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The End. Two of the most famous and widely known words in the written language.

I love the word The End. I often start my writing with some “end” in mind and work my way back. I say “some end” because every once in a while the ending that I had conjured is not what it turns out to be. We’ve all been there I’m sure, the detour of the creative mind and the characters we dream up. However, for the most part, I try to stick to what I set out to accomplish as the finality of the story.

The words The End are sacred to me. They hold the secret to the final resolution, conflict, and issue to whatever I’m trying to convey. When you eventually read the words The End, that’s it, it’s the full loop. You have reached the last stop on your ride of reading for that particular tale.

I recently had the pleasure of penning in my first fictional novel: Isabella, My Rose, the words The End. A story about a couple’s journey and struggles within their marriage, and the miraculous birth of their daughter born with a congenital limb deficiency who becomes the pinnacle in their relationship, in keeping it all together. Honestly, I had mixed emotions after I finished it. I knew I couldn’t go any further, but yet I felt it was time to conclude the story. Similar to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.

But are you really done when you reach The End? Is all that labor of furious writing complete? If you are just writing for yourself and it’s a personal escape, well then, I guess you can end where you want. Maybe not, who knows, that’s an individual decision. However, for those writers like myself who want to publish their writings, it really isn’t The End, is it? I currently have two people editing my novel. I know there will be changes, but will their feedback change my ending? Hmm…I don’t know. That is between me the writer, and the message I’m delivering. I do know that if ever I get the opportunity to entertain the interests of the publishing industry; there will be plenty of enhancements to be made.

So even if you penned “The End,” the road to the bookshelves can be an uneven path full of cracks and rolling pebbles. The End may be done, but that my friends is only the Beginning. Keep writing. May the pen always be in your hand, and the words flow from your mind.

There’s a book that I think several of my readers will have an interest in, particularly veterans. It’s called Heroes Among Us by Hal Terrell. It’s the story of “twenty-two boys who grew up in a small western Colorado town during The Great Depression and how they dealt with their circumstances. It also delves into each individual’s WWII experiences and what each one did after WWII to help build America into what it is today. There’s a multitude of information on the book’s website but since I’ve been corresponding with Mr. Terell, I wanted to share what he had to say about how he decided to write the book.

Dear Cheryl

It was a sunny day but a bit chilly as I stood among thousands of white marble crosses. My wife and I came to this place to honor the memory of all the young men who fought and died here on D-Day and the following few days after June 6, 1944. United States and Allied Forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day to liberate Europe from German occupation, one of the most significant and imortant events in the annuals of military history. We also wanted to honor all of America’s young men who fought and died on every other far flung shore or foreign country during WWII. It had been over sixth years since that morning of June 6,1944 when American forces stormed ashore at Omaha and Utah beaches. Time has inevitably relegated their heroic deeds and suffering to a storage room of dusty archives and all that remains are the fading memories of those who lived through those terrible days. Time is gradually defeating all WWII veterans. That is something Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany could not do.

During the D-Day cermony I, along with two other WWII veterans, was given the honor and the privilege of placing the memorial wreath at the feet of the “Spirit of American Youth” statue during the cermony on June 6, 2001.

At the conclusion of the wreath-laying ceremony I found myself strolling slowly among the white marble crosses. All I could hear was the soft whisper of a sea breeze caressing my face, the sound of the surf against the sandy beach below, and the twittering of the birds in the surrounding trees. As I looked around, I realized I was standing in a place where every blade of grass appeared to have its own private caretaker. Yet, I felt no joy or particular appreciation for the aesthetic value of this place. I was completely overwhelmed with a somber and desperate feeling of sadness and grief that surrounded me. My emotions were almost uncontrollable as I struggled to get my breath. I felt tears streaming down my cheeks. I felt a burning lump in my throat and my body began to involuntarily shake. Suddenly the silence was broken by a soft, low moaning or sobbing sound. I looked around to see who was in distress but no one was near me. I suddenly realized the sobs and moans were coming from my own chest and throat. That was the moment when I decided that I had to located the boys I had gone to grade school and high school with and document their stories and experiences. The result ended up as a book, HEROES AMONG US.

