Writing or When Was the Last Time I Cried?

Sometimes inspiration is not enough. Motivation is not enough. Sometimes I need a cat to gently nudge me into action. Okay, wrong adverb. Wrong verb. Wrong cat. There's nothing gentle about Kočka. He bites.

In this case, the inspiration comes from Facebook. One of those questionnaires. You know --

     "It's fun to learn odd little things about my friends.
          1. What’s your middle name:
          2. Last time you cried?
          3. What's your favorite pizza?"
        etc.

As a writer, these random questions can start me thinking. And, rather like an artist too poor to hire a model, I can explore my own reactions to stories. Stories that my friends tell me. Stories I find in the media.

My Michigan cousin Gary's questionnaire on Facebook reminded me of my own tearful responses to two recent stories in the media.

The first was a National Public Radio piece on Flint, Michigan.

A little background:  A series of changes to the water supply led to a federal state of emergency declaration in January 2016. Because of lead contamination, Flint residents were instructed to use only bottled or filtered water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing. The water is now declared to be safe, but residents are instructed to continue to use bottled or filtered water until all the lead pipes have been replaced, which is expected no sooner than 2020.

The NPR story aired on October 26. The reporter Ari Shapiro was revisiting Flint citizens to find out how their lives are now, almost three years after the emergency declaration. The last interview of the piece was a woman, who along with her husband is raising two boys. Her name is Jeneyah McDonald.

During the interview her 9-year-old son Justice speaks up, "Why does the pipes break in Flint and in the others they don't?"

The reporter explains that Ms. McDonald goes into a long, fact-based explanation about the state government's decision to change water sources in an effort to save money. Then the reporter says that later when the children are not in the room, she says that question from her son really threw her.

     "MCDONALD: It's his first time asking me that ever. And that kind of - that was a lot.

      SHAPIRO: Is it hard to know what to say?

      MCDONALD: It is. It is, and especially trying to contain my emotions 'cause I don't, you know,
      just want to break down in front of them 'cause they're not understanding, why is she so upset?

      SHAPIRO: What's the answer that you would have given to that question if it had not been asked        by one of your children?

      MCDONALD: I probably - honestly, I feel like it was done on purpose because Flint is
      predominantly black. And who cares? I feel like it's pretty much where the nation is right now.
      You see young black boys getting murdered by white police officers all across the nation. So
      what do I think as a black mother raising black boys? How do I think a government that's
      predominantly white - how do they - they showed me what they feel about me and us here in
      Flint. They showed us.

      Everyone want to say racism is not alive. It is so alive, and it's so sad. And I - you know, it's
      hard not to teach your kids about it without sounding racist. You know what I mean? I don't
      want my children to hate anyone because of the color of their skin. I just - I want to be careful
      when I'm answering things for him because I want him to be an adult that's able to change the
      world."

And what made me cry? It breaks my heart that this is happening in America today. That America must be taught by this mother, who has been on the receiving end of racism, saying "I don't want my children to hate anyone because of the color of their skin."

Not all my tears come from a broken heart. Sometimes I cry when I see something so beautiful or hear a story that opens my heart.

With all the ugly campaign advertising on commercial TV recently, I've found refuge in Public Television, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and TED Talks.

Four days ago, I listened to Andrew Solomon giving a TED talk about "How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are."

Solomon is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and a past President of PEN American Center. His book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was included in The Times list of one hundred best books of the decade. Solomon's Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity was honored with the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.

His work has been mostly about how people deal successfully with adversity. Parents with handicapped children, people living in the midst of war, people surviving their own disabilities. In this twenty minute TED talk he describes forging meaning and building identity from his own life's adversities.

Solomon tells a story about Harvey Milk. You may remember Milk was the gay activist elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977 and then assassinated a year later along with Mayer George Moscone in San Francisco's City Hall.

Solomon says when Milk was asked by a young gay man what he could do to help the gay movement, Milk said "Go out and tell someone. There's always somebody who wants to confiscate our humanity and there are always stories that restore it. If we live out loud, we can trounce the hatred and expand everyone's lives."

Solomon ends his talk exhorting us to "Forge meaning. Build identity. And then invite the world to share your joy."

My tears were from my heart opening. For the assurance that there are people like that out there.

