"J" is about how I became a cracking good speller, in spite of myself...

I don't have a particular fondness for the letter "J". In fact, it's linked to one of the worst memories of my young academic life and may explain why I became so fanatical about spelling.

When I was in the fifth grade--about age 9-10, I was already a good speller. I always scored 100% on Miss Dunaway's weekly spelling tests and was proud of it. Go on, throw me a pop quiz. I would spell 10 out of 10 words correctly every time.

I don't know why I could spell well; I just could. Nobody else in my family was ever called out for this particular skill; in fact, quite the opposite. They had other talents--like they could all water ski and ice skate, at both of which I was abysmal. It didn't seem fair but I got what I got. And they got the good stuff.

Eventually, I was recognised as the number one speller in my class. When I was in elementary school--in the late 1950s--this wasn't necessarily a good thing. Only "teacher's pet" people and real nerdy types were the best spellers. Or 'dorks'. This was about the time the word 'dork' came into being in Orange County, California. The last thing you wanted to be was one of them. It was far better to be a 'neat', popular kid. It was a burden, being able to spell, an automatic demotion to the lowest of the low.

Imagine my horror when Miss Dunaway announced that there was to be a District Spelling Bee and the two best spellers from our class were going to represent the fifth grade. It was me and a light blonde, blue-eyed kid with a square head and big brown thick-lensed glasses that had a strap on them so they wouldn't fall off. I'm not making this up: his name was Herbie Delight. The other kids said he was sweet on me. Alas, I was enamoured of Price Locke, a star-quality blonde kid with a cowlick. Three girls liked Price. Life just isn't fair, is it?

So off we went to the Spelling Bee on the appointed Sunny Southern California afternoon. The details fade but I do remember these things clearly:

1. There were many children there; it must have been Kindergarten to 6th grade.
   
2. It was noisy (see number 1. for explanation)
3. There were nearly twice as many parents as children--so, hey, a lot of people overall.
4. Both of my parents were there. This is big stuff because my dad didn't go to my concerts and other life events very often--he was busy being a flight test engineer and helping people break sound barriers and eventually go to the moon.
5. I was wearing a red plaid dress my mother had made me (she made all my clothes). It had a full gathered skirt but I didn't have any nice full petticoats yet. They were on my Christmas list.
6. I had on horrible brown saddle shoes which were corrective in nature because, apparently, I had something wrong with my feet that needed correcting (I have good feet now so the embarrassing shoes treatment must have worked).
7. I was terrified and didn't want to be there at all.

Does anybody ever actually like these things? I didn't. The only worse thing was having to play organ concerts when my organ teacher--Miss Margaret--decided periodically to hold one and show off our budding musical talents. She had about two dozen Pekingese dogs and they were always all over the place so it made for an interesting event for a lot of reasons. (I'll save that for the "P" day blog, shall I?)

Cutting to the chase: I made it to some sort of semi-final or maybe even the final round in my age group. I spelled some pretty impressive words. It's different when you're in the fifth grade and you don't even know what a word means. Like peripatetic. Or chrysanthemum. Or duodenum.  I could do it. I did it. I was almost there.

Miss Dunaway was with me and I could do it for her. But could I do it with my awe-inspiring whiz of a father, Mr Science, in the audience? That remained to be seen.

It was for all the marbles. There were four kids left, maybe six. I can't really remember, probably owing to some sort of psychological trauma filter my brain immediately invoked afterwards and still hasn't been willing to let go. Herbie had long since bowed out; I have no idea what he couldn't spell but I knew that when I heard him spell it, he had blown it. Poor Herbie.

A hush fell over the crowd. They always say that, don't they? Maybe it did and maybe it didn't. The spotlight, though I'm sure there wasn't one, felt like it had fallen on me. It was my turn. My turn. All the marbles. What did that mean, "all the marbles?" I couldn't remember. Oh god please let this be a word I can spell. I promise I'll clean my room without being told. I won't pick on my little brother. Honest, I won't...