Sincerely,
Hal Terrell

Mr. Terrell also sent me the following.”Perhaps you can use some of the comments made by some of my readers. I can honestly say that I never received one single comment that was derogatory.

THE GLENWOOD POST INDEPENDENT
“A reader is fortunate when he hooks into a book that is so good he doesn’t want it to end. A newspaper reporter is even luckier when he talks to a subject who has so many stories the reporter doesn’t want the interview to end. That is how it turned out when I interviewed Hal Terrell about a book he wrote about local World War Two veterans.”

TOM AXELROD–70th DIVISION, 274 BATTALION, COMPANY K
(Tom recently passed away)
“WOW! This is going to be some book! Hal has been hiding under the editorial blanket all these years. He has he touch. All the stats, the trip to Europe, his letter writing, the footwork, the years in the making looks to be paying off. From what I have seen and read it appears to be one of the best sellers.

LARRY SCHMUESER & ASSOCIATES
“You have summurized the feeling and thoughts of most Americans, my generation included. The war should, and will not ever be forgotten, and your generation will be remembered not only as the greatest but also the one that could and did. You have said far more in a few words than many of the historians have in volumes. THE OLD NATIVE WAY! This book should be required reading by all leaders in government, all teachers who teach history, at all levels of learning”.

HAL CAPRON
“I found tears rolling down my cheek while reading about Alex and Raymond. Two such different lives, but both heroes just the same. The stories you tell are very touching and should be identifiable to people from all generations and backgrounds, just like your heroes are. It is hard to imagine the fear of being in the tail of that B-17, or having to live with the challenges of Raymond. But, your book has brought me as close as I will ever know of what it was like. I only hope that if I had been dealt the same hand as they were I would have been man enough to play it as well as they did”.

FOX CLEAR CHANNEL TELEVISION
“I just finished reading one of the most moving and compelling books I have ever read. Your first chapter sent chills up my spine and brought tears to my eyes. Your descriptions of the battlefields, the walk through the cemetery at Omaha Beach, and the letter from the military doctor in San Antonio all put into perspective how insignificant and fortunate we really are. The fact that you have put all of this on paper is a tribute to you and your character. I for one, thank you for opening my eyes”.

STEVE BEATTIE, ATTORNEY AT LAW
“Great reading! You are both tough and tender, and the combination makes for a unique and inspiring narrative. When the book is actually finished, I look forward to being one of your first customers. I know my Dad would enjoy the book”.

CHARLES JACKSON
(He has a chapter in this book) “If you hadn’t written this book, I would have gone to my grave having no idea about the true greatness of the individuals in our Garfield County High School class. We were/are a pretty impressive bunch of people, and before the book, I didn’t have a clue”.

NORMA AND GENE STROMBERG
“I read the first chapter of your book to Gene as he is almost blind now. It was great! We were both quite impressed and we both had tears in our eyes. I got choked up, especially when reading the poem at the end of this chapter. Gene is eighty three years old now and your book has brought back a lot of the WWII memories to him. (Gene made the D-Day invasion at Utah Beach”.)

RESA AND JOHN WING–WING INTERNATIONAL
“Just wanted to tell you how deeply touched John and I were while reading your book. You have a rare gift of not only poetry, charisma–we all know that about you–but even more importantly of sharing your heart and vision. Good luch with your book”.

JIM NELSON–PUBLISHED AUTHOR
“”Heroes Among Us” by Hal Terrell is obviously a labor of love. So many of us who are alive today remember little or nothing of the enormous conflict of WWII. As Hal points out in his epilogue, WWII was indeed a world war, a war of almost unbelievable scope. It involved sixth-eight countries and resulted in the death of many millions of people, both military and civilian. Through his research, his persistence and his words, Hal has presented slices from the military and the personal lives of twenty-one men. These men joined the armed services, shipped out for places of terrible danger, fought, and in some cases died for their country. Most of them had not yet reached voting age. “The Greatest Generation, the enormous death toll of WWII, the terrible injuries of many of the survivors are all things that slip all too easily into the mists of time. Thanks to Hal Terrell, some of the battles, some of the horror, some of these men will not be forgotten.”

[Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D., better known as Dr. Ni, is a radio talk show host. I recently asked if she would do a guest post about what she's looking for in the work submitted to her.]

I was standing on a hot, sweaty street corner waiting, interminably, for the slow-ass 23 bus.  The six or seven of us gathered there quietly not fighting for the miniscule space in the shade under a definitely unloved something straining to be a tree.  We couldn’t fault it; it was trying with everything it had.

The only sources of true entertainment were the two addicts, an interracial couple, madly in love, dancing, walking, talking and occasionally nuzzling while waiting for the bus.  Their love, we could see, was clear, pure, honest, and vivacious, and they didn’t care who saw.  Neither looked a long way from their last high, but my heart leapt when I saw the female, either Latina or white, holding fiercely to and reading, a book.  Literature, I thought, in the hands of someone who needs it! Then I saw the title.  Knife Assassin.

So when you ask me the rationale behind the choices for my radio show, “Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni,” I tell you that I want my listeners to hear the best writing out there; if they tune in, I want their ears dripping in anticipation.  I want their appetite for good words whetted and then sated in the way that only sweet potato cheesecake can make a gourmand smile.

Keep in mind that I am, and have been for 13+ years, a professor of literature, and therefore I want poems and prose with evidence of study and the development of craft.  To give you an idea, here is a definition of poetic art that I gave to the Kelly Writers House for whom I did a poetry workshop in 2005:

Why poetry:  Poetry works because it bypasses the intellect and goes straight for the gut, the soul, what lies underneath your tame and ordinary conventions, ideas, and feelings about the world.  It takes you out of your commonplace feelings and arouses, touches something deeper, something you feel only in your solar plexus, something you feel only when someone surprises you and knocks the wind, momentarily, out of your sails.  That gasp for breath, of recognition, that’s what you’re going for as a poet.  You want your audience to recognize but be stunned, startled by that recognition.  You want them shocked awake by what they instantaneously understand.Poetic language: By poetic language I mean metaphor, simile and imagery as your nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs; as your building blocks with which to communicate.  Poetic writing is about density (of image and metaphor) and compactness of language; you are communicating in symbols, but you are compacting those symbols so tightly that you express 5 pages in six or seven stanzas.  Your medium is the comparison, the putting of a thought or concept into its mirror, an image:  the way in which a flower unfolds, the way in which a bee approaches and pollinates, the way in which a mirror smashes against a wall and proliferates into a million and one shards.  Tell us about your news item and its effect on your world using image and metaphor and simile.  Tell us by showing us through what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you envision, what you hold every day in your hands.

Do you see what I mean by development/evidence of craft?  I want poems and stories for the show that leave a reader THINKING, recovering from an emotional onslaught, yes, absolutely, but I want their brain teased into motion as well.  Density, complexity, sophistication:  I want all three evident in the prose or poem, and it must be a great listening experience as well; if writing is not fun for the reader, does not pull the reader in—especially against his or her will—if it is not magnetic, kinetic, and instructive what then is the point and who will ever care?
   
You may wonder why I put “and instructive” in italics.  I am one of those old saws who still believes in the ideals of the Black Arts Movement.  Literature is supposed to give us tools for living, is supposed to tell us how others survived the impossible, the improbable, the unjust so that we too can do the same—with our dignity intact, with a sense, even, of majesty and grace.  Literature is supposed to arm us for Mr. Charlie, whoever and whatever our Mr. Charlie looks like.  That tree needed love and attention and water, and that female in love and recovery needed stronger sustenance than Knife Assassin would ever be able to offer.  To face the cruel twists and turns of fate sober will require knowledge, solace, tales sophisticated and honest with characters real in their bravery; characters enough like her to help her envision acting with similar courage and fortitude.
   
The 23 bus did, eventually, come, and I left that tree there, alone, unloved, unwatered.  Soon to be another fatality in this city of mounting bodies.  As I boarded the bus I tried very hard not to look at that woman and the book that, in her hands, would continue to break my heart.

