Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ Roulf Burrell

Particle Plot Production

There is nothing miraculous about past book or movie plots, though it seems magical when we read or watch them. Sometimes plots are copied with cosmetic elements changed. Zorro is just James Bond with cosmetic changes. Instead of a tux, you use a mask and black cape and the Walther PPK is replaced by a Spanish rapier. Instead of an Aston Martin, use a black stallion named Tornado. The cold war required spy training, so substitute the war for Mexican Independence and fencing practice fencing.

But I want something original, you say?  Unfortunately, most of us can’t sit in a chair with our fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut, making such a plot pop into our head. How do the best authors give us something unique? I answer that with a particle accelerator. The best-known accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. The LHC forces elemental particles to collide into one another. The result is undiscovered particles.

So let's do this with plots. All plots combine common elements in uncommon ways. The Harry Potter series took many common elements. Boarding school life, school sports events, train rides, detention after class, teachers we don't like; none of these were original. Rowling collided them with the element of magic. Instead of dodge ball and polo, she makes the balls and players fly, swapping horses for broomsticks. Voila—Quidditch. After writing 100 lines on paper for detention, the lines magically scratch themselves onto the back of your hand. Ouch!

Let’s try ramming a few elements of our own to see what we get. In three columns, make a list of occupations, motivations, and settings.  

With people’s occupations, think of the more unusual ones you’ve heard about.

Now make a list of common motivations for human behavior. These motivations will suggest some background in the main character lending itself towards that need.  Someone greedy, say, might have been poor growing up. Someone looking for romance might have been lonely or hurt. They can be general or more specific.

Finally, list settings, making some common and some unusual. These will change as needed. As examples, see my entries below.

Profession	Motivation	Setting
Zoo maintenance worker	Greed	Abandoned factory
Independent gold miner	Romance	Mount St. Helens
Basketball team coach	Pride	Antarctic weather station
Recently fired TV chef	Revenge	St. Paul's cathedral
Catholic priest	Growth	Dying Kansas town
Retired librarian	Fear of death	Mediterranean yacht

I can assure you, these have been written about. Each one by itself is commonplace and would not provide a story. But as we force each element into the one across from it, a story may suggest itself.

A zoo worker steals valuable animals, hiding them in an abandoned factory. Perhaps the animals turn on the keeper, as we see a visceral lesson that our possessions can destroy us.

A gold miner, hoping to find exposed gold after the Mount Saint Helen eruption, finds romance instead. A retired librarian (collision with another unusual character) likes to hike and learn new things. Will our lady miner find she must choose between hunting gold or a quiet life with a bookworm?

Or collide that gold miner and romance with a yacht in the Mediterranean. Is she now a diver for lost treasure?  Could our librarian’s access to limited archives and his ability to research find a missing clue? Could we set this during a looming World War I naval battle? As we collide between different rows in the columns, the possibilities broaden.

A TV chef, whose career is waning, hopes for a rebirth when he/she volunteers to cook for a term at an Antarctic weather station. Filmed during the long dark months, he/she reconnects with cooking artistry and people sharing a common meal when confined.  Does our chef turn down the next TV offer?

Thanks to a nationally advertised, interdenominational challenge, an atheist basketball coach has one month to create a winning team from the ordained members of St. Paul's Cathedral. (If St. Paul's has no ordained members, then switch it to Westminister Abby.) For the coach, pride is at stake. Or it could be revenge on the opposing coach. While team St. Paul’s might learn valuable lessons working as a team, what might the coach learn from them?

A Catholic priest diagnosed with aggressive cancer faces his fear of death. He leaves his mark by converting an abandoned factory into a youth center. What challenges would he face? How much of the factory could be left intact to provide obstacle courses, a work-out center, industrial training for welding or cutting, etc.? How could you parallel his death with the dying neighborhood he's trying to help? As the abandoned factory finds a new life, will he?

Have fun colliding your own elements. Remember, it takes a little practice, but you only need one success to launch you on to that next story, contest, or query letter.

