came from the book, The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. In her book, she said, "Put the drama on the page..." or something along those lines. No matter how it was phrased, it works. She was referring to channeling your emotional energy into writing and not letting everyday drama bog you down. When I read this, I thought, "Wow, that makes sense!" Why hadn't I thought of that before? Well, probably because I've been hip-deep in drama my entire life and it never occurred to me that I didn't have to be until recently. All this time, I had loads of material just waiting to become a bestselling novel. Well...maybe just a widely read short story...or...poem...ok, a haiku???
In any case, I've struggled with various issues over the years; some of them not so pretty. But once they were written down, they didn't seem so daunting and I was able to get through them. Not exactly journalling, just processing what is going on around me through the written word has been an invaluable tool for coping with day to day stress and anxiety. For example, when I miscarried last year for the fifth time, I wrote an article called, "Empty." This article was meant to be a way of processing my pain and helping me to understand my feelings. It did just that and as an added bonus, it ended up being published by Alive Magazine earlier this year. It's coming up on a year since the loss and truthfully, I feel that the article gave me a sense of closure on the matter and it isn't as painful to discuss or even think about as it was before I wrote about it.
Some things have been bogging me down lately and I have a suspicion that this is because I haven't taken enough time to write down my feelings about what has been going on in my life. When I write, I somehow transfer all of that emotional energy onto the page and it doesn't seem so overwhelming as it did floating around in my head. I can always tell when I haven't been writing enough, too, because I feel edgy and disconnected from myself.
For those of you who write, does your writing help you to cope with the stress in your life? Do you find it therapeutic beyond the sense of accomplishment you get from simply getting your ideas out? Or is it just me? :)
I don't know about you, but I certainly feel better just having written this post.
Until next time...
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Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Best Advice I Ever Got...
Sunday, March 22, 2009
FOX News needs a spanking...
for reporting this morning that spankings actually make children more aggressive. I can't see how that's possible unless parents are just hitting their children without doing any other parenting whatsoever. Sure, if all you do is swat your kid and you never talk to them or explain rules or expectations to them, they might grow up hating you and not understanding why you are so mean. But if you are a parent who takes time to talk with your child about things and you find it necessary to spank them for bad behavior every once in a while, I don't see that having any negative ramifications. As a matter of fact, I think that's part of what kids are missing these days. They don't seem to be as weary of punishment as they used to be and I think it is because so many parents started listening to the findings of studies like these.
Ladies and gentlemen, just because a group gets together and researches something, that doesn't make them experts on the matter. It just means they know more about the issue than they did before the study. Parents who are actually trying to parent their children are the real experts on this issue. You know the right way to handle your child. You know when you are being unfair and when you might have taken your punishment of their behavior a bit too far. At least if you're like me, you feel guilty for yelling or losing your temper even when your child has been steadily stomping on your last frayed nerve for the past twelve hours and you've been as patient as patient can be.
My thought is this, we need to stop spending so much time and energy worrying that we shouldn't be asserting ourselves as parents for fear that they will hate us. Your children are going to hate you for one thing or another anyway if you're doing your job right. We need to spend less time justifying our lack of commitment to being the stern disciplinarians our children need and start finding ways to clean up our society. I have a few suggestions: Take those damned horror movie trailors off of the television that show terrible images to our children before we have a chance to turn the channel, take those horrible "booty" songs off the radio so that our five year-olds aren't singing about Apple Bottom jeans, and for God's sake can we drop all of the ads for male enhancement drugs and medication for depression? This shit doesn't need to be in our heads all of the time. If it bothers me, I know it confuses the hell out of my daughter. While I know that it is my responsibility to monitor what she's watching and hearing, they sneak some of these things by so quickly that you don't have a chance to shield your child from it.
I'm not saying that the fault lies entirely with the media or with television or radio, but they don't make things any better by not being responsible about what they put on the air. Just because they get a press release or they hear about some new fad, they automatically think it needs to go out into everyone's homes. I don't even think they screen this stuff anymore. News media makes their living by perpetuating our fears with reports like today's big spanking news. This is bullshit. Parents are already confused enough without FOX News laying a guilt trip on them.
I don't think I'm being unreasonable in wanting a news broadcast to report things that are actually useful to me. Telling me something that I know isn't true just isn't useful. It is downright enfuriating. My husband watches FOX News every morning and I've been trying to understand why. Perhaps he is oblivious to the crap they are throwing out and just needs background noise to accompany his morning coffee. I guess they're good for that.
Until next time...
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Thursday, March 19, 2009
Keeping the Faith...available September 25th!
I'm so happy to announce here on Benston Blogs that my third Rona Shively book, Keeping the Faith will be released by Stonegarden.net Publishing on September 25th! This is the first novel-length Rona Shively story and I can hardly wait for the release date! Rona is going through some changes and you won't believe what she's up against or for that matter, whom she's up against in this one.