The folks over at The Germaine Truth are conducting an incredible online fiction experiment complete with a newspaper, town hall, plus several characters, maps, etc. Well worth a look.

The thing that caught my eye when I was bopping around there is that their coffeehouse uses the same Ginseng coffee theme that this site does.

Lew Weinstein has just posted that his novel, which he offered free to readers of this blog, is now in print.

I congratulated Lew and said, “I suppose you’re already busy writing the next one, right?”

He replied, “Yes, I am deep into research … Lorenzo de Medici’s Florence in the late 15th c … which will lead to a sequel to The Heretic. I find this period in history, and Lorenzo himself, to be absolutely fascinating, and I am hopeful I can create a story that will communicate this excitement to readers.

“I’m also trying to improve my skills as a novelist, by reading books about writing and other novels (with a very focused eye). You can follow my progress at my other blog … http://novelwriting.wordpress.com.”

I sent him a short note back alerting him to my new blog about blooks. For those of you who might be curious, I’m posting there several times a day. I’ve had letters from authors, editors, and publishers and I’ve looked at over 100 blooks in less than two months.

[Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member J.D. Gordon]

It is every time that I look at something of mine that some misguided nut out there decided to print that I’m amazed. I never intended to get into writing as a career or even a hobby really. It was just something that I fell into, literally.

I fell off of a train several years goes and busted up my knee pretty bad. I was a professional firefighter/paramedic back in those days and considering the nature of the job, I was to be off of work for quite sometime. Outside of the most excellent pain medicines, the nightly pizza and gallon of ice cream to stave off depression, I really didn’t have much going on. I had always been an avid reader but never dreamed of writing. Until I was visiting my shift mates at the fire department and I was asked what I was going to do with all of my time away, besides being depressed and ingesting copious amounts of medicine, both the pharmaceutical kind and the culinary kind.

“Maybe I’ll write a book.” I did make the comment with a humorous edge. I wasn’t serious, until challenged.

“You don’t even use lower case letters for your run reports” (why waste time hitting the shift key?)

“You don’t even use punctuation in your run reports!” ( I often wondered what those extra keys along side the letters were.)

“You don’t even write your run reports!” (That’s true to, once I made it past rookie I handed that job off ASAP)

Well, the gauntlet was there, I picked it up and 4 months later some quack from 1stBooks Library was lining me up in his sites. He was right on target. I had no knowledge of the lit biz. I hooked up with that vanity publisher and in a couple more months I had a hot little copy of ISLAND BOUND in my hands.

I learned quite a bit in that venture and actually met the folks that would eventually publish CARIBBEAN CALLING. My second book in what I plan to be a three book series around the Caribbean adventures of a Midwestern firefighter named Eddie Gilbert.

I recalled someone, somewhere saying that one should write what one knows. I had always been a big fan of the Caribbean, warm weather and Jimmy Buffett so I went with the tropical flavor. I was firefighter, well, so is Eddie. I tended to read action adventure so I figured Eddie a pretty wild ride ahead of him.

I am always asked, and I wonder myself, what the difference is between action adventure and mystery. Prior to CARIBBEAN CALLING hitting the shelves it was reviewed, mostly, by organizations that considered themselves dedicated to the mystery writers. Perhaps it is simply the amount lead and explosives tossed around in my writing compared to true blue mystery writing people?

As of right now I am still writing but I will never set foot into another burning building. Yeah I know, I make that sound like a bad thing right? Well firefighting was my first love.

About two or three years ago I was injured in the line of duty. I went through a brutal year of surgery and rehabilitation. In the end, I had to retire. They kicked me out with the rest of the broken down and old firefighters. I now write news, community news and I am still writing books. The third Eddie book is to be released at the end of the year. That one is titled PIRATE’S FALL and I will not be holding my breath on a prompt release. It hasn’t happened yet. My publisher by the way, get this, is Red Engine Press. Which originally suited me just fine. Nowadays I’m getting a little tired of everyone asking me if I own the company. The red engine folks? Its a train, not a fire engine. Go figure… .

As for the future, time will tell.

