Endlessly Scrolling Through Twitter and Facebook

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Writers often use Twitter and Facebook as part of their so-called media platforms, perhaps a necessary evil and/or a worthwhile publicity/networking part of the business that’s apparently indispensable to everyone who isn’t James Patterson or Alice Hoffman or Dean Koontz. Yet, as I read Damyanti Biswas’ recent post How much Time Do You Spend on #SociaMedia? How is It Affecting You?, I wondered how much social media time as necessary and how much was an addiction.

True, I have unblocked myself from my novels in progress by endlessly scrolling through Twitter and Facebook. Likewise, I’ve done the same thing to break cycles of clinical depression. Yet, I can also say that there are days I got little or nothing none due to some mindless need to keep up with the latest social media stuff more than necessary. Part of being a writer is keeping up with the business, supporting other writers, and learning more about one’s craft by “talking” to other writers and following blogs like Damyanti’s.

Obviously, at some point, too much social media time is too much and it’s getting in the way of the stuff we’re supposed to be doing whether it’s writing or anything else. The easiest thing to do, I think, is to set time limits. We can decide, can’t we, just how long we’ll read bloggers’ posts and Facebook status updates before leaving the Internet for the day and turning to our real work. I’ve known people who kept their TVs on 24/7, tuned into one network news feed or another to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Some folks seem to look at social media the same way. But seriously, what are you going to miss that’s more important than your own career and your family’s needs?

One mistake here, I believe, is assuming that whatever’s happening on Twitter and Facebook is more important than whatever else we might do with our day. It’s almost a phobia, this feeling that our lives will be ruined if an important tweet or post goes by without our knowing about it instantly. Meanwhile, to satisfy the infinite demands of that phobia, our own work is sitting there undone, and at the end of a day of “too much” social media, we feel really down about ourselves pretty much the same way a drunk feels after wasting another day being drunk.

When I worked as a technical writer for large corporations, management would occasionally subject us to time-management courses that showed that a large number of us spent too much time focusing on what wasn’t important. Among other things, we tended to clear low-importance stuff out of our in baskets before working on our primary projects. Now, I see many of us who write doing the same thing with social media. We handle it first and then we finally get around to our major priorities.

As important as social media can be for promoting our work and networking with others, they are not our primary mission. Social media tweets and updates and posts represent what others are doing, not what I’m (supposed to be) doing. I need to remind myself of that from time to time.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

 

 

 

 

Hello, Cancer, my old associate

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life12 Comments

Okay, here’s an update, and then I’ll get off the personal stuff and look again at books (including my own, of course), writing, and a bit of magic.

The news and our neighborhoods are constantly filled the talk of cancer as though it’s a shadow that follows all of us or, at the very least, hovers nearby as friends, neighbors, and widely known people either die from it or become survivors.

I’m already a survivor–from kidney cancer and successful surgery–two years ago. It was caught by coincidence when I suddenly came down with appendicitis and the CT scan and MRI found the tumor. Fortunately, it was on the outside of the kidney and could be removed before it invaded the kidney. I ended up with a six-inch scar that took a long time to fade away, but I feel hesitant to mention that I’m a survivor because I didn’t undergo the long and painful journeys that many survivors face.

You notice that in the title of this post, I didn’t say, “my old friend.” Yes, I suffer from depression, but not the fatalistic kind that would put cancer on my Christmas card or Facebook friends list. Suffice it to say, we’ve met before. I read somewhere that 80% of the men who reach 80* have cancer cells in their prostates. Sometimes it’s treated, sometimes it’s simply monitored. However, the older a man gets, the more his doctors insist upon a PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) blood tes several times a year. The higher the number, the worse the result is. So, you want to see nothing higher than, say, a “3” in the results. As you get older, that acceptable number gets a bit higher. My number has bounced up and down, partly because I had BHP (Benign prostatic hyperplasia) which can impact the results.

