Category: Wisps of Writing Wisdom

Always stay aware of the things that can bring inspiration for a story. I once pitched an episode for an animated series – though it ultimately wasn’t considered a fit – simply by overhearing a conversation while stopping into an ice cream shop; a girl came in to apply for a job with someone else and was afraid to ask if she could apply for a job without a resume so a friend had to ask for her. Another animated episode I pitched for a series, that was accepted and produced, focused around my experiences as a teacher’s aide when in school. Recently I got a certificate for Library Technician originally hoping where I previously worked might create an archive position or department I could be a part of, and while that  didn’t happen, I used all that student experience to forge a character in the  ebook THE PHOENIX RISES and my overall library experience to create the book.

So don’t dismiss anything in your life experience, no matter how big or small. You never know what it might lead to.

Finding Time to Write Even When it Seems Impossible April 9, 2012

Posted by shannonmuir in Advice, analysis, Writing.
1 comment so far

This piece is a follow-up to one I wrote several years ago when I first started this blog.

With the day job thing going on – including a 6 day work week this past week – it is getting harder to find time to write. I’m still getting little bits in, but not the volume I did other days. I have to admit it feels really wrong after six months of having tons of time to write. That said, I feel even more wrong if I don’t at least do a little every day. I really do feel a piece of me is missing without the writing.

I really do believe if someone’s meant to be a writer, it is part of who that person is. Writing becomes mandatory, though not necessarily publication. Some people are satisfied with just writing private diaries all of their lives, but still they are fulfilling that call of writer that lives inside them. The most important thing is being true to oneself.

When it Rains, it Pours, They Say… April 2, 2012

Posted by shannonmuir in Advice, analysis.
Tags: ebook formatting, reading, work-life balance, writing
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For months, I’ve had nothing going on but my writing and a lot of reading. Now, it’s looking that writing and reading may take a back seat to other things for a while. First I got offered an interesting book formatting challenge, and now it looks like I may have a day job for a month or so.

My biggest challenge is to still find time to write. I’m a writer first and foremost, even though I enjoy doing all these other things, and to some degree also need to do these other things on a financial level.

It’ll be interesting to see how I balance everything out.

Wisps of Writing Wisdom: The Voices Within March 28, 2012

Posted by shannonmuir in Advice, analysis, editing, wisps of writing wisdom, Writing.
Tags: self-critic, self-editing, voices within, wisps of writing wisdom
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Our self-critic can be our most powerful weapon, or our most dangerous enemy. It can cause us to be cautious and not run head first into disaster; alternatively, it can render us so timid that we do nothing and remain stuck. It can help us scrutinize and edit details of manuscripts on our own until they are flawless without assistance, yet possibly keep us so paralyzed looking for every last possible detail that we never share something with the world.

The balance is knowing when to let that self-critic take control and when to take a back seat. I believe personally that it’s a constantly battle and never something you master. I used to be better at it, but lately I think I need more practice at it. In some aspects I’m holding back too much and in others should hold back more. It’s all about the balance.

Making a List, Checking it Twice… March 26, 2012

Posted by shannonmuir in Advice, analysis.
Tags: checklist, doublechecking, editing, factfinding, publishing, writer, writing
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Yeah, I know, a title like that makes it seem like Christmas (and I wish it was a holiday season). Today’s post is actually inspired by grocery lists. Doesn’t there always seem like something gets forgotten,  or alternatively something that gets added either on impulse or remembered while one is at the store? I know I do this and I hear rumors others do as well. In today’s case I forgot something, and even though I live six blocks from the grocery store (actually several stores), when the item in question is something I need to cook dinner tonight that means because I didn’t doublecheck I had to walk all the way back and get it (as well as deciding to pick up a preboxed lunch in the process, now being too tired to make lunch when I got home on top of everything else I already did).

As I walked home, I started thinking about writers and checklists. Whether you’re a “pantser” or a “plotter,” every writer has some form of a checklist. I think it’s pretty apparent with plotters who go from outline to story to editing to getting published; the others start with story and move to editing ot getting published. The big question is, how much do we double – or even triple – check ourselves as writers before moving on to the next step? Sometimes it can feel so good to be done, or a deadline needs to met, that a writer can run on to the next stage without remembering to double check or just breezing through. I know I’m guilty of this sometimes. In the end, the person most hurt by writers not double checking their own writing lists are themselves.

Maybe I’ll unpack this more later once I can reflect on it some more. Right now I just want to settle down and eat that preboxed lunch.

