Category: Writing

Right off the Pier

Hey, it’s a new year. Why not make it a new you, too? All it takes is a couple of new year’s resolutions, a little elbow grease, and some stick-to-it-iveness. You’ve got all that, dontcha?

You’re a writer, you know how it goes. You best days are those spent, keyboard at hand, stirring the creative pot and letting stuff fly. My goal was to tap into that bliss.

So, one of my resolutions was to write a good piece of fiction every day. Every day, Louie, and let no day pass unwritten.

Well, let’s see. Today is 4 January. I’ve been busy, working at work, writing non-fiction promotional stuff, making videos, building 3D models. And now I’m sitting here, writing this.

Yesterday was 3 January. Worked at working, you know, working at work. Got home, was kinda tired. Didn’t do much beyond play solitaire.

Before that was 2 January. Worked at work (are we sensing a theme yet?) and came home and messed with the boats.

Boats? Yes, boats. Yachts. Seacraft. My darling love and I acquired two kayaks, yes, paddle-your-keester-around-the-sea kayaks. Really nice ones.

The little boat, a 10-footer, was on sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods. The salesguy was himself a kayaker, but seemed to have been hit in the head by a paddle one too many times. How much is this boat, he repeats our question. How much? Let me see, here. I should be able to figure this out… I figured it out, and he agreed with my assessment.

The other boat is a lithe 14-foot beauty. Man, she’s nice. The owner was asking a lot of money, but dropped the price to a third without any haggling. He was like, just take it – I’ve got to get rid of it. In thinking about it, now I rather hope it floats…

FYI, I am the worst haggler in history. I mean, bad. I bought a car once, and asked the salesman if it would be okay if I paid the price that was in the windshield. He said only if he could add a ten dollar consultation fee, to which I readily agreed.

Idiot.

Anyway, last year my wife and I acquired a Honda pickup truck. My lovely, trusty Ford was just beginning to shift on its own, without waiting for me, which was a sure sign that the constant-variable-transmission was just about to become inconstant. I donated her to one of those cars-for-causes charities – they looked at the battered paint, and the 248,000 miles on the odo, and said “gee. thanks.”

To get the boats, I had to fit a rack in the back of the Ridgeline, which is no mean feat, whether you have mean feet or not. But, now that we have the truck, we have no excuse not to get the boats, which we did.

And that’s how I spent the night of the second – installing the racks on the truck.

I am most sorry, but I’ve lost the thread.

Oh. Fiction. Write a piece a day. That was my plan.

Not a word so far this year. Every day, every shmay, I say.

This is sad. Even as I sit here, writing this, I’m thinking man, I should be writing fiction. Here goes:

I thought she loved me, but she didn’t. She was interested, but only in the reaction she caused in me, not in me myself. It took a few terse conversations, filled with misguided inuendo, for each of us to see that simple truth. I think of her, sometimes.

There. Fiction. Well, not really…

Anyway, good luck with YOUR resolutions. As far as mine go, I seem to have driven right off the pier.

Lucky for me, I’ve got yachts!

F***K Plan B

That’s a headline, right? Plan B? You know Plan B. It’s the one you always have because you always need a backup plan, right? Maybe not so much…

If you really want to listen to something fun on your long holiday drive, you might listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger read his book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. As an action hero kind of guy, he really doesn’t pull any punches.

The book is meant to help you find a way to be happy. My guess is that he’s kinda preachin’ to the choir, as the people who will go buy his book are already somewhat self-activated.

But, if you’re unhappy, maybe it will help. Perhaps you will find some degree of self-activation.

That’s the point of his book: get yourself activated. Don’t sit around wondering what to do. Figure out your vision, write it down. Make a plan to go get it. Don’t have time? He shows you how to find two hours a day to accomplish your vision.

But, he warns you that napping is for babies. And that you can only rest and relax if you are old and tired or something. He’s kinda hard on those who aren’t hale and hearty…

My favorite takeaway? F**k Plan B.

According to Arnie, the only reason you would come up with a Plan B is if you plan to fail at Plan A. Why do you need a secondary plan if your first one is good? If you are careful with Plan A, you’ll never need a Plan B.

Plan B is just an easy way out of accomplishing your vision. It’s an escape clause, which means you never planned to accomplish your vision in the first place.

F**k Plan B.

To that end, I finally released the third installment in the California Air Museums series. It’s a visit to the Commemorative Air Force, Southern California Wing.

