Clicking Our Heels - People We Respect

Clicking Our Heels – People We Respect

Last month, we contemplated our favorite royals, but what about non-royal people we respect?  Rich or poor, famous or not – these individuals are who the Stiletto Gang members most respect and why.

A.B. Plum: Michelle Obama: quintessential mother and First Lady and apparently a damned good lawyer as well. The President was lucky to have her at his side watching his back, imo. I think she’s done a lot to encourage women to speak out against sexual harassment.

Juliana Aragon Fatula: Hillary Clinton put cracks in the glass ceiling and she put up with many fools who wanted to tear her down. She taught us that it takes a village to raise a child.

Bethany Maines: Warren Buffet, Melinda Gates, and anyone who publicly admits that they have changed their mind on a topic after hearing new information. Buffet and Gates seem interested in raising up the human condition and I find that admirable. But the person who admits that they have listed to facts and changed their opinion is some sort of saint. In this world of entrenched view points and never admitting to being wrong unless you think it will prevent you from going to jail, changing your mind is some sort of sin and takes courage.

Sparkle Abbey:
Anita Carter: My Grandmother. When she lost her first husband, she uprooted her 6 young children and moved them from Homer, New York to Yuba City, California. She opened a restaurant and raised her family for many years (10+) before she remarried. She was spunky, determined, and a prayer warrior. She was an amazing lady.

Mary Lee Woods: There are so many to think about that this is a difficult choice. Someone I greatly admire is Jimmy Carter. Though he could have enjoyed a leisurely retirement, since his time as president, this man has continued to contribute to the world in a very positive way. His work with Habitat for Humanity has, I’m sure, made a difference for many families. Many families who never dreamed they could have a home of their own. To me, he seems to be the embodiment of what we should strive for – to continue doing, to continue to believe in causes we feel are important, to continue to make a difference in whatever way we can. This is one of my favorite quotes from our 39^th president: We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

Kay Kendall: I respect President Obama for his steady and intelligent hand in guiding our nation during eight years, for his withstanding racism and horribly unfair attack on his sterling character, and for maintaining a fine and loving family life despite constant and intense political pressures.

Judy Penz Sheluk: I’m going to go with my favorite Canadian – my husband, Mike. He is by no means perfect, and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but you will never find a more loyal friend or anyone with more integrity.

Linda Rodriguez: Dolores Huerta is an amazing leader and public servant, a charismatic speaker and gifted community organizer – who actually began what would become the United Farmworkers Movement before Cesar Chavez ever showed up and did most of the actual work for it while he was out doing the publicity – and I’ve been fortunate enough to know her and taok to her, leading to tremendous respect for her. Wilma Mankiller was the first Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in modern times (we say that because, before Europeans came and made them stop, the Cherokee always had women in leadership with men). Wilma was honored by the Cherokee Nation, the United States, and the United Nations for the work she did for may years on behalf of poor people, women, children, and other marginalized communities, and she’s been my role model for decades. My dear friend Sandra Cisneros, is one of the most spiritually enlightened people I know and a fabulous writer and mentor/organizer/benefactor of writers, plus being funny and fun. It’s hard to choose just one person. I’ve been so lucky to know so many remarkable people. And then there’s Diane Glancy, Linda Hogan, Joy Harjo, Deborah Miranda, Luis J. Rodriguez, Patricia Spears Jones, Lucha Corpi, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Marjorie Agosin, beloved friends, fabulous writers, and all doing major work for other writers and for their own communities and others. I find myself gravitating to writers of color for this answer because they not only write incredible books, but mentor other writers and work hard to build up the communities they come from and the communities where they now find themselves, as well as the country as a whole.

T.K. Thorne: Benjamin Franklin. He was certainly not perfect, but he was brilliant and prolific and eccentric, affecting the shape of our country and customs in many ways.

Dru Ann Love: Obama because he stood up to the naysayers and showed that a black man can indeed be president, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.

Jennae Phillippe: The first names that come to mind are all the activists that have fought to make changes in our country- including the Founding Fathers, who are the original activists. Our country always seems to move ahead through an act of revolution (even if the modern ones are all political). And when I think of “American Royals” I think of our rich history of activism.

Shari Randall: So may historical figures fascinate me – I just finished Lincoln in the Bardo and would love to meet Lincoln. Also many brave women fascinate – Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman – and artists like Emily Dickinson. Too many to list!