This is what writing is for. To tell stories. To connect people to other people so they can share stories.  Just like the song says, "Put a little love in your heart. And the world will be a better place for you and me."



For the NPR story click Flint. To watch this TED talk click Solomon

Facebook and Google -- Opinion

image from newsmobile.in

Yesterday was Day F in the 2018 A to Z Blogging Challenge and today was G.

With all the news these days about loss of privacy and security because of our presence on social media F and G were easy--Facebook and Google.

Am I willing to give up Facebook to protect my security. To avoid being manipulated by advertisers and political operatives?

Apparently, I started on Facebook in July of 2008. I'm sure there's a way to find out exactly, but I couldn't figure it out. It's not really that important exactly when. Why is more important.

I was taking cake decorating classes and the instructor said it was easier to share photos with Facebook. She posted pictures of the cakes she did and I wanted to see them. Soooo....

My daughter Grace, a teen at the time helped her internet-illiterate mother open a Facebook account so I could see my cake decorating instructor's pictures of beautiful cakes.

In less than a week I received a friend request from a person I went to high school with. She hadn't said ten words together to me in high school so I couldn't imagine why she wanted to be my friend anywhere, much less on Facebook which could come into my home willy-nilly via my computer screen.

I didn't know if she would be notified if I rejected her friend request. And what would I do when I saw her in Walmart? Our town was small enough that that was possible. Would she be mad at me? Confront me? Vandalize my car? Well, no she wouldn't do that! So I accepted the friend request to avoid any possible unpleasantness.

Then a couple days later that same woman's ex-husband sent me a friend request. He'd never been particularly friendly to me in high school either and I surely didn't want to get in the middle of those two.

The only thing to do was to get Grace to cancel my Facebook account. Cake decorating be damned.

Grace, being slightly more rational than I, reassured me that I could just unfriend her and ignore his request. And that they wouldn't get any ugly public announcements that I had rejected them. She said that they, in fact, would probably not notice and if they did they'd just chalk it up to my flaky inability to hit the right keys and not take it personally.

She talked me into keeping my Facebook account. And I am so glad I did.

My daughter-in-law posts photos and videos of my grandchildren's activities. They live hundreds of miles away from me, and I could easily feel left out of their lives. But, just like tonight, one of my grand's team won first in their state Destination Imagination competition and will be going to Globals next month. Within minutes I could see for myself through the photos and video she posted. Color me included and proud of those beautiful, brilliant, creative young people.

Plus -- my brother lives more than a thousand miles from me. We talk on the phone, but the photos he shares via Facebook make me not feel so far away from him.

And my cousins are scattered hither and yon. We grew up together and were almost as close as siblings but I don't know their children or their spouses or their children's children and spouses very well at all. Facebook has helped me get better acquainted with them.

And my husband's family. Again we live very far away from them, but we're getting to watch the littles grow and keep up with the grown-ups.

My daughter and her partners are our only family close at hand and that will end this coming August when she marries and moves to Houston for grad school. We'll still talk on the phone, but I'm sure I'll depend on Facebook to ease the separation.

And Google? Well I'm sure Google also sells my info to businesses for all kinds of purposes. Like I heard a commentator comment "If it's a free service, my information is a commodity."

I'm a writer and like all writers I need access to information -- all kinds of information. As much as I love my local library, and as extensive as the collection is, it is still limited compared to the world's information. It is still a drive across town while my laptop sits on my desk and my cell phone is in my pocket.

I must admit, that I feel a little uncomfortable when ads for hotels in Washington, D.C., pop up because I've been researching online for an upcoming trip. Or there are ads for dining places that show up because I'm using GPS to find my way. But then access to these kinds of information when I might want to use it is very convenient.

So what can I do? I can take standard precautions -- I keep my antivirus software up to date; change my passwords regularly; turn off the location on my devices when it's not necessary for what I'm doing; avoid apps that request access to my Facebook friends and my email contacts and hope they do the same for me.

I research information for veracity. I even looked up the website that was the source for the image I used at the top of this post. It's a news agency in India.

I don't open forwarded emails. I don't open emails from sources I don't know.

And when I do mess up one of my devices as I have and probably will again, I take it to someone who knows how to clean up after me. And yes I do backups regularly.

I know, the world is a dangerous place. There are bad actors out there who will search out and take advantage of weaknesses. But I will not be cut off from the world. Or the people I care about.