That’s my vision: to build a library of videos, in a fun and easy-to-navigate site, for the parents of STEM students, that they might see these videos and take their kids to these museums and get them interested in engineering. Tomorrow’s engineers today! There is no Plan B for this project. Just do it. Get in the chopper!

And, the novel I’ve written. You’re a writer. You know how it goes. Do you seek a publisher, or do you publish yourself? Either way, you’re in charge of marketing. Either way, sales are up to you, bucko.

I’ve approached a few agents. They’re now mostly using a standardized submission form, which is just so de-humanizing.

Demoralising.

The farther I travel down this road, I’m starting to think that maybe self-publishing isn’t all bad.

But now I wonder: is that just a Plan B?

A Fun Little Video

So, it turns out, if you want to do something, or need something done, sometimes the best way to do it is to actually do it. How weird…

Here’s a new video on the Point Mugu Missile Park, in beautiful Port Hueneme, California.

My wife did the camera work while I did the yammering. It’s such a tiny little museum, you can’t make an epically long video about it! But it was great fun.

This California Air Museums project is both a lot of work and great fun. It rather encompasses all of the things that I like to do, beyond sleep in and enjoy a bagel and a cup of coffee with my lovely wife on a weekend morning out on the patio.

There’s a writer’s story in all of this, and that’s why I’m sharing it with you.

I’ve always felt that a writer writes. A writer who dreams of writing isn’t a writer. That’s a dreamer.

My mom and dad were great parents, and we had a great growing up. After he passed, I was cleaning out my dad’s closet and found a gorgeous half-painted painting.

It was one of those Southwestern style jobs, with flat-bottomed clouds and zig-zag lightning that were so popular in the 1940’s. Beautiful colors scrolled across half of the canvas. Only half. The other half was penciled in.

He had put the painting aside to raises his kids, and never quite got back to it. Life got in the way.

That painting absolutely broke my heart.

And it drove home to me the point that if you want to do it, you better go do it. Nobody but you is going to live your dream.

So, if you’re sitting on the fence, get off the fence. Just get off the fence and go do it.

Oh, and don’t forget to watch my video first!

The Ship is Launched

You’re a writer – you know how it is. You think about a project, and dream about it, and you wonder and wonder how it will turn out, all before you actually start it. And then, one day, you start it. And it’s entirely different than what you thought.

The first episode of California Air Museums is on the, well, air. Actually, it’s on YouTube, but YouTube is as much the new TV as 60 is the new 40, and orange is the new, well, it was the…

Anyway, you can view the first episode here.

My wonderful wife stood in as camera operator, and the Mojave Air Museum stood in as the museum. It was a ton of fun!

We got there around 2 in the afternoon and spent a good ten minutes wandering around the Mojave Air and Space Port looking for it, only to discover we’d driven right past it at the entrance. Oops.

No one was there, which made it a great place to try out our video production process. Even though I wore a lavalier microphone, the stiff wind obliterated, like, 90% of what I said. Luckily, I tend to babble, so we didn’t miss anything.

You know how it goes – most of what you shoot goes on the cutting room floor anyway. Of course, with video, there IS no cuttong room anymore…

We shot about 35 gigabytes of footage over the span of an hour and a half, and I have to tell you: this video business is a gas!

And the airplanes themselves were terrific. If you’re an aviation geek, or, like me, not too bright but like the airplanes, you will love this little musuem!

What this video does is formally launch California Air Museums as a thing. The site is revamped, and now holds slots for the many museum visits to come.

Zoom!

you see what I did there by writing zoom – kind of like saying we’re having fun and at the same time making a kind of airplane hand gesture sort of thing  – oh, yeah. you caught that…

Surrounded by Red Herrings

You’re a writer, you know how it goes. You write and write and write, and then, one day, you wonder if you’re writing the right stuff… uh oh.

So, you know me. I write a lot of stuff. I’ve got this blog, a blog about pirates, a project documenting California’s air museums, and that DIY site. And all of that is on top of forever rewriting and revamping novels. And all of THAT is on top of a regular 9-5 working as, of all things, a writer!

With all of that going on, I begins to get meself a little crazy, if you know what I mean. If I’m not panicking about posting here, I’m flipping out about researching there. And where’s that damned book?

So I nominated myself CEO of my organization, John D Reinhart Enterprises, or JDRE. Chief, cook, and bottle-washer, so to speak.

In my previous existences, I would hurry up and crank out a logo and maybe some letterhead or something, thinking that doing that work would make it official and somehow bound for success. Ah, I was younger then.