Stop by my Rona Shively website for more about this book!
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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
An Interview with J.A. Konrath...
Author, J.A. Konrath was kind enough to add Benston Blogs as a stop on his Blog Tour. He stopped by today to answer a few questions for me. For those few people out there who don't know, Konrath is the fabulously talented author of the Jack Daniels series. His first novel, Whiskey Sour (2004), introduced Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels. Others in the series include Bloody Mary (2005), Rusty Nail (2006), Dirty Martini (2007), Fuzzy Navel (2008), and Cherry Bomb (2009). The books combine hair-raising scares and suspense with laugh out loud comedy. The next book in the series, Cherry Bomb, will be released in July of this year. Now, onto the good stuff:
Did you always want to be a writer? If not, what did you want to be before you became an author?
I wanted to be a model for husky pants. But then, when I was barely a teen, they stopped making husky sizes.
Damn those clothing designers for shattering my dreams.
Your stories are fairly creepy, where do you get your ideas?
I mean, I'm not offended by the term "husky." Now they're called "relaxed fit" jeans. It's the same thing, but there's nothing sexy about being a "relaxed fit jeans" model.
What was your question again? Ideas? Mostly, I watch old reruns of the Outer Limits and steal the concepts, like Alan Moore did with Watchmen.
What writers do you read regularly or even irregularly?
I'm not sure if this is the place to talk about my irregularity.
But there are many authors I love. Blake Crouch, Henry Perez, Jeff Strand, Tasha Alexander, James Rollins, Barry Eisler, Raymond Bensen. Lots of people.
My absolute favorite author is Dr. Seuss. In fact, I tried my hand at writing a few Dr. Seuss-style children's books. Here are the titles:
HOW THE GRINCH STOLE MY WIFE
HORTON HATCHES A TERRORIST PLOT
ON BEYOND DONKEY PUNCH
MARVIN K MOONEY WILL YOU PLEASE DROP DEAD
THE CAT IN THE HAT GETS NEUTERED
GREEN EGGS AND E COLI
THIDWICK THE BIG HEARTED COKE DEALER
MR. BROWN CAN MOO, AND THEY PUT HIM AWAY
THERE'S A WOCKET IN MY POCKET, AND I BLAME CIALIS
BOOMER THE TUMOR
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to sell any of these. I think it may be some sort of rights-issue thing.
Do you write every day? If so, give us an idea of what your typical writing day looks like.
I wake up early and make some eggs.
Then the smoke alarm goes off, because the eggs are burning because I fell asleep again.
Then I spend ten minutes explaining to the firemen that show up how I'll be more careful next time.
I go back to bed, and the next thing I know, it's around noon. Time for lunch. I want to make an egg sandwich, but I'm out of eggs. And bread. And pretty much everything except some sort of fruit that's been in the refrigerator forever and might be a lime.
It's not a lime. It may not even be fruit. So I put it back and think about cooking some pasta but that seems like a lot of work for just lunch, so I go take a nap.
Around three I get up, ready to start my work day, but first I need to eat something. Do pizza places delivery at three? I make a few calls. Nope, no one delivers before five.
I check the fridge. The lime thing is still there, but it looks like it moved from where I saw it last. I'm really hungry, so I decide to give it a try.
It's not a lime, because limes don't have bones.
When I finish eating, I sit down at my computer and write my daily quota, thirty pages.
What are you currently working on besides answering these questions?
Currently working on rewrites for TRAPPED, which is my second Jack Kilborn horror novel. The first one, AFRAID, comes out March 31. My one goal is for everyone in the Western world to buy just one copy. That, and so clothing designers to bring back husky pants.
What are the titles of your books and where can we buy them?
The Jack Daniels books, which I write under the name JA Konrath, are Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini, Fuzzy Navel, and Cherry Bomb, which comes out July 7.
If you notice, each of these books is named after a drink. In fact, each title is a two word drink, and the first word ends in the letter Y.
If you string all the first words together, whiskey bloody rusty dirty fuzzy cherry, it sounds like a really fun weekend.
Do you have any appearances scheduled?
On March 23, at 7pm, I'll be doing a signing with Barry Eilser in Milwaukee, at the Mystery One bookstore. I'm doing other stuff too, probably.
What advice would you like to give to other writers or anyone interested in becoming a writer?
Never take "no" for an answer. If an agent or editor rejects you, you should keep calling them and emailing them, over and over and over, until they relent and give you a three million dollar contract.
Also, when you're writing a novel, try to remember to use verbs. Editors like verbs.
Thanks for having me here, Rebecca. After goofing off for most of this blog tour, it's nice to finally be serious for once...
Joe
http://www.JAKonrath.com
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/jakonrath
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A Little Bit of Mystery: Short Mysteries to Confuse and Amuse