Wisps of Writing Wisdom: Listen to Your Heart March 21, 2012

Posted by shannonmuir in Advice, wisps of writing wisdom.
Tags: listen to your heart, passion, risk-taking, wisps of writing wisdom
1 comment so far

Sometimes there may be a project that you really want to do, and it means a lot to you. Yet getting people to buy into it, especially in today’s day and age when it is so easy to get ideas out there – though maybe not easily as noticed – could be hard. However, if something matters enough to you that you want to do it, my personal belief is that you should give it a try as long as it doesn’t run you so far under the ground you’ll never dig out. My releasing fiction novels now when I am able though I’ve wanted to for years is a personal example for me. For other people it might be developing their own games, or designing their own sewing patterns, or programming new code to create applications. If your heart and soul can’t put the passion aside, experiment and see where it leads. You never know.

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• ABOUT SHANNON MUIR, WRITERThis is my place to talk about products and other helpful hints for readers and writers alike, and may include sponsored content.If you came here looking for Animated Insights, reflections on animation and related media, be sure to follow the link to get to its new home!If your interest comes from my new pulp and genre fiction ventures, please come visit my Shannon Muir, New Pulp and Genre Author blog on Tumblr.To get great interviews, guest blogs, and excerpts from other prose writers, I invite you to visit my site Infinite House of Books, in business since 2013.Want to know more about what I’m doing on YouTube or Vine? Visit Discover Words on Tumblr for all the latest.Lastly, for inspirational thoughts and helpful tips on writing your own story of life, visit Own Your Own Tale on Tumblr.

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Always stay aware of the things that can bring inspiration for a story. I once pitched an episode for an animated series – though it ultimately wasn’t considered a fit – simply by overhearing a conversation while stopping into an ice cream shop; a girl came in to apply for a job with someone else and was afraid to ask if she could apply for a job without a resume so a friend had to ask for her. Another animated episode I pitched for a series, that was accepted and produced, focused around my experiences as a teacher’s aide when in school. Recently I got a certificate for Library Technician originally hoping where I previously worked might create an archive position or department I could be a part of, and while that  didn’t happen, I used all that student experience to forge a character in the  ebook THE PHOENIX RISES and my overall library experience to create the book.

So don’t dismiss anything in your life experience, no matter how big or small. You never know what it might lead to.

Yeah, I know, a title like that makes it seem like Christmas (and I wish it was a holiday season). Today’s post is actually inspired by grocery lists. Doesn’t there always seem like something gets forgotten,  or alternatively something that gets added either on impulse or remembered while one is at the store? I know I do this and I hear rumors others do as well. In today’s case I forgot something, and even though I live six blocks from the grocery store (actually several stores), when the item in question is something I need to cook dinner tonight that means because I didn’t doublecheck I had to walk all the way back and get it (as well as deciding to pick up a preboxed lunch in the process, now being too tired to make lunch when I got home on top of everything else I already did).

As I walked home, I started thinking about writers and checklists. Whether you’re a “pantser” or a “plotter,” every writer has some form of a checklist. I think it’s pretty apparent with plotters who go from outline to story to editing to getting published; the others start with story and move to editing ot getting published. The big question is, how much do we double – or even triple – check ourselves as writers before moving on to the next step? Sometimes it can feel so good to be done, or a deadline needs to met, that a writer can run on to the next stage without remembering to double check or just breezing through. I know I’m guilty of this sometimes. In the end, the person most hurt by writers not double checking their own writing lists are themselves.

Maybe I’ll unpack this more later once I can reflect on it some more. Right now I just want to settle down and eat that preboxed lunch.

Sometimes there may be a project that you really want to do, and it means a lot to you. Yet getting people to buy into it, especially in today’s day and age when it is so easy to get ideas out there – though maybe not easily as noticed – could be hard. However, if something matters enough to you that you want to do it, my personal belief is that you should give it a try as long as it doesn’t run you so far under the ground you’ll never dig out. My releasing fiction novels now when I am able though I’ve wanted to for years is a personal example for me. For other people it might be developing their own games, or designing their own sewing patterns, or programming new code to create applications. If your heart and soul can’t put the passion aside, experiment and see where it leads. You never know.

These last couple weeks have been filled with a lot of the unexpected. As I said last Wednesday, when other people intersect with your world you have to try to be careful what lines you cross and this is a case – especially because it’s evolving – I really can’t say much. I will say that it’s definitely made me look at the world in different ways.

As writers, we can create new and fantastical places, or we can take the “ordinary world” and make it something more than regular. We can take what we understand as being what is and create for better or worse the universe as it might be. Yet, sometimes, things can happen to us or we can become spectators to events that show that life is more than we imagined it to be. I often think there is a lot of substance to that idea of “truth can be stranger than fiction,” because I believe we can only imagine to a certain degree based on the boundaries of our experiences; when something enters our lives that shows far beyond what we knew or what we’ve read or viewed (in the case of TV or movies) by anyone else, then our definitions of truth and fiction are changed. I think these experiences can be just as true to readers as to writers in terms of how media can constantly re-define the universe.

