#FridayFlash, NaNo and Writing About Writing

It's funny how things go.  When I first started writing there was no way I'd show my stuff to people. I also knew there would be a long way until I could muster the courage to do so. Although, I knew that nowadays writing doesn't have to be a strictly lonely activity, so I signed up for Twitter and started talking to like minded people. 

This is when I first learned about #FridayFlash. Oh boy, how badly I wanted to be a part of it!  But I was still shy, so I watched, read and learned. 

On May 2010 I finally gathered my wits and wrote my first flash fiction, Zombie Walk.  The response was so great that it even got published on an e-zine, Flashes in the Dark, and it inspired me to run a contest Zombie Luv, which was so very funny and a great success! Recently, to my surprise, it was accepted in the anthology The Best of Friday Flash vol. 2, or as we affectionately call it, BOFF #2. (I strongly suggest you follow the links and buy the thing. The stories there are... Wow!)

After that first push I got a little bolder. I wrote weekly stories and made great friends in the #FridayFlash community. I even joined WeSeWrimo (Web Serial Writing Month) and NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month), and got some great writing experience from it. 

WeSeWrimo I "won" kind of easily, since you're the one setting your own goals. I was very modest and made the best of it. NaNoWrimo is something different altogether. You have to write 50K words in a month, and if you have never tried something like that, let me tell you this is no easy task. NaNo flunked very early on, but I wasn't too upset about it. 

A few months later life got the better of me and I stopped writing. It took me over a year to put it together so I could even consider the writing venture again. No matter, in due time I got back and I do write a few stories now and then, and even, *cough, cough* poems. O.o (Not showing those publicly, sorry! :P) 

Ironically enough, now that I write much less than I used to, I find myself writing about writing. Back when I started Randomities (this blog you're reading, if you're new here ;) I set a goal of sharing only my stories and other random stuff. What I least wanted was to write about writing, because I thought that such meta-writing was for the likes of Stephen King, not people like me. 

Well, life got the better of me again! Recently I was humbled and honored to be invited to join the #FF staff as a contributing correspondent. I hope I'll be up to the challenge! You can make your own mind about it by reading my first article: "NaNo madness this year? Thanks, but no thanks".

So, if you're curious to know why my NaNo experience flunked, and more importantly, why I'm totally okay with it, follow the link above. I hope you'll find it somehow useful. ;) While you're at it, I suggest you browse through the Friday Flash website. It's full of information and links to uncountable wondrous stories. Have fun! 

Women

Picture credit

By instict a woman perceives the truth and anticipates it.

José Martí

Happy Women's Day! 


Here's to a year with better working conditions, less and less (and less!) genital mutilation, more equal treatment, less slavery, less envy of our life-creating potential, less fear of our power, more love.  


To a day in which every day will be a woman's day, as every day is a mankind day.

The Privacy Thing

It took me almost a month but I'm finally explaining why Randomities moved, and why I've changed my whole web presence. Thanks for your patience guys! :)

Beforehand, I should assure you that no, there's no stalker. My shadowy picture is result of an option I've made in regard of my privacy. Ever since I've turned my life towards the writing career I've considered how much should be shared about my personal life on the internet and elsewhere.

It's not an easy thing to find balance. Take Neil Gaiman as example, he has a blog, he's on twitter, he has a girlfriend who has a blog and is also on twitter, his assistant too and even his bird-watching friend.

There was a time, not long ago, when he shared insights about his daughter, his son, his dog and cats, his girlfriend, and even the rudeness of a cab driver, or the moment he was going to sleep -- from the bed of a hotel room or his own.

Once I did follow all this activity, being a real drooler over his writing, but soon I felt overwhelmed -- talk about stalking, eh?

Now I follow him on twitter and only occasionally check out his blog. Last time I popped in there I glimpsed over another post about his dog (boring) and news about the events he was attending (boring, but only because I can't be there, bleh).

As far as I know he has limited his personal exposure on the web. I concluded this by the diminished number of tweets and change in content. Now he shares other people's stuff as well. Actually, to be fair, he has been sharing mainly other people's stuff lately, which are interesting and informative.

Although I've never reached Gaiman's extreme I was already feeling over exposed. Having a conservative profession I thought I should split my web persona from my professional one, to spare me future problems and allow me the freedom to write whatever the muse inspires me to.

So I ask you, how do you feel about your own exposure on the web and elsewhere?

Do you think the lack of a clear picture of a writer could be an impediment to her work reaching the readers?

Breathe

I had promised another installment of the zombie dragon story for this week, but, but... It doesn't matter does it? heh ;P

So, I wrote this a few days ago, which I thought I'd share with you although it doesn't really qualify as #FridayFlash. But there you go; I hope you'll like it. :)

Breathe

I'm walking on a large road with no room for pedestrians. I'm going from one appointment to another and I have plenty of time. I'm hungry. I'm eager to sink my teeth into the half-eaten sandwich I'm carrying in my purse.

