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A Writing Year in Review

December 28, 2012

No writing advice today, just a few remembrances…

It’s been an interesting year.

In January 2012 we helped my remarkable father-in-law celebrate his 95th birthday. In a little more than a week, we’ll hopefully help him celebrate Number 96.

In June, my bride and I reached our 42nd Anniversary.

Last August, I drove in the annual Woodward Dream Cruise again. For aficionados of the muscle cars manufactured in the 1960s and 70s, it’s an event made in Heaven … or, at least in a Detroit that was a lot closer to one forty years ago.

Participating in my ’81 Corvette and with a brother-in-law who makes each new old-car sighting an event in itself (“Omigod, just look at that red Challenger, would ya!”), was as enjoyable as you can imagine.

In 2012 I finished, and published, three books. Two … “Zebulon” and “Tinker” … were each well-received collections of short stories.

My debut novel, “Reichold Street” was finished in March 2012, and I was surprised (and pleased) when it was selected as a 2012 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner. My wife and I traveled to Miami during the International Book Fair to collect it.

Just knowing reviewers actually liked it was a prize unto itself.

In October, based on the positive results I enjoyed with my writing earlier in the year, I was both flattered and honored to be asked to make a presentation on self-publishing at the well-attended 2012 Rochester Writer’s Conference at Oakland University.

During 2012 I also entered the National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) event for the first time, with the full intention of writing the required 50,000 words in the month of November.

The fact I only managed 16,000 … and about two-thirds of those are so bad they’ve already been edited away … made me realize writing to word-count bores me to death. I won’t join the Nanowrimo 30-day marathon again next year, but at least I can say I tried.

On the negative side, my pension and healthcare underwent a radical change in the past year and it still upsets me enough that I don’t want to talk about it more than I have to.

Suffice it to say, my former employer shouldn’t count too heavily on my ongoing support in the retail arena. Loyalty is, after all, a two-way street and they just made the road in my direction practically a dead end. I’m definitely going to shop for the best deal from now on.

Instead of enjoying sandals and shorts in the sunshine, which would make all sorts of sense, we instead welcomed eight inches of snow here in the North yesterday, just as we have for years (I think ‘welcomed’ is probably too kind a word).

On the plus side, I’m in good health; still have an adequate home, food on the table, successful children, wonderful grandchildren and a beautiful wife who loves me in spite of myself. That’s not too shabby. In fact, it’s pretty damn good.

That’s why, as I ponder resolutions for the New Year, I know I only need to make a few:

(1) Keep writing and finish my next book (two in 2013, if I’m lucky); (2) Love my wife as she deserves to be loved; (3) Love and enjoy my children and grandchildren; (4) Be kind to my family, neighbors and friends; ditto that to people in need; (5) Be considerate to everyone; and … most of all … enjoy life.

That is, after all, what it’s all about.

Please Watch the Book Trailer for Ron Herron’s Gold Medal-winning “Reichold Street”:

Tags:award-winning writing, indie writers, Nanowrimo, Rochester Writer's Conference
Posted in Awards, Book Promotion, Book Trailer, Market Your Book | 4 Comments »

I Didn’t Always Write Fiction

December 6, 2012

An Article Written for the December 1983 Issue of “GM Today” © R.L. Herron

The headline of today’s entry is somewhat misleading. I’ve actually written fiction (and poetry) since I was seventeen. Most of it, with the exception of a couple of short stories and some poems, never saw the light of day in any publication.

In fact, most of it never even garnered a rejection slip.

Just like with today’s wannabe authors, rejections were not acknowledged … they were ignored. Somewhere, in a dusty brown cardboard box in the dim recesses of the basement, I’m sure I still have copies of most of the ones I did get. Sad, yellow-brown pages brittle now with age.

There were a few mimeographed (read xeroxed, for those too young to remember mimeos) and unsigned rejection letters, but those were infrequent and have long since been tossed into the same abyss my original submissions went into.

However, I did write and publish:

The cold darkness was broken only by the sound of cargo boats being poled across an icy river. Desperation was written plainly in the faces of the men sitting in the boats. A young general stood in the lead boat staring ahead into darkness.

