Tag: Undeniable

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November 2024

Anyone who writes a dystopian story hopes that it will never come true. A few years ago, my novella, “Wasting Water”, was published in Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change. It is a coming of age story of a young girl growing up in a world where continuous drought has ravaged the interior of the United States. This was my vision of a possible world where climate change had gone unchecked. When I wrote that story, I believed we could reverse the dangerous direction of our activities that contribute to this possible future. Sadly, the people on our planet may now have gone beyond the point of being able to reverse the effects of climate change and the deadly results of it. I am not alone is seeing the disaster unfolding.

The World Wild Life Fund says this: “More frequent and intense drought, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans can directly harm animals, destroy the places they live, and wreak havoc on people’s livelihoods and communities.”

The United Nations says: “Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. Climate impacts are already harming health, through air pollution, disease, extreme weather events, forced displacement, pressures on mental health, and increased hunger and poor nutrition in places where people cannot grow or find sufficient food.”

This November there was an election. In the past, our new president-elect has stated that climate change is a hoax. He appears to have no intention of curbing the human activities that contribute to this undeniable future. Ironically, the very things he has promised to do, curbing immigration into the U.S. and reducing consumer costs, are the very things that a warming world will aggravate.

Climate refugees are fleeing places that can no longer support them through farming or that are so ravaged by extremes of weather that their homes are being destroyed.  Their numbers are increasing, and they will continue to flee to anywhere they can survive. They believe one of those safe places is the United States. Whatever measures will be taken to try to stop them, there will be more and more of them because they have no place else to go. Unfortunately for us all, the U.S. is becoming a place of doubtful refuge. Rising sea level, hurricanes of unprecedented severity, wild fires, floods, and droughts are causing people within the United States also to become climate refugees.

As for reducing consumer costs, especially the cost of groceries and housing, the new administration will have to deal with the challenges of food production becoming increasingly compromised by changing climate and the threats to housing in places ravaged by floods, storms, and fires . All of this is already observable.

The results of climate change increasingly threaten building and maintaining housing.  Even if a house can be built, no insurance company will take on the risk because it is too high, making getting a mortgage impossible. This may be a minor concern compared to the end of life on the planet, but for some people, this is such an urgent issue that the survival of all living things is secondary. That species are dying–the last white rhino died this week–and other species, both of plants and of animals, are declining in number or are vanishing, is less important than affordable housing. One’s own survival instinctively comes first, but the death of our fellow creatures is a harbinger of our own demise.

I don’t want my dystopian story to come true, but I’m afraid it has already begun. Perhaps, during this National Write a Novel Month,  I can write a new story. One where people change their behaviors to try to pull Earth out of the fire. Where people realize the world is fragile and full of humans and animals who deserve to live their lives without hate, fear, starvation, or extinction. Where there will be no wars across the globe causing terrible suffering. The role of science fiction has so often been to inspire hope. And perhaps even change. It may be too late, but I can’t give up. I owe it to my planet and all who live here.

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Brevity, the Soul of Wit

I just found out one of my flash fiction pieces has been accepted for publication. Mind you, it’s probably going to be a really long time before it shows up, like a year and a half or so. Still, as they say, any publicity is good publicity. The publisher is Vine Leaves Press. They electronically publish a story every day–they call them 50 Give or Take, and the stories are, you guessed it, 50 words more or less.  In Novembers they publish an anthology of the stories from the past year or so. Mine apparently will show up in the 2024 anthology, but maybe not. It’s story number 1436. As of this morning they hadn’t broken 1100. I don’t mind, really. Getting published is a waiting game, decidedly not for the impatient.

I sometimes wonder why I like writing short stories and flash fiction. I suspect it’s because I’m lazy. Still, writing a good story of whatever length takes work. My novels, Beloved Lives and The Ginger Bread House (the latter currently being reviewed by a publisher), aren’t epic 100,000 word tomes. Wasting Water wasn’t even a novel.  I’m suspecting Wickham’s Daughter is going to be a lot longer just because there is so much story to tell, but it’s not my usual modus operandi. The other novels still in the doodling phase of development may or may not be longish. It’s hard to tell at this stage.

The cool thing about writing short stories and flash fiction is that you are creating a little jewel, self contained and concise. The characters don’t take a lot of side streets and get lost. They go where they need to and do what they need to do. You tell their whole story in a snapshot.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a flash piece, usually less than a thousand words, shows a moment in time, a significant event contained within a careful word count where each word matters.

During this National Write a Novel in a Month November, I’ve taken a little detour from writing my current novel to jot down a flash piece that has been stirring around in my mind for more than a year. Just because flash pieces are short doesn’t mean you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them, developing them, writing, rewriting, and visiting them again and again.  I am pretty lazy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t work at writing when my muse pokes me. And she can be a real pain.