Debra H. Goldstein: My mother, Erica Green, because she was the quintessential example of what the politicians, national leaders, teachers, writers, entertainers, and others I admire tell us America is. A Holocaust survivor orphaned at ten, she was an immigrant who came to the United States through Ellis Island. She learned perfect English and while gaining an education, worked from the age of fourteen. After marrying the love of her life and having children, she instilled in them the confidence to embrace everything our country offers, to understand one’s name and word reflects one’s integrity, that putting family and others first is necessary, and that survival necessitates thinking outside the box.

The Week The World Stopped by Debra H. Goldstein

The Week The World Stopped by Debra H. Goldstein

The bug that’s going around finally caught me. I coughed, but didn’t think anything of it. Then, I coughed again. Within hours, I felt my chest tightening as the cough became more pronounced and other symptoms crept upon me. I cursed.

My cursing wasn’t directed at the bug, but at two women. One of them sat behind me at a conference the day before coughing non-stop. Mid-day, she confided to her seat mate she’d been diagnosed with the flu earlier in the week, but having paid, didn’t want to miss this special speaker. The other was a friend I hadn’t seen for a few weeks who came up, hugged and kissed me, and in bringing me up to date on her family mentioned her daughter had a bad case of the flu last week, but she’d started Tamiflu immediately, so she was sure that was why she’d only felt a little ill the past few days.

I cursed because considering my calendar for the upcoming weeks, the last thing I needed to be was sick. But, I was.

My calendar always is booked, but with out-of-state travel coming up in the next few weeks, I’d squeezed extra things into that week. Within hours, I knew days of plans were going to be a non-go. I cancelled my next day’s activities, which would have brought me in contact with friends and family, and crawled into bed. Instead of the next day’s meetings and a fun lunch and dinner, I used part of that day clearing my calendar for the rest of the week. Plans juggled on my calendar were ruined. I felt bad about that and I felt bad in general.

After a day or two, I wasn’t fit for interaction with other humans, but I could focus on my computer. I wrote. I knocked out a short story and the end of a novel. The quiet was nice. I attacked our tax papers. The solitude felt good. I wrote some more. Nothing interrupted my concentration. I read.

I got well. Life went back to its normal craziness. It’s nice to be back in my regular groove of insanity, but there was something to be said about stopping the world for a few days.

Revision and Television

Revision and Television by Debra H. Goldstein

Lately, I’ve been fast forwarding through a lot of television shows, avoiding the commercials. It makes it possible for me to quickly get to the gist of each program, but also makes me realize how much of normal program running time is taken up by ads. Perhaps the most egregious one was a recent airing of Beaches.

Because I loved the Bette Midler/Barbara Hershey version, I was a little leery about the remake, but having been an Idina Menzel fan since seeing her in Rent and Wicked, I decided to bite the bullet. Joel and I had other plans the night it was telecast, so I taped it. When I finally sat down with my remote control to watch the multi-hour presentation, I discovered that almost a third of it had been commercials. Good for me, but a bummer for those who watched the original broadcast.

For me, first drafts are much like watching a show with its commercials intact. They are bloated and often contain spots I can do without. Revision is comparable to using a remote control. I can fast forward or edit through garbage, but slow down if there is a passage (advertisement) that catches my eye or I’ve hit the spot where the plot actually flows. Sometimes, I fast forward too quickly in terms of my revisions, and must backtrack a bit; other times, it is a stop and start method until I get the wording exactly like I want it. The key is to make my manuscript as tight as a script must be to fit into its limited time. A thirty-minute show must move the acts of its plot within twenty-two minutes. My work must be equally concise or I will lose a reader’s attention.

That’s why I am going to end this blog now. Or, perhaps I should insert a commercial – want to know more about me? Check out my new website at www.DebraHGoldstein.com and sign up there to follow my personal blog, It’s Not Always a Mystery, and, if you haven’t already done so, follow The Stiletto Gang, http://thestilettogang.blogspot.com/ (and like the gang’s facebook pageJ).

Clicking Our Heels - As Writers, What's Difficult or Easy to Address

Clicking Our Heels – As Writers, What’s Difficult or Easy to Address

Jennae Phillippe – Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about representation in fiction; while I want to be inclusive in my writing, I am terrified of being insulting or stereotyping, and yet I want to write about people other than cisgendered straight white women. I tend to rely heavily on my friends and their experiences, but I also feel a bit like a story vampire, sucking their experiences from them to make my own characters live. I am fortunate enough to have friends that are willing to share with me.

