot that never boils,

And she held my feet to the fire

As she read me the riot act.

I was at the end of my rope

Until the drop of a hat

Hit the nail on the head

And showed me the writing on the wall.

He lost track of time until he heard the smoosh of the rain on the thatched roof and the plunk as it hit the dirt floor in the corner where the roof needed fixing—someday. Grabbing his drink, he went outside and soaked in the salt smell of the sea and the warmth of the rain. The he lifted his head to watch the show in the sky.

Lightning flashed and touched the earth where the poet stood. His cry was drowned by thunder, and all that remained was a pile of ashes.

* * *

On Mount Olympus, two gods bowed their heads as the clock hit the final stroke of midnight down below.

“October 31 has ended all over the world for another year.” The younger god raised his head and shook his unshorn locks. “Thank you, Zeus, for granting my wish and giving me this one day when you use your thunderbolt to strike down the worst of those who dare to call themselves poets. I just wish you’d let me eliminate many more.” He shuddered as he thought of some of the pretenders still out there.

“Enough, Apollo,” the older god replied. “If you had your way, there would be none left.”

“That’s not true,” the other said. “There have been a few good poets over the years. Homer and Shakespeare and, uhm, ah . . . .” He sat down and started making his list for next year.

I wonder if you’re on it.

Sending Submissions the Old-Fashioned Way

I’m making my second round of submissions for Desert Jewels, and all five publishers want hard copies. One wants the full manuscript and the other four will take a query letter and three sample chapters, but even that requires spending money on paper and ink and postage. Fortunately, the expense is not a problem for me. But what about those starving artists for whom it is?

Once upon a time, postal mail was the only way to send a manuscript. The speed of delivery improved as gasoline-powered vehicles replaced horses, but submissions still cost the writer money for paper and postage.

Today we can send long documents through the ether without spending any additional money. Sure, we have to pay for the computer and the Internet connection, but we would be doing that anyway. And with the advances in security and virus protection, some publishers have realized that e-mail submissions are more convenient for them, as well. So why haven’t the rest reached the same conclusion?

If an editor accepts e-mail submissions and wants to read a manuscript on paper, then the time and expense of printing it off rests with the editor instead of the writer. Still, that may not happen very often. Most submissions are rejected after the editor reads the first few paragraphs (or less), and this initial sort could be done easily enough on a laptop or tablet or even a smart phone.

It also hasn’t been very long since a postage pre-paid envelope guaranteed that a rejected submission would be returned. In the days before computers and printers and personal photocopiers, publishers had empathy for writers who would otherwise have to make time-consuming replacement copies each time they submitted their work. Or maybe the publishers worried that they would lose out on the next best seller because the author didn’t have a copy left to send them. Either way, they found the time to stick the manuscript in a pre-addressed envelope and drop it in the mail. Now three out of the five publishers say they won’t return the submission under any circumstances.

Personally, I would rather print off a new manuscript for the next publisher. What if the returned copy is marked on or dog-eared or has coffee stains halfway through? (Coffee stains halfway through might tell the next editor that the first one liked it enough to read that far, but they also say that I’m not very professional.) I could page through the material, but I might still miss something. So even when a publisher is willing to return the manuscript, I tell it not to. But again, what about those writers for whom money is tight?

I can sympathize with the editors. Researching publishers takes time, and some writers think that free means they have nothing to lose. If the manuscript isn’t ready or the publisher isn’t a good fit, it will probably be rejected. But maybe the editor will think the story is so outstanding that he or she will publish it anyway. (So goes the thinking of these inexperienced writers.) Requiring hard copy submissions and refusing to return them is one way publishers can cut down on unsuitable submissions. But it isn’t the only way. An editor can easily delete any submission that is sent to multiple e-mail addresses or is clearly generic.

Sometimes the good old days had their advantages.

But this isn’t one of them.

__________

The Pony Express poster is in the public domain because of its age.

Is That a Flaw I See?

I spent a nervous Thursday and Friday waiting for UPS to deliver copies of In God We Trust so that I could sell them Saturday and Sunday at book sales events connected to a writers’ conference. I didn’t relax until they arrived at mid-day on Friday.

After they arrived, I inspected them. It was the first time I had seen the book in hard copy, and it looks great. Then I took a closer look at the picture on the front, which I took in Wisconsin in 2010, and my heart sank.