I’m off to go write again, prolly chase the kids around. They won’t be little forever, the writing could wait.

Jimmy

NEED AN AGENT? LOOKING FOR A PUBLISHER?

Maybe we can help.

Killer Nashville 2007 (http://www.KillerNashville.com) has made arrangements with New York’s Maria Carvainis Agency’s Donna Bagdasarian and Oceanview Publishing’s editor Maryglenn McCombs to accept pitches from registered authors during Killer Nashville 2007, August 17-19, 2007.

Both agent and editor are actively seeking new authors.

The pitch sessions are a free add-on to Killer Nashville 2007 attendees and are on a first-registered, first-served basis. Pitch times are limited. Signing up for Killer Nashville or the pitch sessions after all times have been taken does not guarantee any new pitch times will be added. Register early to ensure you get a spot

To sign up for a pitch time at no additional cost, or to read agent/editor bios see http://www.killernashville.com/Content2007/agentedsignup2007.htm.

To register for Killer Nashville 2007 visit http://www.killernashville.com/Content2007/registration2007.htm.

Note: Assignment times are given in the order Killer Nashville registration is received, not the time in which the agent/editor pitch request is received.

I’m of the opinion - I got it first from Judith Barrington’s book Writing the Memoir and had it reinforced in graduate school — that a memoir is more than a memory written down. It’s an evaluation of what happened from the perspective of today. I’d like to share a quote I found this morning that explains even better:

“Time changes people, places and perceptions

“One of the things I love most about blogging, is that it allows us, in a very real way, to interact with earlier versions of ourselves.  What I mean is that I can look back in time, say 4 years, to a post I wrote before the advent of children, deaths and triumphs.  That Chris no longer exists; should I mourn for his passing or be overjoyed that I have matured, leaving that man to the cold blankness of time?

“Reading that post, I can answer myself across the gulfs of time and cyberspace, and say “No, you weren’t an idiot.  You were brave enough to believe in an ideal, one that had no possibility of making a difference.  But you believed and that, is worth more than can be imagined.” (Chris Davis)

Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member Diana Zwinak.

How 18 people came to write more than 70,000 words in November
and lived to tell about it
By Diana Zwinak

I believe that teenage writers have a wealth of creativity inside them that should not be ignored and that our schools’ curriculums, focused as they are on standardized tests, push many students away from acquiring the very skills that teachers want adamantly to drill into their heads. For this reason, and as a response to the needs of several of my students, I created a non-profit corporation (Teen Writers and Artists Project) that tries to help supply these teenagers with the outlet that they so desperately crave. This is beginning to take up a serious amount of time, but when I am not tending to my corporation, or writing my own work, I am teaching at a rural high school in Illinois. Our entire student body is less than 500 students. However, last year 17 of them started the journey to became first time novelists, at least by NaNoWriMo standards. It all started on a pretty typical day in November. . .

Students in my high school English classes never know what to expect. In the course of a typical day I may get overtaken by inspiration several times and spontaneously start bouncing up and down in front of the classroom, a signal that I am about to send the whole class, or a select few adventurous souls, off on a project that takes us places we never even thought of before. That is what happened to us that day in the middle of the first week of last November.

I had just started my first attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. I was brimming with the exhilaration of just writing without a direction, just letting words flow for once. I hadn’t written in this way since high school or early college when I seemed to be a pipeline of words that poured forth and shaped themselves into their own amazing projects destined after a little tweaking from the internal editor to become pretty solid creations. I had honestly forgotten how good that felt.

So I was telling my students about it. They thought I was nuts. Most of them have never attempted to write anything beyond the papers demanded of them by the school system, and once they get to high school in our district, these papers become dry and unimaginative. Wrapped up in the MLA style manual and a formula that makes them easy to grade, they are boring to write. Students soon lose interest in writing at all, much less writing well. However, these papers are also designed in such a way that the department believes their are sure to learn various skills mandated by the state, so I can see why they exist in the format they do.

