calling my woot! part two

 Last post I talked about an article called ''The Four Characteristics of Author Attitude and Why You Need Them.'' Willingness and objectivity represent the first two letters in the acronym that reads ''woot''. Well, actually willingness and optimism represent the first two letters of the acronym but I mixed them up because I'm an airhead! Anyhow, with this post I'll talk about optimism and tenacity, the other two letters of the acronym.
    Everybody knows the basic definition of optimism but how does it apply specifically to authors? Well, we authors have to endure a lot of rejection and criticism for one thing. Whether it's from agents, publishers, readers, reviewers, you name it, somebodies going to have something to say! And somebody having something to say is never a bad thing no matter what they say! With that said, how do you deal with this whirlwind of advise, opinions, etc.? The article says that one must see everything that happens to them on their writing journey as ''pushing them closer to successful authorship''. I agree with this 100% because whenever somebody takes the time to give you their honest opinion it's a gift simply because they gave your work some attention. I would like to add that nothing worth having is going to be easy to attain, so one could also view criticism and rejection ''optimistically'' by seeing it as a sign of progress. Not only does it give you a chance to improve your work but you can strengthen your resolve to reach your goals and have breakthroughs from it. I have experienced this firsthand. I also try to remember that fiction writing is an art form and all art is subjective. So, it's insane to take rejection and/or criticism personally because you have no idea of peoples personal prejudices, taste, etc. Authors have to take it all with a grain of salt and learn how to go inward and discern the meaningful feedback from the rest.
    Wow! Author optimism is a huge topic in and of itself. Writing this post has really got me to reflecting on my own optimism. I'm going to stop here and do a part three to discuss tenacity. I'm worn out!

calling my woot! part one

July 6th 2014. What's so important about that date you ask? Well, only that it's the last day I've written anything, unless you count this blog. And why haven't I written anything since July 6th you ask? Well, it's not because I've been lazy or unmotivated. It's because I been blocked. I've had writer's block! To be perfectly honest I've never really had writer's block in all the years I've been writing, only motivation problems. But now, for the first time, I'll sit down to write and nothing is coming out! I don't know where to take my story. I don't have any ideas! This has been going on since July 6th.
    Rather than wallow in my writing problems by stuffing my face and watching DVDs I decided I must find creative ways to get myself out of this rut. So, I've been reading articles about writing in effort to get my writing juices flowing again. A member of my writer's support group gave me an interesting article called The  Four Characteristics of Author Attitude and Why you Need them by Nina Amir. It talks about the importance of willingness, optimism, objectivity and tenacity, which make the acronym woot! Anyhow, willingness means to be able to sit back and reflect upon where one is as an author/writer and what it will take to get one where he/she wants to go. Am I willing to look at my self objectively and change some of my old habits and/or beliefs in order to get myself where I want to be? I would add to ''willingness'' by saying am I ready to take risk!
    Objectivity means can one look at their work/idea from a business standpoint. This means to craft ones work to meet industry standards and needs, which are always focused on marketability and sales in the end. You have to be willing and able to take criticism and make changes that you, as the author, may not be able to see or understand. Authors are very close to their work, I know this for a fact, but learning to see/write it in a way that would appeal to masses of people is a skill in and of itself. It's like a comedian telling a joke that's funny to him/her but not considering whether their audience will get it.
    I just realized that I skipped optimism and went straight to objectivity, which tells me that I'm not focused on what I'm doing. Luckily there both O words in the acronym. Anyhow, I'm going to split this post into two parts and go focus on stuffing my face and watching some DVDs. Hay, I didn't say I never wallowed in my writing problems!

I love new york

Last Thursday [7-10-14] at 2:00AM I hopped a bus to NYC to nominate Rainbow Plantation Blues to be read by an LGBT book club that meets once a month at the NYC LGBT community center. Then, on Friday [7-11-14] At 12:35AM I hopped a bus to come back home to Cleveland. Yes, I spent a total of about twelve hours in NYC and a total of about twenty-three hours on the bus! It was a crazy, insane, whirlwind trip but it  payed off because the book club voted to read my novel. There were two other books nominated but mine beat them out. When the meeting was over a member told me that about a year ago an author showed up at their meeting to nominate his book for the group to read but it was still voted down. And to this day they still haven't read it!

