Category Archives: Nandy Ekle

Words From A Master

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Words From A Master

By Nandy Ekle

 

“As a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.”  –Stephen King

I’m making a confession here. I’ve bee a huge fan of Stephen King nearly all my life. I consider several of his books to be outright masterpieces.

I like this quote of his because it puts images in my head. Let me show you.

I’m sitting in a chair in front of my fireplace, a blanket wrapped around my legs and a book in my hand. The words march across the pages and occasionally I gasp with emotion.

I become aware of a voice in the room, actually right in front of me. When I look up I see the author squatting before me whispering. Keeping my finger between the pages, I close the book and listen to the words coming from his mouth. The story becomes alive in my head and I feel a connection with the author.

This is what makes a great book.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

 

 

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The Submit Button

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The Submit Button

By Nandy Ekle

I have one huge phobia, and that’s spiders. Yeah, that’s right. I openly admit this phobia. I always say that I am not ashamed and am actually very comfortable with my pet phobia.

There is one other thing that frightens me a little, and that is the submit button. This one little thing can paralyze me as completely as a single spider can. I can not count the times my hand has hovered over the button while my brain tries to talk me out of pushing it. “Don’t do it,” it says. “They’ll laugh.” It continues. Then the organ inside my head turns ugly. “You know the story still isn’t right. There’s gaping plot holes and unbelievable dialogue. And your grammar and punctuation are no better than a third grader.”

If my finger still aims at that little button, my gray matter turns mean and hateful. “Who are you kidding? You can’t write a story. Just listen to your so-called style. This is just a silly waste of time and paper. Are you sure you want to bear your soul to strangers so they can laugh at you and point at you? You’re nothing but a useless blob behind a computer keyboard with delusions of grandeur.”

Sometimes I believe the whole spiel. I let all that bullying talk freeze my hand and stop my breathing. Just like seeing a giant spider, my fingers curl back into my hand and I close the computer lid and do something else.

But sometimes I turn on some music and remember the promise I made to my characters to find them a home. Then I close my eyes and . . . push submit. Air rushes into my lungs and my arms feel as though they could lift a house. That’s when I know my success is not whether or not my work is accepted. My success is in squashing the monster.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Post Cards

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Post Cards

By Nandy Ekle

 

The muse is traveling again. I’ve gotten several post cards that I will share with you, my readers.

  1. What if . . . you go inside your computer and live invisibly?
  1. What happens if . . . the clouds in the sky begin to spell out words, and those words begin to read like a message?
  1. What if . . . a young woman is the maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding, and she and the groom have been having a secret affair for a year?
  1. How about a family of serial killers?
  1. The girl behind the counter at the convenience store. She sits on a stool chewing a wad of gum and reading a romance book. She has a little bruise on her shoulder. What do we know about her?
  1. You look down at the carpet while praying at church and you see a skull in the knap. When you come back later, it’s gone.
  1. A spooky old house, a favorite book, and all the paper and pens in the world.
  1. You go see your doctor. He brings into his office and tells you that you have cancer.
  1. Driving to work one morning, you are rear-ended.

10. You are visiting a dear friend and he looks up into your eyes and says . . . what?

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Confessions of a Pantser

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Confessions of a Pantser

By Nandy Ekle

 

 

First of all, what’s a “pantser”?

In the writing world there are two types of writers: plotters and pantsers. Plotters are those who write an outline, some more meticulous than others. Pantsers are writers who write by the seat of their pants. They don’t do much planning, usually just have a word sketch of a character, a basic thought of a scenario, or maybe they just have a thought, write it down, and suddenly have an entire world and story going on.

I have always prided myself as a pantser. Some of my best stories have come from picking up a piece of paper and a pen (or in today’s world, opened my laptop) and written a killer first sentence. Writing, for me, was like looking into a foggy landscape. I could see dark shapes from a distance, and the closer I got to them, the clearer they were. And I got a thrill as intense as riding a roller coaster.

Lately, however, I’ve had a little harder time getting that coaster car to move. I can walk around during the day seeing the fuzzy dark shapes, but I never get any closer to them. And sometimes they run away before I can get near enough to see them.

So I’ve resorted to some plotting. Oh, I could never be so structured as to make a outline with sublevels all the way down to “iii”, but I have gotten a little more . . . thoughtful, maybe?

So, I have a character. I know the character’s name and some things about her. Mostly I know the stuff that creates the problem. And I have a very foggy situation. Then, whammo! The wall. This is when I have to step back and say, “What is it about this girl that is different? What would make the reader like her? And what does she want bad enough to risk losing everything? And what is ‘everything’?”

This is the basic plot. Your main character wants something so much they are willing to give up . . . everything . . . to get it. And this is the extent of my plotting.

