IWSG: Pushing Out of the Comfort Zone

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting, so be sure to click on the image above and link your blog--and visit as many as you can.



The Monthly Question:
Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing? For example, by trying a new genre you didn't think you'd be comfortable in??

This is a great question, and one I can speak to, because I have certainly surprised myself when I've tried new genres. Answering the question also spares me admitting that my writing has stagnated all summer. But hey, I've had some good trips, and saw the eclipse! That has to be worth something!


One of the things I like best about my weekly flash fiction, besides being good practice and a way to make sure I at least write *something* (even when I'm not doing at all well about getting to work) is that it's a place to play with genres. I get most of my prompts from Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds blog, as he posts a weekly challenge (usually). And many of those challenges play with genres, or suggest a genre that isn't either the cozy mystery or the children's fiction I usually write. Sometimes I twist them to make them fit my style, and I never wholly let go of certain limits (for example, because I write for children, who may find this blog, and because my mother reads this blog, I do not write erotica, nor anything that I wouldn't want my children or my mother to read. Makes sense, right?).

Maybe the best challenges Chuck offers are the sub-genre mash-ups, which sometimes force me to research just what the genres I drew actually are, since there are many I haven't heard of. What I have learned is that I can write in almost any genre (see note re: erotica), though maybe not in every style. 

But every now and then, a story goes beyond that deliberate stretching. Sometimes, I read them over and ask myself, "where did that come from?" There might be a darkness I didn't know I could tap, or something weird, or I might stop in the middle of a story because it is leading me to a kind of violence I'm not willing to write (or at least to publish here). Writing may sometimes show us corners of our minds that we'd rather not see.

How about you? Leave a comment below and tell me about something you wrote that surprised you.  

Then hop around and see what other writers are feeling insecure about this month.

P.S. The Ninja Librarian is out biking, so we won't get back to you to read your comments and your posts until next week. Bear with us! 

YA Review: Going Over, by Beth Kephart

Title: Going Over
Author: Beth Kephart
Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2014
Source: Library

Publisher's Summary:In the early 1980s Ada and Stefan are young, would-be lovers living on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall--Ada lives with her mother and grandmother and paints graffiti on the Wall, and Stefan lives with his grandmother in the East and dreams of escaping to the West.

My Review:  I debated about how to classify this book. I found it in the juvvy section of my library, but I hadn't read very far before I realized that it fits much more in what I consider YA. It's not so much that there is a love story at the heart of it, as that there are too many "adult situations" as they say. There is a pregnancy, a strongly implied rape, spousal abuse, and a lot of death as well. Nor are the politics behind the story all that easy to understand. So: YA. Not for children.

That taken care of, this was a good book. It highlights a part of history that doesn't get a lot of attention--the Cold War division of Berlin into East and West, and does it in the context of a couple of young people who mostly just want to live their lives. The story is strong and plays out well. In a way, this could be another in the series of books I've read this summer about kids dealing with death and loss. These young people have lost all sorts of family through death or separation, and it has certainly affected their lives, though that's not what the book is primarily about. Or maybe it is: maybe what drives them so strongly to be together is the need to not lose one more person they love to that wall.

The writing is strong, but I did have some issues. The book is told in alternating sections between Ada and Stefan. Ada's sections are written in the 1st person, present tense. Sefan's are written in 2nd person, a voice that is always difficult, and which causes most of my issues. Ada manages to keep her present tense straight, I think, but Stefan's sections are not always strong. Here and there the voice slips, losing the 2nd person. And, of course, the question always hovers (for me, anyway) as to whom exactly is being addressed when the narrator says "you." It appears to be Stefan, but that doesn't always feel right. I think the intention is to make the reader feel more a part of the story, to feel what it is to be trapped in East Berlin. It almost works.

My Recommendation:
This is a good read, and not long. I think it's worth it for the sake of the history as well as the story, but in my opinion isn't appropriate for kids under 13 or 14.