My strides are calm yet determined. I spot this:

I had seen this small path before, walking on the same road. I've wanted to explore it although it looked too much like the entry to a private property. Today I dare going in. It might have been the pending flowers that made it look like the door to another world, or it was the sun inviting me to rest under the trees tops. It doesn't matter.

I look back to see if someone sees me and I stroll in. I'm welcomed by chipping birds, a kind breeze and white butterflies.

As I advance I'm more and more certain that I'm trespassing. I ignore the knot on my stomach and look at the shades of green of the tree leaves above my head; I smell the humidity of the earth below my feet; I hear the cracking sound of the fallen branches at my every step.

I hear a rumbling sound that does not come from my belly. Shortly after I see a construction between the tree trunks; there's no doubt anymore.

I turn to go away. Nature invites me to stay for a while longer, so I leave the rough road embracing the woods, feeling that the birds will hide and protect me from the owner's wrath. I'm wearing red under a black coat.

I give my back to the house and the noise and sit on a tree stump. I eat my sandwich, leaving the crumbs in appreciation of the bird's greeting. The sun thanks me with a warm beam, illuminating every one of us.

I breathe in the moment and go. The butterflies salute me in my way back.

*

I'm writing this in a charming town, drinking a good caffè macchiato. I pause every once in a while to gaze at the passing people, the buildings and into nothing.

The sun has hidden behind the clouds, providing a cool afternoon. My red scarf protects me from the mountain air and the coffee heats me from the inside. Life is good right now.

Note: These pics were taken by yours truly with her crappy cell phone camera. Please forgive their bad quality, although I've tagged this post as "pretty things". It's the essence that is pretty, not the form. ;)

Mother's Day - Twitter Chats Blog Tour

Welcome to the Twitter Chats Blog Tour, organized by Anne Tyler Lord at Don’t Fence Me In and by yours truly. ;) Today's theme is Mother's Day.

You'll be traveling with us through the blogs of some of the fantastic authors and writers who participate in our weekly -- funny, entertaining and educating -- Twitter chats. This tour will feature writers from #writechat, #litchat, and #fridayflash.

You will be directed to your next stop at the end of this post. Please feel welcome here, and have a happy Mother's Day!

~~~~~~~

Where Is Mom

Where's mom?

She's not here dear, but she'll be back by night.

I want my mom.

I know honey...

Why she's never here? Doesn't she love me?

Of course she loves you!

Then why is she never here?

Because she's working...

Why?

Well, people have to work to buy food, clothes, to keep a house.

These things.

Why

does she

have to work?

Why don't you go so she can stay with me?

Well...

Humph.

Will you be my mom instead?

Oh no, pumpkin, I can be your friend if you want, but I'm not your mother.

I want mommy...

Come here sweetie. Lie down on my lap.

I'll tell you a nice story while we wait for her to come back.

A story?

What kind of story?

An adventure, with magic swords and all!

I love magic swords! Can I have a hot cocoa too?

This once, ok?

Ok.

~~~~~~~

Thanks for stopping by! Your next stop for the Mother's Day Twitter Chats Blog Tour is Jon Strother, at Mad Utopia, who is the creator of one of the most prolific and supportive Twitter Chats, #FridayFlash. If you are on Twitter, it's worth checking it out!

Below you'll find the complete list of participants, in order of appearance. Have fun! :)

>> Anne Tyler Lord of Don't Fence Me In (co-host of Twitter Chats Blog Tour)

>> Mari Juniper of mari's randomities (co-host of Twitter Chats Blog Tour)

>> Jon Strother of Mad Utopia (creator of #FridayFlash)

>> Carolyn Burns Bass of Ovations, and also at the Red Room writing community (creator of #LitChat)

>> Marisa Birns of Out Of Order Alice

>> Jemi Fraser of Just Jemi

>> Deanna Schrayer of The Other Side of Deanna

>> Laura Eno of A Shift In Dimensions

>> Susan Gottfried of West Of Mars

>> Tony Noland of Landless

>> Kristi Thompson of How Did You Get There

>> Angie Capozello of Techtiggers' Soapbox

>> Donna Carrick of Writer's Craft

>> P.J. Kaiser of Inspired By Real Life

Note: I found this gorgeous picture that we used for the tour here.

Motto

This is a quick note to tell you that I've found a motto for myself.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” ~ Plato

I don't know why I haven't chosen this phrase before, as it rings so true, but it doesn't matter.

What do you think of my choice? :)

Note to add: I'm a sucker for images. I couldn't just leave this post image-less, so I've put this beautiful mosaic of Plato in Athens to illustrate it, which I found here. *snort* heh

Jealous? Hell, yeah!

