I’m number 3! I’m number 3! *Jumps around room, whooping and cheering.*

What? No one chants that? Why would I care to celebrate NOT placing first or even second?

Third is an also ran. Little prize money. Little acclaim. No one remembers third. Still technically a loser.

But therein lies the beauty.

When I began writing (not counting my plays or short stories I wrote in elementary school). I was in junior high. In my bedroom, I knocked out which in today’s standards would be considered a 300-page, Star Wars fan fiction. I did it with a friend and the writing was fun. I didn’t want or need outside validation.

Fast forward a few years and I get on the writer’s career super highway. But instead of taking me quickly to my destination of Publish Land. It’s more like a stretch of endless, highway with nothing but cornfields .

I move along counting miles, I look for signs that I’m getting closer. Any landmark, that tells me that I’m moving.

I enter contest and submit to agents and apply for scholarships. At the beginning of my contest run, I merely got general comments mentioning my grammar or awkward sentences.

Good concept, back execution.

I took classes and polished and tightened and tweaked and submitted to the Rebecca in 2013.

I remember the day I got the email. I expected to see a general: so many great entries this year but you didn’t place note. The congratulation hit me like a right hook to my jaw from a prize fighter. After a few hours, the truth seeped into my bones. I was elated. Third place! In a hotly competitive category in a very prestigious contest. Not first, not second, but respectable.

I felt like I’d finally seen the sign. I may not be in Published Land, but by God I was making progress.

Placing second would have been good, but so close to first, I would have constantly tortured myself. Was it that one comma? A forgotten verb case? Was my story not tight enough?

But third. Third was almost freeing. Oodles better, but no pressure.

Even first, at the time, would have been more hurtful than helpful. With a first place victory, the request would have started, from an agent or editor. At the time, I don’t think my writing could have stood up to the scrutiny. And I would have scrambled and panicked and felt like a fraud.

I believed that somehow my feelings were weird or wrong, but stumbled upon this little article about Olympic bronze medal winners and how they are happier than silver medal winners. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-counterfactual-thinking-may-make-you-more-relieved-to-get-third-place-rather-than-second-2012-8. I felt better, and kept submitting.

Recently, I received third place in a scholarship contest. A pretty big deal contest as well. They liked the concept and the writing, and the scoring was within fractions of points. I’m a bit less satisfied with this win. Which tells me that my time being comfortable with third place is coming to an end.

I want more. I will deal with the jealously of second and the pressure of being first, because I have done the work. I have done the time. I am ready to progress.

And it’s long past time for me to see that beautiful sign: Now entering Published Land.

Have you come in third? Won? How did it make you feel? Comment below.

 

Just got caught in the vortex that is known as Netflix binge watching during a snow day hiatus. And I gotta say, I’m addicted to The Blacklist. Didn’t expect it either.  I’d heard from multiple sources that it was a great show and I should be watching.  I had reservations. The show had none of my favorite tropes no romantic theme, no science fiction or fantasy, (and let’s be honest) no beefcake male over which to drool.  But I did know I enjoyed James Spader and during a span in the 80’s and 90’s found him to be quite dishy, and he still had that amazing voice.

I sat down expecting to watch the first half of the pilot then move on to the next thing in my queue. I was enchanted.  The power that James Spader as Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington  brings to the screen with his every interaction with Lizzie is the stuff of classic must see TV.

But the more you watch, the more you realize he is definitely not a nice person. Definitely not one of the good guys, at least by traditional standards. He literally wears a black fedora. One of the FBI’s most wanted, he turns himself in as an informant and will only speak with Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Keen, a young profiler on her first day at the Bureau. But his presence on the screen is magnetizing.  The way he looks at Lizzie, the way he would do anything to protect her, is as engrossing as any romance. They have an undisclosed connection. And we get a bit of intrigue and spyventure and kick butt female empowerment, so the entire show is like a giant cream puff of goodness. But of all of super cool features, Red hooks me the most.

I enjoy his rhetoric, his storytelling, his loyalty, his irreverence, his self-serving agenda, and that in the end, nothing means more to him than Lizzie’s safety, even his own life.

Why does this character who in most shows or books would be a villain grab the audience by the emotional cajones and does not let go?