I know from my own recent experiences that my perspective on things has undergone some definition and transformation, experience I am always glad to have to grow and improve as a writer and a person.

This week’s bit of Wisps is not inspired by any one event, but several events of the past couple of years that I’ve had on my mind recently.

Life is full of hard choices. Sometimes they’re as simple as what type of ice cream to eat for the day, which may not seem that hard on the surface except that how pleased you are with your choice could affect your mood for the rest of the day (especially if the one you choose causes you to run out of one, of which you want more later, and then you’re on a downer). Perhaps it’s a little more complicated than that. You are at a job that you love and someone offers you what seems to be the opportunity of the lifetime, but you don’t know anything about people offering this incredible new venture; you have to decide if it is worth risking everything for. The stakes could be even higher. Maybe you have to decide whether or not to forgive someone in order to try to build a new kind of relationship from something that has gone sour in the past.

People make choices of all kinds of levels every day. So do characters, as they should, since to be strong believable characters they must be like multifaceted individuals and not cardboard cutouts. This isn’t easy to achieve, and even I struggle with it sometimes. The key is that when a character confronts an area of choice, take a deep look and make sure they don’t make a choice simply for the writer’s convenience – readers see through to that and get frustrated. Make sure there are strong compelling reasons for  characters to choose to do what they do, and readers will go along for the ride, which in turn boosts your world building (whether your setting is Earth or somewhere new).  The world will feel more real to the readers.

Starting this week, Wednesdays (which in the Twittersphere also happen to be known as #WW or #WriterWednesday) are going to be turned into “Wisps of Writing Wisdom” (which by the way was the original name of this blog before I decided to consolidate my better known “Animated Insights” image into my single brand). I decided to use this catchy phrase because of the alliterative “W”s such as in Wednesday, and truthfully I liked it but had to go with streamlining the brand. Wednesdays will be used for various musings on any topic, that then can provide inspiration on writing and life.

I decided to give this a shot after the recommendation of several Facebook friends after they noticed a trend in some of my comments over there. This was the passage that triggered the discussion, originally posted February 13th on Facebook:

“Been gaming some for the last bit while also job searching, and thinking about life, and how we can take for granted seeing and hearing from folks and all of a sudden they’re gone. And this isn’t just about this weekend and Whitney. Called to set up a normal, annual exam at my GP’s office today and found a young woman answered the phone instead of the familiar, gentle older gentleman I’d come to know and care about. Apparently since I had to stop into the office for something last Oct and now he passed away. 

Treasure the people in your lives when you have them now, and don’t let petty things get in the way of what could be better things. Otherwise, when time passes by and it’s too late to mend anything, all you may find later is that you will live with eternal regret.”

From a writing perspective, loss of any kind is a very strong thematic place to come from. It may even be a scary point for a writer to come from, and inadvertently writers may put up defenses that keep a scene or entire work from being all that it can. I know it isn’t an easy subject for me.

The suggestions weighed toward a different blog for this kind of content, but right now I’m going to try it as a feature on this blog – where I think it can be relevant – to try and keep traffic focused. So there’s my Wisps of Writing Wisdom for this week, will bring you more next week.

NOTE: This interview was originally featured on an older blog I was on, and part of an event called BLOG TOUR DE TROOPS. I wanted to preserve the interview and moved it to this blog.

SHANNON MUIR: This Veteran’s Day weekend, we’re paying tribute to veterans and giving away ebooks to soldiers. Growing up, I thought for quite a while that being a veteran meant that you had to actively serve in war, not just serve your country. What makes this an interesting misconception for me is that my own father, John C. Muir, served in the Navy for 24 years (of which I was a “Navy Brat” with him for most of the latter 12, during which time I lived in California, Japan, and the Hawaiian Islands). I decided for this “Blog Tour de Troops” to talk to my Dad about what being a veteran means to him, as someone who has served, and the impact it had on his life and about the views he gets of today’s veterans while now working on staff at Spokane Falls Community College in Washington State. Dad, I’m going to start of by asking, what made you decide to get into the service, was there any reason you chose the Navy specifically, and how did you end up staying almost a quarter of a century?