Now, back to the novel.

Image: Small things. By Marilyn Evans

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Adventures in Editing

There are certain times in your life when you go back to visit old ideas and adventures that you’ve put on hold. Currently, besides all the other stuff I’ve been doing, I’ve gotten interested once again in backpacking and editing. The backpacking is something I’ve always wanted to do, but never seemed to get around to. The editing I’ve been doing in one form or another for a long time, but never really did a deep dive until now.

I blame my friend, Dennis Young, for seducing me into editing in a focused sort of way. I’ve been putting in my two cents worth on his Blood Lines series of vampire novels for some time now. That indirectly got me connected to someone who, sadly, wasn’t really ready for writing novels. Not that he was a bad writer–he just couldn’t make his story go in an orderly fashion toward a coherent whole. I wished him luck and ran.

When I was a lab rat, I wrote, edited, messed about with grant proposals and articles. When I was a corporate weenie, I wrote, edited and messed about with SOP’s , quality manuals, audit reports, and other such stuff that makes the pharmaceutical world go round.

This summer I got down and dirty with editing my father’s World War II memoir. I hope to have it up as an e-book sometime this fall or winter. I had a really good time doing that. It was like having a sit-down conversation with my late father. I got to hear his voice in my head, laugh at his humor, live some of his doubts and fears. The thing I probably learned most clearly in reading and correcting the typos in my dad’s book was not to change his voice. He spoke a certain way. That comes through in his writing. I’ve said here before that it was his voice I used, unaware, for the voice of my young heroine in “Wasting Water”, my novella in the anthology Undeniable: Authors Respond to Climate Change.

As I always do when faced with a new adventure, I hit the library. There I found a book on editing for journalists, The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists, by Arthur Plotnik,  that I wish I had read before or even during the time I was editing The Rune, a small-circulation, local magazine. Editing, I am finding, is a great opportunity to see how other authors work, help them avoid some of the pitfalls I hurled myself into, and encourage good writing. And it’s an opportunity to catch the homonyms, malapropisms, misplaced modifiers, and other stuff that makes you crazy when you’re reading an article or a book. To borrow from Jeff Foxworthy, if you make corrections to nearly everything you read, you might be an editor.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for my summer vacation. Now it might be time to get back to writing.

Image: Once again, my catastrophic desk. By Marilyn Evans.

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Doing Good

In 1902, the Agriculture Department’s Chief Chemist, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, began what he called “hygienic table trials,” but soon the Washington Post reporter George Rothwell Brown came up with the name The Poison Squad. Dr. Wiley was attempting to prove that additives and adulterants in everyday foods were unsafe and unhealthy. In doing so, he took on powerful industries and their bought-and-paid-for government supporters. It took years of fighting, issuing reports, doing the right thing, but it wasn’t until Sinclair Lewis published The Jungle in 1906 that headway was finally made. Dr. Wiley’s story is told in Deborah Blum’s book, The Poison Squad, and in the  documentary based on the book (you can watch it in it’s entirety at the American Experience website https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squad/).

One of the many things that disturbs me is that over one hundred years later, the same excuses are being used to prevent doing the right thing. The arguments go: changes will adversely affect business, it’s too expensive, the people advocating for change are misguided radicals or alarmists, and other common protests. Special interests still buy off politicians, seek to cut funding to watchdog groups, delay, sue, ignore the law–whatever it takes to not do the right thing.

Writers have a unique opportunity to draw attention to bad behavior. Certainly journalists and writers of exposés do this, but writers of fiction sometimes make far more headway in capturing the attention of the public, raising awareness, and calling people to action. Sinclair’s novel was written to draw attention to the inhumane working conditions of the meat packing industry, but in exposing it his disclosures inspired  changes in hygienic practices. Science fiction writers have a long history of asking questions, proposing worst case scenarios, making us look at ourselves and the people we trust but maybe shouldn’t. Fiction puts us in the story so we can see the real costs of failure to do good.

I feel strongly that truth has great value, that lies once told take on a life of their own and can cause real harm. I believe doing the right thing s may sometimes be difficult but is never the wrong way to go. I am proud that my writing has been included in the anthology Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change. I am proud to be one of the voices saying, take notice, this is important, we need to act. It is my personal goal to always try to write with truth and compassion. Though I may not always succeed, I will always try to do good.

