Category: writing

Some say we’re too stupid for freedom of speech

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing4 Comments

When Facebook and Twitter decided to partially censor a New York Post article about Biden family e-mails, they did so because they favor Biden. Similar posts pointing at President Trump’s purported screw-ups were allowed. Okay, Big Tech wants to help Biden and not run afoul of countries in the EU that are more restrictive of speech and press freedoms than we are in the U.S.

While flipping through news channels last night, I happened upon a comment from a member of Congress who said he thought the government might need to step in and regulate our freedom of speech because everyday people didn’t have the knowledge required to tell the difference between truth, opinion, and lies.

I don’t buy it.

I’ll agree that we need more objective news sources rather than newspapers, networks, and programs that come with an agenda. Even so, I think people are smart enough to check multiple sources before believing one report or another is gospel.

As I see it, the only “stupid” people out there are those who say they believe everything CNN says or everything Fox News says. Those people only know issues from one partisan agenda or another. As we used to say, they believe those who are preaching to the choir.

Moderates and conservatives used to say that many of those on the left side of the aisle planned to destroy or dilute the Second Amendment before doing anything else. They (moderates and conservatives) were wrong: the first priority of many (not all) of those on the left side of the aisle seems to be diluting the First Amendment.

I hope that’s not true of the majority of Democrats. If it is true, what a shame. If it is true, I believe it’s still possible to book a flight to China or Russia where freedom of speech isn’t even part of the discussion.

—Malcolm

Easy-to-fix mistakes damage your credibility

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn editing, writing2 Comments

One of the first rules students are taught in reporting classes at a journalism school is spelling people’s name’s correctly in news stories, feature stories, and editorials. Misspelling a person’s name is not only a rude discount, it undermines your credibility, the thought being that if you can’t even get the name right, how can readers trust you to get anything else right?

Used to be a copyeditor would catch a lot of the misspelt names. Now, reporters and writers are expected to catch their own mistakes because copyediting has become a lost art as organizations cut costs. When a reporter covers a story, readers expect him/her to have a basic knowledge of the subject and when that proves not to be true, the story won’t be trusted.

Novelists face the same issues. If you misspell the names of famous people and widely known cities, you’re in trouble. The more obvious the error–to general readers–the more likely it is to be caught. Obscure errors will bring specialists out of the woodwork in editorial reviews even though most Amazon reader reviewers don’t have the background to catch them.

One of my favorite historical novelists got some simple facts wrong in a recent book that brought the wrath of the gods down on his back. I hope he went back and corrected the material for the next edition. If you’re writing a civil war novel and say that the South fired on “Fort Summer” in “Savannah Harbor,” you–and your beta readers or editor–have been somewhat lax.

Personally, I think it’s especially damaging to make an amateurish mistake on the first page of a novel. Here’s what I saw in the opening paragraph of a book by a well-known writer for a major publisher (that should have had editors and fact checkers):

“Eighty-one-year-old Ernie Keene, retired corporal, United States Navy, stood on the misty flight deck of the USS Intrepid and looked out at New Jersey.”

I immediately lost my faith in the accuracy of the book because the rank of corporal is not a navy rank. I wonder: how can an author of a black ops book not know this? How can the publisher’s editorial staff not know this? Presumably, most readers of black ops and other military-style novels would also know this.

This error alone probably won’t sink the book, but it creates a barrier between the readers and the author about the author’s credentials for writing the novel. As with a news story, readers will think, “If you make a mistake like this, you’re probably making bigger mistakes that are harder for a layperson to catch.”

Authors have a luxury older generations didn’t have. Type in the word “corporal” in a search engine, and you know the navy doesn’t have them. Type in a name that can have multiple spellings, and find out which way the famous person you’re writing about spelt it. And then there’s Wikipedia for basic information about a lot of things.

We have to sweat the “small stuff” or our readers will think we didn’t research the big stuff.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the Florida Folk Magic Series, the latest of which is “Fate’s Arrows.”

Local Color in Novels

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing1 Comment

Local color serves a variety of purposes in novels and short stories:

  • Paints a picture of the location and its history
  • Provides careers, hobbies, road trips for the characters
  • Resonates with readers who know the area
  • Helps move the plot forward
  • Adds depth to the story

Florida Panhandle

My four Florida Folk Magic novels are set in the state’s panhandle near the Apalachicola River. This was once a land of cotton that is far different from the cities and tourist attractions of the peninsula that tourists flock to every year. It’s dominated by pine forests, small towns, small farms, commercial and sports fishing, and a relatively low profile nationally.