I have found characters like him almost always attract me emotionally. Antiheroes like Han Solo, Flynn Ryder, Damon Salvatore, BBC Sherlock, Spike, all have a few things in common.

They are all intelligent. In a room full of average hooligans, they can out talk, out maneuver, and outwit all comers. Red not only out thinks the FBI but he uses their influence to eliminate any criminal that gets in his the way.

Even in the worst of circumstance, they seem to find the humor in the situation. Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, changed from bad to good and fell in love with the lead character but still had a yen for watching his daily soap opera, Passions.

 They are charming. Damon Salvatore, Vampire Diaries, can murder a dozen people and end the episode stealing a dance with Elena and swearing his undying loyalty and the views swoon.

Han Solo’s classic response when Princess Leia tells him she loves him.  Not the good boy, “I love you, too.” But instead, “I know.”  The character could write the guidebook on cocky bad boy responses.

Deep emotional core a/k/a their soft and gooey center. They care about their loved ones to a level that is above the law and moral standing. To save or be reunited with their loved one, they go to extreme measures. Spike fought through Hell for months to restore his soul, Damon returned from the dead, Red sacrificed himself to one of his many enemies in order to save Lizzie from a bullet in the head. Flynn Ryder dies instead of allowing Rapunzel to sacrifice her freedom.

After examining the blueprint for the antihero, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

Bad boys are fun, irreverent, romantic, and are highly entertaining, and attractive (in fiction). We return again and again to watch the morality play, to be entertained by their badness. and to root that they may find their inner good guy.

But for the audience to fall in love with them, they must feel redeemable. Even if they are never redeemed.

What do you think of the Blacklist? Bad boys?  Redeemable or unredeemable characters?  Leave me a comment.

I have a really awful secret.

When I was a teenager I spent a lot of time with my great-grandmother. If I didn’t have theatre rehearsal, or track practice, I’d walk to her house and wait for a ride home (I lived pretty far from town where the high school is located). The ruse was that my grandparents needed help doing various chores around the house. I did the dishes, but mostly I sat and painted my great-grandmothers nails while she told me stories. Most of which were maybe true. Maybe.

Looking back now, I think I got some of that dramatic story telling flare from her. She was quiet and unassuming. Mostly she was a good listener—But if I asked her to talk about her childhood or tell me about some item in their house, she’d weave a good tale.

One of the things I liked about my visits there were that she was always very positive. She had a heart condition and she’d outlived the doctor’s predictions of her lifespan by twenty years or more. She’d always tell me how talented I was. She loved my drawings, she loved my cooking, and she loved how I massaged her hands before I’d paint them. She told me I could be anything I wanted and I believed her.

I wasn’t sure about going to college. I’d heard a lot of conflicting advice. One counselor had lamented it might be a waste of money, that I was the sort of student that would realize too late I didn’t have the capacity to understand the higher level thinking college would demand. I went to my grandma’s house right after that and cried. My grandma said, “Well, that settles it. You have to go,” along with a few other choice words for where the counselor could put his opinion—all very polite, of course. She was a lady after all. Her encouragement along with many others was much needed at that time in my life.

I came home for the summer after my first year and worked at a grocery store. Every day I’d go to my grandma’s for lunch. I’d talked about a program to go to London to study. My grandmother emigrated to the U.S. from England when she was three. She was ecstatic about the idea.

“It’s cold there,” she said. I have no idea how she could have any memories of that time, but she said she did. She remembered someone, a relative, dying on the boat. I wish I’d written that story down.

Then the planning started. Whenever I’d come home to visit she’d update me on family names she remembered. Places she wanted me to see and take pictures to bring back to her. Before I left she was so concerned about the cold she gave me a blanket. It was her mother’s. “This blanket is my great-great-grandmother’s,” I’d think to myself with awe. I stroked its rough wool texture and thought of all the people this blanket had kept warm.

“Just promise me if I give you this that you will use it. It doesn’t belong in a chest collecting dust. Things were meant to be used, not hidden away.”

She was always big on that. Don’t hide things away. Use them. If you have pictures hang them. If candles are on the table, light them. If you have heirlooms, pull them out and show them to people. If you have a dream, chase it.