~Roulf Burrell

Find Roulf:

Website

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ Roulf Burrell

Horses, Roses and Websites Galore~Part 1

Building your own website is like owning a thoroughbred racehorse. After you put in the time to learn about horses, feed, and groom, train the fiery beast, then muck out the stall, you’re too tired to ride, so you put it away in the barn.

Now I’m talking about the WordPress.org system that allows you full control over the various elements. Other options such as SiteBuilder, Wix, GoDaddy or Squarespace promise to streamline the process. They accomplish this, in part, by limiting your choices, but if your needs are less complex and you can comfortably live within their parameters; they are a competitive choice, though usually not a lot cheaper.

The first thing you will encounter with the Wordpress system is a tangle of technical terms worthy of any electronic jungle. Examples include: “domain name”, “cloud hosting”, “dashboard”, “widgets”, “plug-ins”, “themes”, “parent & child”, “tags and slugs”, to name a few. When instructions tell me to go to the dashboard, it does me little good to go sit in the car in my garage waiting for increased book sales. 

Once I find the dashboard, the acronyms attack. SEOs, CDNs, API, GDPR, JPEG, URL, HTTP, and HTML are a few.  Each one of these has a definition that sometimes requires more defining. For example, once I determine JPEG is a file extension for a lossy graphics file (and provided I know what a file extension is), other computer enthusiasts grant me a nod of affirmation; but, I still have not “lossied“ the headache.  

Another Google search reveals that Lossy graphics is a data compression system that gives up some image data to improve transfer speed, size, and storage needs for the remaining data. So now that I know what JPEG is and means, I also want to understand its effect and impact on my website. For instance, I might need to convert photos using a different compression system to work with my website or consider what type of photos load the fastest or look the best. 

While we are traipsing joyously through this lexicon minefield, we must exercise care we don’t incidentally sign up for premium services we don‘t need. And until I comprehend the terms, as well as the website’s method of implementation, I don’t know what I need. Apparently, my domain and name, while formidable, doesn’t stop themes, widgets, and plug-ins from presenting themselves in pop-ups, all promising to solve my woes for a few more dollars. Declining these, turning them off, or selecting the free option, can feel like staking vampires in a churchyard, only to watch them rise again during the evening service.

I’ve bought a host site, secured the right to use WordPress, chosen a domain name, and the system has dumped me into a screen called a dashboard. What do I do now? Speak to it using my new definitions? Wave my hands over it while muttering the three Latin phrases I know?  Personally, I had another coffee, lay down and had trouble sleeping, so I prayed for the site to construct itself as a magnificent testimony to God. Failing that, I awaited divine instructions to appear on the inside of my eyelids, an old test preparation technique of mine from college.

Stay tuned next time to see if the Baffling Burrell can overcome impossible odds, complete his website and qualify his fantasy nag-novel for entry into Literature’s Run for the Roses. 

~Brad

Find Brad:
Website

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ Help!

Help!  I’ve Fallen into a Drawing and Can’t Picture a Way Out

"I have got to create more products."

An artist-bronzing friend of mine made this statement to me when I inquired as to the health of his sculpture business. He replied he needed to make more statues. I asked him what the holdup was, expecting to hear about issues with clay or metal or the foundry.

Instead, he lamented that all his time vanished tending business concerns, including shipping, marketing, advertising, website design, tax laws, and the like. As screaming bells went off in my head, I told him it was too bad he wasn't a writer. We writers are a natural combination of Hemmingway, FedEx, Tony Robbins, Steve Jobs, and H&R Block – NOT.  Unfortunately, in my case, I forgot to throw in Rembrandt or da Vinci.

The writer’s key platform today is the “website.” Named, I assumed, because of the vast array of crisscrossing computer lines linking various sites. I now suspect they adopted the sobriquet, "web" because tech illiterate hosts jump into this matrix and then can’t escape. They writhe helpless, like the first victim who establishes the deadly stakes for the other houseguests, trapped in a B-rate, Vincent Price movie.  I can't shake that feeling when I struggle around in my web.  Are there amused, eight-limbed, jewel-eyed, byte-spiders, the kind who “hot-link it over dark arrays to suck the cloud dry of juicy credit data,” “LoL”-ing me? The ways of webs, learn you should, young Padawan!