Looking above the chimney on the right-hand side of the picture, I saw a thin line. I must have had a hair on the lens when I took the picture, and I hadn’t noticed it before. There was nothing I could do about it for these first thirty copies, but I decided that as soon as I had time I would remove it from the picture and redo the cover. And once I saw the blemish, I couldn’t unsee it.

At the mass book signing on Sunday, I sat next to a friend and fellow author, Michael Poore. He complimented me on the cover and the photo, so I pointed out the flaw.

Then he did what I should have done myself. He took an even closer look. Where I saw a hair on the lens, he saw a bare branch hanging from a tree. But I couldn’t give up on the idea that I had used a dirty lens, so I noticed and pointed out the dot you can see farther up on the right, just below where the tree branches cross the steeple. Mike said it looked like a single leaf hanging from another branch.

When I got home and enlarged the original on the screen, I discovered that Mike was 75% correct and I was 100% wrong. What I thought was a hair is indeed a branch. The dot is not a leaf but is something (probably a light fixture) attached to the steeple by a long metal rod. But neither of them are flaws in the picture, and neither are my fault.

It’s so easy to see what we think are flaws when they are just part of the scene. I may be convinced that I received a rejection letter because my story isn’t good enough. Or you may think you missed out on that job opportunity because you blew the interview. But maybe the story just wasn’t a good fit for that particular magazine and God has a better job in mind for you. Sometimes we just need to trust and move on.

But now I have a different dilemma. Should I try to brush the branch and the light fixture out of the photo so that others don’t see them as flaws and think I messed up? Or should I trust my readers to view the picture with Mike’s more discerning eyes?

What do you think?

Shameless Promotion

No, this is not a rant against shameless promotion. It is shameless promotion. The updated second edition of my first book, In God We Trust, was released by KP/PK Publishing on September 30, 2015, and this week's blog post promotes it.

Throughout American history, the First Amendment has been a lightning rod for the debate over religious freedom and its limitations within a free society. Intense legal battles have been fought over prayer in school, religious symbols on public property, and the right to speak out when religious beliefs conflict with popular opinion. These battles will continue as society struggles with the degree of tolerance to give organized religion.

Does the First Amendment create a wall of separation between church and state? How important was that concept to the men who created the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Has the Supreme Court been true to the founders’ intent, or has it distorted the First Amendment religion clauses beyond recognition?

Written in plain English for laypeople, In God We Trust provides a neutral summary of the First Amendment’s historical background and the Supreme Court cases interpreting it. This knowledge arms readers with the tools they need to answer those questions for themselves.

You can find the Amazon.com link for the paperback version here.

The Kindle version will be available later this week.

 

Thanks for letting me engage in this shameless promotion.

Relaxing on the Water

When I was a young attorney, I was assigned to monitor the activities of an outside law firm that was representing my employer in a lawsuit. The billing statements showed one associate working 14-hour days. I had no reason to believe that the law firm was padding the bill—in fact, the total number of hours seemed reasonable. But I couldn’t help wondering if the long hours made the tired associate less efficient and whether she would have done a better job in fewer hours if she had been fresh.

Flash forward thirty years. I’ve been working long and hard revising my very first book for its second edition, which I am trying to get ready for a conference in October. I’m tired and probably cranky, although you would have to ask Roland about that latter part. So when Sunday’s weather was favorable for a sail, I wasn’t sure I could afford to take the time.

Unfortunately, we haven’t had very many good sailing days lately. And with the season drawing to a close, we will probably get in one more after this—if the weather cooperates. So rather than disappointing Roland, I kept my thoughts to myself and went.

If I had remembered those billing statements, I wouldn’t have been so hesitant. There was just enough wind for a peaceful sail, and I came back refreshed. Then I went back to work with renewed energy.

Sometimes I think I don’t have time to take a nap or go sailing. But the truth is that I don’t have time not to do those things. And yes, the double negative is intentional.

Because sometimes the best way to work efficiently is to spend time relaxing on the water.

Jane Austin and Deep POV

As I take my regular walks, I listen to lectures from the Great Courses. Right now I am doing a series called “The English Novel,” and Friday’s lectures were on Jane Austin.

During the second lecture, Professor Timothy Spurgin talked about how Austin improved on the novelists of her day by finding a way to combine emotional immediacy with narrative control. By having her narrator use a central character’s speech patterns and vocabulary, the narrator remains on the scene without crowding the character out.

