Thursday's Children: What Really Matters

Posted by: Jeff McKown

Thursday's Children is a weekly blog hop where writers come together to talk about what inspires them. 

I'm participating today and you can too. A link to other Thursday's Children writers is at the end of the post.

Thanks to Rhiann Wynn Nolet for orchestrating this affair.


My "Thursday's Children" article this week is literally about children. Not so much all children, just one. A very inspiring and brave little girl named Lisa.

LoveYouLisa

In June of 2008, my friend Linda's three year-old daughter Lisa was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma cancer.

For the last five years, Lisa's illness and treatments have had her in and out of the hospital countless times. She has been poked, prodded, chemo-ed, and radiated.

All the while, she has fought like a champion.

A couple of days ago, Lisa was taken to the ER with a high temperature, nausea, and increased pain in her legs and head, and she was again admitted to the hospital. Today, her battle rages on, and Lisa's parents and siblings find themselves once more in the helpless and agonizing position of waiting and wondering and wishing.

I have witnessed all of this from a great distance, through only the lens of the internet. But even from here, over the thousands of miles from California to Michigan, the strength of Lisa, Linda, and their family inspires me.

Linda has chronicled much of the journey of her little "warrior" on a blog, and I IMPLORE you to read the post she wrote this week entitled "Live Life." Linda's words are honest, heart-wrenching, and powerful. With Linda's permission, I am sharing her words, hoping that you might be inspired to remember to take nothing for granted.

After you've read Linda's post, I ask one thing in return: a compassionate thought or positive vibe, or perhaps if you're so inclined (and this means a lot coming from an atheist), a prayer.


Learn more about Lisa at the LoveYouLisa Facebook page. 

Click here to view other Thursday's Children blog posts, or check out Rhiann's website for more info.

Thursday's Children: Never Kick the Habit

Posted by: Jeff McKown

Thursday's Children is a weekly blog hop where writers come together to talk about what inspires them. I'm participating today and you can too. 

A link to other Thursday's Children writers is at the end of the post.

Thanks to Rhiann Wynn Nolet for orchestrating this affair.


Writing fiction is a lonely and foolish obsession. Finding one's voice, twisting and manipulating language to tell a compelling story, developing characters, teasing out story arcs, building tension.

Reading it, hating it, re-writing it, and hating it only a little less.

The act of creating something from nothing and crafting it to be as good as you know it can be is alternately discouraging, tedium-inducing, and brain-frying. But enough with the good news.

The worst aspect of nursing a hardcore writing addiction is knowing that some people make a living doing it. Some authors are actually compensated for the hard time they do in the vocabulary salt mines, and knowing that a small percentage of writers are paid to pursue their obsession makes it that much harder for the rest of us to quit. Imagine how much more difficult it would be for a junkie to give up heroin, if being a smack addict was a respectable paying job.

My chances of earning an honest wage as a fiction writer are in the same ballpark as my odds of scoring a winning Powerball ticket, and yet, I keep going. I write because certain stories deserve to be told (or maybe because I need to tell certain stories), and because not writing leaves me bloated and full of words that should have been shared. I write because not writing feels like leaving the dock just before the ship comes in. Not writing, for me, is wrong.

Those are my truths, though I must confess, I haven't been entirely honest with you. When I said the worst part of writing is knowing some people make a living at it, I lied.

The worst part of writing, or creating art of any kind I imagine, is committing hours and hours and hours of your life to a project, and still thinking it sucks. When that happens, and if you're a writer it will, the urge to give up on writing will be strong. You'll be tempted to burn your copy of Stephen King's On Writing and hurl your laptop out the window. Don't do it.

A few weeks ago, just as I was drowning in disappointment over the absence of literary sparkle in my current work-in-progress, an inspiring video from NPR's Ira Glass came to my rescue.

The clip is short and you can watch it here, but if you don't have three minutes to spare, the gist of Ira's advice is this: Everyone sucked when they first started. Create as much as you can, and the quality of your work will improve.