So, when the number shot up to 22, it was “what the hell is this?” The doctor put me under sedation and did a biopsy. A relatively small number of cancer cells were found. Fortunately, the follow-up CT scans showed that the cancer had not spread, the worst case being into one’s bones. When my wife an I talked the urologist yesterday about the results and prognosis, we were actually relieved because we already knew it was cancer and were more concerned about how bad it might be.

The treatment will probably be radiation since the cancer cells are scattered–rather than comprising a tumor–along with hormone therapy. We won’t know how this will be set up until June 10th when I have an appointment with the oncology department. The prognosis at this point is that the treatment will make me cancer free again by this fall. The radiation treatments [External beam radiation therapy (EBRT)] are a five-days-a-week protocol, and that’s way more doctor’s visits than I want. The treatments are painless and the side effects impact a very low percentage of those being treated.

So there it is, more cancer details than either you or I want to read in a post or anywhere else.

As for today, Lesa and I are celebrating our 32nd wedding anniversary. We’re having homemade mousaka for dinner along with some wine or Coke and maybe something amusing on TV.

—Malcolm

* P.S. No, I am not in my 80s.

On this day of memories, an excerpt from ‘At Sea’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Remebrance

My favorite writing, I think can be found in my linked novels Mountain Song and At Sea. The books are true in ways I can never tell you and they speak of loss and other sad things and looking for oneself. At Sea is my Vietnam War novel. It’s still patiently waiting for the right audience to find it. Here’s an excerpt on a day when we remember those who didn’t return:

At Sea

On his last night aboard ship, David stood on the catwalk after stopping by the head to wipe the blood off his hands only to discover there were no damn towels. He wondered who, if anyone, he had betrayed: Píta, his golden eagle messenger, perhaps, and the dead on Jayee’s Lists; those who called him into the center of the lotus in the sea of fire or those who called him away from the lotus. Or even Jill, one way or another. He sought clues. Yet, with the ship steaming as before at various courses and speeds on Yankee Station at condition yoke on a clear commander’s moon of a night, with sleeping birds behind him with folded wings, with eight bells struck in pairs announcing the end of the first watch, he was blind.

Angelita once told him while they were treading water at the foot of Magdapio Falls, surrounded by sheer cliffs and a hovering rain forest, “God brings to us the ones we love if our calls are pure and strong.” She looked tiny and cold in the shower of spray and quite distracted by the everlasting call of the water, but he asked her nonetheless what one ought to do if his pure call spoilt over time. She climbed out of the water on to one of the many sun-warmed rocks, grabbed a towel, and chattered out a reply. “Ask God if your true love has a sister. If she doesn’t, then call an angel.”

He headed home nonetheless, wondering how many angels a man could scare away in a lifetime: To Danang, South Vietnam, aboard the ship’s C-1A Trader. To Cubi Point aboard a nondescript plane. To the Galaxy Bar in Olongapo to say goodbye to the angel who saved his life. To Clark Air Base aboard an HU-16 Albatross. Then, to Travis AFB in California via a TransInternational DC-8, arriving on January 1, 1970.

His orders granted him an honorable discharge, for reasons of conscientious objection and though the system said it was his right to do it, he would not be much liked for signing his name on that line. Anti-war protesters at the base spat on him and called him a baby killer. Ultimately, his liberal parents would yell at him on the phone and call him a hypocrite—it would not be the last time.

Jill was not at Travis to watch him run the gauntlet of the war protesters’ love-in beneath cumulonimbus clouds spinning the scattered late afternoon sunlight into threads of gold. Her parents had lured her into their snowy world along the Lake Michigan shore for the holidays, knowing—as did she—that he would show up wherever she was whenever he showed up. Using his bulky seabag as a battering ram, he pushed through the ranting flower children toward a dull blue military bus for the ninety-minute ride to the Alameda Naval Air Station.

“Mr. Ward?”

A tall, large-boned, gangly blond woman stood apart from the crowd with her hands on her hips. She had bangs; they hung loosely above her pale brown eyes, while her long hair swept back into a ponytail that was determined to catch in the collar of her denim work shirt.

“Yes?”

“I’m Eleanor Rose, Jack’s wife.”

He dropped his sea bag with a thud and they shook hands. “How did you recognize me? Are you meeting somebody?”