Professor Spurgin called the technique “free indirect discourse” or “free indirect speech,” but it sounds a lot like what many writers call “deep POV.”

Austin did not use deep POV all the time. She moved between distances frequently within a scene and sometimes within the same paragraph. They weren’t large leaps, but they were there. And if she did it, that gives me permission to do it as well.

I won’t use the same passage that Professor Spurgin used to demonstrate the technique, because that might be a spoiler for someone who hasn’t read Emma but intends to. So instead I’ll use two passages from around the middle of Northanger Abbey

The protagonist, Catherine Morland, is an avid reader of gothic novels. When she is invited to the Tilney’s country home, her imagination turns it into a mysterious mansion with a dangerous secret. Alone in her room, she spots a chest that seems out-of-place. Notice how this passage starts inside her thoughts but attributes them to her by the use of quotation marks, moves outside while still acknowledging her presence by the use of “Catherine” and “she,” and then ends with a totally unattributed sentence that comes from within.

“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this!—An immense heavy chest!—What can it hold?—Why should it be placed here?—Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into it—cost me what it may. I will look into it—and directly too—by day-light.—If I stay till evening my candle may go out.” She advanced and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cypher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish any thing with certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T; and yet that it should be any thing else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?

When Catherine finally has a chance to look inside, the chest contains nothing but ordinary bedding. So then she turns her attention to an old-fashioned black cabinet that fights her attempts to open it. When she finally does get it open, drawer after drawer is empty. Except one. Back in a corner, as if shoved out of sight, is a roll of paper. Events intervene and keep her from reading it until the following morning. But when she does . . . well, here’s what happens.

Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false?—An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! . . . She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of the chest have taught her wisdom?

Again, we go seamlessly from outside to inside within a single paragraph.

To some people, Jane Austin was just another romance writer. To me, she was an innovator whose novels are timeless, whose techniques are still in use today, and whose writing teaches me how to improve my own.

Thank you, Jane.      

__________

The picture is a watercolor and pencil drawing of Jane Austin by her sister, Cassandra Austin, around 1810. The picture and the quoted passages are in the public domain because of their age.

Advice to the Research Challenged

As I update my first book for its second edition, I am reminded just how much research it took. So I thought this would be a good time to reprint a blog post that I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog, published on February 14, 2010.

* * * * *

Advice to the Research-Challenged

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, bad facts make readers put your article or book down before they finish it. But over-researching wastes time you could spend writing and tempts you to include unnecessary facts that bore the reader. So how do you find the right balance?

Unlike many people, I love doing research. But I learned long ago that inefficient research wastes valuable writing time. Here are some tips on researching that use examples from my experience while writing In God We Trust, which was originally published by FaithWalk Publishing in 2006. The second edition will be coming from KP/PK Publishing at the beginning of October.

1. Have a general idea of where your book is going before you start the research. In God We Trust was my response to the ongoing argument over the meaning of the First Amendment’s religion clauses. As I listened to both conservatives and liberals, I became concerned that neither side was painting an accurate picture for the general public. The object of the book is to give laypersons the information they need to draw their own conclusions about what the First Amendment means and how well the Supreme Court has applied it.

2. Tailor your research to the book’s goal. I could have researched and discussed the country’s religious history from the time the Pilgrims reached Plymouth, but that would have overwhelmed my audience with more information than necessary. So I limited my historical research and discussion to the years during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written and adopted.

3. Select your sources, then use them wisely. Depending on the topic, libraries, books, magazines, interviews, location visits, and the Internet can all be helpful resources. Interviews and location visits wouldn’t have worked for me, but I made extensive use of the Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago and of the Internet. I focused on original sources such as the Supreme Court’s written opinions and James Madison’s notes on the discussions in the House of Representatives. Internet research is tricky unless you use sites you know are reliable. Otherwise, use the Internet as a starting point but confirm your information from more dependable sources.

4. Don’t be afraid to go back and supplement your research. After I started writing, I realized I needed to address two federal laws that Congress adopted in an attempt to overrule the Supreme Court. So I found them and read them.

5. Or to leave some of your research on the cutting room floor. Although I believe in researching efficiently, it is better to err on the side of too much rather than too little. Some of the Supreme Court cases I read were decided on other grounds that avoided the First Amendment issues, so I didn’t use them.

Learn to research efficiently, and you might discover you enjoy it.

__________

The picture shows the Harold Washington Library, where I spent so much of my time.