So, there you go. If you're saddled with a writing habit that is sometimes troublesome and unrewarding, don't be discouraged, and for God's sake, don't quit. Some habits shouldn't be kicked, they should be nursed, like a tumbler of Jameson.

If you're compelled, as I am, to keep stringing words and phrases together in the hopes of someday getting it right, stay with it. Figure out the story you want to tell, and follow it wherever it leads. You won't be happy if you don't.


Click here to view other Thursday's Children blog posts, or check out Rhiann's website for more info.

Thursday's Children: It's the Words

Posted by: Jeff McKown

Thursday's Children is a weekly blog hop where writers come together to talk about what inspires them. I'm participating today and you can too. 

A link to other Thursday's Children writers is at the end of the post.

Thanks to Rhiann Wynn Nolet for orchestrating this affair.

I'm a massive dork when it comes to writing. I keep a schedule with daily word count targets and I track my progress compulsively. My customized Excel spreadsheet has one tab for story structure, and another where I keep a "to do" list of open questions and issues. But the holy grail of my spreadsheet, the tab to end all tabs, is the formula-laden sheet where I calculate my output and performance to daily goals - the page that lets me know whether to flog or reward myself at the end of each writing day. I’m just that kind of guy.

With my aforementioned schedule, I have a pretty good idea of when I’m going to finish the second draft of the novel I’m currently revising. In two weeks, I’ll be done and that scares the living shit out of me. I lose sleep wondering about the great abyss that lies beyond the security of my daily writing rituals, and the uncertainty of what happens next makes my heart pound and my stomach churn. Because I’m also that kind of guy.

Having worked on this book off and on for a decade, I’ve had ample time to consider my fear, to examine it, to roll it around in my palm and squeeze it like a turd. I’m pretty intimate with my writing fear, but it’s only now, as the end of the second draft draws near, that I have begun to fully comprehend its meaning.

Writing isn’t a hobby for me, it’s a dream. And not a champagne hot tub Beverly Hills limo dream, but a third-grade no-pants school bus dream. Okay, not exactly that either. More like an MLK “I have a dream” dream, only less uplifting and lyrical, without all the concern for equality and brotherhood and the well-being of mankind.

You see, I love words. All kinds of words. I love how they fit together like jagged little puzzle pieces, conjuring nightmares and landscapes no one else ever imagined. I love how choosing the right words and assembling them in a meaningful order conveys a profound thought, a stunning image, or a devastating emotion. I love how words, when properly aligned, become art.

That's my dream - to make word art, the kind that makes you weep in a quiet corner or laugh out loud on a crowded train. To share ideas that make you shake your head in disapproval, or words that make you love someone more. To craft thoughtful collections of phrases and sentences and paragraphs, and carefully cull them into a collection of pages that rock you, crush you, or piss you off.

And therein lies my fear. I’m two weeks away from finishing the second draft of a novel, my best attempt at chasing the dream and making word art, which I daresay is a damn sight tougher than most of us know. I’ve invested so much. I spoke my dream aloud. I left jobs to pursue it. I sought peers and mentors and editors. I read blogs, and books, and books about books. I bought software. I meditated. I lived in a cabin in the woods. Thousands. Of. Hours.

Now I know, thanks to my trusty spreadsheet, I will soon reach a new milestone. In fourteen short days, give or take a day, I will cross another bridge on the way to my dream, with no way of knowing what awaits me at the far end of the span. Maybe my dream comes true or maybe there’s a nightmare end. More likely, the dream will just go on, and I'll be left to keep running after it.

I’m scared, but whatever happens next, I have the satisfaction of knowing I gave it my all. I pursued something in my life that mattered to me, something I cared about. I surfaced something honest and real from deep inside - the words. Because you know what? I’m that kind of guy, too.

Click here to view other Thursday's Children blog posts, or check out Rhiann's website for more info.