In the Summertime

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine


Down here in the South, most students have just wrapped up their school year and begun their summer vacation.  Up North, many kids are still hitting the books, and will continue to well into June.  Officially, the calendar says the first day of Summer is June 20th.  But the days have been hot and summery enough lately that many Southerners consider Memorial Day Weekend the start of the sunny solstice.

"Summertime and the livin' is easy," said George and Ira Gershwin (actually, it was DuBose Heyward, the author of Porgy, the novel on which Porgy and Bess was based).  Regardless of whether your daddy's rich and your mama's good lookin', there are plenty of folks who dispute Porgy's sentiment because Summer often means juggling even more things than usual.

It's not necessarily bad stuff, just more stuff.  We tend to fill our summers with as much as we can, hoping to make up for all the months when we've worked so hard, feeling like this is the only chance we have to do the things we don't have enough time for. 

Which brings me to the question, did you make any writing resolutions back in January?  Did you pledge to write a page a day?  500 words a day?  More importantly, have you been successful?  I've pondered that very subject with a number of authors lately, and, like me, most of them were faithful to their goals for at least a week.

As honorable people, we make it a point to live up to the promises we make to others.  Commitments we make to ourselves, however, are too easy to break, since no one's around to punish us.  But don't we do just that, with feelings of disappointment in ourselves, regret, and lost opportunity?  If we had started on that novel in January and kept at it for the last 150 days, even a 500-word goal would mean 75,000 words under our belt today.

Stephen King says he writes 2,000 words a day.  Julia Cameron shoots for three pages, roughly 750 words.  Your own mileage will vary, as it should, and you might do well to start small.  On those days when you surprise yourself because you've written 3,000 words, you'll know you've gotten back your groove.

To those authors who manage to write two or more books a year, I'm preaching to the choir.  I don't know how you do it, but I love you for being a source of hope for the rest of us.

500 words a day is an easy task when you're having fun.  As a matter of fact, this blog post is exactly 500 words long. 

As you enthusiastically make your other plans for the summer, I encourage you to include a recommitment to (or the initiation of) your writing resolution. Remember how important writing is to you and how good it would feel to get your book written by December 31st.

Then your resolution for 2017 could be all about your next book.

A Writer's Resolutions

By Lily Mastron

I love making lists, so I put quite a bit of effort into my New Year's resolutions. Lists are my thing. I love the satisfaction of crossing goals off one at a time. I may not make all my goals, but at the end of the year I can look back and see how far I've come. 

Resolutions don't have to be complicated lists of "pie in the sky" ideas. Nothing has to be earth-shattering about them. The key really is to keep it simple. Those outrageous tasks look great on paper until you actually try to tackle them. A long and difficult list tends to make people overwhelmed. It does not make for a productive year. 

I like to organize my New Year's resolutions so that all my little resolutions add up to a larger picture. This allows you to accomplish a large task, but you don't really notice until you've already finished. 

Consider making a goal of writing just 15 minutes everyday. Each day add to the writing of the day before, and in two weeks, you'll have a short story! This is so much less overwhelming than staring at the paper thinking, "I have to write a whole short story today."

Once you have the short story, keep adding each day. Take your characters on an adventure. Send them to another country. Make them fall in love. The most important thing is to keep writing and exercising that portion of your brain. By the end of the year, you could have a full novel, maybe even a series of novels.

When making writer's resolutions, remember to keep it simple. Start by writing a few minutes at a time, and keep adding to the plot. Eventually, the writing will add up to a bigger picture resolution, without leaving you overwhelmed and frustrated.

Going Places

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine
 

A few years ago I accepted the occasional invitation to be a guest reader at elementary schools for Community Reader Day. Upon arriving, the teacher would have a book already picked out for me to read to the kids.  I was surprised at how often the book of choice was Dr Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go!

It was always a pleasant surprise, since I enjoyed revisiting this pint-sized pep talk by the good doctor, and the kids seemed to get a lot out of it too.

I was even more pleasantly surprised to learn recently that Oh, the Places You'll Go! is popular not just with grade school children, but is a perennial favorite of adults who give it as graduation gifts, wedding gifts, and to others embarking on any new path of life.

In this classic tale, the protagonist (you) get to take a symbolic trip into your future, a land of unfamiliar trials and triumphs and ups and downs, always with the assurance that you will emerge the conquering hero.  In the encouraging words of Dr Seuss, "And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed!"

The most famous and powerful scene is one in which you come to a land called The Waiting Place, where everyone is just ... waiting.  Waiting for the mail, or for Friday to come, or for a yes or a no, etc.  In this city of stagnation, nothing ever happens because nobody takes action.

As we look back at the past year, how many of us can say that we didn't waste time in that Waiting Place?  Did we stay true to our commitment to write every day?  Did we keep regular submissions going out?  Did we stay connected through writers groups and conferences?  Or did we put off our writing goals, waiting for conditions to be just right (which of course they never are)?

With many of us coming up with new year's resolutions this week, I can't think of a better premise than to promise ourselves that we will not be victims of self-imposed inertia.  Action does speak louder than words, and when we writers combine action with words, great things happen.

Southern Writers will do our best to help keep you motivated in 2014, beginning with this week's new January/February issue.  Bestselling authors like p.m. terrell, Bob Mayer and Haywood Smith are just a few examples of those who make their writing dreams reality by perfecting their craft, and they gladly share their secrets with you.

This year we'll also be introducing an exciting new way for authors to enhance their online presence and attract new readers. Like Mic Nite, Must Read TV and Take Five, this new promotional tool will be free to all subscribers.

Each of us at Southern Writers wish you a new year filled with joy and success. Together we'll make great things happen in 2014. And that is 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed!

A Writer's Bucket List

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

The term "bucket list" has become so much a part of our lexicon that it's hard to believe it didn't exist before the 2007 movie The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. In just five years, most everyone has come to know that a bucket list is a personal wish list of things one wishes to do before one "kicks the bucket".

I think the reason the phrase has caught on so quickly and indelibly is because everyone has a deeply personal wish list, whether they've taken the time to write theirs out yet or not.

Examples from the film include "Witness something truly majestic" and "Laugh until I cry".  Goals such as these are not mere short-term achievements like clearing out your inbox.  They aspire to the kind of high-caliber life experience that fulfills on a soul level.

As a writer, it's a given that some of the goals capable of enriching us to that degree will involve writing.  In 2013, as we contemplate New Year's resolutions, why not include something "bucket list worthy" in your intentions? 

Where to start? A good place to begin might be through two of the main questions posed in the movie:

Did you find joy in your life? 
Has your life brought joy to others?

When we narrow these into a writing focus, they might well become:

What will bring me joy in my writing?
How can my writing bring joy to others?

A good bucket list item reflects the motivation behind it. Instead of "Write a novel", make it "Write a novel that honors my ancestors" or "Write a book that helps kids who are afraid of going to the doctor". One of the best things about a bucket list is that it's uniquely you, and exclusively yours to fulfill.  Good luck.

With Christmas just a week away, and 2013 a mere two weeks from today, I wish you glad tidings and the opportunity to slow down over the holidays to give some inspired thought to the writing you'd like to accomplish this coming year. May you write something capable of changing someone's life, and your own.

You might even come up with a new catch phrase, like "bucket list".