The fall semester before I left for London was crazy. I called my grandmother usually every so many days to update her on how I was doing. Sometimes I wrote her. She insisted we write, although I hated it, but she said she liked getting letters and I secretly liked getting them too, so to get I had to give. I remember writing to tell her about not coming up for the weekend like I’d planned and about all the exams I had.

She called me to tell me that I’d made the right choice, that she wished me luck on my exams and papers and that she loved me. I wasn’t there to take the call, so I had a nice message on my machine when I got home from work. I guess I should have been suspicious then. Why didn’t she write? We did call each other every so often. I brushed it off.

She died a few days later–two months before I moved to England to study abroad, probably while I was writing a paper, a few days after the weekend I was supposed to be home.

Before I knew she had died, I listened to her message over and over before each exam for luck. After I was told she was gone, I listened to the message over and over for clues. Did she know she was going to die? Did she call from the hospital? Why didn’t my family tell me?

I kept that message for years. When I got a new answering machine, I carefully preserved the machine, wrapped the cord around it and placed it in a closet at my parent’s house. Sometimes when I’d go home, I’d listen to the message.

That is my awful secret. The blanket stayed folded up in my hope chest, but the message got played over and over. People say you forget things about people after they die. I was horrified when I tried to picture her and couldn’t quite remember her features. I relished the fact that I’d cheated death of this one thing. I’d never have to forget the sound of her voice.

My pen name, Gower, is her maiden name. I didn’t bring the blanket to England like she’d hoped I would. I was too afraid it would get lost or ruined. I know she’d understand that, she wouldn’t have been angry—she never expected to die before I left—after all I was supposed to write her of all the places I saw. I was supposed to “go away and have adventures.” And I did.

Then when I came home I unwrapped the cord from the answering machine and would listen to her voice again. I kept doing it so many years later. The blanket that was supposed to be (and promised to be used) stayed safely tucked away.

I feel like I do this sometimes with my stories. I wrap them up and put them away after they’ve been published. I wrote something someone bought and enjoyed enough to pay for. But after they’re not in print anymore I wrap them up like the blanket and place them away in a hope chest. Someday, I’ll pull it out and use it again. Maybe tomorrow.

The answering machine is one of the things burned in my parent’s fire. I know I’ve talked a lot about the things they’ve lost, because they’re not the type to harp on it and try to remain positive. But all those scraps of memories that they’ve kept over the years to remind us of the people we loved–the fire is like having that loss happen all over again. I don’t mind being the sad sap I guess.

I already have forgotten the sound of my grandmother’s voice. When I realized this I tried again, closing my eyes and concentrating on the rasp of her vocal cords, the lilt in her inflections. It wasn’t right. I’ll never get it back, but I do still have the blanket. Safe and tucked away in a hope chest in my son’s room, I dug it out a few weeks ago.

My daughter said she was cold and I wrapped her up in it while we talked. I told her it was her great-great-great grandmother’s blanket.

She sniffed it. “Does it smell like her?”

“No.” I held back a laugh.

“Okay, because it’s dusty. If it smelled like her then she should have taken a bath.” A few minutes later. “Can I take it off? It itches.”

It wasn’t exactly the profound moment I’d imagined.

My daughter then asked me about my stories and if I would read them. I read her a little section of one of my stories. She asked if other people read them. I said I hoped so.

And then it hit me. I’d been wanting to put my backlog of published stories up for free for some time, but I’d been holding on to them, waiting for a “good time to share them.” Also I’ve been hoping to sell them as re-prints, but really that market is pretty competitive and what I want most is for them to be enjoyed. I wrote them so they’d get read. I didn’t ever mean for them to sit on my computer after the rights reverted back to me. I didn’t ever mean for them to be folded up like that blanket in the hope chest. Things should always be in use. Even stories.

One day I hope to package several stories up into a self-published package and offer them for cheap. For now I’m going to put them on Wattpad one by one. Starting with a recent story that was originally published in Galaxy’s Edge May 2014 issue. “Pocket Full of Mumbles” is about a woman who captures unheard phrases and last words and weaves them into blankets. I thought it was a good one to start with.

Link to read Pocket Full of Mumbles on Wattpad

Enjoy.

I love comments! Everyone who leaves a comment will help someone reclaim something that has been hidden away.