So I'll keep using Facebook and Google.

My Life According to The Rolling Stones

Sometimes Facebook inspires me. Grace Wagner posted the following:  "Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name.)"

If you decide to do this, too, I suggest picking an artist or band that's been around for a while and covered everybody in the business. Plus choose someone who just makes you happy.

I'm not including all the questions. Lord knows I've spent most of the morning on YouTube revisiting these songs. I've put links to the songs I do name here just in case you want to spend too much time with Mick and the Boys. So here goes.

Pick your Artist:  Well, duh – The Rolling Stones
The closest I've ever come to them was many years ago, driving west on US 66, yeah the famous one. It was late at night and The Stones were playing in Norman, Oklahoma, less than 50 miles south of the little town I was driving through. I knew they were there and I was listening to them on the car radio, just cruisin' and groovin'. And then, and then, there were flashing lights in my rear view mirror. Yep, I was being stopped by the only police officer on duty in that very small town. Speeding.

Back to the Facebook questionnaire.

Are you a male or female:  Honky Tonk Women
This video is from 1969 when Charlie Watts still had dark hair.

Describe yourself:  She’s a Rainbow

How do you feel:  Just My Imagination

Describe where you currently live:  Under the Boardwalk

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:  Down the Road a Piece
This video is from 1965 on the TV show Shindig! back when Mick and I were just babies. This is what we watched instead of American Ninja Warriors. Shindig! was probably lower budget, but then it was in black and white.

Your favorite form of transportation:  Driving Too Fast
Another one of those rockin' songs that could get me in trouble on the highway. That's why they call that electronic device in a motor vehicle cruise control and I should always use it.

Your best friend is:  Midnight Rambler
OMG! What Mick lacks in rhythm, he makes up for playing the harmonica. And Charlie Watts with white hair. Can't sit still while this is goin’ on?

What's the weather like:  Gimme Shelter
Reminds me of the Whoopi Goldberg movie, Jumpin' Jack Flash -- I can't understand what he's saying on this one either. But, who cares, it's rock n roll!

Favorite time of day:  The Moon Is Up

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:  Out of Control
What can I say? Keith has finally gotten as old as he's always looked, and Mick and I aren't babies any more.

What is life to you:  Silver Train

Your relationship:  You Got Me Rocking
My husband keeps me rocking and I don't mean in a chair.

Your fear:  Ventilator Blues

What is the best advice you have to give:  You Can’t Always Get What You Want (but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.)

Last year this song was in the news because the 'rump campaign used it. The Stones to tweeted “The Rolling Stones do not endorse Donald Trump. 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ was used without the band’s permission.” In this instance I didn't get what I wanted or needed. I just hope we all survive it.

Where I Was 3 Years Ago Today -- Nonfiction

In 2013 my daughter Grace invited me to write as a guest on her blog Sin and Inconvenience. This is what she published Tuesday, August 27, 2013, three years ago today. Facebook reminded me. And, yes, the novel in question is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle additions -- Murder on Ceres.

My first novel, first draft almost finished. How did I get here? If I were Michener I would start--In the beginning, God. This blog post begins only a little later than that, but well before cell phones and the internet.

I used to write and submit poetry for publication. Acceptance letters along with the standard thank you and a promise of two copies of the issue in which my poem would be published thrilled me. But in those pre-cell-phone days, it cost a fortune to call all my friends and relatives long distance to tell them the good news. Not to mention the expense of buying additional copies of said issue and postage to send those copies to friends and relatives.

I’ve worked for a small-town daily newspaper. I’ve seen my by-line and my name in cutlines enough. But the idea of a book with my name on the spine sitting on a shelf in the Edmond Public Library seems much too grand. It shimmers above me in the night sky, brighter than the moon. A dream, a desire, a star too brilliant to look at and too distant to touch.

Knowing that a novel was beyond me, my book started out as a short story. I’ve written short fiction. I took a course in college. I understand how it works. So all I needed was a prompt of some kind and a deadline. My daughter provided the prompt and the deadline allowing me to choose the genre.

I ignored her prompt and chose murder and science fiction. And I went to work.

The deadline came and went, and the work proved to be as undisciplined as I. The story would not limit itself to short fiction. So I reconsidered the situation and decided to do a little book, a murder mystery that takes place on a colony in low orbit around the asteroid Ceres. But I needed help.