All this computing and marketing adds up to a learning "curve" that looks like something Wiley E. Coyote would fall off of chasing the Road Runner.  But that cliff can be conquered with the help of knowledgeable friends, YouTube videos, and a competent writers group (mine rivals the Inklings by the way.)  For the fantasy genre, add a portable Prozac IV drip, a Pez dispensing Pepsid AC like a Gatling gun, and Rogaine for the suddenly missing hair.

What friends and videos can’t provide is talent you do not have. Visuals and graphics to illustrate a fantasy website are not commonplace. One does not pop down to the park to snap a banshee loitering about or a UFO disembarking an invasion force.  Much of what's offered insists, quite justifiably, on remuneration. The artistic hand, imagination, and software manipulation tools and skills are a profession in and of themselves.

My sculpting abilities peaked in a seventh-grade art class. While other kids made heads or pots, I rolled the clay out flat, and then cut six sides for a cool Dracula coffin. When my fingers put it together, it looked better suited to bury a slouching hunch-shoulder of Notre Dame. My use of colors was more refined – coffin black.   

But drawing?  I tried one of those Bob Ross TV courses. Clearing my brush, I slapped it across the tripod leg like Bob did – it slapped me back!  Then my "happy little tree" Bob said I could put anywhere, grabbed the paintbrush hairs and instantly hardened.  I failed to notice as my palette knife attacked a plugged tube of forest green that then bled across the autumn orange into my sky blue.  I was terrified the EPA would show up with a warrant.  “Joy of Painting” filed for damages and the cable company inexplicably removed my access.  Eh -- art world’s loss.

Now, I'm left dependent on a high school graduate in graphics who just married her boyfriend. In a feat of selflessness unrivaled in Clan Leach’s history, I urged her not to spend all of her honeymoon time at the Bleeding Moose Lodge & One Hour/Every Hour Wedding Chapel working on my project.  Spend a few minutes with the groom, I said.  I’m paying for that generosity now. 

Yes, Ridley Bundleforth and the Banshee's Bell, my forthcoming novel, remains jacket-less. And with cold weather coming, too. Where am I going to find another starving graphic artist, unmarried with no prospects, shivering in some grotto, with a frozen mouse and a cracked I-pad?  One with the angelic flare of a digital Raphael, the imagination of a Jules Verne, but the business acumen of a Ralph Kramden?

No, like my artistic friend, I’m caught between needing to create product and trying to develop a deeply latent artistic talent for drawing banshees and bells.  So far, I’d have better luck trying to win “America’s Got Talent,” singing Sinatra’s, “Fly Me to the Moon” through a knotted soda straw.  So it's back to my trusty 64 shades – Crayola don't let me down. Now if I can only find an image with color by numbers...?

~Roulf Burrell

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ Lessons From A Balloon

Brad Leach, oops, Roulf Burrell (his announced pen name from his prior post) is back today with a thought-provoking post. Read on.

      When our children were young, my wife and I occasionally took them out to the Red Robin restaurant to eat.  The kids loved the TV in the floor, the large mascot “bird” that went around giving hugs to little ones, and the ice cream shakes.  Mom loved the break from cooking.  I wondered why they added the word “Red” to the name Robin - is there any other color robins come in?  Would “Orange Robin” work for marketing?  Is “Red Robin” actually a tautology, like a freshwater “bone fish”?  Would we have been better off eating there?

     As we were leaving, my youngest daughter (who also happens to be my oldest daughter since I have only one), asked for a balloon.  Of course, the staff was happy to oblige.  So she picked out a nice red one that seemed to be busy doing push-ups off the drop-tiled ceiling with the help of a nearby paddle fan while jostling other balloons that tried to crowd around to watch.  I was considering the social structure of balloons in groups, which I’m sure some university has taken tax dollars to study.  What do you call a balloon group, a clutch, a bundle, a stretch?  Anyway, this obvious “Alpha” balloon was pulled down and slip-noosed to my daughter’s wrist.