My brother excels at many things. He’s  not just good, but great at almost anything he tries. Skills seemed to come to him in a flash.  He wanted to learn about computers in the 80’s so he pulled one apart and rebuilt it.  He could do the Rubik’s cube in less than three minutes.  He picked up a guitar. Within a few weeks, he had a band and was composing music.

Composing. Music.

He learned to drive and never had a major accident of any kind. In school, he never studied that I recall. I don’t think he ever brought home a school book after he hit high school, yet still managed very good grades.

There are many words attached to someone like this: genius, talented, wunderkind, but I categorize him as a natural.

I am not.

I read and re-read the instructional book that came with my DOS operated computer until I finally figured out how to make a simple program.  I never mastered the Rubik cube.  I spent the entirety of junior high learning to play flute by practicing every day and finally in high school took lessons. By my senior year, I was first chair. I was a horrible driver, until I had driven for years. And although I was third in my high school class and got a full ride scholarship, I spent most of my teen years buried in a math or history book, repeating by rote, doing worksheets, taking notes, highlighting, studying.

Writing is the same. The desire to put pen to paper comes with a small dollop of talent but it’s not easy. I am not a natural.

I watch other writing naturals and hear their stories. I got a Kindle in 2011 and decided I wanted to write a book. Three months later it was a ‘boom’ bestseller. I quit my day job.

The tales make my insides turn to molten lava and my head explode.  I’ve been writing for enjoyment my entire life.  I am a horrible speller, not great a grammar, and struggle with a myriad of other writing devices.  I take classes, go to seminars, read books, dedicate half of my time to writing and editing new material every damn day and after more than ten years on a publication path I still am trudging forward. No request. No agent. No publishing deal.

But all those years of watching my brother and fighting my not-naturalness has taught me something.

If I work hard enough. If I am dedicated enough.  If I endure for long enough.  I will succeed.  Natural or not.

Disclaimer: My brother may dispute the above. It is only my observation of the past and it is subjective.

Big, fat, hairy goals. BFHG for short.

I love list. Grocery list. To do list. Future plans lists. Project lists. If there is information I need to review or remember, my best friend is a bullet pointed Word doc. (Yeah, I’m weird. Also don’t get me started on office supplies or book stores.)

My favorite kind of list is a goals list. A list of resolutions for the new week, new month, new year, even the new day. My addition to list making is both a blessing and a bane. Because no matter how focused I am, no matter how early I start, I always, ALWAYS, put more on the list than I can humanly accomplish.

I say to myself on a daily basis. Don’t put more on the list than you can possibly do, because the pursuit will end in disappointment and eventually the important task planned at the bottom will fall off the list and be forgotten, because huge goals aren’t attainable anyway. Too much to do, not enough me.

When this happens I get discouraged and lose faith in my ability. The big, fat, hairy goals like- research Indie publishing , or submit to thirty agents, becomes more of a dream than a potential reality and my list drops into the mundane of emptying dishes and shoveling the driveway. Things that are safe. Things that I know I can complete in a satisfying manner. Things that don’t contribute to my life vision. But I have to admit that buzzy feeling of completion is somewhat addictive.

My biggest problem is the size of my goals. I logically can not work, care for a household, do my daily writing and editing, AND listen to half a dozen podcast, contact multiple freelance editors, pick through a hundred photos for cover, etc. (continues on to over fifty action items.)

I have found the answer is to have the big, fat hairy goals, but to rein in my excitement, and to adjust my expectations. Margie Lawson, one of my writing gurus, has a great article online about goal  setting and a whole packet about Defeating Self Defeating Behavior which I highly recommend. She suggest having two list. One a Winner list and even if you have dozen of things that need to be done, put two of your most important dream based goals on this list. These two must be done by the end of the day. She also encourages a Superstar list for when you have extra time to reach a bit higher and claw closer to those BFHGs.

I know these things, I just need to remember to implement slicing of goals on a daily basis and prioritizing. Keeping the ultimate vision of my life forefront and make enough progress to please my inner taskmaster.

Excuse me while I add, set realistic, bite sized goals to my list. Daily.

So what do you guys think about goals and achievement? Pro, con, too much structure? Please let me know in the comments.