JOHN MUIR: That is a complex tale, though plenty of current service people have similar reasons. I wanted to go to college to better myself and get a good job but I didn’t have job skills that could get me hired at a wage that would pay for college and I didn’t have large scholarship offers. My folks were temporarily unable to help with college tuition. And, not a problem now, I was facing the draft if I wasn’t going to school. That would have been two years service with no choice as to what I would do. Military service was still a civic duty and expected, though we were not then in a shooting war with anyone. This was post-Korea, in 1960. There was no GI Bill at that point.

My choice was to volunteer for four years in the Navy with promised technical training as an incentive. The Navy definitely had the best technical schools at that time. I figured that technical skills would let me earn enough at a Radio Shack or TV repair store to get me through college. I wanted to be a nuclear power plant operator (I grew up next to the nuclear complex at Hanford,Washington) but the Navy had enough of those and I settled for an Electronics field enlistment. After Recruit Training, I received orders to Basic Electronics School and was told that I would be a Communications Technician. After I graduated from that school I received orders to Motion Picture Operator School (16MM and 35MM) for further transfer to a shadowy, secretive base that you would later know as KamiSeya, Japan. That was totally unexpected and a great disappointment, but I consoled myself with the thought that colleges had to need movie operators, so it would probably work out. And Japan would be good duty.

Arriving in Japan, I found that the theater had burned down while I was in transit and I had almost no purpose or useful skills. I was given some general electrical and mechanical work but quickly figured that this would not grow into useful job prospects after discharge. Still wanting to go to college as soon as possible, I gamed the system, re-enlisted for six years (which cancelled the remainder of my first enlistment) for Advanced Electronics School and would let me out after seven-and-a-half years with skills and some money saved up.

That sort of worked and did get me a good equipment maintenance school and experience on high-end electronics. At about the six year point, I was assigned to the Communication Training Center in Pensacola, Florida on the support staff.Vietnamwas heating up. I began preparing to enroll in a college or university in my home State. I also tried getting the feel of college by taking night classes at Pensacola Junior College. I also met your future mother and married her just as my seven-year point was coming up.

When we got back from the short honeymoon, there was a note taped to the trailer door that said the Captain wanted to see me right away. He had just gotten the local Junior College added to an experimental education reenlistment incentive program and was able to nominate one sailor to be enrolled until a degree was obtained, with fully paid tuition and books, and all Navy pay and allowances, Would I be the one? It was yes or no right then because he had to provide a name to Headquarters the next day. It was yes, though it obligated me to about four more years. And a year later, I was handed, and directed to sign, an application for the Warrant Officer program. I complied because I was way too young to be a Warrant Officer and it wasn’t worth making a fuss. They picked me.

After that, it was rather late to turn back and I was beginning to enjoy Navy life now that I was committed to it. For a technical geek, Warrant Officer was the best possible job. After my twenty-fourth year, though, it seemed to be time to take the family back to the States and use my now existing GI Bill to get that degree.

SHANNON: When you got out of the service, you used the G.I. Bill (used to fund post military training) to go back to school. What was it like returning to school after all those years in the service?

JOHN: It was a little strange but not as different as current vets find it. I hadn’t been shot at any time during my twenty-four years and did not have to go in-country during the Vietnam War. No PTSD issues to deal with. It was just different, not way-different. And I had prepared a bit by taking night classes at the Honolulu campus of Roosevelt University of Chicago during my last year of service. Those were Computer Science courses with a large number of military students attending and mostly active duty or retired military instructors working part time.

My degree program at Eastern Washington University was a modified Management Information Systems degree with a Library Research emphasis and I mixed with both geeks and business majors. That field of study didn’t even exist when I would have been first ready for college. The GI Bill did help a lot and I had my retirement pay but I still had to have a part-time job in a local bank doing data entry and word processing automation to make ends meet for a family of four. That was in line with my original goal, just deferred a bit. It was educational and pleasant but I was definitely of a different generation from the majority of the students. The first day of class, I showed up early and was first into the classroom. The second student in asked if I was the instructor.

SHANNON: Moving ahead, you’ve been working for a Community College in the Information Technology department for about as long as you spent in the service. Over the years, have you met a lot of veterans returning to school?

JOHN: There were fewer early on. I started in 1991 and we saw more active duty military from Fairchild Air Force Base than veterans. There were, and are, quite a number of faculty and staff who were vets. However, nobody said much about their prior service and there was no vets club or additional services. There was a Vets Office for VA paperwork in the Financial Aid area of Student Services with a staff of one and a couple of workstudies.

There are many more vets attending now, and they have greater adjustment problems, but are getting more recognition now than earlier and more assistance.

SHANNON: From what you’ve gathered, what has it been like for them, generally speaking?