"Cindi Saunders. The word is JURY. Please spell JURY," said the person with the microphone. Did I breathe? No. Did I think? No. Do I know how to spell JURY. Yes. Did I say "Jury, J-U-R-Y, Jury" in the prescribed manner? No. I did not.

Immediately, and for reasons unknown to this day, the image of my mother's Ladies Home JOURNAL Magazine, laying on the coffee table in the living room, crowded into my mind and overloaded every synapse, coursed through every tiny artery, sang in an exalted voice until I heard nothing else. 'I can spell it, I can spell it! I can win, I can win!

"Jury, J-O-U-R-Y, Jury," I said, loud and clear.

Well, that was that. It was over. I'm sure my parents weren't upset; I'm certain they were proud that I got there in the first place and got to some sort of final round. I, on the other hand, was humiliated, mortified, embarrassed and probably in tears though I don't recall that either. How could I miss spelling a four-letter word? I'll never know. I choked. I panicked. I didn't stop and think.

It didn't seem like it at the time but it was a good thing. I remember clearly, as if it had happened earlier this afternoon, vowing that I would never get caught again not being able to spell a word. And I seldom do. It's a heavy burden to bear sometimes--people are always saying things like "Oh, can you spell jaculiferous or juglandaceous or jectigation...?" and off I go again, hoping that I can, but at least thinking it through carefully. I'm much more careful now. 

Miss Dunaway would be proud of me.

Oh, yeah...so, like, whatever became of Herbie? Well. I just Googled Herbie and there is one Herbert J Delight who's my age in the entire United States. He's living half an hour away from where we went to school. And his father is still alive, at age 95. Well, so is mine, just coming 90. Amazing. I haven't thought of Herbie in years. (Please don't tell him I said that.)

And Price Locke? Amazingly, he's right there, too, not three miles from where we grew up--over fifty years later. I think I'll stay right where I am.

Want to know more about the history of the National Spelling Bee in the U.S.? Click here!

#AtoZChallenge

"G" is for Good, No, GREAT Writing Quotes

"G" is the most difficult letter of the #AtoZChallenge alphabet yet. "K" looms large and knarly (or is it gnarly?) just ahead...but we're not there quite yet. I spent Sunday thinking, polled a few friends and ended up with a great big list of "G" words that, try as I might, I couldn't link to writing.

Nothing came to mind so, naturally, I turned to a favourite quote. It sits on my work table:

'When words don't come easy, I make do with silence and find something in nothing.' (Strider Marcus Jones)

Well, gee-whiz. So I listened, like the man said. And it came to me. "OK," I decided, "I'm taking the lazy way out and stealing a favourite idea from the second half of the alphabet!" Right, cheat. Got it. So, my "G" post is (tah-dah!) about the Good, Great, Glorious, Grand QUOTATIONS which have changed my day, or my life, or gotten me un-stuck or back on track somewhere along the way.

And here are some of them. (Spoiler alert: I have so many, I'm certain there'll be plenty left for Q-Day if nothing else comes along.)

FIRST, an an all-time favourite from an all-time favourite man, film critic and writer extraordinaire Roger Ebert:

"You are the writer. What you write is what is written. It is exactly right because it is exactly what you wrote. If someone else doesn't think so, fuck 'em. There is no objective goal, no objective right or wrong. Only the process. Your mind will set itself down in words. Do not criticize. Do not look back at every sentence. Just write. You have no idea where you are headed. Your words will lead you. This above all: Nothing is ever completed until it is started. Start. Don't look back. If at the end it doesn't meet your hopes, start again."

NEXT,  this one. I love what Clancy says because it makes my mind make grinding sounds just thinking about it:                                  

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” -Tom Clancy

BUT, some days I want a more mellow approach, something that puts the great big picture in something resembling perspective. Thich Nhat Hanh does that for me: 

"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth." - Thich Nhat Hanh

And, FINALLY, for now...my newest gleaned quote, just last week from an interview in an issue of Creative Nonfiction Magazine; it came along at just the right time. I needed a kick in the, well, you know. Isn't this just the most wonderful writing advice?

“Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig. You need to do the same. … so write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a Mother#^@%*&!"

"E" is for Edit...SmartEdit, if you please!

I'm in Edit mode with my novel right now. I've got plenty left to write, of course, but my manuscript also got to the point where it needed some serious smoothing out. I realised that the day I discovered that someone who did something in Chapter 34 had actually been killed in Chapter 22. Ouch. 

I've been using a tool in this process which I really like: SmartEdit. It's FREE. The full SmartEdit version can be downloaded and used for ten days, then either purchased OR you can opt for the free-forever package which contains the most used features of the larger product.

It's E-Day! Let me tell you about SmartEdit and how to try it out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
WHAT IS IT? SmartEdit is a new, first-pass editing tool for writers. Not a replacement for a human editor or good proofreading, it's an aid--and easy helper for when you begin editing your work.

WHAT DOES IT DO: SmartEdit takes text or reads from an rtf file and runs all these checks on your document and produces a list. Imagine your surprise when you discover (as did I) that you have way too many adverbs or you've actually used the word 'actually' ten times in a chapter.

Or that 14 sentences begin with 'Mother had said'. Ouch. You can go through and change--or not change--them. I've found it a very useful writing tool, too, since it's identifying some things I do again and again.

WHAT ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING: We all have a hard time catching our own mistakes. If you're self-publishing, and you don't have a strong plan for outside editing, I think this is brilliant. It picks up things from a library of commonly-misused words (capital vs capital, for instance) and makes it simple to catch those before your first readers do. The dialog tag counter is great, too. Does your hero 'exclaim' or 'declare' everything? Give the boy a choice with some SmartEditing!

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE: Here's a sample. Oh, those pesky adverbs! See all the sample pages in the SmartEdit gallery for a closer look.

p.s. Want an "E" bonus?
Check out Evernote...and 'Remember Everything'
I truly use this one for just about everything I do. I collect ideas, clip things from web pages, save whole web pages to it, capture the odd paragraph opening I write in Starbucks, research items wherever I am...at home or on the go...and sync it all between my PC, my iPad and my Android phone. I think it's fantastic. Check it out and download your copy at:

http://evernote.com/evernote/

#AtoZChallenge

"D" is for Dialogue...which fills me with dread, despair and despondency...

I've been an author of non-fiction, a sorta technical marketing author specialist type for IT and telecomms, for decades. That's my comfort zone. So when I set off to write this novel, for a long time I simply avoided the Dialogue part. It was easy during NaNoWriMo: I just blasted out 50,000 words and some of it was blah blah blah. I'd fill in the blanks later. 

Then I finally had to Do it. Write Dialogue. The very idea filled me with  a bunch of other "D" words: despair, doubt, distress and  despondency will do for starters.

Add to that the fact that I was writing historical fiction set in mid-19th century England and the Crimean Peninsula of what is now the Ukraine. Oh, woe...I had cast a Russian colonel, a Polish captain in the Russian army, an American doctor from Tennessee, a Turkish couple, the Russian Sisters of Charity nuns, the odd French Zoave, a few French women cantinières and maybe a Sardinian or two for good measure. And who knew when the bloody Cossacks would come riding in and cause a ruckus?

Those colourful folks are on top of the variations that might show up from the different regions of Britain; after all, many thousands of soldiers went to The Crimea from all over England, Scotland, Wales--and Ireland, too.

How would they all speak? What would they say? What could possibly sound real? I still don't know; I just keep trying to get out of the way and let them find their voices. Slowly, slowly, each claims a voice. I hope they'll get it right!

The other problem I have with Dialogue goes deeper still--I have been Dreading actually sharing any of my writing with anyone. It's Difficult to imagining actually publishing a book, by whatever means, without actually Delivering a written word on the page, isn't it? Decidedly so. I joke about having the unpublished manuscript tossed on my funeral pyre but I'd really rather have someone read it (I think).

