Blogger Buddie Award!

Thank you, Kristin Rae for this sweet award! There are so many amazing blogs to read each day, and sometimes I have to pick and choose due to limited time and crazy schedules. But, I check out Kristin's religiously because she has such a fantastic voice and her personality shines through everything she writes. If you don't follow her yet, scoot over there and sign up today!


Usually these awards come with the task of revealing something about yourself, so in honor of a recent event in my life, here are five things about me/my past:



1. Thanks to Google and Blogger, a long-lost friend I haven't been in touch with for twenty years found me and dropped me an email. ~R~ is male and we were great friends -- platonic -- and hung out for two years in our early twenties. So glad to have ~R~ in my life again!!

2. I met ~R~ back in 1990, when we both worked in the Client Accounting department at what was then known as Chiat/Day/Mojo Advertising (today it's TBWA/Chiat/Day.) The agency, located in Venice Beach, CA, was perhaps best known for its Energizer Bunny campaign. While ~R~ and I worked there, we witnessed the building of, and move into, this crazy building by architect Frank Gehry:





Yes, the entryway is fashioned out of two gigantic binoculars. The right side of the building is made with copper that was shiny in the early years, but is now a wonderful greenish-brown patina.

3. The week before my first Christmas at Chiat/Day, a semi-truck showed up and delivered hundreds of large, identical, rectangular boxes. Turned out, agency owner Jay Chiat had purchased a beach cruiser bicycle for every employee, as a Christmas gift. At the time, the agency resided in an old drapery factory. The space was cavernous, with polished cement floors and exposed pipes across the ceilings. Workspaces were dictated by partitions and clusters of cubicles. That day, the guys in the mailroom assembled bike after bike, and for a week everyone opted to ride their cruiser inside the building, to the conference rooms, fax stations, or coffee room, in lieu of walking.

4. Since we were one block from the Pacific Ocean, I often had lunch on the beach. I used to see this guy all the time:





He always sang the same song to me. The lyrics began, "I wonder what a man would do on Mars?" He sang to people up and down The Strand all day, so he must have had other songs in his repertoire, but I never heard any others... He was there the day I got my nose pierced during my lunch hour, in a striped tent on the beach, before going back to work. Crazy times!

5. ~R~ and I used to take off on weekends and catch as many of the Grateful Dead's west coast tour as possible. When we didn't have camping reservations, which was often, we slept wherever we could. Once we woke up on the beach in Santa Cruz to the bark of noisy sea lions. Here's a pic of me one morning when we did have reservations:





~R~ and I lost track of each other after I moved east and later joined the Peace Corps. He went on to realize his dreams of being a copywriter. I'm so happy we've reconnected, and I've learned that he's doing great with his wife and two kids. I miss our crazy days, ~R~'s red VW Bug convertible, and sunny California days.

Thanks Kristin Rae, for the award that sparked this little California dreamin', and thanks to all of you for taking this mini-walk down memory lane with me!

I'm passing this award on to these awesome blogger peeps:

Lindsay Brooks @
Dangerous With a Pen

Dominique @ En Violet (Happy 1 YR Blog Anniversary!!)

Little Miss J

Eva @
Screaming Whispers

Kristin Torres @
Write in the Way

Have a fab weekend!

Show Me! Don't Tell Me.

I was watching last night’s American Idol on TiVo as I drank my first cup of coffee this morning. Cutie sixteen-year-old Aaron Kelly sang a Rascal Flatts song I’d never heard before. (I like country music all right, but I rarely pay much attention to it.) I didn’t catch the title when Ryan Seacrest introduced him, but as Aaron sang the opening verse, my writer’s ears perked up.

It begins, "I can hear the truck tires coming up the gravel road / And it’s not like her to drive so slow, (must be) nothing on the radio / Footsteps on the porch, I hear my doorbell / She usually comes right in…"

These lines demonstrate perfectly the power of Show, Don’t Tell descriptions. There was no doubt in my mind that something was wrong, that “she” was the bearer of bad news. The anticipation I felt and the strong mood those opening words created made the chorus that much more poignant: "Here comes goodbye / Here comes the last time / Here comes the start of every sleepless night / The first of every tear I’m gonna cry."

Showing descriptions pull your readers into the story. By asking your audience to pick up on the important clues sprinkled across each sentence, to connect the dots and reach the correct conclusions, you invite readers to participate in the story. Reader interaction can’t be underestimated. Your readers will become emotionally involved on a deeper level with the characters and plot, which boosts the overall entertainment factor of your work.

When do you concentrate the most on writing showing descriptions? Does it come naturally to you and appear in your first drafts/word vomitting sessions? Or do you comb through your scenes during the revision process and incorporate showing descriptions where you just "told" in the first draft? Or both?

In Suspension of (Dis)belief

I raised an eyebrow when I turned down the hallway at six a.m. this morning and spotted the light spilling out from underneath my daughter’s bedroom door. Usually, waking my kids for school is like rousing a couple cadavers, (corpses who, to my chagrin, effortlessly self-resurrect before sunrise on Saturday and Sunday mornings). Sidney had complained about a tummy ache yesterday, so I half-expected that a campaign to miss school was underway. When I pushed open her door though, I encountered a smiling little girl.

She stood in the middle of her room, her belly button peeking out beneath a too-short pajama top, and her long braided hair bent into a pair of boomerangs flanking her shoulders. In her hand she held her diary.

“You’re up early, sunshine,” I greeted her. “Is everything okay?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Mommy!” she began. “James-y woke me up.”

James was our sweet kitten who passed away from feline-leukemia a few weeks ago. As Sidney's declaration sunk into my pre-caffinated brain, a smile remained fixed on my lips but my eyebrows knitted a little closer together. “What?” I asked.

“James woke me up, but it was still dark. So I peeked out my window and you know what I saw?”

She didn’t wait for me to answer. Drawing in a deep breath that sent her belly button a little further into the room, she said, “Down by the tree, I saw three black cats! They were so cute, Mommy, and they came right up to my window.” She held up her diary. “I’m going to write about it!”

That’s my girl!





Our reality is dictated by our beliefs. Sidney believes James woke her up so she wouldn’t miss seeing those cats. Why not? (I hope it’s true!) One of the goals I embrace as a writer is drawing my readers into my brand of reality, suspending their disbelief. It comes down to the level of authenticity in the writing which can be achieved many ways: through the logical chain of events in the plot, believable dialogue, realistic characterizations, etc.

What’s your favorite device for creating authenticity in your writing, or for suspending your readers’ disbelief? Can you think of a time when you were the reader or viewer, that your disbelief wasn’t suspended? (Think Clark Kent hiding his Super Identity behind a pair of glasses!)

[Artwork at the top of this post by Joied6]