“Chief Coleman, of your recent employer, called me. He told me you looked emaciated, sick almost unto death. Hard to miss that. I’m here to meet you unless you want to ride to Alameda on that bus.”

“I don’t, unless you’ve got something worse.”

She picked up his sea bag as though it were weightless.

“Come on, Mr. Ward,” she said. “I’ve got a bright red Mercury M-250 pickup. It rides fine.”

“Call me David.”

“Your Chief Coleman was also right about your wife.”

“What about her?”

“She’s not here.”

“I didn’t expect her.”

Eleanor slung the sea bag into the back of the truck. “Get in,” she said. “It’s not locked.”

“Jill’s spending Christmas with her parents.”

“With all due respect,” she said as she guided the truck out of the parking lot, “she ought to be here.”

“I wish she were,” he said. “Not that you’re chopped liver.”

“I understand. You’ll need a home-cooked meal, I expect.”

“Are you offering?”

“I am.”

“Lucky break for me. I was expecting shit on a shingle at the base.”

“Jack loved this truck,” she said, and settled back in the seat like she wasn’t expecting a response.

The world flowed by, a normalcy of sorts. She looked at him from time to time, a pragmatic smile washing across her squarish face. South of Pinole, she told him the first money from Chogori was sending her back to school to get her teaching credentials. South of El Cerrito, she told him he would have to convince her over her best pot roast that Jack really had a fair hand in writing the book; it seemed so unlike him. As they drove through Berkeley, he told her about the hell-bent-for-leather Mt. Olomana climb, and she said that was Jack.

Then she said, “Your wife should have met you at Travis, not because you came home from a war or even because you survived. Survival isn’t our first duty. When you took a stand and became a conscientious objector, you became your true self.”

“I am not without regrets.”

“I don’t doubt it. They’re battle scars. Your family and friends will never see them. You will always feel them, don’t you think?”

“I do,” he said, happy that she couldn’t see the blood on his hands.

–

Copyright © 2010, 2013, 2016 by Malcolm R. Campbell

—Malcolm

What’s your story?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn storytelling, writing

Sometimes “what’s your story” is a bully’s taunt. Sometimes it’s a provocative inquiry on a first date. More or less, it means “who are you and/or what are you doing here?”

We spend our lives writing our stories. We’re not always aware of the plots or even the themes. We stack up dreams and hopes like cordwood, or even denials and excuses. Perhaps our stories are more transparent to spouses and friends than they are to us. Not all of us can be read like great novels even though we’re impacted by the tales we discover in books and the memories of others shared around a quiet drink or a backyard barbecue.

If one looks at our stories with the combined eye of a mystic, a shaman, a conjurer, an alchemist, and a quantum scientist, the tapestry of the world’s people becomes a little clearer. We see synchronicities rather than coincidences. We toss out the idea of fate, if not destiny, and maybe on nights when the moon is bright and the flowers and birds are quiet, we glimpse the whole of the world’s stories.

As an author, I like to think that the stories in books–fiction and nonfiction–enlarge our perspectives and help us change course or re-dedicate ourselves to the course already chosen. My quantum view is that every story that can happen, will happen in one universe or another and that we can follow the chains of events that best meet our developing needs for the plots in our own stories.

Reading and listening and observing in a spirit of hope and wonder are so necessary for our progress, it’s difficult to understand why a lot of people don’t read or listen or observe. Have they chosen to close their lives off from the world and/or from themselves? I don’t know, but the result of whatever they’re doing doesn’t seem healthy–or helpful to the world.

I see studies from time to time showing that kids benefit from parents who read to them as well as growing up households full of books. Nonetheless, stories are everywhere and if we’re not finding them on the printed page, I hope we’re finding them in films and paintings and TV shows, and what others tell us whenever we ask “what’s your story?”