St. Joe Paper Company

The St. Joe Paper Company in the 1950s when my novels are set, had a massive influence in the panhandle: paper mill, landholdings, a railroad called the Apalachicola Northern that carried wood products from the coastal mill to Quincy, Florida for transfer to mainline railroads. The paper company, part of a trust established by the du Pont family, still exists but focuses on commercial and residential real estate. The railroad, named the Apalachicola Northern, was referred to as the Port St. Joe Route. (It still exists as part of a conglomerate.)

In my novels, I call my fictional the town Torreya (after a rare Florida tree) and place it near the town of Telogia as shown on this AN railroad map:

I mention the railroad a lot, fudging its route to include my fictional town because it, and the local sawmill, are important to the local economy; inasmuch as “crossings” is a vital word in conjure, railroad crossings also provide ambiance and figure into a plot which includes bulkhead flat cars carrying wood products:

Unfortunately, most of the online pictures of this railroad are copyrighted, including its old Electro-Motive (General Motors) SW9 switch engines.

If you’re a railfan, you can learn more about the railroad here:

What’s the Major Attraction or Industry?

What draws people to the location you’re writing about. If I’d set the novels in current times, I might have mentioned Apalachicola’s commercial oyster industry and/or the fight between Florida and Georgia for rights to the Apalachicola River’s water. If I’d set my novels in Tallahassee, the state government and two state universities there add plot opportunities. Of course, almost anywhere you go in the state provides fishing, kayaking, swimming, and other river/gulf/ocean recreation.

I chose pine forests and railroads because they fit the realities of the times in the Florida Panhandle of the 1950s. Needless to say, if you grow up or live in the area you’re writing about, you have an edge over authors from the far side of the country. You may not be a walking encyclopedia for the locale, but you know where to look.

—Malcolm

Book four in the Florida Folk Magic Series, “Fate’s Arrows,” was released by Thomas-Jacob Publishing last month in paperback and e-book.

 

Twelve years of hooey

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing6 Comments

A writer friend of mine posted on her blog that this year marked the blog’s 13th anniversary. I said 13 years + 2020 = play the Twilight Zone theme song.

I have no idea when this blog began because it started out on blogger–with a few posts on several other sites–before it began here in 2008. That sure is a lot of hooey.

I no longer have this old Jeep, but I wish I did.

Perhaps there have been a few interesting reviews, writers tips, and other ideas mixed in with the hooey. Occasionally, I go through old posts, updating links, and as I do that, I’m not sure which blogs are hooey and which posts make valuable contributions to “real life” as we know it.

Maybe that doesn’t matter since the word on the street is “nobody reads blogs anymore.” That means you’re not reading this post. That’s reassuring, isn’t it?

The good news is this: this post is not “real life.” I always put “real life” in quotes because I don’t know where dreams begin and end. So, chances are, you’re asleep now and when you wake up you might have thoughts of “hooey” on your mind but you won’t know why. (Don’t blame your spouse.)

Hooey or not, this blog has been fun, mainly because it gives me a place to talk about my books, other people’s books, and my crazy view of “real life.” I also enjoy the comments, other than the SPAM, that people make. You’ve probably noticed that I don’t write many political posts. Mainly that’s because those kinds of posts usually start fights and a bunch of comments filled with profanity. Not my idea of a good time.

Most of my books deal with magic because that’s the way I see the world. You’ve probably noticed that if you’ve been reading this blog for a while. But then, I think magic is a more viable way of viewing the world than subscribing to most of the political beliefs floating around lately.

The bottom line here, I suppose, is hooey. How much can you accept? And how much is the truth presented in outlandish terms? I may never know. But perhaps the hooey here will lead you to come of my contemporary fantasy and magical realism novels. Or perhaps it will lead you to drink moonshine. Either way, it’s got to be better than watching CNN and FOX news every day while eating Moonpies.

Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell’s latest book is “Fate’s Arrows,” a novel in which a young woman in the Florida Panhandle of 1955, fights the KKK.

Too Many Cows in the Yard

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

When we first built a house on a portion of the farm where my wife grew up, we frequently had cows in the yard because the old fence around the pasture had seen better days. Now, our neighbor has a new fence and we seldom see cows out on the road or our garden or the driveway.

The worst thing is when they get out at night. Black cows are hard to see in the dark, and they don’t mind running into people who are out in the roads and yards with flashlights trying to get them all moving back toward the break in the fence.

Cows are heavy. When the ground is wet, it doesn’t take them long to create a mud hole or put a lot of foot-sized holes in the yard for the riding mowers to get stuck in.