These days I came across a piece from a fellow writer that astounded me. I'm afraid I can't tell whether its fiction or non fiction, prose or poetry, but suffice to say that I felt jealous of the quality therein.

I had never felt like this before. I thought I'd never feel this way. I thought myself above these "petty" feelings, and then BANG!

I hate when this happens. However, this is one of those opportunities I grab with both hands.

"Have you noticed that you often contradict yourself? This is getting annoying," you say.

Heh, indeed. Why would someone hold to a supposedly bad feeling?

Well, it's not to the feeling that I cling to, mind, it's to discovering a new aspect of myself.

Right, I know this is not a pleasant one, but although I dabble with fantasy and science fiction in my writing, when it comes to real life I'm very realistic. It doesn't mean that I know immediately how to deal with it, though. So I thought that by asking others how they coped with it I might not feel so bad about myself and move on to working and improving my own stuff. ;)

So, would you help me out on this? Have you ever felt jealous of someone else's work? If yes, how did you manage it?

Note: I meant to leave this post dry of pictures, but then I came across the painting "Jealous Zebras" and I couldn't resist putting here. Too darn fitting! heh

Edited to add: The artist who created this fabulous painting is Eira Fogelberg. Thanks to @virtualDavis for sharing this information and linking back here. :) You can visit his Posterous blog if you like. It's has much in common with Randomities, heh.

Random Cool Things #3 - Zélia Duncan

When thinking on how put into words the Traveling Souls post, I came across this song Não Vá Ainda or literally translated Don't Go Yet composed and sang by a fabulous Brazilian artist, Zélia Duncan.

By the way, she's on Twitter, in case you want to get in touch with her. ;)

The song has nothing to do with my musings, directly anyway, but the idea of someone leaving reminded of the nomad lifestyle I've never had. (and don't intend on having, just sayin', heh)

Here's an excerpt of the lyrics, poorly translated by me. I hope you'll be able to see my point.

Me diga como você pode viver indo embora, sem se despedaçar

Por favor me diga agora, ou será

Que você nem quer perceber?

Talvez você seja feliz sem saber.

Tell me how can you be always leaving, without falling apart

Please tell me now, or is it

That you don't even want to know?

Maybe you're happier unaware.

I gather this might make not much sense, but the music is good anyway. Don't you agree? ;)

Traveling Souls, Opening Eyes

I'm reading Cape Wrath to Finisterre, by Björn Larsson. This is not a usual novel, like his famous Long John Silver; it's more a collection of thoughts and reflections. This book is so rich that in the third chapter I had to stop and write this post.

Larsson's life circles around the sea, his travels, and of course, his writing. He met many people in his wanderings: a guy who wanted to build his own boat; a man who worked on a nuclear submarine spending six months under water, and when he came out he'd say that the surface reeked of putridity; an Irish couple who lived a very simple life and were happy, he was the type of sailor who would go out for a "ride" in a storm that kept everyone else at home; a captain who had a heart attack the day after paying Larsson and his wife a visit, clad in full uniform to honor the couple's nautical abilities, and whose faith is unknown, as of numerous other friends they have made on their traveling.

Reading about these people who live by and for the sea, casting anchor only to gather supplies for their journey, triggered a frequent contemplation of mine.

Once again I come to realize how many worlds there are in our World.

We hear frequently about the "sea people" -- sailors, travelers, merchants, etc. -- but we never get to feel what their life is like. In this book, there's a hit of that feeling, which is one of the most precious things to me, because these fleeting impressions can teach us more than many believe.

You can learn a whole different way of seeing life, of thinking, an unlike set of desires, fears and goals. You get to feel it too. I could almost smell the scent of a storm by his description of a moment in someone else's life; I could feel the urge of moving forward, never remaining in a place for long --even though my personal needs are diametrically opposite -- I could taste the salty wind in a bright day.

His tales also brought back the memory of my own encounters with people of various cultural backgrounds: a friendly man who lives in Eastern Island, where the natives still live by the standards of their ancient culture, with hints of modernity provided by television, alcoholic beverages, and internet; a black man with the hardest gaze, filled with suffering and danger; a Japanese man who fell in love with a foreign land where he felt free, but had to go back to his own country for not being able to get a visa; Chinese people and their sons and daughters born abroad, who struggled to live by contradicting codes of conduct and honor; an Italian family who lives practically the same life of their ancestors, although being in the 21st century and benefiting from its technology.

Each of these people live in their own world. My world is not that of deep waters and passing shores, the world of a native from Easter Island is not the one of bucolic and static landscapes (although their scenery is gorgeous), the world of a refugee is not the one same of a man of the country he immigrated to.

