I’m not sure when I started wearing gym shorts everyday. I’ll just say this; it’s a big deal when I put on my ‘dress’ shorts, or even – I’m pretty sure this happened – an actual pair of jeans. You know, to go to the grocery store, or the car wash, or an outdoor coffee meeting, or – that one time – to buy a tortilla press ($22 at Carniceria El Guero on W. Central).

I’ve committed to an actual job for the entire rest of the year. I’m pretty sure part of that job is to get dressed in something better than gym shorts. I’m ready, though, because it takes sacrifice and willpower and determination and grit to make the tough decisions. I’ve ironed my shirts and have my shoes ready and am (probably) going to fit into my khaki and dress pants just fine.

Goodbye, Husker gym shorts… we had a good run.

During a recent SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) local meeting, we had a session of ‘flash writing’ from a prompt. Here’s my prompt:

“Regardless of where you were born, where do you feel you’re from?” Taken from the book, 642 Tiny Things To Write About, by the San Francisco Writers Grotto, purchased at Watermark Books, Wichita, KS.

Here’s my answer, originally penned (I only use Bic soft feel medium pens) into my small, tan, soft-covered Moleskine notebook I carry everywhere:

“I was born, I feel, in Box Canyon, on Ghost Ranch, on the Piedra Lumbre Grant, on the Colorado Plateau. Late of the Genízaro, earlier of the Pueblo, who took over the ground from the Anasazi.

Somehow I only recharge when I step up onto that last boulder in the Box part. I lay on my back, arched, with my eyes closed. I listen to the canyon wrens, the raven’s burring call, the soft percussion of the seeping water.

I wear both blue jeans and moccasins. I wear both a straw cowboy hat and a string bag called a bilum, which I’ve brought from the other side of the globe. I have a bicycle parked at the trailhead, a camper in the campground, and a stack of books waiting for me.

I’m from the many, many worlds I’ve read into existence, but I’m truly home in Box Canyon.”

1 minute to sum up your current life’s effort. Camera in your face. Lights throwing heat at you. Experts judging every word. Every piece of clothing, too.

20 of those Dem candidates had an opening and a closing statement. Although I didn’t time any of the speeches, the moderators said they had ‘one minute for your opening remarks’. It seemed like they all stuck pretty close to that, didn’t it? Maybe 2.

Still… try to summarize you in that amount of time.

It struck me that, if a person ever asks me ‘what’s your book about?’, I would be totally unprepared to give them a summary that takes 1 minute or less. That’s the classic ‘elevator pitch’ that we are all supposed to prepare. It’s the ‘executive summary’. It’s the ‘thumbnail’. Every writer’s book says this on or near page 1. It’s not like I don’t know what to do, so why haven’t I done it?

I have no excuse for not preparing a 1 minute campaign speech for each of my novels, other than it’s a daunting thing. That’s one of the things I’m going to work on. Because, again someday, I’ll have a story written that I have pushed past the 60-70% completion point – the point where it’s hard to finish stitching together the rough main ideas – and want to actually take the plunge and send it to some experts to see if they want to publish it.

And I’ll make sure that I smile at the end of the speech.

I learned a phrase this past Saturday at a writing workshop: unreliable narrator. As regards a storyteller in one of my novels, I learned that this can be a useful tool. In my Work-In-Progress Gladstone, old Travis is at least midway into dementia. He has moments of clarity among his days of woolly wandering, never quite remembering if he’s milked the cows or eaten lunch yet.

It takes a ‘light touch’, the experts this weekend say, to use an unreliable narrator to make a story stronger. They gave examples of writers who do it well; Stephen King and Celeste Ng, to name the two I remember. I wouldn’t presume to think my work will come close to theirs.

I think I’m going to try it, though. After all, since I’m the writer, I think he deserves a voice.

Can you think of examples you’ve read – or movies you’ve seen – where you just can’t trust the storyteller?

I noticed, the other day, the thread of wood smoke on the breeze. Does that pull you out of whatever your reality is and plunk you down right next to a campfire like it does me?

It’s not like I stop everything I’m doing, but it sure does offer the possibility. Doesn’t it? Think about the chill in the dusk at a campsite, next to a brook, under those towering pines, and a bellyful of whatever camp dinner you dragged out of the cooler and cooked for yourself. No restaurant service out there next to the campfire. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.

There’s a smoothness, a clarity, a safety that is released in my brain by that thread of smoke passing my face. I don’t control it. Matter of fact, I bet some super-smart people have identified the part of the brain that says “you’re safe” when the nose knows.

I figure that’s why so much of spirituality has an incense connection. I’ve got piñon smoke incense burning right this very second in my study.

I feel safe.

I returned yesterday from an Advanced Craft Retreat at a monastery in Conception, MO. I went to get help with my writing. I have ALL these ideas, and have read a lot, but still had a murky idea of what my good/great/successful writing would look like. My ‘point of view’ writing, ‘tense’ writing, and character voices were all over the map. Undisciplined, unfocused, scatter shot. I KNEW this, but had no clear way to work past or through those limitations.

The fine people at Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators hosted this Retreat and found a fantastic professor to anchor the weekend of critique and focused writing sessions. Most of the other 7 writers in attendance were much farther along the path towards excellence in writing (it’s possible I ignored the “Advanced” part of the retreat title – wishful thinking, maybe).  They all had stories of editors, agents, and publishing to tell. I listened in fascination because all of that is still ahead of me.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. How many times have YOU heard that? Lots, is my answer. I realize, now, that I can’t ‘turn in’ this novel of mine like I turned in the majority of my papers and essays in high school and college. I have to work at it. Success has usually come easily to me, but this ‘writing thing’ is going to take some effort. Some skin. Some blood, sweat, tears. Now I know.

The privilege is that I get to keep working at it. I get to meet my characters (one of the attendees said ‘take each one of them out on a date – get to know what they really think and who they really are’). Being a ‘people-pleaser/golden retriever’ personality, it is scary to think that I am the only one who chooses my setting, my time period, my character motivations, my good guys and bad guys.

It’s liberating to know, though, and I thank each and every writer who found new ways to tell me that last weekend.

I GET to be the storyteller.