Now I’ve heard plotting writers talk about obstacles and rewards. I’ve heard about the four parts to a novel (alone, lost, help, hero/martyr), and I’ve heard about the story arc. These are wonderful tools. I’ve read books where I can see these things all very clearly and cleverly used. But to sit down and think to myself, “Okay I need an obstacle to overcome” just sucks all the fun out. What I really need is for that roller coaster to fire up and show me the dark shapes in the fog.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

 

The Challenge

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The Challenge

By Nandy Ekle

 

Lately Facebook has been full of various and sundry challenges from The Ice Bucket Challenge, benefitting ALS, to your favorite bible verse. There are challenges to count your blessings, challenges to count positive events from the day, and challenges to count ways you were inspired. These are all worthwhile, thought provoking, self-examining challenges.

For those of us who love books, the hardest challenge I’ve seen out there has been to list your top ten favorite books, books that have stayed with you the longest. While I try to learn something from every single book I read–even the books I didn’t really enjoy–I must say there are a few that my mind refuses to let go of.

Of course, I must start by mentioning The Holy Bible. This is actually 66 books. And really and truly, it’s a lot a more than just fun reading. This is where I go for answers to life questions, inspiration, comfort, peace, correction, lessons, literature, adventure, romance, and magic.

The rest of the books on my list are not nearly as noble as The Bible, but I enjoyed reading them, and I still reread some them over and over. Of course, I tend to lean to the dark side of story telling. But when you think about it, every story has elements of the dark side because, it wouldn’t be a real story without a conflict. And conflict is usually connected to something dark in some way.

So, for hundreds of different reasons, here are the ten books that I will go out on a limb and add the label “favorite.”

  1. The Shining by Stephen King. This was his third book and I was in high school. I had read his first two books and liked them, so when The Shining came out, I bought it, hard back. I’ve reread it more times than I can count. Besides all that, I love a good ghost story.
  1. The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. Even though this is seven books, it’s really all one story. Ms. Rowling is an expert at capturing her readers immediately and making them love the characters. The world is seamless and the details are astounding. And how she keeps up with those details simply blows me away.
  1. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snider. This is a middle reader and I was in Jr. High when I read it. Great story of children with big imaginations — one of my favorite themes.
  1. Bag of Bones by Stephen King. Another ghost story, and by The King of ghost stories. How could it not be on my list. One other thing I will mention about this book is I never knew he could write romance.
  1. Lisey’s Story by Stephen King. In my mind, the flip side of Bag of Bones. Loved it!
  1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Now this is a very different book. A story within a story as an older writer tells a younger writer the story of her life. Excellent read.
  1. On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I love the mini biography in the first half of the book, and the second is valuable writing instruction and advice. I keep it on my nightstand.
  1. Dracula by Bram Stoker. I voluntarily read this in high school. Now THAT’S a vampire story. And the format is amazing too.
  1. Go Ask Alice. This was actually the scariest book I ever read. I was in high school and read the whole thing in one night. Just. Wow.
  2. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I have read this book to all three of my kids numerous times and to all of my grandchildren even more numerous times. I enjoy getting into the drama of it, and the kids always ask me to read it again. Imagination is the best toy we have.

So, everyone who reads this, consider yourself challenged. In the comments below, list your ten “favorite” books and we can have a fabulous discussion.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Changing Your Mind

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Changing Your Mind

By Nandy Ekle

 

I love dark stories. I love horrors, thrillers, suspense, mysteries, science fiction, every form of scary tension you can think of. I read them all like a starving person at a Thanksgiving feast. Even more than reading, I love to write them.

But every once in a while I need a break from monsters, death, decay, and darkness for some light sugary fun. So I pick up a little romance to read. Or I dig out a children’s book from the shelf I keep for my grandkids. And sometimes I have to do this in my writing as well.

We can get bogged down to the point of being completely desensitized to the thrill of a new way to kill a character. The twisted mind of a psychotic serial killer no longer brings out those delicious chill bumps. Demons thumping around the pages of our story stay right on the page and don’t enter our imaginations to keep us up all night. We read about the scorned woman planning to kill her lover, and we yawn.

So I tried something different. I changed my writing genre. I still have all my fun little spooks in their assigned rooms in my head, but I thought it might be time to visit a different world. And to make sure I was being completely reborn, I did something else new: I made outlines for my new stories.

Guess what happened. The stainless steel wall that kept my words locked away from the page opened and there I was, writing again. For the first time in a while, I was eagerly typing while the words moved like they were on a conveyor belt.

Sometimes you just need a change to shake things up.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Who Am I?

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Who Am I?

By Nandy Ekle

 

I am a writer. I’ve always been a writer and I always will be. Sometimes I have periods where I cannot write my stories fast enough. The words parade through my head like raindrops in a storm. There are times when I hear the characters talking but my hands pause long enough that the words melt away like snowflakes on a not quite cold enough sidewalk. And then are the days when the characters are quiet.

These days are the reason for my day job. And what is my day job? Well, I’m a writer. I’m part of the correspondence department of a major world wide corporation. Granted, this is a different type of writing than the story telling I do after hours. But it is writing, just the same.

I open a letter from a client and the first thing I have to do is read their request, or their concerns. I notice the appearance of the letter, the handwriting, the typing font, the spelling and grammar. What is their voice? Most of the letters I answer are from the elderly, their family, or attorneys. The next step is to analyze what they are saying. Do they need help, information, confirmation, or do they need to be comforted and soothed?

