Sunday, June 29, 2014

JUST WORDS: It’s Hard to Be a Poet

It’s hard to be a poet
in a dull town
with a name like Witch’s Teat, Maine
or Empty Plain, Texas.
Where small minds
look over their own shoulders
and yours.
Or in a city full
of empty bottles
and broken promises.
In a desert spot
where nothing grows
save mean sand and a lizard
which would be the name
of a pub, Mean Sand & A Lizard
if only England
had a desert.
A pub where a poet could create
his uni-
verse.

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, A TWEET REPEAT: I have a sweat-shirt that says “Eschew Obfuscation.” I don’t wear it in public because if I do, I have to explain it… and people still don’t get it. 

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: Donna Tartt, THE GOLDFINCH A really long book that is worth the effort. It should have won a Pulitzer. Oh, it did
           
I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

JUST WORDS: What the Muse Says-a poem

I start most mornings by writing a poem. They are not for publication, just to get the words flowing. I write in a very pretty little 4x6 journal my daughter, Katie, the MG/YA author gave me. [1] There is one simple rule: Only ink, no cross-outs or do-overs. Once it’s on the paper, that’s it.

I find it to be a useful discipline, to learn how to think about the words before I use them, to get it right before I get it write.

Here’s the one from April 16.

At the breaking of the dawn
my muse appears,
riding on a cloud
of caffeine,
a tiny smear of jelly,
raspberry,
on her flawless cheek,
and says, “Write something true
and beautiful.”
Although she has a basket full
of pre-warmed words
and rhymes,
I cannot do both.

John Robert McFarland

1] Katie is on twitter @katiewritesbooks.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: The editor kept telling me to shorten my ms. I finally got it down to one word. “Couldn’t you find a shorter word?” she asked.

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW:  William Kent Krueger, ORDINARY GRACE. A sparkling book that I read with pleasure. It deserves all the plaudits it has received. I have read and enjoyed many of his Cork O’Connor Northern MN mystery books. This one is about the family of a Methodist minister in a small town in MN in the 1960s and is also a murder mystery, but diff from the O’Connor series, and a good examination of theodicy. At first he portrays the ways of the Methodist Church and parsonage so accurately I thought he must be a Methodist PK [Preacher’s Kid], but he made two mistakes toward the end of the book. They don’t affect the story at all, which remains an excellent mystery and an excellent examination of the ways people in a family cope, with life and with one another.
                    
I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

I also write The Periwinkle Chronicles. You need a rather strange sense of humor to appreciate it, but occasionally it is slightly humorous. http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml



Saturday, June 14, 2014

JUST WORDS: In Naming Characters, Remember the Reader

I loved reading Alistair Maclean, especially his WWII books, like Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. [My wife still shudders when I mention the latter because she had just read the scene where the hero is fighting Nazis on top of a cable car when I decided we should ride a cable car up to a remote French village.]

He really knew how to tell a story, but he did not name characters well.

Maclean had a thing for the name “Mary.” He did name one character Marian, which was far as he ever strayed from the name Mary for his female characters. In one book, he named the female characters Mary and Mary Two, and had the gall to claim it was the other characters in the book who did it.

His male characters were all Johnson and Henderson and Peterson and Nelson, et al, ad nauseum. Those names are too much alike. I couldn’t keep them straight.

It is important to keep the reader in mind when naming characters. Will the name help my readers remember who this character is, and differentiate him/her from the others?

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: I have heard that when the first baby laughed the first laugh, it broke into pieces and that is how we got fairies.

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: John Boyne, NEXT OF KIN . Set in London, in 1937, with writing style appropriate to the time. An examination of how integrity does and does not work, and how we delude ourselves about who we are. Well done.
                    
I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml


Monday, June 9, 2014

JUST WORDS: In Amazon v Hachette, Authors Are the Losers

Amazon is the Wal Mart of books. Amazon’s multibillionaire Jeff Bezos is on record as wanting to be the ONLY source of books, and wanting an end to print books, leaving only ebooks. There can be only one outcome for that scenario: Amazon has all the money and power and authors and readers have none.

Absolute power is never good for anyone except those with absolute power.

One of the first things you do when you want to mistreat folks is to depersonalize them. That is why authors are now called “content providers.”

In his interview with Stephen Colbert, Sherman Alexie pointed out that although Hachette is the smallest of the five extant publishing dinosaurs, Hachette and Amazon are both giant corporations. Cheering for Hachette is not like cheering for David against Goliath. [1]

In this contest, Amazon and Hachette are both Goliath. The authors are David. Remember, no one, especially the Philistines, but not even his own people [readers], expected David to win.

When my cancer book came out, the publisher printed two thousand hardbacks and forty thousand paperbacks. Many were purchased by patients, but most were bought by people who loved a cancer patient, to give as a gift. The hardbacks sold out almost immediately. I was surprised. The hardbacks cost more. But people said, “I wanted to give her a hardback rather than a paperback to show I have faith she’ll be around a long time, the way a hardback is.”

There is a large emotional element in book-buying. Price is rarely the most important consideration in buying a book.