JOHN: Their lives have generally been far more stressful and very different than mine was, but I seem to have more empathy with them than many of their never-served peers. Many of them have had experiences that their sheltered peers can’t imagine and it is hard for them to connect. Many have been wounded or traumatized and it doesn’t always show. One of the guys in the Computer Science program two years ago had been a Navy Brat on both sides and had a goal of becoming a Master Chief Petty Officer at a younger age than either of his parents. Wounds received while doing convoy protection on shore in Iraq got him a disability discharge before he made Chief Petty Officer. He was looking for a new goal and had a positive attitude but still wore his Navy uniform ballcap almost every day.

SHANNON: What kinds of services are available on your campus for veteran students?

JOHN: One vet, after getting a Masters Degree in Social Work, got part-time work at our sister-community-college across town about five years ago and created a Veterans Center there to provide a place where vets could relax among people that they felt safe with. Our campus acquired him full time about two years ago to do the same for us and to organize a vets student organization. They now have a very small vets center in what was designed as a seminar room in one of our newer buildings and an active presence in the Student Union building common area. They are much more visible and sponsor veteran-related ceremonies for Veterans Day, Memorial Day, 9-11 and Armistice Day

Our Vets Center counselor is actively seeking a larger center for our students because their room is always full. We are trying to find them a couple more computers for the center because he reports that they find most of the labs too crowded for some of the vets to feel comfortable. Some have trouble sleeping and it catches up with them. The counselor reported that one vet recently went to sit in his car to find a quiet, safe space and woke up eight hours later, having missed three classes.

To help understand vets and their possible problems, faculty and staff are offered training on identifying and dealing with victims of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.

SHANNON: Did you have similar services available to you when you were going to school on the G.I. Bill? If not, do you wish you had?

JOHN: All that we had was a VA desk in the Financial Aid area for processing paperwork. The Vietnam-era vets were not always keen on having their prior service known. The idea of a veterans organization on campus was unthinkable – some academics were still working to keep recruiters off campus. Fortunately, there were off-campus programs for Vets that needed help. My service was so non-traumatic that I didn’t have any particular problems re-adapting. There was only one panicked moment in the late ‘80’s when I realized I was outside without a hat and afraid that the Master At Arms would see me and put me on report for being out of uniform.

SHANNON: Are there things you are observing in the younger generation of veterans that are very different than the way you remember things when you retired in the 1980s?

JOHN: They are definitely more stressed than we were and the type of service many have experienced has left them with different habits. They have more in common with Vietnam in-country vets. In extreme cases, they don’t like people they don’t know behind them and sit at the very back of rooms. Loud noises cause reflex sheltering responses. Most are less obvious than that but they have experiences that are not easily understood nor freely communicated.

For as good an insight as I can think of to explain something of what they may be feeling I suspect The Hurt Locker may be the best available source. I don’t try to keep up with the latest movies but it got a lot of kudos. In books, David Drake’s Hammers Slammers stories, based on his Vietnam experiences, give some of the same feel.

On a very positive side, we are, I believe, the only two-year school in the country with an Orthotics and Prosthetics program to learn to make artificial limbs. Many of the students in the program are vets and may have chosen that program because they know buddies with artificial limbs and how much those can mean to the wearers.

SHANNON: Are there things that you can still easily relate to between today’s generation of veterans and yourself?

JOHN:  We have a lot of negative experiences in common: the boredom, isolation, grinding workloads and unfathomable orders, for examples. We can compare C Rations to MREs for food value (or as weapons). I haven’t had the combat experiences but I fully expected to go in-country during Vietnam and had psyched myself for the prospect.

Despite the difference in generational outlooks, I seem to make more of an effort to understand what they think and feel than their peers do. There is some feeling of shared experience among us.

SHANNON: Any last thoughts?

JOHN: You might want to check out a 6 minute interview that was on NPR Morning Edition Sunday with author Karen Fischer-Alaniz from Walla Walla. Her book is titled Breaking The Code. It is particularly interesting because it has to do with veterans affairs and a particular form of PTSD that might be called the Vow of Silence.

Karen’s father was in the Navy during WWII,was discharged after, and never said a word about what he had done or where he was. On his 81st birthday, he gave Karen two notebooks that she spent a great deal of time deciphering but they contained letters about his war experience.She thought they were important enough to put them in book form and it will be out soon. Her father is still alive and was also part of the interview.

He was in my old line of work and, when he was discharged, the emphasis on the absolute necessity for security was so impressed upon him that he was unable to talk about it at all. In many ways, he still is. His job, she finally figured out was breaking Japanese codes. Me, I was just a Teletype mechanic, but I understand what pressures he was under. We were getting more relaxed by my time, though. There is obviously more than one kind of PTSD, and the psychological may be worse than the traumatic.

There are two main things that I learned from my service. The first was the apparent randomness of life. The Navy certainly changed me when I was at a pliable age, but it didn’t do it predictably. What would I be now if the theater hadn’t burned down? Why did the Captain ask me to be his nominee for a degree program that you couldn’t even apply for? Other apparently random happenings really weren’t. I was steered into my specialty by a “special offer” at Recruit Training for a fourth choice of what I wanted my specialty to be, when there were only three blocks on the form for choices. There was a series of duty assignments that were not usual, and one very irritated officer who made assignments indicated that he had been overruled by someone with clout who got us pulled out of the Aleutians in time for you to be born in California.

The second is that attitudes change over time toward the military. This is a relatively benign time for veterans and they get respect and aid. In a different time they would have been called “baby killers” and spat upon. In another time, they would have been ignored and told that they were unneeded and should find real work. The service people are much the same in each case but the culture’s view of them does change. Our honored vets could be demonized at any time, or ignored. This isn’t a new thing. Call it military relativism. Rudyard Kipling captured it in “The Ballad of Tommy Atkins”. I paraphrase:

Oh its Tommy this and Tommy that

And Tommy, step aside.

But its “Special Train for Atkins”

When the trooper’s on the tide.

Whatever they do or say about us, stand tall, people, and soldier on.

SHANNON: Thanks, Dad. I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights. I hope we’ve helped bring some insight and understanding about veterans that people may not otherwise have thought about and raise awareness.

JOHN C. MUIR, in addition to working with electronics in and out of the Navy for his entire career, remains an avid reader and spent years writing Play by Mail game review articles for all the major magazines in the 1980s and 1990s (PAPER MAYHEM, FLAGSHIP [U.S.], GAMING UNIVERSAL); at one point, we both appeared with separate articles in issues of PAPER MAYHEM on a couple occasions as I got my start there writing Play by Mail opinion and fiction pieces. Also, he thought material like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis made good bedtime stories for young girls such as my little sister and myself. My admiration of hobbits is all thanks to him.

The last couple days proved an interesting experience for me, as I did several author interviews by email. One received publication so far over at Indie Writer Zone’s Indie Insider, and the other still is forthcoming. Years back, I interviewed professionals in the animation field as part of a regular column I did over at a site called Digital Media FX, where I gave people insight into the varied careers involved for people in animation who did not draw. This came from the fact that I myself, while very much in love with the medium of animation growing up, wasn’t really aware of all the opportunities people who didn’t draw could have provided they had the needed skillset. I knew there could be writers somehow (to this day, not really sure how, as that interest began in the mid 1980s before the prevalance of all the “making of” featurettes and information on the Internet), but I didn’t know what else lay out there. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1996, the first job I worked was as an animation Production Assistant on JUMANJI: THE ANIMATED SERIES. Then I saw the whole pipeline and the possibilities, and my view changed a bit over time.

So here I am in 2011, now finding myself on the other side of the interview. I will say that my respect for the people I interviewed certainly went up doing this experience. The first interview I sent off I think answers the questions all right, but that person likes to send out a lot of Twitter snippets with his quotes and in hindsight I’m not sure I’m all that “Twitter byte” quotable. My college training is in Radio-TV as well as English, so I definitely know what that is. If you’ve ever talked to me in person, short and to the point sometimes isn’t my strong suit. The Indie Insider interview asked questions that lent themselves to longer answers and I responded accordingly. I did see Indie Writers Zone actually pull some quotes out of that interview for Facebook, which surprised me that they were able to; I liked the selections.

 Some of the questions really made me have to stop and think, and I needed to keep in mind though the questions asked about me in specific, if I read the article just starting out today what would I really want to know and potentially apply to my own situation. You need to be careful and say potentially because in doing interviews or columns or commentary such as these, you must remember your audience will be at varied stages in the career track and one size does not in fact fit all. The trick comes that your readers must remember too.

These interviews came about because I wrote letters to the people introducing myself, providing links to my various books, and in most cases taking the tact “if you believe I am appropriate please contact me about the book(s) you would like to cover”. I left the control in the hands of the sites. After all, right now I am more interested in just making myself known that just any specific title on my backlist, and that might mean one ebook connects with one niche while a different title resonates with another. With future titles, I’ll definitely be focused on making a campaign around that specific ebook. Right now, being new to the indie game (though not the writing game), I’m just pleased with any opportunity to introduce myself.

If you’ve got a site that does author interviews and you believe my background may be a fit in some way, this is an open invitation to get in touch. Ebook publicity aside, I love mentoring and “paying it forward”. I’d be happy to help in any way I can.

Folllowing the death of Steve Jobs, it’s appropriate to write about computers and writing this week. Especially when the first computer my family owned was an Apple, and we got it about the time I first got into creative writing.

I first became recognized for my talents in creative writing at around age 10 (5th grade), in the early 1980s. About this same time, my father purchased our first home computer – the Apple ][ +. We were the only family for blocks with a home computer that I know of. Now I’ve always had poor handwriting (though crushing a finger in a door in 7th grade hasn’t helped), so I gravitated to the keyboard early even though I did not learn to touch type until I was about 16 or so. Both my sister and I would start writing stories and save them in various word processing programs. I believe AppleWriter was the first one we used, and then later AppleWorks.

When my Dad got out of the Navy and used his GI bill to go back to school after 24 years of service, he needed the ][+ for his computing homework and couldn’t compete with his kids for time on the machine. That’s when the Apple ][ c entered our lives. Yes that “c” meant compact but other than the drive and keyboard being in a single portable case, it wasn’t truly (the monitor, albeit small, was still a bit of a handful). Though I will admit it was of perfect size for a preteen and teenager. Both my sister and I continued to write a lot of material, making up what would amount to entire novellas at times.

Then came the moment.

The moment that would forever render us Users of the Other Operating System.

As I became closer to high school age, I also began to have an interest in screenwriting. I came to learn from a professional working in the field in Los Angeles that non-Apple machines were the screenwriting industry standard. I was told “it was a pain” exchanging formatted scripts with Mac users back then (and my family didn’t even have a Mac at that point, though we had them in high school so I knew how to use one).

With that, my Dad found someone at work – actually the mother of a classmate of mine – selling an older “non Apple” machine because her family was upgrading. Dad took the parts tothe now defunct  Superior Typewriter and Computer, later just STC, in Cheney, WA.  I had a great relationship for many years with those folks as they not only custom built the parts of the old system into a new case, but would build me a completely new system for my graduation (except Dad didn’t buy me the sound card since he didn’t think a writer needed it yet also bought me this fantastic new game that came out by a local company called MYST… which you could not play without a sound card, so I went and bought my own, top of the line with microphone input and all since I was working on a broadcasting future).

Of course the dark side of all this was the inability to convert all those files we’d done on Apple computers, up to including developing entire series of stories. My sister and I ended up making dot matrix printouts of anything and everything we thought worth saving, and then having to handtype them all back into WordStar (that was the first word processor we had) and later MicrosoftWord.  In the end, I think most of it was retained by making sure to upgrade a lot of the files not only by versions of Word but from one media to another (5.25 discs to 3.5 discs to Zip discs to flash drives, etc.).

So, I’ve been using non Apple machines ever since in terms of desktop work. Other than occassionally using my now fiance’s Mac for things – he’s had Apple computers and never left the fold – I don’t regularly touch Macs anymore. But in the last year I’ve come to own an iPad that with the right accessories I can treat like a laptop and easily write stuff on the go. Not to mention files are more cross-format compatible than ever between Windows and Mac when it comes to documents, even if the main programs themselves are not.

How far we’ve come… and how dependent I was on a computer even early on in my writing development.

June 25th, 2003, started out seeming like just another average day for a graduate student off for the summer with no call from the temporary agency to fill her time. A few errands, and I was on my way to meet my significant other and sometimes collaborative partner Kevin Paul Shaw Broden up in Sherman Oaks after he had a meeting elsewhere in the Valley. His meeting ran long so I spent time wandering the shops at the Galleria at Ventura and Sepulveda Boulevards, in the same vicinity of Warner Bros. Animation. I grabbed a cold drink, sat outside, and sipped slowly waiting for him to arrive.

Kevin showed after a while, eagerly telling me about his day, and I asked him to let me check my PalmPilot one last time before we hit the road for a meeting of animation writers we would attend that evening. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but wanted to be sure not to miss anything. Kevin kept talking, I can’t remember about what anymore, as I got to the listing of new mail. One of the messages started out to the effect of: “Fwd: Passing of…” and came from someone at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. EWU is where I studied to get my Bachelors of Arts in Radio-TV and English, and Cheney the place I consider my hometown.

Instantly I abruptly asked Kevin to shut up as the message took forever to download completely. Who would have passed away that they would go to the trouble to locate ten-year-old alumni who are out of the area? As the message finished loading, I read something that made me crumble to the core.

Dr. David Terwische, or Dr. Dave as we all called him, my screenwriting professor at Eastern Washington University, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 59 on June 24th, 2003 from lung cancer he never knew he had until it was far too late.

I wrote an article in December 2002 for Digital Media FX, as a tribute to my one-time opportunity to sit down with animation writer Hilary J. Bader, in which I recommended people grab every opportunity they could to learn from others. Writing this, I want to grab a bullhorn and stand on the tallest rooftop and scream it until my lungs are hoarse and keep on going and going and going.

My studies at Eastern began in Fall of 1989, when I came as a half-time student concurrently enrolled for my senior year at Cheney High School. I knew that I wanted to write scripts for animation, and began taking introductory Radio-TV classes for high school credit to learn more about the business. I wouldn’t meet Dr. Dave until that summer after graduation, when I heard that he taught a summer drama workshop where four original half-hour (live-action) scripts were produced over an eight week period. There were no prerequisites, and working on creative content was what I longed to do, so I registered. So there I was, only 17 — I turned 18 on July 10th, in the middle of the program — watching creativity unfold firsthand.

I wish I could remember how it came up during Summerstock (as the workshop was informally known) that I wanted to write. Never having had me in a class, not knowing the strengths and limitations of my abilities, Dr. Dave gave me that chance. The result, Give and Take, was written in three weeks and in all honesty is a dreadful script. I know the class hated working on it; in fact, the directors wanted to turn this meant-to-be-dramatic-script into a full-out comedy to try and make it somewhat redeemable, it was so bad. In fact, I later came to learn that the master copy was bulk-erased, but I don’t think Dr. Dave ever found out it happened. Probably for the best to be honest, as airing it over community cable was not the best representation of what our department could do. I’m forever grateful Dr. Dave stood up and made the students producing it as it was written, because I learned a lot about what didn’t work from paper to screen and became very aware of my weaknesses. The Give and Take debacle was probably one of the more positive experiences of my educational career, and the lessons I learned about plot, character, theme, and execution apply to animation and live-action equally.

The best part is despite the results of producing Give and Take, Dr. Dave didn’t give up on me, for which I never could thank him enough. I would go on to do a directed study with him in television scriptwriting that produced two more half-hour scripts, From the Fatal Heart and Shattered; From the Fatal Heart would be produced the following summer drama workshop with a much better outcome, and both scripts went on to receive Honorable Mentions from the National Broadcasting Society-Alpha Epsilon Rho student production awards. Dr. Dave would also guide me in a directed study to develop my first (again live-action) dramatic series, and I would also work with him in the first screenwriting seminar taught in the department, in which I wrote my first full-length screenplay as an ambitious blend of intercut live-action and animation that I hope someday I can get into a workable form that isn’t a budget breaker. Back then it was known as Come to Life, but nowadays is better known as Inspiration’s Hand, which made it to the second round of judging in the Austin Film Festival in 1997.

Another growth area for me came in working behind the camera, where I not only co-directed someone else’s script in the second year of the summer drama workshop, but also ended up having to work in a Story Editor capacity when the writer burned out on rewrites. Changing someone’s story as little as possible while trying to get it down to length is a delicate balance, and I know what all is at stake now when I get to doing that professionally.

After all those classes, plus a third year in the drama workshop in a diminished capacity via directed study (you could only register for the class twice), and working as a writer and video editor on Deception Pass, the Radio-TV department’s first attempt at a mini-soap opera that gave me an idea about the grind of a weekly dramatic show, my emphasis switched mainly to the English department for poetry and fiction, but I never turned away from my scriptwriting roots. I know that all of Dr. Dave’s efforts exposing me to so many areas helped me survive and thrive when I moved to Los Angeles, by teaching me to be flexible and be prepared and step up to do what is needed. I came to Eastern Washington University just wanting to be an animation writer; with Dr. Dave’s guidance, I left with a mindset that made me open-minded enough and capable enough to step up to the plate when the Production Assistant position at Jumanji: The Animated Series presented itself, taking me down paths in animation I never dreamed existed.

June 20th, 2003, marked my seventh consecutive year in Los Angeles and counting. I know I couldn’t have made it so long without all of Dr. Dave’s help back then to mold me into the character I needed to be. We saw each other at least once a year, whether he was here meeting alumni, or when I went home to visit my parents in Cheney, I made sure to always find time for him. Now, I have to figure out how to continue on without him, and even more so, how I can turn around and spread the gift he gave me to all those who need it. The columns I’ve written the past several years, the speaking I’ve gotten to do so far, it just feels like the tip of the iceberg now. I will continue to do my utmost in the arena I love most to further help aspiring animation writers and other non-artist positions. It’s the least I can do.

Thank you, Dr. Dave, for everything you did for myself and other students over the years. You will be missed.

Originally published: July 6, 2003