So...herewith...my first attempt at throwing a relatively small, inconsequential section of my novel out there for anyone who happens to come along and have the time and interest read it. It might work and it might not. I have about 20,000 words to cut, I'm guessing, and it could well be some or all of these.

This is about 2,000 words from the middle an early chapter. I picked it because it had a lot of Dialogue. Two young Coldstream Guards officers are riding off to meet a ship to sail to the Crimea (and war) the next morning. It's got children and adults, broken hearts, some past hurts, a broken almost-engagement, a lot of unresolved stuff and some good information about the longest river in Britain, and swans, in case you've been wondering about swans.

Am I feeling Despair that I ever had this idea? Yes.  At the moment I am. But I'm going to DoItAnyway. Isn't that what the #AtoZChallenge is all about?

All that Dread aside, let me say that (1) I'm doing this just to do this and get over it; and (2) I welcome feedback from anyone who wants to send some. Hate it? That's OK. Please tell me why. Like it? What about it do you like? Feel free to email me at CynthiaReedWrites@gmail.com if you really want to rant. Or coo.

  Click on Read More (below) to jump to the story excerpt.                      

The A to Z Blog Challenge

The Letter "B"                         

         #AtoZChallenge

One down and twenty-five to go. Today is the letter B. For Bones. Or Books. Or Both.

Yesterday I bought an Audible copy of Natalie Goldberg's old classic, "Writing Down the Bones". First published in 1986, when I lived in Boise, Idaho, it (and nearly all of my hundreds of books) didn't make the cut when I moved to the UK in 1999. What was I thinking? I don't know--it was expensive and I was foolish.

Over the years, between then and 2011, when I moved to Malaysia, I re-purchased many of my old books, both books on writing and books not on writing. Mostly not on writing; at that time, busy working as a technical author and marketing maven wannabe, it would only have served to remind me that I wasn't writing the fiction I had long longed to write.

When we moved to Malaysia, I only brought two or three books, all for my camera and Photoshop (my own personal nemesis software). Everything else was sold on Amazon or Freecycled, though a few I-can't-live-without-these treasures remained behind in UK storage because we didn't think we'd be here long.

Yeah, right. And then it seemed we be'd here longer than planned. That's a good thing but, hey, my books! So I've been off re-re-buying (again) some of the key books--and some new ones--mostly as Kindle versions so I would never, ever, ever have to give them up again. Ever.

Last year I added, at the suggestion of Kuala Lumpur writing instructor and publisher extraordinaire, Sharon Bakar, of Word Works, the Kindle version of Goldberg's "Old Friend From Far Away". It's been great for inspiration and writing prompts. But I somehow didn't think to add the the Kindle version of "Bones". Why? I just didn't. I thought of it later and filed it away for "next time".

Next time arrived, right on schedule, yesterday. In an attempt to not do what I was supposed to be doing (writing) I checked my Audible member account and, deep joy, I had an unspent credit! Did Audible have "Bones"? Indeed they did; they had two versions! It was a sign. There's no going back from that sort of purchase indicator, is there? Now to choose which.

I'm glad I read the descriptions carefully--and here's the point of the "B is for Bones" blog post: the 2006 Audible edition (you should order it now!)* is a re-recorded version and, in it, Goldberg reflects on what she wrote fourteen years previously. Her commentary is wonderful.

Audible calls it a "collector's edition". I do, too. Whatever it is, it's fascinating to listen to; I close my eyes and have the sense that I'm sitting in a room listening to the Natalie Goldberg read to me and tell me what she thinks as a 50-year-old compared to what she felt when she wrote the original book at age 36. Her personal reflections add a lovely dimension to the book that's been called the "magic manual for all writers".

It was always great. But that made it even Better. You know, that's "B" for better.

* It's also on the US Audible site here. But it's on sale on the UK site.