    They nominate their books four months in advance to give everybody time to get the books and read them. So, they will be discussing mine in November and they asked if I could come back for the discussion. Of course I said hell yeah! Well, to myself I said that but out loud I said ''yes, I would be happy to do that'' all calm, cool and collected. There were ten people there including myself and I passed out the business cards I had made prior to the trip.

    My bus arrived in NYC around 11:30AM but the meeting wasn't to start until 8:00PM, so I had over eight hours to kill. I just explored the city on foot, did a lot of people watching and drank smoothies. I 've been to NYC many times before so I know my way around Manhattan but the one thing that was new to me was the city bikes they have now. You can rent bikes and explore the city, or whatever else you need to do, by bike as well as on foot. I love the hustle and bustle, the diversity, the pulse and the concrete jungle that is NYC, and It really is ''the city that never sleeps''. It was dark by the time I walked back to the bus station from 13th st to 42nd st but there were still as many people on the streets as there had been when I arrived at 11:30 that morning! There's no place else in America like NYC.

     The bus ride back was torturous! We went through upstate New York and stopped in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo along with a few other towns I've never heard of. Then it was onto Erie, PA and finally Cleveland. It was a fourteen hour ride. I got no sleep and I had to go to my writer's support group and  then to my day job when I got back. Still, I have no regrets and I'm glad I took the risk in going. The book club had no idea I was coming and I had no idea how things would pan out. It just goes to show that you have to roll the dice in life and see what happens because you never know!

call me kuchu : a review

Recently I watched a documentary called Call Me Kuchu[kuchu means queer in Swahili]. It's about the activism of murdered Ugandan Gay right activist David Kato. The documentary itself was good but I did have trouble reading the subtitles sometimes. The lettering was in white and the backdrops were often too light, so the words would blend into them. The subtitles also went fast and I had to keep pausing and backtracking. Other than that it was quite good and informative.
    Kato was murdered in 2011 for his activism, although the official story says that it was by a male prostitute over money. I guess we'll never know what really happened but I don't see how it was not an assassination. Uganda has a disgusting stance on LGBT rights. They recently passed the Anti-Homosexual Bill[ that's what it's called] that Kato was working to stop. The bill says that anybody found to be LGBT, abating anybody LGBT or not reporting somebody who is LGBT can be imprisoned and/or executed! It also says that this applies to any Ugandan living abroad! Of course the international community has spoken out against this but, lets face it, every county commits human right violations.
    Africa came to be so anti-gay in the first place because of the colonist who came there and imposed their anti-gay laws on the locals. Now, most of those colonial powers have changed their laws but most of Africa is still steeped in the prejudice and misunderstanding that the colonist created. Africans in general think that homosexuality is some kind of Western plague but Uganda is a Christan county. This is equally ironic because That's something that was imposed on them, too! The situation is a hot buttered mess! But the good news is that Uganda's LGBT people are not giving up. They have an organization call SMUG[sexual minorities Uganda which Kato helped to found] that has a very articulate and courageous[and handsome I might add] executive director named Frank Mugisha.
    I already knew that South Africa has marriage equality and constitutional protection for It's LGBT citizens but watching this documentary motivated me to find out more about LGBT people in the whole of Africa. I found out that there are about fourteen countries that have no laws criminalizing homosexuality but they don't protect it either. The rest of them specifically criminalize it. The degree to which they criminalize and enforce these laws probably varies from country to country, but Uganda's must be one of the most extreme.

happy pride!