Suddenly, there was a flash from shore. The entire group slumped. Instantly the shoreline came alive, not with cannon fire, but with conversation and activity.

“Cut! Let’s do it again; and tell those people not to use flashbulbs again while we’re filming!”

The date was November 21, 1983. The scene was the re-creation of George Washington and 2,400 of his troops crossing the Delaware River on Christmas Eve 1777 on their way to attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton.

The original action was one of the first important victories for the Continental Army during the American Revolution. The re-creation is also a first for General Motors.

I found this example of one of my articles, published in the December 1983 issue of “GM Today” … an internal monthly newsletter distributed to all GM employees. The print run, at the time, was over 800,000, quite a respectable distribution. I remember this article very well.

The editor didn’t like it at all.

He’d sent me to cover a portion of the filming of the GM-sponsored made-for-television mini-series about the life of the young George Washington, starring Barry Bostwick and Patty Duke. I met and interviewed them both … and the director, Richard Fielder, on location at the filming of the re-creation of Washington’s historic crossing.

From his comments when I returned, my editor thought the article was too story-like and not the nuts-and-bolts information he wanted. Thankfully, the PR Vice President had seen … and liked … my article or it would have found its way into the waste receptacle, too.

Is the world today better simply because the article ran almost exactly as I wrote it?

Probably not. But my memory of it is.

“Reichold Street” a book trailer video © R.L. Herron

Tags:award-winning writing, indie writers, journalism
Posted in Book Promotion, Book Trailer, Non-Fiction Writing | 1 Comment »

Now, Back to Business …

November 30, 2012

Lots of Questions
One of the things I’ve noticed since I won that pesky Gold Medal for my debut novel, Reichold Street: I’m now asked (usually by other writers, when they find out about the award) how I went about creating the book.

Did you do anything unique or special when you wrote? How, exactly, did you go about it? Did you create extensive review notes for all your characters? Did you make an outline? Did you follow any particular plot style?

The answer to all these questions is … no.

Oh, for a long time I tried to follow all the language rigors most teachers (who, by the way, were quite often not writers themselves) tried so hard to drum into me while I was in school all those years ago. Start with notes. Decide on a plot line. Make an outline.

The trouble is, it didn’t work (sorry, Mrs. Bliss).

My prose was always stilted and quite unbelievable. For a while, I tried making extensive Excel spreadsheets for each character. I would make detailed lists of their traits, physical descriptions, even notes about siblings and significant others.

I was doing this for every character in every story. It was far too tedious and the result was awful.

I finally found a Word-compatible piece of software called Scrivener – which, as recently as a few months ago I touted at the meeting of a local writers group I attend.

In truth, it was just another form of boring spreadsheet.

In Miami a few weeks ago I was asked once again by other writers: “Your characters are very well-developed … how do you go about writing?” and it occurred to me I had actually employed none of those approaches in crafting Reichold Street.

Oh, I admit I toyed with them … sort of. I plugged information into spreadsheets and also tried to coax software to help develop my storyline, instead of just letting the story happen.

But it was (as it has always seemed to be) a tedious, cumbersome and unwieldy process – one that always left me with, as you might imagine, predictably shitty results.

I realized it wasn’t until I let all that go and started relying on my intuition to tell me what was working in the story that Reichold Street started to come together.

Creative Spontaneity
Stephen King mentions in his fabulous book “On Writing” that “plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible.” I’ve come to believe that’s true.

My writing style is really quite simple. I start with what I think is an intriguing (at least to me) what-if? question. Then I try to visualize what begins to happen.

Rather than going to the story, I let the story come to me. I see the surroundings; I hear the characters.

Then I try to translate what I see and hear in my mind into words on the page, and go forward from there.

Does it work? Some people seem to think so, but I guess reviews are one thing and people making purchases are quite another. From the proceeds so far I can afford lunch out once in a while. Not exactly world changing.

The months spent writing the book have started to seem like a breeze. Even the hard part of editing now seems easier in hindsight. I’ve discovered getting the word out is the hard part.

If you have the time, please check out the book trailer for “Reichold Street”