But that day I was filled with the joy and the lightening that true creative freedom can bring, and I challenged them to try to take part in the project with me. The NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s program allows students to make an agreement with a teacher and set a word goal for themselves. Students are not restricted to the 50,000 words that adult novelists are given. I offered my students 25 extra credit points if they set a word limit and succeeded. If they got half-way to their goal, they got 50 percent of the points. A quarter of the way got them 25 percent and so on.

Seventeen of my students took me up on the offer. Surprisingly, many of them were not from actual classes I taught but from my creative writing club at the high school. These people weren’t currently taking classes with me so they could not earn extra credit for their work. Some worked individually, some worked in pairs. Six of my students met their word goals and several NaNoWriMo novels came into existence. Everything from love stories to teen angst and horror stories poured through their fingers and into their computers. Periodically, students would turn their novels in to me electronically so that I could upload their novels into the NaNoWriMo counter.

My students who wrote the greatest amount of words 17,220 out of a contracted goal of 12,500 wrote a semi-Gothic exchange of letters between two twins battling for survival against their emotionally abusive father. One twin was sweetness and optimism; the other was eerie and weird. Overall the novel flowed well and descriptively for a piece that was not given a chance for a rewrite. They were proud of the work they had done and were presented with blank books to serve as journals to honor their achievement.

As a whole the student body of Indian Creek High School in Shabbona, Illinois had set a goal of 50,000 words. They wrote 70,430. Not too shabby for first timers.

Most importantly of all these students were given a chance to attempt a feat their peers would not. They came away having felt the joy of unbridled creation, and the confidence of accomplishment. One memory that sticks out in my mind was the day one of my freshmen came to me describing with wonder how she had cried uncontrollably while she wrote the scene in her novel in which her heroine died. She was amazed and I was pleased that she could feel so deeply for someone she created. I smiled and nodded, remembering the times when I , myself, have lost my heart to a character.

Upon completion of the project, all students’ names and word counts were posted on a bulletin board in my classroom, and any other passing student who dared to comment negatively on someone’s lower word count was asked how many words they had written last November. I never had that problem with the participants. Those other students got my point fairly quickly.

This year we plan to start outlining in October. We will approach it in a more organized manner, and I hope to complete more that 1900 out of my own 50,000 word goal. I also plan to offer NaNoWriMo Young Author support groups to teens in the Chicago area that are planning to try. Anyone interested in having a support group in their community can contact me at TeenWritersAndArtistsProject@gmail.com. Or they can visit our weblog and online journal link at TeenWritersAndArtistsProject.blogspot.com or through our page on myspace.com

I had the odd experience last night of having someone read my own words to me. A black woman. I was astounded by how different they sounded with her inflection as opposed to how they had sounded in my head as I was writing.

I’ve never consciously thought about my readers beyond wanting to connect with them as human beings. Sure, I realize that some things just won’t translate into other cultures. Like in my novel, none of the murderers at the senior center used a gun as a weapon. The centers with which I’m familiar are primarily white suburban centers. I’m guessing - could be my own bias - that most of the members don’t carry guns.

But how odd to think that someone in a senior center, perhaps in a city, would find my book “stupid” - or something like that, maybe “naive” - because I didn’t simply have the murderer shoot his victim. We talked a bit about that last night on the radio. Well, I mentioned the recent shooting over cards at a senior residence in Chicago.

We also talked about something that struck Dr. Ni as peculiar, which was my use of “the Spanish-speaking woman.” I confess I used it too often but for the life of me could not think of another way to identify her without being crude. I grew up in the whitest of white neighborhoods. The closest we came to persons of color were when the stray migrant child was plopped into school for the brief time that their parents worked on nearby farms. Mexican was used in a derogatory (two gs or one?) fashion.

Besides I couldn’t use “Mexican” generically - although I guess that my parents might. Spanish-speaking folk come from everywhere. I just read this morning in the DePaul Alumni news that Chicago has the third largest Spanish-speaking population - ahead of Miami!

Dr. Ni said that coming from California as she did her choice would have been chicana or latina. Duh! Never occured to me. But I do know enough not to use those interchangeably. Latina meaning someone of Hispanic descent born outside the U.S. Chicana is reserved for someone born here. [I hope I've got that right].

Ah me. So much to consider.