Yesterday we had our pride celebration here in Cleveland, OH, and what a celebration it was! The weather was hot and sticky but that didn't stop thousands from attending. It started out with a parade which ended at Vounivich Park, the festival site, and went on until about seven or eightish PM. It had all the typical features of a pride event : drag shows[which I love] a beer garden[which I can do without]vendors, dancing, food and special guest performers.
     All of the performers[that I saw] were great but Debbie Gibson stood out for me. Yes, we had that 80's teen diva right here in person at Cleveland pride yesterday! Of course she's no longer a teen and the 80's are long gone, but Debbie looked amazing, and her show was flawless. Well, she did have some sound trouble. She said she didn't have a chance to do a sound check before her show, so she sort of incorporated it into the show. It was very clevor. I didn't even realize that that was what she had  done until a freind pointed it out to me after the show. You could tell that Debbie is a seasoned professional who's been performing for along time.
    Looking around the audience I was aware that very few people were under forty. It made me think of how fast time flies and of how old I am, seeing as I remember her music when it was topping the charts! Okay, I'll admit it, I'm actually a couple years older than Debbie! But hay, what are you gonna do? I can say that being a forty something, okay an upper-forty something, didn't stop me from wearing my red skinny jeans and form-fitting pullover! I looked better than half of the twenty somethings there and I got enough attention from some of them to prove it!
    Anyhow, age and looks aside[ wait, did that statement come from a Gay man?] it was a great pride. In fact it was the most enjoyable pride I've ever been to and the only one where I stayed all the way until the end.
   One more thing. I met a guy[no, not the guy who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with] named Robert banks who is a short film maker. I'm always fascinated by people with ambitions, especially creative one's, and so I just had to talk to him and hear about his work. Also, the friend I came with got a business card from a women has written and self-published a book. I didn't get to meet her but it did make me think that I should have business cards made. Pride would have been a great place to pass them out, and I'm always telling people about my book anyway. Why not give them something to hold on to?

a writer's fast

We had our writer's support group last night.  Two people couldn't make it but there were still four people there including myself. We talked about writer's block vs. motivation/ having time to write, the structure of a short story and three people read some of their work. I was one of the three. Now, this meeting went on for two hours! I guess only true writer's would find conversations about the structure of a short story and writer's block vs. motivation/time to write interesting enough to talk about for over an hour. Most people would find those topics to be an instant cure for their insomnia! But not us writer's. We all left feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.
   Another thing we touched upon was what I call ''speed noveling.'' One of the group members had recently done it. Speed noveling is when you write an entire novel in some insane time frame, like one month. It's an exercise that people do to hone their chops or to simply get the job done. I guess you could say it's like a writer's fast. When you fast you do anything but eat but when you ''speed novel'' you do nothing but write! What else could you be doing if you finish a novel in a month? Now mind you, these novels are far from publishable but that's not the goal/point. And the writer can always go back and take all the time that he or she needs to edit it and turn it into something publishable because all the basics, story line, characters, etc. are there.
   If my writer's fast stuff makes no sense to you don't worry because I'm not so sure I get it either. Look, I had a late night last night, Okay! And it's still early[if you call 2:12PM early]. Anyhow, I need to go a ''writer's fast.'' At the rate that I've been writing for the past month or so you could say I'm on a writer's gluttony. At least I have been doing some marketing and promotions for Rainbow Plantation Blues.

Okay, Okay, I'm pathetic!!

So, it's been nine months since I've been on this blog. Nine months! Is that pathetic or what? Actually, I'm being too hard on myself because even though I've not been blogging I haven't been totally feckless. I increased my readership toward the end of last year simply by telling people about Rainbow Plantation Blues and back in March of this year I started a fiction writers support group. We meet at a local book store every two or three weeks. It's been really successful so far. There are four amazing people that have been coming since day one and one person that started coming with the past two meetings. The group has really helped me to get my motivation to write back by connecting with other local writers. I call the group psychotherapy for writer's. We read our work for feedback and talk about all aspects of the writer's life and world. It's very stimulating and refreshing. I just hope the group last.
    Back in April I started contacting LGBT book clubs/groups nationwide to drum up interest in Rainbow Plantation Blues. So far I've gotten six book clubs to take notice and two lending libraries. My goal is to spread the word across the country. I know there are still a lot of people who don't know about the book but would like to. I want people all over the nation to know about Kumi and Jonathon and their lives at Rainbow Plantation.
   When I stopped blogging I pretty much stopped working on the sequel, too. I didn't pick it back up again until after I started the writer's group. I had left off on page 317[longhand] and now I'm on page 341 or so. I have not been writing everyday, or I'd be a lot further along, but I have been doing the promotional stuff I mentioned earlier. So, I've not only been watching keeping Up Appearances[ a BBC sitcom], Castle, Globe Trekker TV and a host of old black and white movies, while stuffing my face with fresh fruits and vegan chicken[it's made from soy].
    My last post, you know the one from nine months ago, is a analysis of my study of the book A Queer History of the United States. I stopped studying the book when I stopped blogging but I'm going to pick that back up, too. I'm not going to push myself to blog five days a week like I did before. I think I'll try one to three days a week this time. But as of this posting I'm officially blogging again!