Author Encounter

You’ll never know who you'll end up meeting when carrying out your day-to-day activities.

The other afternoon, on my way back from the city, I hopped on my train, found a quiet seat away from the crowd and whipped out my WIP for the journey home. I write my WIP in longhand during my commutes to and from the city, and transcribe it to my netbook when I get home. This time, I only had my iPod with me. I had forgotten to put my paper and pen in my bag the night before.

I sat in my seat, minding my own business, pecking away at my manuscript, when the passenger next to me, who looked no older than twenty, pulled out some paper and a pen. She also began to write. I chuckled to myself, feeling familiar, knowing she had the same idea I had.

Anyway, an hour later, a few minutes before my stop, I took a chance and asked her the question pressing against my brain the whole ride, "Are you a writer?"

All of a sudden, I felt like an idiot. I thought to myself, of course she’s a writer, you nitwit, can’t you see she's writing?

But, hold on, it doesn’t end there. Nooooo, no. I felt more of an idiot when she answers, as serious as a skydiver over a gator farm in the Everglades, "Yes, I am."

Now, before your thoughts drift to the Nether Reaches of Pickup-ville (tsk-tsk, Jack), I must admit something—just so you know I'm an honorable man—I've never met a writer or author before. Yep. You heard me right. Never. And I'm not in the habit of starting conversations with strangers either (although I’m very good at it).

So you can imagine my nervousness and my subsequent dialog thereafter. "Are you on Twitter?" I blurted out. No discretion whatsoever. I didn't even ask about her WIP, her project genre or any of the obvious questions. Nope. I went straightaway for the pot of gold, "Are you on Twitter?"

Total fool.

She hesitated a second then trusted her instincts, "Yeah, I am."

She smiled at my fumbling.

I then rambled some incoherent babblings of a buffoon in the making, "I write my manuscript in longhand too. When I get home, I transcribe it to my netbook. Is that what you do? It looks like you do that too. You do, don’t you? It looks like it. It is, isn’t it?"

Complete basket case.

She said, "Mmm-hmm, only because I didn't bring my notebook with me today."

She smiled. I smiled back.

By that time, my stop had arrived, of which she probably thanked God it was the end of the chat. I kid you not. My first author encounter and I act like a total goofball, high on Trippy Lube Oil fumes.

GOSH!

Now, I’m curious. Ever meet a fellow author this way? If not, when was your first author encounter? And—am I the only derfwad who handled their first like a dorky schoolboy?

Uh-hu, it’s okay to laugh at me, ‘cause if you can’t laugh at me, who can you laugh at?

~~~~~~~
This Week's Kudos – I would like to thank the following folks for their most awesome blogs!

• Sarah Kernochan – At Home With a Ghost: A restless writer of fiction, film, and music. Scripted such films as 9 and ½ Weeks, Sommersby, Impromptu (personal favorite), What Lies Beneath, and All I Wanna Do which she also directed. Both documentaries, Marjoe and Thoth, won Academy Awards.
  
  
• Alyson Peterson – Dirty Green Jello: An artist/cook/musician/writer/mom who has way too much time on her hands... obviously. Write and paint like a crazy woman, usually when she should be cooking dinner. She burn things a lot.
  
  
• Melanie Conklin – Flash Fiction on SatSunTails: A NY based writer and designer. Relentlessly creative and fundamentally optimistic. Currently, capturing the magic of The Great Exhibition of 1851 in Clockmakers, a story of dreams, inventions, and escape.

Finally, I leave you my quote for the week. These are the words that sum up everything I've learned or experienced these past seven days.

"Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin’ ready to hang himself."

~George Carlin

Randomness

I have a few things I want to cover this week, so let’s get started. I’m writing whatever comes to mind. No editing. You’re going to get a good look into my head today—pretty scary, huh?

The first order of business – This week marks the one-year anniversary of my blog. Whoo-hoo! Yep. I can’t believe it either. When I look back at all the posts I’ve written, I can only say how grateful I am to have learned so much from my followers. You all have made my blogging experience unique. Thank you.

Next up – Twitter. I blew past 6,000 followers this week. Woot! How can I express how I’m feeling at the moment? It’s been crazy, Crazy, CRAZY!!! I’m gaining about 100 followers a week. Like I said, cr-aaazy. I bow to those of you who have stuck with me through my virtual barrage of “meet my new follower” tweets. Mercifully, I've moved them to late at night, spacing them out so as not take over everyone's Home feed.

What else? Oh, yes…

Kudos! – I would like to thank the following folks for their most awesome blogs. I’ve learned something from each one of these posts and wanted to share that with you. I’ve left comments to the authors to capture my first reactions.

• Kayleigh Grian – Seasons Change: “As the seasons change, everything becomes strange. Nothing stays the same, but who is there to blame? We can blame it on me, but soon even you'll see. We can blame it on you, but you know it isn't true.”
  
  
• Leigh Covington – K is for Karma: “It’s about love, it’s about compassion, it’s about kindness and faith. It has nothing to do with luck. You get what you give, so give good.”
  
  
• Jennifer Lane – Psychoanalyze Your Characters: “As a psychologist/author (or psycho author), I'm starting a series of posts today about using psychological diagnosis to assist the development of your characters. The typical layperson is probably more familiar with diagnoses like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, etc.—what mental health professionals refer to as Axis I disorders. However, I'll focus on personality disorders, known as Axis II.”
  
  
• Jennifer Lane – P is for Psychology: “It starts off with a post about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, one of my favorites and most difficult to treat. I created a character in my newly released Young Adult Sports Romance STREAMLINE based on this diagnosis.”

Finally, let me leave you with this quote. It’s a big lesson I learned this week when trying to fix something that refuses to mend.

"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them." ~Maya Angelou

Just Try It!

Since I had a number of things on-the-go this week (my guest post over at Juliana Brandt’s blog, my interview with Darhk Portal, etc.), I thought I'd give y’all something easy to digest for today.

Calvin, Calvin, Calvin. That little boy has given me so much pleasure in life, I can’t explain.

As writers, we’re in a constant battle to overcome many obstacles in our journey. Obstacles such as: Writer’s block, writer’s fatigue, finding an agent, keeping an agent, finding a publishing company, keeping a publishing company, dealing with bad reviews, dealing with no reviews, finding the time to write, editing, revising, rejections, writing a query letter, writing a synopsis, coming up with ideas, coming up with too many ideas, managing time, dealing with family, dealing with friends, computers, notebooks, laptops, printers, and putting a smile on our face. Well…I slipped that last one in as a joke. To be blunt, if we’re writing and not smiling then what are we doing?

Despite Calvin’s reservations for trying his mom’s cooking, he holds a stellar track record for experimenting with new things, especially breaking the rules in pursuit of those new things.

We all need a little Calvin in us. If something is broken, try another approach. Break it down further. Sometimes, the only way to fix something is to take it apart at its rudimentary level and put it back together in a different way. The writing’s not working? Try a different point of view, change the scene, add a character, kill a character, blow something up, tear something down—endless ways of making things right. No use staring at the same thing, getting bogged down by it and not progressing due to an unwillingness to change. Better to start again, but from a different perspective. If done right, the writing will flow again.

Oh, well, so much for an easy-to-digest post.

[By the way, if his mother had told Calvin she had in fact served him a plate of grubs, he would have eaten them.]