Since it’s 2020, I keep expecting to see cows in the yard again. Knock on wood. So far, nobody’s rung the doorbell and said those fateful words “Your cows are out” even though they’re not our cows.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Fate’s Arrows,” in which a young woman fights the KKK in the Florida Panhandle of the 1950s.

If I can’t see you, you’re not there and it didn’t happen

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Years ago, I lived in an upstairs apartment above a family with two children. Sometimes, while visiting in their living room, we’d see their youngest child emerge from the kitchen with a handful of cookies en route to his bedroom. He imagined that since he was walking in front of us with his free hand covering his eyes, we couldn’t see him and that the cookie theft never occurred.

I read an article in the New Yorker today, “Has Self-Awareness Gone Too Far in Fiction?” in which author Katy Waldman wrote, “These self-conscious times have furnished us with a new fallacy. Call it the reflexivity trap. This is the implicit, and sometimes explicit, idea that professing awareness of a fault absolves you of that fault—that lip service equals resistance.” While, as she says, she confines her comments about this fallacy to books where she says that “Increasingly, characters seem to be rewarded for the moral work of feeling bad,” the message covers a lot of the self-examination speeches, essays, posts, and other confessions we’re seeing these days in the news and on social media.

Portland, July 2020 – Wikipedia photos.

Perhaps it’s the slip side of burying one’s head in the sand or covering one’s eyes while participating in a riot or watching a riot on the TV news. One form of covering one’s eyes seems to be saying, “I don’t live in Portland, so I don’t know anything about the nightly riots there, so none of that is my responsibility or problem.”

You can either say, “I wasn’t there, so I can’t help fix it” or “I was there and threw bricks through a few windows and torched a few police cars, but in admitting it to you, I’ve cleaned my plate, conscience, and soul, and am now a good person again.”

Actually, I remember another approach from the 1960s and 19070s: A discussion group that focuses on the ills of the world meets once a week at a member’s house where people have cookies and coffee or cheese fondu and Scotch and talk about the negative issues of the day. Everyone chips in, says how terrible it all is, complains that the government or the church or somebody or other needs to do something about it, and then they leave the house at the end of the evening with a feeling of accomplishment. That is to say, the members believe that talking about a societal ill is the same thing as working proactively to get rid of that ill.

I can’t quite decide which approach is worse. I hope that the discord flowing through our society is a realization that none of these approaches is healthy or humane–much less, a solution.

—Malcolm

 

 

Too much sex in novels is boring

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn sex, writing7 Comments

When we were growing up, we occasionally heard about sex books that were banned everywhere. “Banned everywhere” meant those books were must-read novels. We were usually disappointed because they focused on a bunch of people having various kinds of scandalous sex for hundreds of words. Yawn

In some of these books, having sex was the plot. In some books, there was a plot–let’s say it was about the good guys vs. the bad guys–that was constantly interrupted by people stopping to have sex. Of course, when you’re in middle school or high school, you don’t care about the plot.

Since most of us didn’t have a lot of experience (sex-wise) in those days, people in the books were constantly doing stuff many of us couldn’t figure out. Needless to say, we couldn’t ask our English teachers or parents what those characters were doing. It would be like reading a book that mentions the Cardi B song WAP (go look it up if you haven’t heard about it) and then going to mom and saying, “Exactly what is WAP?”

There are a few popular novelists writing decent books that keep bogging things down with sex. These books have actual plots. Whenever the plot is about to take an important move forward, the protagonist gets an attack of lust and the action stops while s/he has a night to remember with somebody s/he just met five minutes earlier.

I want to write to the authors that do this and suggest they put the sex in the footnotes. I’m sure it’s there to sell books. But it really messes up the storyline. Maybe I’m just getting old and find no joy anymore reading about gratuitous sex in the back seat of a Buick or even in a $1000-per-night hotel room.

In high school, such things were WOW. Today, they’re as boring as watching a fly standing on the ceiling.  Occasionally, I find an author who knows how to write about sex and, well, it’s like a miracle. But those books are few and far between.

When I was a kid, I found it amusing whenever a book was banned to hear that a long line of educators, philosophers, priests, etc., had read the book and wanted to protect the rest of us from reading the book. The same thing is happening today with WAP. Important people keep “accidentally” hearing the song or seeing the video and telling the rest of us how appalled they were.

I’ve never figured out how somebody accidentally reads a scandalous book or sees a scandalous music video. Perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that those people are trying to shield me from the bad stuff.

—Malcolm

 

 

Find Your Happy Place to Write During COVID 

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Pandemic, writing

COVID is changing a lot of people. I have seen a range of emotions coming out of folks craving normalcy.