What conclusion do I reach with this? That every and each of us see things from a singular perspective. We're the same, yet we're unique.

I don't know about you, but I want to be introduced to as many cultures and viewpoints as possible. I want to feel their viewpoint, not only understand it. Since I'm not the nomad type of person, I read, I talk to people, and I observe. And of course, I write about it.

Now, why don't you tell me about your own world?

Note: The painting are these, in order of appearance:

Lonely Sailing Ship, by Peter Pavlov

A Sailing Boat off Deal, by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Smooth Sailing, by Robert Bisset

Sailing Boat, by Ginger Lovellette

On The Sailing Boat, by Caspar David Friedrich

Sailing at Sunset, by Lissa Friedman

Home

This is our home:

Marvel at the most detailed image of our pretty little planet ever made. It's still blue, our home. I hope we manage to maintain it alive.

Yes, our home has many faces, much like the human being.

See Earth's west face below, and while you do that, please remember that the planet is one single thing. That is, even if we live in opposite sides we're sharing the same home.

We're one large family, the humanity.

Note: Err, maybe I got too emotional on this one, no? This pictures were taken by a bunch of Nasa satellites and put together by their amazing scientists. You can see these and other images of the visible Earth here.

Random Cool Things #2 - Sigur Rós' Angels

Sigur Rós, or Victory Rose, is a band from Iceland that I got to know through my friend Anon-Claudio, who pointed me to other good info in this post's comments.

If you're puzzled, what might help you connect the dots is knowing that Vanila Sky ending song "On the Roof of Skycraper", or Njósnavélin (aka The Nothing Song) is theirs.

But this is just introduction babbling to the video below. Watch it, and then tell me how do you feel, or what you think about it?

Limited Mind Sets

One of the topics discussed on #LitChat last year - a most interesting twitter chat for writers - was the use of stereotypes in literature. During our discussion, someone shared this video of the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, who gave a brilliant talk about "The Danger of a Single Story" that inspired this reflection. All quotes below are hers.

Her speech relates to our LitChat topic, because a stereotype is basically a simplified view of someone or something. It's natural that we mentally categorize in our minds people we've just met and things we're hearing about, tasting, or smelling for the first time. The problem is when this categorization process becomes a barrier to absorb new impressions and information on that person or thing.

For instance, when Adichie tells the tale of her going to the US to study at the university; when her roommate pitied her without having ever met her, thinking that Adichie was unable to understand the functioning of a stove because she had come from Africa.

What does her experience tell us? That her roommate had had some previous information about Africa, and had taken the rest for granted. This is what Adichie calls a single story (about Africa) and I call a limited mind set.

Now, let's come clean here. When you think of Africa, which is the first image that comes to mind? Poverty? Famish? Exquisite landscapes? "Primitive societies"? Rape? All the above?

"But, that's all true," you say. In a way it may be, but is it all that there is to know about Africa and its people?

...if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreign.

You know what bugs me the most? How precise she is when talking about the kind, white savior.

When we have a limited mind set, we usually believe that our point of view is the best for everyone, regardless their cultural background and life experience (and our own too). Sometimes, without even realizing we think ourselves superior from someone else. Are we? Superior?

When talking about her roommate she adds:

In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her [the roommate] in any way; no possibility of feelings more complex than pity; no possibility of a connection as human equals.

This touched me deeply. Adichie summarized in that sentence how the "superior" heart sees people through the limit of its pity. The pitied people become less than human, like Locke's imaginative impression of the Africans back in the XIV century.

I love this anecdote Adichie mentions on the talking:

A student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I'd just read an American novel called American Psycho, and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.

So, as writers we have the privilege (and the obligation) of seeing our stories from many points of view. We may choose to tell them from a single one, but we know what goes in the heart of each of our characters.

When I read books filled with cultural impressions, especially when they feel alien to me so diverse they are, I also feel privileged. Have you ever had close contact with the Chinese culture? What about the Japanese, the Iranian, or the Pakistani cultures?

This cultural diversity, the astounding difference in which people (even from the same cultural background) see the world, reason and deal with their own feelings and the other people's feelings, is fascinating to me.

I have learned so much from stories that portrait intensely the character's minds and hearts that I like to think that, through them, I've expanded my view of the world, or my mind set if you will.

This is what good stories do; they enrapt the reader, projecting in our heart the character's emotions, transforming a reading into a life experience. We suffer with the characters when they fall, we rejoice when they succeed, love, and are loved. And then we learn, as if their lives were ours.

I won't extend more this post; if you've read this far I'm sure you have much in mind to digest, so I'll leave you with a final reflection:

Stories matter.

And please feel free to share your opinion. I'd love to hear it.

Note: The impressive picture of a Zimbabwe sunset was taken by Steve Evans, and I found it here. The touching picture of the African child I found here.