     Now one problem with any small child having a balloon is the dirigibles' fragile nature.  Balloons, especially helium balloons, are mercurial and prone to wander if they don’t choose to vanish entirely.  I personally think they fancy themselves as one of the “noble gases.” They find nitrogen and oxygen plebeian and feel they should always be above them.  My wife simply says it’s because they are full of themselves.  Regardless, they have a short life when clutched in the hands of any young child who almost always manifests a primal urge to jerk on the ribbon.

     My four-year old’s balloon slipped her wrist in moments and was rising faster than a Taylor Swift love song on the teenage pop charts.  Tears followed.  How can a little girl become so attached to a red spheroid so fast when it took her months to bond with me?  They were strangers a minute ago!  Do I lack the charisma of a common balloon?... I withdraw the question.  Anyway, as the “Helium Houdini” escaped into the ether, and wanting to avoid a scene, I nonchalantly complimented my daughter on her generosity and willingness to share.  Confused, she looked at me for an explanation. 

     I explained that the balloon was heading up towards heaven, going as fast as it can.  That when Jesus was down here as a little boy, they didn’t have Red Robins and helium balloons, so He never had a balloon to play with.  “But now you shared your balloon with Him.  See, it’s going up into the clouds; up into heaven. I think He’s very pleased that you are willing to let your balloon go up and see him. To play and tell Him all about you.”  We said a little prayer and watched the balloon until it was out of sight.

  I think of that incident when I hear another author has sent off his or her story.  They’ve filled a package with all the life they can breathe into it, tied it with a ribbon, then let it go.  A story is like that balloon, if you will, and we all watch to see if it rises – or bursts.  As it floats out of the author’s sight, I know hopes and prayers go with it.  And sometimes, a few tears.  A Christian writer hopes to share something of themselves with others.  They hope their story creates some noble moment, rising to great heights.  Most of all, they release it to Jesus, watching it rise on childlike faith.  Hoping it tells Jesus all about them; that it pleases Him.

~Brad, now writing as Roulf

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ Let's Give That Smelly Rose Another Name

Welcome back, Brad Leach...err, or maybe....

“A rose by any other name...” is a line oft quoted from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  While Juliet was a Capulet, a name deemed hateful by Romeo Montague’s family, Romeo found her enchanting.  Why, he reasons, should a name matter so much?  That’s a question many authors ask today.  

Pen names – the assumed appellation of our key-stroke commandos, present, and past.  Many famous authors have them.  Voltaire was actually Francois-Marie Arouet. George Eliot was actually Mary Ann Evans.  Lewis Carroll was known to his mother more properly as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

Authors sometimes have more than one.  Joanne Rowling not only used her initials J.K. when she wrote Harry Potter (fearing Joanne would discourage boys), she’s also published under Robert Galbraith, Newt Scamander & Kennilworthy Whisp.  Benjamin Franklin?  Think Richard Saunders of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Anthony Afterwit and Silence Dogood; Dogood even featured in the movie, National Treasure. Samuel Langhorn Clemmens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, used many monikers, including Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.  Clemmens used so many names in fact, historians today aren’t sure we have identified all his works.

So why use a literary sobriquet?  After all, don’t we want everyone to associate our written works with who we are?  Isn’t it simpler to avoid false names?  Shouldn’t we stand behind what we write – even if it’s way behind? 

There are several reasons to use a pen name.  Security concerns, and marketing top the list.  When John le Carre wrote the Spy Who Came in Out of the Cold, he was actually working for MI-6.  It wouldn’t do to have his real name, David John Moore Cornwell, splashed about.  One writer, whom I know personally, had her house broken into on the assumption that all writers are fabulously rich.  It was too easy to track down an address with a real name. 

Others may need to avoid association with materials unacceptable to their culture, such as Salmon Rushdie.  Many Jewish European writers during the 1920's, 30's and 40's used pen names to protect themselves and family members. And for some, they simply might not wish to embarrass family, such as P.L. Travers, aka Helen Goff, who wrote Mary Poppins based on her own father’s harsh practices.

