I spent a transformative hour this morning in the Bewilderness with poet Ellis Elliott. I signed up for her course and spent an hour with a group of other authors as we put the rubber on the road and wrote in response to two poems Ellis shared with us. I struggle with giving my own writing practice the time and respect it deserves, so it took a lot of hemming and hawing for me to allow myself to spend this money on myself/my writing, to register, and think I was even three minutes late, as I found other things that definitely needed to be done right away before I joined the class. During the session, which lasted the perfect amount of time, IMHO, we each came up with two pieces. They were remarkably different, and some (mine, I’m going to say) were less polished than others, which was fine, because polish isn’t the point. What is the point is going barefoot in the grass, or, in my case, the mud. Getting in there and feeling it is the point, and getting it down on the stubbornly Teflon pages I always seem to have… Why won’t my writing stick there? Well’p, it stuck today. And, guess what: no one says a peep about anyone else’s writing, so it is 100% a safe space where you create, and off you go into your own ether, unmolested by critique.
Here’s my suggestion on what we should do, if anyone is interested.
The situation: The Republicans, and the people who vote them into office, currently, have a culture of grievance.
For example: college is too hard, and they want good jobs without it, and they also don’t want others going to college and being successful because then they feel less-than. They don’t want vaccines or masks, and they don’t want us to have them, in case it gives us an edge, and so forth and so on. Right? “We want to be miserable, and we want you to be miserable too.” And “We love eating tacos and Chinese food, but we don’t want them people around us.”
One way to respond to that is this:
1. Women/LGBTQIA folks move to safe(r) places, like California, as much as possible. There are many places where it is affordable in CA still. Don’t count a place out as a safe place to go because you think it is too pricey.
2. Create support groups in as many places as possible, but especiually safe spaces were folks might migrate too.
3. Women/LGBTQIA/immigrants seek remote jobs, as much as possible, to facilitate #1.
4. Women who can hire, hire women/LGBTQIA/immigrants (train them if needed, hire them while they’re still working toward a degree).
5. Women who can become landlords to other women: rent your extra space to a single mom, an immigrant, an lgbtqia person, a foster kid, etc. Create your own safe spaces.
6. Women who are able to mentor other women, do so.
7. Help other women have access to birth control, explain it to them, buy it for them, so that they don’t end up needing an abortion. Think of all females old enough to menstruate (some girls start at age 9) as WOMEN, and, if you know one, give her information early. Give her encouragement too.
8. Avoid grievance yourself. Not that we don’t deserve it, but make a conscious effort to be the people of “This isn’t what I like? I’ll try to fix it,” rather than to complain about it. Attempting to fix things is much more empowering. Use rage for good. Right? Because we’re not going to change the minds of JDRump voters, and the Republicans can do almost anything they want to do now. We can’t make policy or change the courts, and they reject our beliefs of education, freedom, openness to different peoples and cultures, etc.
So we do things for us, anyway, in spite of them, in places where we can do them, and we help other marginalized people to freedom and safety and gainful employment and a decent place to live, as much as we can. Together we can help each other, and make the unlivable, livable.
Very excited to let you know that I had the opportunity to interview with the amazing Polly Campbell on her podcast, Simply Write. Polly is a fantastic human, kind, funny, and I had a lovely time talking with her.
I met Ben Talbot when he somehow found me online, and asked me to edit a short story he had written. I read the short story, and it was, well, you know, my kinda fiction. It was funny, sly, and odd in the best possible way. It took me by surprise, and, as a person who has read thousands of books and probably hundreds of manuscripts, it is hard to write something that presents to me as fresh. Ben’s story did all of that.
Ben writes a blog.
When an author works with me I give advice on the whole “I’m an author” thing, and my advice is always that each author needs a website (the author’s personal shelf in the bookstore that is the WWW, where readers can find him/her/they), and then to communicate, even if it feels like whispering into the void, so people know about you, have a chance to get to know you, as an author and a human. Most folks don’t take my advice, and even I have trouble with my own advice, as I just don’t get the time I need to attend to my own blog, but Ben took my advice and is blogging… daily.
Ben already had a website with a blog, but he has started making blogging a very regular part of his life, and that takes some stamina and commitment to one’s writing career. Ben has both.
Ben is also a person with a unique way of seeing the world in general, and I think that is his literary “blessing,” if you will, that makes his fiction so compelling when you read it. You can get a taste for it in his blog. If you wonder what the elusive thing called “talent” is, I guess I would say, loosely, it is the ability to do what other people can do (right? Like even I can play a little piano…) but to do it in an either especially skilled way, or with a unique interpretation, or a different way of “playing the instrument” that results in surprising and new ways of…. seeing, hearing, etc.
Ben is releasing his first book in 2025, a collection of short stories that function as a novel, much like the classic, WINESBURG, OHIO, by Sherwood Anderson, that is actually labeled as a short story cycle. Ben’s collection is called Periscope City: Where the Lonely Go to Live Alone. Reading Ben’s blog will give you an idea of his style, and keep you up to date on when his book releases. It’s under construction with us now, and I’ll be certain to post when the pre-order is available.
I especially like today’s post by Ben. I left a comment on it that it’s like poetry, of a sort. It’s not so much what Ben has to say, as it is the way in which he says it.
Over two million books get released each year. The first step to being read, which the blogging has an opportunity to help with, is having people know that your book even exists. The second step is, once you get them reading, keep them hooked. And that’s where Ben’s writing shines, at least is does for me, a reader who has been bored way more often than hooked, by books sent my way to edit.
So take a look at today’s blog entry from Ben, and see if you see what I see in his style that I find so intriguing.
And if you’re working on your own book, ask yourself if you are willing to out yourself out there, over and over, whispering into the void, to try to find your readers.
Dianne Pearce Writes 