So I suggested to the publisher the printing of more hardbacks. “No, the marketing models show that two thousand is enough. [Even though they were already gone!] And when the paperbacks are sold out, the book will go out of print because the marketing models [computers] say that will exhaust the market for the book.” I said, “But the market will never end. That’s unfortunate. I’d like for it to be otherwise, but there are a million new cancer patients every year.” I did not prevail. Authors do not prevail against marketing departments.

I loved the editors and artists I worked with at AndrewsMcMeel, and they loved my book, but they were no match for the marketing department and its computers.

For readers to get what they need, authors must be successful. They must have some power in decision making. Likewise readers.

At any level of the economy, the only “job creators” are customers.

That is why a monopoly like Amazon, already controlling half the book market, is a bad thing. Competition spreads the power and the profits, so that all in the reading and writing community, not just a few, get in on the action.

This is why independent book stores, and boutique publishers like Black Opal Books, are important. They are the Davids, only 5 smooth stones in their bags, but nimble and not burdened by heavy armor. With a Big 5 publisher, the maximum author’s royalty is rarely as high at 10%. With Black Opal Books, the standard royalty is 45%. But book prices are low. Authors and readers are the winners.

Now I’m off to our local book store…

John Robert McFarland

1] I highly recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s David & Goliath, in which we learn why the underdog often has an advantage.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015. http://www.blackopalbooks.com/about-us/about-us

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “Conflict is that which prevents a character from getting what he or she wants.” Stuart Spencer, Playwright’s Guidebook

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

I have a few of each of these. If you would like a signed copy, contact me at jmcfarland1721@charter.net

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml




Sunday, June 8, 2014

JUST WORDS: Sacrificial Interruptions

I once wrote for Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show. It was not a long gig. Almost as soon as I had started, GK decided to end the show and move to Denmark. I don’t think my writing was the reason. It was the Danish woman. I’m sorry for him that the marriage to the Danish woman did not work out, but I’m glad he moved back to the US. Humor, and poetry, and music, and story-telling are all so much better for his contributions to those arts every Saturday evening.

One of his staff members was once asked about how to approach him so as not to interrupt him. “Any time you approach him, you’re interrupting,” she said, “because he is writing in his head ALL the time.”

I think that is true of most writers. We are working on our writing all the time—doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, driving to Mother’s, just staring into space.

When William Faulkner went to Hollywood as a screen writer, his producers complained that he didn’t work hard. “All he does is stare out the window,” they said. He may well have been working harder than anyone there. Kierkegaard would have approved.

So if you speak to a writer, if just to say “Hey,” you are interrupting.

How, as a writer, do you deal with this? I have no answer, except to say that we learn as much through sacrifice as any other way. Sacrificing for the sake of those we love, and who love us, by accepting the interruption to pay attention to them, is better than any mental writing we might do. Everything, to a writer, is material, including the interruptions, including the sacrifices.

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “When will there be good news?” When you read Kate Atkinson.

I tweet as yooper1721
           
I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

JUST WORDS: Follow the Taxi

When the flamboyant actress, Tallulah Bankhead, began to make big bucks in London, she bought a Bentley, which she greatly enjoyed driving. However, she kept getting lost in London’s notoriously confusing street grid. She used Occam’s Razor to solve the problem: she hired a taxi to drive ahead of her as she wheeled along worry-free in her Bentley.

Occam, unlike Rube Goldberg, believed that the simplest solution is usually best.

So, in writing, I hire a taxi. I follow a simple guide through the labyrinthine ways of my writing brain. It’s as simple as ABCD…

A = action. B= background. C= conflict. D=denouement, or, if you don’t like French, decision.

Note above: I start with the action of Tallulah. I give the background of how decisions are made. The conflict is the confusion of the various ways. [With Tallulah the conflict is to give up driving or to keep getting lost.] The decision, the way to resolve the conflict, is to follow a taxi.

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: Doctors don’t know how an anus knows if you are defecating or just passing gas. Apparently anuses are smarter than doctors

I tweet as yooper1721.
           
MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml




Tuesday, June 3, 2014

JUST WORDS: Self-Destructive Characters

Characters in a novel need flaws. Everyone has flaws, even Super Man. Otherwise there is no story, because readers cannot identify with the story, cannot find themselves in it. The flaws create conflict, either within the character or with other characters, and it is conflict that drives the story and creates the interest. As readers, we want to find out how the character will resolve the conflict.

Self-destruction is not the same thing as a flaw. I can stand a little self-destruction in a character, but when characters don’t learn from mistakes, and almost perversely keep on putting themselves and others into jeopardy, they are not interesting, just stupid. I encounter too many of those folks in real life to want to read about them in a story. I shout at them to grow up and get with it. If that doesn’t work, I stop reading about them.

Writing VETS, which will be published by Black Opal Books later this year or in early 2015, I had to tread carefully on that tightrope between flaw and self-destruction. Iraqistan vets Joe and Lonnie and Victoria and Zan are all handicapped, automatic flaws. But is it paranoid self-destruction that they refuse to “come inside the system” of the VA to get help? From what we are learning about the VA right now, their mistrust is just being smart.

John Robert McFarland

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat:

I tweet as yooper1721.
                    
MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml