RACHEL

This beautiful young girl is one of the kindest persons I've ever known. She has compassion and love for every living thing in God's universe. From early childhood, she refused to eat anything that had once been alive. Naturally tall and slender, Rachel is on a traveling volley ball team. This makes remaining a vegetarian even more difficult. Tomorrow we're going to work on a writing project she's doing for her school.

I developed a writing program for youth several years back called VOICES OF TOMORROW. At the moment, I'm trying to decide the winner of a contest held at West Holmes High School in Millersburg, Ohio. The kids stories are so great, I ask myself if anyone knows how talented they are. And writing is wonderful at this age, so free of restraints and editorial constrictions. When I published my first novel, MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES, I was furious that this editor person kept crossing off certain words. This was when I learned about "word repetition", which is pretty easy to figure out, but not so easy to implement. Think of how many times you use a certain word, then try not to use it more than a few times in a ten or fifteen page section. Now writing becomes work.

Another thing new writers have to eliminate is cliches. When I was growing up, almost everything my parents said was a cliche. I was talking to someone about the sizzling hot summers in Texas, and recalling how my sisters believed my mother when she said it was so hot that you could "fry an egg on the sidewalk." We once tried to fry an egg and ended up with a gooey mess. Once I became a published writer, I had to edit out most of what my parents said.

Now I'm going to throw you another loop. You're allowed to use cliches, but only in dialogue. The only trouble is you have to remember what cliches each character has said, or they will all sound the same. The same (Oops I did it again) applies to metaphors. Now I have to rewrite the sentence. Metaphors are similar, that works. If one character says, "She's as innocent as a newborn baby," and fifty pages later, another character uses the same metaphor, then you will have failed at distinguishing one character from another. See how hard this is getting. Challenging isn't it? Okay, I could say if another character says something like the first character, then you will have failed at distinguishing one character from another. Got it?

Everyone might say, "cool," or "you know" or dozens of other standard words and phrases, but trust me, they won't all spit out the same metaphors. And metaphors can also be cliches, such as the statement that "it's so hot, you could an egg on the sidewalk."

Everyone knows their strengths and weaknesses. Oh, no, look what I've done now. Two sentences can't start with the same word. In fact, they're not even supposed to start with the same sentence structure. Here's an example:

"Looking around the corner, Jack saw the stupid guy wearing a green hat hiding beside the garbage can. Turning so he could get a better look at him, Jack ....." Both these setences begin with introductory phrases, so this isn't very good writing. A more demonstrative way of writing would be to say, "Jack saw the stupid guy as he peered around the corner." But if all your sentences are demonstrative, it will get boring, and creative writing doesn't ahere to the strict rules of grammer.

To be honest, in case an English teacher is reading this, I don't even know all the rules of grammer. A lot of writers don't. The ones that do are called appropriately "literary" writers. Sometimes the worst writers like myself sell the most books. Well, at least I did in the past. My career is on a slippery slope right now. I might be able to climb again to the top of the mountain, but then again, I could fall off into the abyss.

The reason literary writers don't sell as many books, although they win awards and get wonderful reviews in the New York Times, is because most people can't read above a fifth grade level, particularly in America. I was much smarter before I become a published author. When I decided to write a bestselling novel, which I actually did, which is pretty remarkable, I started crossing off words in my vocabulary that everyone wouldn't instantly comprehend. You know, if you're smoking crack and reading one of my novels, it might even sound slightly better.

Now I don't know where those beautiful words have gone, and its sad. They're lost somewhere in the swirl of this brain crammed so full of books, words, rules, and ridiculous thoughts and ideas. Every now and then, I give myself a treat and read a book by a real litearary genuis, such as Martin Amis, or Ian McEwan, who has done well even if he does use big words and takes thirty pages to decribe one raquetball game. In reality, that's where I put his beautiful, important, and impressive literary book down. I'm saying, "Man, kill someone, will you? My eyes are beginning to cross watching your imginary rubber ball hit and bounce off your imaginary walls."

Nonetheless, I'm in awe of these briliant writers, and would cut off my arm to write that well. Not really, but maybe a toe, under heavy sedation and rehabilation in some swank plastic surgery hospital where all the nurses look like movie stars because they get paid in plastic surgery procedures. Besides, I don't think they're even nurses. Ah, you're thinking, she's been to one of those places. I had some corrective surgery, okay. You know, a mole or two removed so they wouldn't arrest me for being a witch and burn me.

Years ago, and after this I'm going to sign off for tonight and scrounge for food somewhere, maybe that place where the genius writers gather around the garbage cans to see what the hack writers have tossed out. But honestly, back in the witch hunting days, they used to call these men "prickers" because a woman with a mole and a a little intelligence was accused of practicing witchcraft, and they would stick pins in the moles to see if the women would scream. If they didn't, they were deemed witches and burned.

How can women collectively forgive men for all the horrible things they've done to them? There's been times when I wished I could get on my broom and stir up a batch of witches brew to feed to some dumb guy who hurt me.

Oh, well, let's be nice. The Pope came out today and said priest still can't marry. They don't have time, anyway. They're too busy molesting children, or settling lawsuits for priests who molest children. Bad joke, so I'm sorry and I'll say five Hail Mary's and three Our Fathers. This is what I love about being Catholic.

I cook some pretty complex plots, and because I have a police background, people tell me the stories seem authentic. When it comes to metaphors, though, I can sit here staring at my computer for days and fail to turn up one decent or original phrase. I'm also weak in the descriptive arena. I'm have enormous respect for writers who can describe things so eloguently that you instantly visualize them. I guess I'm more or less a "cut to the chase" writer. Oops, there's another cliche. The reason I'm saying "Oops" so much, in case you have no life and are wondering, is because I don't know what in the world Britney Spears has done right to be on the cover of so many magazines outide of that one song that started with "Oops."

I really got a kick out of a movie released recently called Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrel. I used to tell my mother about something strange that had happened to me, and she'd say, "Oh, you're just running into some of your characters." Is that terrifying or what? It's a sweet and funny movie and I highly recommend it. Now about that awful woman who almost ran over me today in the parking lot . . . A semi truck is barreling down on her. She isn't looking because she's putting on lipstick and talking on her cell phone, and there's this terrible accident. You defintely don't want to be a character in one of my thrillers. The writer in the movie only killed one person. My body count is much higher. Everytime I get bored or frustrated, I just go to my computer and kill someone else. It's only fiction, and I have a lot of frustrations right now. Smile!

Peace,

Nancy