What started off as families coming closer has turned into families tiring of the confinement and frustration. People who fear going out and about turn angry at those who have decided they’ll return to pre-COVID normal and continue on. Parents and teachers are fussing with each other over how children will return to schools, with both sides scared.

Source: Find Your Happy Place to Write During COVID | | FundsforWriters

Even if you’re not a writer, you need a happy place. If you are a writer, you need a place where you can block out the slings and arrows and polarized politics of the day and write stories that may ultimately help others cope with the world.

Hope Clark writes great novels. She also has great advice in her Funds for Writers website and her free weekly newsletter. Her words are always comforting, yet pragmatic. When it comes to happy places, we need to find one and keep writing.

—Malcolm

Parents aren’t supposed to like one of their children more than the others

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn racism, writing

Shameless promotion from your sponsor (me)

Southwest Airlines used to raise eyebrows during the flight attendant’s monologue about the plane’s safety features when s/he said, “If the masks are lowered during a flight put yours on first and then put the next mask on the child most likely to support you in old age.” Or, “The child you like best.”

I thought of this when a friend asked several days ago which of my novels I liked best while acknowledging that that might be impossible to do. I can pick one even though that doesn’t mean I’m discounting all the others. I told her it’s Conjure Woman’s Cat.

Here’s why.

  • It represented a change of focus for me in that I finally decided to address a hot-button issue for me: racism, Jim Crow, and the KKK as it was in Florida during my childhood.
  • After focussing on contemporary fantasy and one satire, I embraced magical realism with a story that would give rise to two sequels (soon to be three) while exploring the folk magic that was all around me in the Florida Panhandle.
  • While two earlier novels, The Sun Singer and Sarabande, focused on the somewhat esoteric themes behind the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey, Conjure Woman’s Cat focused on backyard magic with a lot of folklore and a lot of ingredients close at hand.
  • I had a chance to do something unique and that was using a cat as the narrator. Why did I do this? Because, after having one or more cats in our household at all times for thirty-five years, I thought it more likely I could accurately write from a cat’s perspective than that of an African American woman who was (as she puts it) “older than dirt.”
  • My publisher, Thomas-Jacob, and I were lucky in that we found a wonderful and highly talented narrator in Wanda J. Dixon for the audio edition. She’s gotten rave reader reviews on Audible and a coveted Earphones Award Winner review from AudioFile Magazine. (“Most distinctive is Eulalie’s recurring sigh, which conveys her frustration with Florida in the 1950s, when Jim Crow laws and ‘Colored Only’ signs were routine.”)

Long-time readers of this blog know that I’m partial to Virginia Woolf’s statement in her novel Orlando: “In short, every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.” I think that’s a given if an author is true to himself/herself. Yes, parts of me–my experiences and approach to life–live on in all my novels. But they loom the largest in Conjure Woman’s Cat.

The novel takes on more significance in my thoughts as riots and racism are looming large in the national consciousness–and major cities’ streets.

Malcolm

Does everyone re-imagine their past or is it just writers?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

There are moments in everyone’s past that didn’t go well. Sometimes those moments grow out of our own mistakes and sometimes they seem like the so-called “cruel hand of fate” stirring perfect moments into swill.

Writers are used to saying, “What if.” So it feels completely natural to me when I happen to think of a bad moment out of the past to change it into a good moment. As if that moment is part of a novel, it’s as though I’ve changed my mind and I’m going to allow the protagonist to be happy rather than seeing them broken by criminals and car accidents and storms.

I like my re-imagings about such things so much, that they seem more real than what really happened. Does everyone do this, or is it just writers?

People say writers play God by moving their characters around like pieces on a chessboard. That’s not really true because my characters are more in control of their own destiny in my novels than I am. If a character wants to jump off a cliff, there’s little I can do to stop it.

Maybe a lot of us jumped off a lot of cliffs in our past and now we’re stuck with the memories of moments that didn’t go well–along with those that did go well. We can choose, I think, which group of moments defines us and what kind of attitude and belief system we project out into the world. Yet, playing let’s pretend is always tempting, like having Rhett tell Scarlett, “Actually, my dear, I do give a damn.”

So, too, I think back and pretend I didn’t hurt the people I hurt and that the people who hurt me changed their minds before they did it. To the extent that perception is reality, maybe our little games of let’s pretend alter the past in ways beyond our ken.

At any rate, that’s how writers see the world. I hope we’re not alone in this respect.

Malcolm

I’m sure you’re not surprised that I’m the author of magical realism and contemporary fantasy novels and short stories.