FTC Disclosure: I checked Going Over out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Flash Fiction Friday: We Apologize for the Error

A few weeks ago, Chuck Wendig asked for people to come up with (just for a variation on the usual) the final line of a story. I enjoyed reading through them, but I admit that most felt more like the first line to me. I managed to snitch this one (I'm sorry that I no longer have the record of whose line it was) and use it at both ends of the story.

It's just a bit of speculative fiction. If you think it's anything else, think what you will.

I give you my story, in 834 words.

We Apologize for the Error…

I always knew I’d be present at the end of the world.

I just didn’t know it would look like this. I didn’t know it would be my fault.

I suppose I should explain: I am immortal. I have no memory of my beginnings, and I can have no end, no matter how much I may wish it. And I have wished it many, many times, for all the good it does. So of course I knew I’d be around when the world ends. But I never meant to be the reason it ended.

It happened like this.

I won’t say it was just another day, because days have little meaning for me. Time washes past in waves, drowning me for long periods—what you would call long periods—then flinging me to the surface to glimpse a single moment or a century before I lose myself again.

This time, I surfaced at a very bad moment. Several major governments around the world had apparently been taken over by madmen or children—toddlers prone to tantrums, they appeared to me. Toddlers who would break and destroy if they didn’t get their own way, just because they could.

Things didn’t look great for the world. My mistake was thinking that I could help.

In fact, I probably could have helped, if I’d just managed to get the timing right.

My idea was to remove the maniacs, which even I could see had to be done pretty much all at once. I was pretty sure I could at least create the illusion of simultaneity. It would take careful timing and meticulous planning, which I was quite capable of.

Where I failed was in my understanding of human nature. You can hardly blame me for that. After all, humans are a pretty new thing from my perspective, and they aren’t that easy to understand. The last time I’d spent any significant time watching them, they were just learning to make things explode.

So, secure in my over-confidence, I headed first for the leader I thought was the craziest. I had to neutralize him—and yes, all the mad rulers were male. In my opinion, and I’ve been watching, more or less, for all of human history, women are chosen far too seldom, and most have been sane and interested in peace. There have been exceptions, of course. Look at Queen Mary—the one they called “Bloody Mary”—or that Isabel woman in Spain. And there have been plenty of sane and humane male leaders, of course. I just happened to come up for air at a time when there were at least three madmen in important positions, and all armed with nuclear weapons.

I was trying to prevent the end of the world, at least as a sphere habitable by humans.

So I dealt with the worst one, as I saw it, first. It was simple enough: I put him in a coma. Don’t ask how. I won’t tell. I thought his minions would keep that quiet as long as possible, to maintain his power. I have my own ways of getting around, so I only needed a few hours, and surely it would take longer than that for word to leak out.

I didn’t realize that the madness went several layers deep in that country. The second in command claimed power within minutes, which I guess was protocol there. And he, too, sat with his thumb on the red button. That was okay, or it would have been; it was an orderly transition even if it did put everyone on edge.

But my second target expected the sort of chaos that would come if he vanished, and tried to take advantage of it. He shouldn’t even have known about the coma before I could get to him, but that orderly transition was all done in public, so it took about 30 seconds for the whole world to know, what with the new kinds of instant communication humans had invented since I last looked.

So the second madman pushed his button.

I suppose he thought that confusion, or even fights over who was in charge, would delay the response long enough for his bombs to destroy their bombs.

It didn’t.

I was only minutes away from neutralizing him when he set loose Armageddon, and the new leader on the other side didn’t hesitate. I might have misjudged who was the maddest, or maybe at that level degrees of madness don’t matter.

Armageddon is kind of pretty, seen from a distance.

Well, it was pretty at first. I was when I realized that I wasn’t going to die along with the humans that it became something else. By the time the madmen were finished, nothing could live on this god-forsaken planet.

Nothing but me, because I can’t die.

Not even of boredom.

I always knew I’d be present at the end of the world. I just didn’t know I’d still be there afterwards.

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©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2017

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