Image: The Members of The Poison Squad. THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION/FLICKR/PUBLIC DOMAIN

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“Wasting Water” Update

I’ve heard from Alternating Current Press at last. The anthology Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change will be published no later than the spring of 2020. If the editing process goes smoothly, they hope to have the collection published in winter 2019 for a holiday release. That will change if the editing or printing process does not go as planned, but the release would be no later than the end of this winter. They want the book on their table for next year’s AWP writers conference and book fair in March 2020, so it will definitely be completed before then. Being the good and dutiful author that I am, I’ve already sent the latest version of my novella, “Wasting Water” with edits and corrections. There will probably need to be a few more changes, editors being how they are (always right), but that shouldn’t be a problem.

In case you’re interested, the 2020 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference where Undeniable will be featured is March 4-7 in San Antonio, Texas.  Here’s the link.

https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/bookfair_overview

I considered going, but I’ll probably use my time and money closer to home. HOWEVER, if anyone wanted to pay my way…just sayin’.

Anthologies are notoriously slow to get to publication, but I’m glad this one is finally on it’s way. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for an early holiday release!

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Back in the Saddle

If you check now and again to see if I’m posting to my blog, you may have noticed I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from writing. Between funerals, the kitchen remodel, a two week visit by my best friend (involving much drinking and conversation), and a few other things that took my mind elsewhere, I’ve been unable to really focus. Last night I re-read all of my blog posts. At the risk of seeming immodest (oh, who am I kidding–I haven’t a modest bone in my body), I have to say there seemed to be some pretty good advice in a few of those posts. I’ve decided to follow my own advice and get back to work.

The first thing I did was drop by the library and get new books, both to read and to listen to as I drove to the stable to see my husband’s horse. I realized after reading on my blog about reading that I haven’t been doing enough of it lately, and I know reading is a strong stimulus for getting me to write. I’ve also set aside time each day to write, either at home or someplace that works for me–coffee shops and the library are among my favorites. I get a lot of writing done in waiting rooms, but if I just plop down in one and help myself to their coffee and donuts without a good reason to be there, I might get asked to leave. I haven’t actually tried it yet.

I’ve decided I need to take another look at publishers for my second novel. I also need to take a good, long look at the short stories I’ve written to see if they are salvageable and should be sent out on the endless merry-go-round of submission and rejection. Always a good time. I was inspired to this by a friend I recently had lunch with. She has multiple plays being produced this summer at multiple venues in multiple cities. This success is the result of sending out masses of plays and then forgetting about them. I found that inspirational. I shall go forth and do likewise.

I did have some encouraging news. Alternating Current Press has finally closed submissions (again) for Undeniable, and they project an early autumn publishing date. Of course, there’s still a chance they’ll decide, “Oops. We don’t like your novella after all.” I should know by the middle of June.

So it’s back to the keyboard, I go. Time to get back to work.

Image: Me on Amish Honey in 2013. By Jonathan Hutchins.

 

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The Sound of My Own Voice

I’ve had the good fortune to take a few writing classes taught by Brian Shawver through The Writer’s Place. Either he is a fantastic teacher (very likely since he is now chair of English and Modern Languages at Park University), or I was lucky enough to have the teacher I needed at the time I needed him–maybe both. At any rate, one piece I worked on in one of his classes was Wasting Water. The story is told by a teenaged girl who lives on a farm with her mother and their animals in the near future when the rain has all but stopped. Brian noted that the voice of the character, Livie, is quite different from my own. That was the first time I realized my character’s voice was borrowed in large part from my father, the only person I knew well who had grown up on a farm during hard times and without one of his parents for much of that time.

Voice for a writer, so I am told, tends to be unique to that writer–his or her own way of using words and seeing the world, of interpreting that world and putting that interpretation down on paper. The voice used by Mark Twain in his many writings in unmistakable, as is the voice of Ernest Hemingway. The voice used by Jane Austen would never be mistaken for one of those other authors. Apparently, most editors in the universe are looking for writers with unique and distinctive voices.

I’ve just finished reading a chapter in one of my writing books about the use of voice. One of the things that struck me as good advise was to be sure your voice is consistent throughout any given book. Some writers may have a voice that comes through from the very first and remains constant throughout their career. Others may need to develop theirs over time. As a writer learns and grows, there is the possibility that how they express themselves may change, perhaps even within a single book. That is something I will be watching for in my own writing.

One might think it’s hard to write in anything but your own voice. However, I suspect a character that has a strong personality might be able to express themselves in spite of the author, just as my Livie did. I did not mean to write Wasting Water in my father’s voice, but his was the one I heard in my head. Livie spoke, and I just wrote down what she said.

Wasting Water will be appearing in Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change to be published by Alternating Current Press. They still are open for submissions through April 30, so check it out if you have poetry, nonfiction, fiction, or hybrid pieces dealing with climate change.

Image: My father, John P. Evans; mother, Geneva; older brother, Paul; and me, on a farm my folks once owned. Photographer unknown.