Bethany Maines – As in life, in writing addressing emotions and complex moral decisions are the hardest things for me to address. The easiest is action – getting from point A to point B is so much easier to consider than grief or justice.

Paula Gail Benson – The most difficult is writing onstage, in front of the readers’ eyes violence. The easiest, happiest, and most wonderful is thanking fellow writers and readers for their support and kindness.

Kay Kendall – The hardest thing I do is to write the first draft of a manuscript. The easiest is to write the conclusion. I also love working with an editor and perfecting things. Pulling out the first draft, thought…UGH. Major ughs.

Paffi S. Flood – The most difficult thing I address as a writer is slowing down a scene to allow the reader to become fully engrossed in the emotional aspects of it. The easiest for me is coming up with a premise. I have tons of them.

Kimberly Jayne – The biggest challenge I face as a writer is time; I don’t have enough of it. So many

things need to be done when you’re a writer, and most of those things are not even about writing. They’re about marketing. For the writing, itself, the challenge is keeping at it (butt in chair) even when you’re too beat to type another word. Distractions and stressors from all aspects of my life can create general fatigue that wears you down over time, and making myself go into my writing space and do the work is sometimes asking too much. So, finding ways to re-motivate, re-inspire, and re-energize is key. I guess the easiest thing is editing. I do it enough, all day every day, that it’s quick and easy for me. I also enjoy plotting with story boards – that’s pretty fun and easy to brainstorm.

Linda Rodriguez – The most difficult thing for me in writing is plotting - that’s why I had to research and teach myself a way of plotting that worked with my strong points. The easiest thing for me in writing is character development. I can hear a name or see a stranger in a coffee shop and begin developing an entire life, personality, and background. I love to go deeper and deeper into characters.

Debra H. Goldstein – My biggest difficulty is writing if I don’t have anything to say. Until an idea crystallizes, I’m not inclined to sit down at my computer. Once I have the triggering idea or phrase, words flow. They might not end up in the final manuscript because they’re dull, were written to get through a moment of blockage, or are repetitive, but there is an ease and joy as they fill the page.

Cathy Perkins – Right now, the hardest thing for me is time management, which rather baffles me since I’ve always been the “get ‘er done!” person. Rocking the exploding day job and building a custom house might be a factor in that J. The easiest? I love making up new characters and seeing what kind of trouble I can get them in – and out – of.

Sparkle Abbey – The most difficult is time management. It seems like there are simply never enough hours in the day! As far as the writing itself, we both plot out our stories before we write them and although we love that process, we’d have to say it never seems to get any easier. The most fun part for us is the revision/layering part once a first draft is complete. And, of course, meeting readers. Meeting readers is awesome!

Coming Back by Debra H. Goldstein

I’ve always been good at multi-tasking, enhanced by good organizational skills, the ability to prioritize, and being a fast reader. Mixing those skills and luck, my to-do-list usually ends up checked off. Recently though, my life has been a perfect example of John Lennon’s famous comment: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

As most of you know, I spent six wonderful months on the road promoting Should Have Played Poker. During that time, I didn’t write much. I tried, but juggling everything pretty much limited me to finishing and revising a new book; keeping up with my personal and Stiletto blogs, as well as the numerous ones I wrote as part of my promotional activities; and turning out a few short stories. I figured I would get serious about my word count when life slowed down.

Unfortunately, everything came to an abrupt halt when I ruptured two tendons in my foot and had to undergo reconstructive surgery. Six screws, a plate, and two tendon transplants later, the only thing I was capable of was lying around in la la land with my foot elevated. My big accomplishment, while keeping my foot above my heart twenty-two out of twenty-four hours, was counting down my totally non-weight bearing time - two weeks in a splint and ace bandages because the swelling was too much for a cast, two weeks in a purple cast, and two weeks in a bright green cast. During this period, my ability to focus on much of anything was compromised.

I finally regained my ability to lie around with the television on. Four seasons of House of Cards, two of Grace and Frankie, ten episodes of The Crown, and a sampling of three or four other shows, and I started getting bored. Although I continued to have to elevate my foot, the introduction of physical therapy and limited weight-bearing in a boot added a spice of variety. Sadly, I still lacked the ability to string words together. And then, one day, a flash story, A Garden for Adonis, came together. It was published last week in SEEDS (http://conta.cc/2igTGS0).