I happened to attend a monthly meeting of Oklahoma City Writers, Inc. at which William Bernhardt was doing a two hour presentation on novel writing. He talked about outlining. An instant turnoff since my research paper days too many years ago. But he made sense and showed how to plan the structure of my book. He was talking about the actual nuts and bolts of constructing a book-length story.

Three years plus several months, three of Bill Bernhardt’s intensive writing workshops plus a conference here and there, and I am coming around the last turn on this full-length murder mystery science fiction novel.

Bill said write every day. Four hours a day. If I had done that the book would have been finished long ago. Did I mention that I’m undisciplined? I heard somewhere that Stephen King says to write four hours a day and read eight hours a day. Or was that Mark Twain?  The eight hours reading I could go for, whoever said it.

There was a recommendation that I join a writers’ critique group for support and critical input. But that meant I had to also give support and critical input. I left every one of those meetings feeling bad because I had said harsh things to people as earnest about their writing as I was about mine. Tact is not one of my virtues. And have I mentioned lack of self-control?

Then somewhere else the advice was to just write it all the way through, do not do any editing until the story is complete. What a good rule. But mine is a murder mystery. As I wrote I discovered things that needed to appear earlier in the story. That required a rewrite of a scene. Editing? Even sitting down to begin the next writing session without looking at what I’d done the day before was impossible. Reading the work from the day before required minor or major changes. Did I mention that I tend to break rules even when I impose them myself?

What have I learned these past three-hundred, ten pages, and counting? Somewhere I heard that the definition of the verb to persevere is to begin again, and again, and again. No matter how many times my discipline fails, my control is lost, and my rules are broken, I can begin right now where I am. My book will be written and I will be launched into the night sky to find my name on the spine of a book in the Edmond Public Library. Just gotta finish this book first.

Claudia Wagner

I was born in Oklahoma. I learned to read under my mother’s ironing board. I learned the importance of stories around the dinner table during holidays and in the cellar during storms. I started writing to entertain my classmates. I continued to write because classes or work required it. Sometimes I wrote to understand my life. I have been office help, a welfare case worker, a fast foods manager, and a roustabout in the oil patch. I have also worked for the USDA. I’ve managed a veterinary clinic, helped care for my dying mother, and been a Page at the Edmond Library. I am a woman, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I believe the future of humanity is as unlimited as the Universe. And I believe that we as a species are imaginative enough and brave enough to move beyond the Earth into that Universe.

U is for Ukraine

I didn’t want to take up blogging. Facebook was traumatic enough for me. When I first started with it, I felt insecure. No. Worse than that. Threatened. I felt like I was giving access to my house, my private safe place, ultimately to me, to people I knew but would never have invited into my home. More than that. And worse. Hundreds of thousands, a world full of people I didn’t even know.

With a little help from my tech savvy daughter I learned enough about Facebook to feel like I have some control over who has access to me.

Then I wrote a book.

And people who knew what they were talking about said I would have to use ‘platforms’ to sell my book. To my horror, they meant Blogging and Twitter and Instagram and goodness knows what other invasive technology. All I wanted to do was write a book.

And have people read the book and enjoy it. To do that a writer has to sell the book.

I used to be a reporter for a small town daily newspaper so the concept of having strangers read what I write felt familiar to me. And I wouldn’t have to talk about me like posting my status on Facebook. I could maintain some sense of privacy.

I could write about writing and reading and other people’s books and movies and current events and . . . . Well you see. And it would feel quite normal that strangers would read my blog. It goes right along with people reading my book. I don’t need to know them either.

So . . . .

I chose Google’s blogspot to blog. Not because I knew what I was doing when I made the choice. I didn’t weigh my options because I didn’t know what options were available. I was using Google as my browser, my default research librarian, my street navigator. You get the picture.

Blogspot displays a curious set of information. (Actually a whole bunch of enigmatic sets of information that I have not yet had the courage to explore.) It’s “Stats.”

Stats includes something identified as Pageviews by Countries. I’m still not sure exactly what constitutes a pageview, but I understand the concept of countries. And one of the countries that began to show up on a somewhat regular basis was the Ukraine.