Next, I try to find out why they need what they are asking for. Sometimes their reasons for contacting our company determines how we will answer them. Then I compose the company’s response.

I’ve trained several people for this job and one of the first things I tell a rookie is that each case is a new story. You have to find out where we are, how we got here, and where we go next. This is why I love to write.

Exercise

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Exercise
By Nandy Ekle

My list of mood creators used to be pretty big. In fact, at one time I could close my eyes and say, “Okay, characters. What happens next?” And I couldn’t write fast enough. My best ideas came to me as I was driving down the road, or sitting in the bathtub, or laying in bed at night trying to sleep. And usually I would get so excited over the voices and actions in my head I could remember word for word exactly what to put on that paper.

These days, however, it takes a little more romancing to get those words to stick. I’ve got the ideas, but my characters have tape over their mouths. Instead of yelling and screaming for me to write, they just sit in the heap where I left them waiting for me to say, “Okay, how about this?” Then they just look up at me and frown as if to say, “You gotta be kidding.” And of course, this is just a sneer on their faces because their mouths are taped shut.

I have a playlist of certain songs/music that can get them moving a little, but usually when I’m in the middle of something really intense during my day job. And the little imps are so lethargic they usually just tell me in sign language, “Whatever.”

I’ve got a favorite author who, in my opinion, is the pure definition of talent. When I read some of his work, I think about how easy he makes it look. I’m sure I could do that. I have the story. Why won’t my words stick together and sing so pretty like his do.

I’ve got a support group. The Wordsmith Six group, the best critique group, friend group in the world. I’ve got time since the kids are grown. I’ve got computers, paper, pens, pencils, pictures, current events, life problems, life greatness, prompt books, everything I need to write these stories.

But these days the words are more like rocks than bubbles. These days my characters are lazy lethargic mimes.

I need a word gym to get these guys moving again.

Congratulations. You have just received post card from the muse.

Drawing Sounds

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Drawing Sounds

By Nandy Ekle

 

Several years ago (ten? fifteen?) We watched a movie called The 13th Warrior. Made from a book by Michael Crichton, it’s the story of an Arabian man who was exiled for having an affair with the wife of an influential noble. He is sentenced to be an ambassador to Northern Barbarians and through a series of events, he is banded with a tribe of Norse Warriors.

In the beginning of the story language is a curious barrier. He wants to understand the culture, but without understanding the language he cannot learn about their way of life.

He tells of traveling with these strangers and paying close attention to the sounds they make until their language begins to make sense to him. Today we call that immersion learning. As he begins to learn their tongue, they are also learning about him. Finally all the fog is cleared and they can then understand each other.

The main character is an educated man, while the Norsemen, one of them a king in waiting, are not. So once they are able to cross the language barrier, they all become friends and the young king in waiting asks a very interesting question.

“Can you draw sounds?”

Of course, he is asking if the ambassador can write. The Norseman wants to learn to read and write.

All these years later I still remember that question. Can you draw sounds.

If you think about it deeply enough you realize that all a spoken language is is sounds that we have assigned ideas to. Each sound is part of a bigger sound we call a word. When we write words we are writing symbols assigned to those sounds. Learning a new language is simply reassigning those symbols to different sounds.

As a student of court reporting and shorthand, I had to learn, in a sense, a different language. Well, it was the same sounds representing the same ideas, but the written symbols were different. And actually, the type of shorthand I learned was the same symbols, just in different orders.

Then I make myself even dizzier by wondering who decided which symbol would represent which sound? This line of thinking can go on and on and on . . .

This is one of the things I love about words.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

CHoD

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CHoD

By Nandy Ekle

 

When you were a kid, what did you like to read? Some of my favorite books were the “choose your own adventure” books. These stories were little mazes of fun where the writers gave you adventurous scenes which set up choices. When you chose what happened next, you were directed to turn to another page to read that choice and the consequences. If your choice was correct the story continued to the next scene, ending with another choice. If your choice was wrong, the story ended in such a way you knew it couldn’t be right. When that happened you had to retrace your choices and start over.

Well, my good friends and fellow readers/writers, this genre is back for adults. Choose or Die is a blog story written by a group of writers possessing amazing talent. The concept is the same. We write what the readers want to read. A list of story lines was presented with vote buttons. Our readers chose the storyline they wanted and we are writing it before your very eyes. Each week a scene of high adventure is written with the sole purpose of creating three choices at the end. The choices are presented to the readers as vote buttons. So you are actually telling us what happens next in our little yarn.

When the voting is closed, the writers write three new scenes. The first is the choice that got second place in the vote and it will end in death for the main character. The second scene is the choice that won third place, also ending in death. The third scene is the choice that received the most votes, and rest of the story will continue.

And so, my dear friends and followers, surf on over to chooseordie.blogspot.com and join the adventure. The story for this season is titled Blazing Saddles, Smoking Tentacles. The first chapter is up, the first voting is complete and the first second-place choice scene is going up today. The third-place story goes up in a few days and I think you will recognize that author as your friendly neighborhood muse, Nandy Ekle.

See you there.