More often, the use of a nom de plume, as the French say, comes down to marketing.  Readers come to associate a name with a certain reading experience.  Lester del Rey, aka Leonard Knapp, is associated with Science Fiction.  He even started the Del Rey imprint, under Ballantine books.  Del Rey publishes Science Fiction.  So if Lester were to write a romance set in Amish Pennsylvania, readers who buy it, based on his name, would be greatly disappointed.  And romance readers who’ve been around a bit would hardly look up Lester for an Amish romantic love-tussle.  A possible answer, had Lester wished to write romance?  Become “Marietta Greenplows” and watch interest jump. 

Name association is not the only reason.  Association with divisive issues can also be helped with a pen name.  If you’re a spokesperson making statements regarding gay rights, abortion alternatives or some political candidate, why choose to alienate a large segment of the public?  It’s not a case of being ashamed of what you write or what stand you take on social issues, it’s simply economics - separate names lessens the loss of audience?

Of course, another reason is a name that just doesn’t work either on the shelf placement an author might receive or a name that doesn’t fit the genre.  Frederick Schiller Faust sounds like some gothic mystery writer or even a German philosopher.  But change that name to Max Brand, and western cowboys spring to life.  Anne Rice, whose real name is Howard Allen Frances O’Brien, might have felt such an Irish name wouldn’t help her Vampire mystic.  Pearl Grey sounds like a tea, but change it to Zane Grey and it smacks of sage and saddles.  Who wants advice from Pauline Phillips?  But change it to Abigail Van Buren – well, of course, a Boston sophisticate would know what is proper to do or say in any situation!

My reason for a pen name?  Romanticism.  To be someone a little larger than ordinary life.  It’s hard to imagine an audience getting excited over some fantasy written by a leech – horror maybe. But Roulf Burrell and his magic candles?  Ask yourself, who doesn’t want to see Lemony Snicket rather than Daniel Handler or Dr. Suess instead of Theodore Geisel?  Seigfried Q. Hornblatt crouching below a balcony does not inspire.  But change the name to Romeo Montague and now that rose sweetens.🌹

~Brad, now known as Roulf

Mental Can Openers and Writer's Hash ~ I'm Not Clowning Around Here

Another great post from Brad. And as usual, he ties it all together in the most entertaining way. Why else call the blog what I call it :)

Writers share something with those traveling circuses and carnivals of yesteryear. Then you paid for a ticket and were promised a memorable experience. Whether it was a Tunnel of Love, the dizzy action of the Octopus ride, or the drama and tension of the high wire act, traveling circuses tried to provide something for everyone. Clowns, magicians, the bizarre, the impossible; all were part of the sawdust-and-popcorn entertainment a century ago.

Writers charge for a book and promise an experience.  We simply call the rides and acts, genres. Romance comes in books, not boats. Tension from a thriller’s high-stakes, not high wires; humor from characters, not clowns.  Like circus acts, genres must deliver.  If you read thrillers, you want to be thrilled. Mysteries should offer a perplexing puzzle. Romances should render that back-and-forth relationship tango.  Readers choose the genre for its specifics.

This expectation presents a challenge. Solomon pointed out that there was nothing new under the sun. Every genre has its clichés. It was a dark and stormy night; the butler did it; they all lived happily ever after.  How do we offer something new?

Details, my friends.  The devil may be in them, but so is our answer. We know in a romance the boy and girl will find each other after various trials. So what if they find each other via letters on a pen-pal site?  And what if, while “graphically” attracted to each other, they physically work in the same shop, constantly rubbing each other the wrong way? Voilá, a couple of changed details and you got, “The Shop Around the Corner.” 

Or take a murder mystery.  A victim is killed and the detective must solve the crime. But what if the victim is forced to become his own detective?  A slow poison given to an accountant that can’t be stopped gives him 24 hours to solve his own progressing murder?  Change this one detail regarding the detective and presto, the movie “D.O.A.”