Although I’d like to tell you I wrote non-stop after that, it would be a lie. Returning to writing came slowly. The ideas were there, but my ability to sustain my attention was not. It took several weeks to write and submit one short story. I had planned to write three pieces during the same time period, but life didn’t work out that way. I don’t know if the story, A Golden Eclipse, will ever be published (I like it, so I hope it will), but I know one thing for sure. I’m back!

I Wrote a Book

I Wrote A Book by Debra H. Goldstein

I wrote a book this week. Or, maybe it was last week? The days seem to run together when I’m writing well. Hours go by before I stiffly realize daylight has faded.

I don’t know if the book is any good. I began writing it at the end of last year and thought it was a hoot. It incorporated everything that a cozy or a traditional with cozy elements needs: small town, a woman finding herself or doing something she’s not particularly comfortable with, nice language, mostly nice characters, food with a twist…you’re getting the picture. Then, my mother died and I stopped writing.

The words didn’t flow. The ideas came and I dutifully wrote them on a sticky or on a note on my iPad, but I didn’t look at them again. Short story contest and anthology deadlines came and went. Still, I didn’t write.

People asked me how my new book was coming and I told them the truth, “It’s not.” What was going well was my mah jongg playing, eating out, exercising, TV watching, volunteer meetings, traveling, and solitaire playing.

And then, one day, I woke up and remembered I wanted to be a writer. It dawned on me that a writer

needs to write. I decided to find time to do that again. For fun, I polished a story I had been tinkering

with and submitted it. I pulled up the manuscript that I had been writing and realized “No wonder I can’t bring myself to work on this manuscript. I’m not sad about my mother (well, maybe I am); the story doesn’t work because I’ve pinned the crime on the wrong character.”

I hit my head (okay, let’s pretend I hit my head), chortled, and wondered “How stupid could I be?” I edited and rewrote and suddenly I was beyond the point at which I’d stopped writing.

For the next ten days, I wrote with minimal breaks. I turned down invitations to play mah jongg and begged off attending meetings or long lunches. My fingers flew across the keyboard in beat to whatever music was being played on the Showtunes channel. I finished. 72464 of my own words.

The book will need to be edited and revised before I’ll send it searching for a home, but I held a hard copy of the manuscript in my hand today and I smiled. Good or bad, I am a writer.

I Don’t Want to Blog Today by Debra H. Goldstein

I don’t want to blog today.

Plain and simple – I’m tired, cranky, out of ideas, and grumpy (is that the same as cranky?). I want to be snowed in so nothing will prevent me from lighting a fire, covering myself with Joel’s Alabama afghan, and either putting on a TV show DVR’d during the past the two weeks or finishing the Janet Bolin book I’m halfway through. It isn’t to be.

The book, TV shows, blanket and electric fireplace are all there waiting for me, but I live in the South so, thank goodness, the snow idea is out of the picture. Plus, I have lunch and afternoon meetings beginning two hours from now and then we’re hosting a dinner for twelve (don’t worry, we made reservations). Today is typical of my schedule for the past two weeks. Consequently, I don’t want to blog today.

Up to now, I haven’t minded that my days have been filled with meetings, doctor appointments, house guests, exercise classes, attending two wonderful mystery conferences (Murder in the Magic City and Murder on the Menu), visiting and hanging with dear friends, submitting a proposal, laundry and other mundane things. Add in attending a funeral, moderating a charity debate on the value of latkes vs. hamentashen, and judging a children’s writing contest and you can understand why I’ve been a little short of sleep. I haven’t had time to write a single word even though I know there are short story submission deadlines I would like to meet (I understand it helps to write the short story first) and a revision idea begging me to address it in the new novel I’m almost finished drafting.

I don’t want to blog today, but I will. That’s what writers do.

Debra H. Goldstein is the author of 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue.  Her second mystery, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery will be published by Five Star Publications in 2016. Her most recent short story, Power Play, appears in the new edition of The Birmingham Arts Journal (Volume 11, Issue 4 - 2015). Whether or not she wants to blog or introduce you to a guest blogger, you can find her thoughts expressed as a member of The Stiletto Gang every 2nd and 4th Friday and every other Monday on "It's Not Always a Mystery"- http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com.