Of course I can’t tell if the person or persons are Ukrainian who are interested in practicing their English by reading a basically anonymous American’s writings. He, she, or they could be Americans currently in the Ukraine and missing home. They could be terrorist spies redirecting their internet connections through the UK to Germany to Japan to Indonesia and finally through the Ukraine.

But somehow, he or she or they felt like real people to me. I know nothing about the geography of the Ukraine, so it wouldn’t mean anything to know which city they live in. But I do know that the Ukraine is a battle ground where competing governments are putting people in harm’s way. And when those ‘stats’ from the Ukraine stopped showing up I worried.

I worried that they were ill and unable to surf the internet. Or that they were without power and I knew it could be cold there in winter. Or that the war had come to them.

I tried to remind myself that they could be on vacation in some nice warm country with good wine and rich food. Or that their own writing was going so well that they hadn’t time to bother with mine. Or worse scenario for me, that they’d gotten bored with what I was writing.

The good news is that they’re back.

Hello Ukraine. I’m so glad to see you.

Self-Publishing and Platforms for Sales

My Website Home Page

Remember me whining about pitching my book to an agent? I complained about being required to sell my book (Murder on Ceres – wink, wink) and really I had to sell myself, too. So the agent would know there was a future for both of us. And I hated it.

So I decided to self-publish. What was I thinking? How am I going to get my book out there for readers to read? Well, salesmanship of course.

A publisher (not a big New York City publisher, but one who has several years in the business) asked me during my pitch two years ago what platforms I was on. I hadn’t any idea what he was talking about. So I sat in on the panel discussion on platforms at that writers’ conference. He meant Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Pinterest, websites, etc. ad infinitum.

Well I’ve been on Facebook for several years. It was a painful and frightening experience to be on Facebook. But now I like it, except when someone with whom I am not personal friends wants to friend me. Just typing ‘friend’ as an active verb makes me cringe. I have 34 friends and only one is someone I’ve never met. Most of my ‘friends’ are relatives and the one I don’t know is a close relative of a relative.

In person, I am friendly. On the internet, not so much. Maybe, not at all. But I’m trying.

Blogging is pretty easy for me. I used to work for a small-town daily newspaper, so I’m used to people I don’t know reading what I write. There was always a certain anonymity with that. People who didn’t know me personally recognized my name, but not my face.

My editor and graphic designer daughter Grace is helping me become active on these platforms. Trusting my computer skills, she gave me a website that helps you set up your own website, SquareSpace.com. I don’t know if the instructions on that website are not simple enough for me or if my antipathy to the project was so strong that I couldn’t allow myself to understand them. Whatever.

I made an appointment for her to come to my house and ‘help’ me do it. We sat side by side with our laptops – me playing solitaire, her building the website and periodically asking me questions. Not how-to questions, you understand, but what-do-you-want and is-this-what-you-had-in-mind questions.

There were things she learned not to ask me. She showed me umpteen fonts and at each one I sounded like A Christmas Story Ralphie’s little brother. “Oooo. I like this one.”

What was Ralphie’s little brother’s name? I know, I could Google it. Or ask Grace.

She suggested posting updates and book reviews on Google. That didn’t sound so bad.

Then she set me up a Twitter account. I wrote down what I thought she said its address is in my little black book. I tried this morning to get on my Twitter or whatever it is you do with your twitter and couldn’t. I went to my website to access my Twitter and this is what I got.

“Twitter has automated systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk. Unfortunately, it looks like this account, @CWeberWagner, got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake.
We apologize for this inconvenience. It’s possible your account posted an update that appeared to be spam, so please be careful what you tweet or retweet. You might also want to review our help page for hacked or compromised accounts://support.twitter.com/entries/68916. You will need to change your behavior to continue using Twitter. Repeat violations of the Twitter Rules may result in the permanent suspension of your account.”

But my only tweet was “Check out my new webpage at http://cweberwagner.com , where #scifi and #murdermystery combines! #newauthor”

A bit of research and multiple attempts to do as they directed and I am back on my Twitter. That sounds so much more fun than it feels.

I promise to change my behavior and never, never repeat my violations. Cross my heart.

Then there are the business cards to decide on. And I’ll have to have a new picture for the business cards and to update my profiles. And a new haircut for the picture.

And I haven’t decided matte or glossy for the cover.

I’m feeling pressured.

Maybe I should tweet that.