With my own genre, fantasy, castles are an oft-used setting.  They are known to be winter cold. The kitchens could get hot when the ovens were going.  I have a castle.  I could use fireplaces in most rooms and the kitchen staff could carry hand fans. But why not have some fun with magic?  It’s a fantasy, people want the unusual.  I put my palace over caves and fault lines.  Why not stick a couple of cranky frost giants in a room under the castle and have them blow their frosty breath up various shafts to cool the castle?

Winter heat is provided by flame sprites who spit their little fireballs up the same shafts. The castle mages make their living producing magic candles. So let’s have one large candle, cut it in half, and when the upper portion is lit, the lower portion’s wick catches fire as well, no matter the halves’ distance.  Need heat? Cold?  Light your candle and down below the corresponding half ignites near the shaft. telling the occupants to send up fireballs or frost.

Of course, when our castle friends switch over from cooling to heating, there's always difficulty. Cold versus hot, giants versus sprites; more trouble than any HVAC man has ever had to deal with. But to find out about that you will have to read my upcoming book, “Riddley Bundleforth and the Banshee's Bell.”

As authors, we should find details to change, creating more experiences for our readers.  Boy meets girl? Why not girl accidentally purchases boy when she mixes an Uber ride for Uber date?  The butler did do it, but the butler is an interplanetary alien doing a sociological study on why murder disturbs humans.  Instead of a fantastic sword that can defeat all enemies, how about a bewitched sword that takes every shield as a personal insult, attacking it mercilessly, while the hero is dragged by the hilt?  As authors, let’s steal a page from P.T. Barnum and fill our pages with “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

~ Brad

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ The Writer's Gift

      Christmas, that time of year when we stop to consider what we cherish, and what we want to give.  I cherish words – words, and the stories they tell.  Stories were my refuge when I was young and hurting, so stories are what I want to give to others today.

      Words can communicate an idea.  But they can do more than that.  Words can stand up, grab a crowbar and lantern, then burst into someone’s darkened soul.  Words can make ideas sizzle like a branding iron, or words can draw out poison like carbolic salve on a wound. 

      Soft words can swaddle you in reassurance as tenderly as a mother wraps her wiggling nestling.  Action words can be harnessed like huskies, pulling the reader around each dark tree, over each new drift, and finally over the frozen water with an ominous snap.  Stories with ice-cracking plots, mercurial characters you love – or love to hate – quicksilver settings.  Wonderful.  But wonderful stories take crafting, and the artist’s skill.  Skill I did not start out with. 

      In the early 90's, I acquired rejections shoveling out stories like shoveling out a hen house.  Both products smelled the same.  A Christmas story that didn’t just fail, mind you; starving buzzards circled, descended, then left it untouched.  One manuscript regarding fishing sent maggots crawling away.  After a quick read, they took the coward’s way out, leaping into a bucket of Pinesol.  The EPA considered paying me not to write, to save clean-up super-funds. 

      After my writer’s soul had been scorched and kicked like an asbestos soccer ball in the satanic semi-finals, I came across a particular word I had initially ignored.  Crafting.  Sounding like some paint-pottery class, hope now sprang from this word.   How do those paid pros do it?

      Craft is a dance.  It looks effortless, but techniques and practice have gone ahead.  Words Box Step, rather than trip along.  Sentences that sashay, not wander.  Paragraphs waltz, describing marble-floor settings and characters cast chandelier-shadows, until the whole story magically picks you up like Cinderella arriving at the ball.  If the crafting is good, life’s ugly pumpkins suddenly transform into glorious carriages. 

      Craft is timing.  A story that pulls, choosing the magnetic word at that iron moment.  It doesn’t rush forward before the heart’s compass is ready; it doesn’t drag until the mind’s attraction fades.

      Craft is dialogue.  Not chat.  Not, “Good morning. How’s the dig coming?  Okay.  I broke my shovel.”  I want dialogue that forces the Sphinx to blink.  I want banter that reaches out and grabs your throat like a mummy.  “Tell me, Sullah.  Why would a righteous God allow his law to be buried in Egyptian sand?” 

      “He wishes to see who will seek the ark, Indy.  He notes who will dig.  But not with this broken shovel, my friend.”