The world appears to me as a grand storybook with countless chapters, millions of characters, unlimited locations, and possibilities that expand outward at lightspeed. The fate of nations and peoples and justice and Earth itself has not yet been determined because many of us are writing blind or aren’t aware that the daily scenes in our personal stories contribute to the story of our planet. We’re all linked like the characters in the pages of a well-written novel; I think we’ll like where our combined story goes if we realize this and live accordingly.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of Conjure Woman’s Cat.

 

Delivery trucks, Ingram & Amazon, CT Scans, and granddaughters

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life
  • In yesterday’s blog, I speculated about when (or if) a lawn mower service and a lawn mower delivery truck would show up. Our old mower is going into to be serviced. It was supposed to be picked up between 9 a.m. and high noon. It was picked up at 4 p.m. A new mower was supposed to be delivered between 3 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. It showed up before lunch. So, I guess that evens out, delivery-wise. Now, if the old mower can be repaired, we’ll be able to use both mowers on the 3+ acres of grass and maybe keep up with it better.
  • If you dashed out to buy hardback copies of the three copies in my Florida Folk Magic Series on Amazon, you probably noticed that two of them are displaying a “no image available” graphic. One of the three is displaying that graphic on the Barnes & Noble site. The good news is, you can still buy the copies and when they arrive, the covers will not say “no image  available.”  I don’t know if Ingram is backed up because it’s having to pick up the slack now that Baker & Taylor has suddenly stopped supplying bookstores, or if Ingram and Amazon are experiencing a failure of communications.
Fortunately, a CT scan is not as loud as an MRI. – Wikipedia photo.
  • I spent the morning at the imaging clinic getting two CT scans. This is a follow-up to the indications of scattered prostate cancer cells from a recent biopsy. If any of you have gone through this, or a similar series of tests, you know there’s a lot of hurry up and wait. So, that meant four days waiting on the biopsy results and another four waiting to hear what the CT scans show prior to meeting with the doctor on Tuesday. For the scans, they injected dye or kryptonite or cyanide or something to provide contrasty pictures that will show how extensive the problem is. If it’s not too bad, the treatment will most likely be hormone injections.
  • My granddaughter Beatrice recently celebrated her sixth birthday. She had a party. I wasn’t there since she’s in Maryland and I’m in Georgia. Fortunately, we’ve been able to see Beatrice (Bebe) and her older sister Freya a fair number of times a year. And, their mother is pretty good about posting pictures of the girls on Facebook. My wife and I hope to visit the Gettysburg battlefield this year. If that works out, we’ll be several hours away from my daughter and her family and might be able to get together.

Once I know the treatment plan, etc. for the prostate cancer, I want to get back to working on the novel in progress, Dark Arrows, Dark Targets. The medical thing has been distrating me, so I haven’t made much progress on it. But soon, I hope.

—Malcolm

On a dark and stormy night, no HVAC repair truck

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life3 Comments

Let’s say the HVAC repair people set up a service call between noon and five. Among other things:

  • You’re stuck in the house all afternoon waiting.
  • You can hardly go to the bathroom because the moment you do, the doorbell will ring and you won’t hear it and you’ll find a note on the door saying “Sorry we missed you.”
  • Five o’clock will come and go and the repair people won’t have shown up and any calls to their hotline or the techs in the truck go into voice mail.
Oh, I see the problem. the repair people have a right-hand drive truck and can’t figure out how to work it.

If they do show up, it will be moments after you sat down to dinner at 7 p.m. They’ll have a lame excuse for being late, like, “Old Mrs. Clark’s unit got stuck in a tree and we couldn’t call you because our cell phones were on the ground and we were wrestling the thing to the ground.”

Today, the lawn more repair people are scheduled to pick up a riding mower and take it into the shop. We can’t do it because we don’t have a truck or a trailer. The time window is between 9 a. m. and noon. It’s 9:30 now, so things are promising.

Meanwhile, a replacement mower was supposed to be delivered yesterday. It wasn’t. Today the time window is between 3 p. m. and 7:15 p.m. Will they show up? I’m not betting money on it. Or, if they do, they’ll get here early and the old mower and the new mower will get mixed up and we’ll get a bill from the repair shop for an estimate on fixing the new mower which wasn’t broken.

Meanwhile, the grass just keeps in growing working its way up so high that we’ll need a tractor and bush hog rather than a riding mower. If we were to order a tractor, we’d probably hear that its price is tangled up with one of the new tariffs.

Hmm, I wonder if I have 30 seconds to run into the bathroom without missing whoever (if anyone) is about to show up. I feel like putting a note on the front door that says, “TAKING A LEAK.”

—Malcolm

 

Some Room to Breathe: In Praise of Quiet Books 

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors

Quiet books are often misread, misunderstood, or, sadly, missed altogether. If a book is labeled quiet in a review or in literary conversation, an author and her readers will likely see it as an insult—sharp criticism of some deep-rooted flaw in the writer’s storytelling abilities. But for me, someone who leans toward anxiety and is easily overstimulated, startled, and stressed out—especially these days—quiet books offer a calming space, a place of rescue. I’ve been told more than once that my writing is quiet, and I always take it as a high compliment because I know how much I long for moments of rest and reflection in the books I read, the movies I watch, the places I go, and the people I encounter along the way. I suspect I’m not alone. 

Source: Some Room to Breathe: In Praise of Quiet Books | Poets & Writers

Leesa Cross-Smith has always liked quiet spaces from which to write, especially in today’s raucous political climate. I feel the same way. This is a nice essay about her work and her love of quiet books.

–Malcolm

A good editor will help you get rid of your pet phrases

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

I’m not sure where pet phrases begin, but almost every novel I’ve written has ended up with the overuse of some phrase or word choice that my editors and I try to find and remove before publication.

Now some pet phrases help define a character. One character might typically say, “you got that right” and another might say “goodness gracious.” As long as they aren’t saying these things on every page, these phrases help define them.

However, things get out of hand if all the characters in your stories and novels are saying, “you got that right.” What are the odds that would ever happen? Some authors become aware of the fact they are using a phrase way too often before they finish the first draft, while others don’t notice it until they’re in the editing process.

If I suspect I’m using a phrase over and over, I search for that phrase in my Word Document to see if it shows up too often. When it does, I go through the manuscript and get rid of it.

I thought of this today while reading a mainstream novel by a popular author. When the police or FBI investigators informed a character of some fact or event, the characters often respond with “did she?” While such a response could equally be a favorite of one character, it can’t possibly fit all the characters in the book. So, the phrase stands out because it has been overused as a response in the story. A good editor should have caught this.

I notice it because “did she” and “did she really” are phrases that I’ve seen in U. K. novels and films of another era and seem a bit out of place when they appear over and over in an American novel. The phrase, as far as I know, is not part of a fad in this country. If it were, you could use it more often, though it would–of course–date the novel.

It has always amazed me how often I can use what I think is a fresh and creative way of saying something, only to find out that I’ve used it twenty times already in the manuscript.

–Malcolm

 

Review: ‘Redemption Road’ by John Hart

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews, writing2 Comments

Redemption RoadRedemption Road by John Hart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There’s enough darkness in this book to cause an eclipse of the sun soon after you begin reading. Elizabeth, the protagonist is a good cop with a good heart that is filled with life-affirming love and infinite grit. Her past was cruel to her and it’s neither gone nor forgotten.

Her story in this thriller will carry you through the darkness stemming from multiple characters whose self-righteous evil is as unflinching as Elizabeth’s heart. Thirteen years prior to the beginning of the novel, a policeman was convicted of killing a young woman and leaving her body on the altar of the church where Elizabeth’s father preaches. Elizabeth, who was a rookie cop at the time thought he was wrongly convicted. As a cop, he has a hard time surviving prison. When he gets out, the killings start again with the same MO. This appears to prove that everyone else on the police force is right about him and that Elizabeth is naive.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is having her own troubles with the authorities over a case she’s involved in. The plot is complex and well constructed, the writing is superb, and the characters have more dimensions, secrets, and agonies than you can shake a stick at. At all times, the notion of a redemption road out of this chaos seems to many as an unlikely nirvana or simply a dead end.

The story is adeptly told and highly recommended.

–Malcolm

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