      Craft is plotting. Events setting out on a wild sea hunt.  Turning points so sharp they harpoon the audience, drawing them into the chase.  Mystery that beckons like Ahab, bound to the pale prize itself. A climax that renders hearts to their essence, leaves mouths dry with Ahab’s thirst, and drives readers to pursue the elusive whale lurking below those crisp, white pages.

      But crafting, skill, and artistry alone can’t make this magic happen.  No matter how cleverly I weave words or stitch sentences together, I must rely on God’s Spirit to fashion the garment through me.  He must awaken the desire for the story.  It matters not how skillful the prophet’s parable if the people’s ears have become dull. 

      Authors, don’t leave your talent forgotten under your tree this year.  Give yourself the gift of crafting words.  There are excellent books, seminars, and classes full of advice and examples.  Topics abound, including how to hook plots, fashion characters, make a scene, time tension, and doctor dialogue. Challenging word exercises abound.  Make sure one (or more) of these grace your tree.  Feed your talent, so your talent can feed others for years to come. 
~ Brad

Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ Lesson From An Old Spud

Brad Leach brings us the wisdom learned from an old spud...read on, he is so funny, he makes me laugh each and every post he sends m.  

       When I was a teenage boy, mashed potatoes were on the menu every other night. And anyone who grew up in the Midwest knows those potatoes either triumph or parish based on the gravy. In my grade school days Mom’s gravy shared a lot with socialized medicine; it probably wouldn’t kill you, and it was usually better than nothing.

      But thanks to her mother-in-law (Grandma Snodgrass to me), her gravy progressed from a bland saltwater mix, hinting at carbonized meat and burnt flour, to a creamy pale confection of meat drippings, butter, and cream.  Grandma was a Kansas farm woman.  In her hands a wooden spoon became a wand, and rumors still circulate in abandoned, backwoods freezers that the Olympian deities battled each other in the storm clouds to see who would lick the ladle.

      From such a legend Mom learned, but despite her success with gravy, as her teenage son I felt entitled to micro-manage her kitchen maneuvers. The fact I couldn’t successfully toast a frozen waffle (I learned the butter goes on after the toaster) bounced off my testosterone-armored ego. You know. That same ego that assures boys everywhere their mothers know nothing, but the sophomore cheerleader with blonde hair is divinely qualified to pronounce their existence either worthy or pointless. And the right of every young lad to verbally improve his mother’s cooking was put into the Constitution by one of the colonial Toms or Massachusetts Johns, I felt certain.

      I always complained she had added too much water, too little salt, or not enough butter, and those covert chances to taste the brew early on confirmed this to my tongue. She would patiently explain how it would change as it boiled down and thickened, until she tired of my hormonal haranguing and chased me out of the kitchen with the potato masher. (A fate I now could wish on most of our current Congress.)

      Then, a miracle worthy of any Catholic bingo hall across the States would occur and delicious gravy would manifest itself from the uninspired brine. Were my insights providential?  Did the brief brush of my lips have transformative power?  (The girls at high school certainly hadn’t noticed.)  But I felt Mom and I had a kitchen rapport – she bumbling along with a spoon and my gifted lips and critical insights invoking the miraculous.

      What has all this got to do with writing, I hear you ask? Stories are like gravy; they start out with a lot of words, ideas, feelings, and descriptions, but then they need to be boiled down and blended into one flavorful essence. To do that as authors, we must learn to make gravy with our words.  It’s not enough to have all the ingredients.  It takes practice. You’ve got to know the recipes. You have to chase out the critics. Stir things up. Then boil down what you want to say and how you want the reader to feel using the fewest of words.

      Powerful stories turn life’s daily potatoes into a feast.  They can help transform insufferable egos who burn their own waffles into those who appreciate a fine meal and a good cook.  They make life’s starchy lumps palatable.  They nourish hungry souls, soothe mashed hearts.

      Mom and grandma impacted lives, in part, by cooking.  I want to do it with stories.  Remember fellow pen-mates, ‘burn’ flour the right way and gravy will come.

~Brad