In my current existence, I made myself a schedule: Mondays are for Skippity Whistles and the Museums, Tuesday is Novel Night, Wednesday is Find A Paying Freelance Gig night, and Thursday is Blog Night.

So, I’m asking myself WtF?!? What am I doing? Is THIS how I’m going to burn up the balance of my youth (all 9 remaining days…), scrambling after this insane schedule? What madness is this?

And then I think wait a minute, here. These are all red herrings…

According to MentalFloss.com, the phrase Red Herring finds its origins in Jolly Olde England, whither the huntsmen would train the fox-hunting horses to follow the smell of said dead fish, that they might keep their horsey calm during the bump and hustle of the hunt. Some poor devil would have to go out the night before and sprinkle red-dead redemption herrings wherever foxes were presumed to hide. I’m sure the foxes liked that…

Anyway, back at the schedule, I realize it ain’t real, mate. It can’t be! Writing is writing, not scheduling. Sommat ain’t right.

Monday I DID work on the air museums database. Tuesday I goofed around on my phone, for I was surely brain-fried, but the book is in the hands of the lovely-sister reader, and there’s nowt I can do about that. Wednesday I submitted a joke to Reader’s Digest, good for $25 if they like it (my wife thought it was an old groaner, and I had to tell her “Honey, that’s all I know…”).

And here it is, Thursday, and I’m tapping out this post. And I’m writing it, not because it’s Thursday and it’s on the sched, but because I wanted to tell you this story.

It is not the schedule that’s the red herring, it’s the thinking that somehow creating the schedule is the thing that will lead me to success. The schedule is a fake. Success doesn’t come from the sched. It comes from the writing.

But now there’s the scary thing that I durst not even think about. I’m daring myself to even write it down. The words are coming slowly.

It. Is. All. A. Waste. Of. Time.

What is writing, but the pouring out of what’s inside? What if what’s inside is pointless meanderings ( I mean, look at this post!)?

Nobody reads my stuff – I mean, YOU do, and I am terribly, terribly grateful for that. Thank you, most sincerely.

But no one reads my books. No one visits my sites. I know.

I know.

And yet still I persist, feverishly building and writing and crafting and wringing my hands together in the dark garret of my mind, turning key after key after key, fitting them one-by-one into the Lock of Success. Surely this one. No, well, then, this one certainly. I’d stake my life on this one over here. Key by key by key, writing this, writing that, searching for the key that will swing those golden doors open. It is a sickness. A madness.

Especially when I have a perfectly good writing job during the day. I’m a success at that, surely. It’s technical translation, of course, with the occasional promotional stuff thrown in, and never a by-line in sight. And, no, it’s not the utterances of my heart, but what if my heart is filled with candy corn and bat poop? Maybe it’d be best to keep that away from the children…

It wakes me up at night, that horrid thought. If not this, what? Perhaps there IS no golden door. What if this water IS the ocean…

But, hey, per the schedule, writing time is up, so I guess I’m done now.

I have Fridays off.

How To How To

You’re a writer. You know how it goes. You’ve got irons in the fire, thoughts in the cabesa, concepts swirling around your noodle.

I was trying to come up with some new how-to topics for my how-to site Skippity Whistles because, frankly, I haven’t told anybody how to do anything for quite a while.

That’s mostly because I haven’t done anything for quite a while. I mean, I go to work and do my job, but there are not a lot of how-tos that pop up there. How to draw an interesting clock face in Adobe Illustrator has a kind of limited appeal.

At home I do stuff, but have had to slow down on stuff like mowing the lawn because of a recent surgery. The last couple of weeks have been things like how to sit in an Adirondack chair. How to nod off watching movies on Netflix…

But in thinking about how-to stuff, I hit this topic this morning: how to write a story.

Well, that’s easy, right? You’ve got your protagonist and your situation and what you want to have happen. How hard could that be?

When you tell someone how to draw, say, a monkey, you don’t tell ’em sharpen your pencils and take out your crayons, do you? Step one: Get a piece of paper. That’s kind of a given, dontcha think?

So, how do you say that you have to find your voice, your point of view. Who are you in the story? Who’s going to tell it? Is that too esoteric?

When I’m putting together a long story, like a novel, I always try to remember the structure of a three-act play.

In act one, we meet everybody and learn the setting and about who wants what. It all seems to be going so well,until, right at the end, a big problem arises.

In act two, the problem gets huge, and becomes insurmountable until, right at the end, a solution arises.

In act three, we work through the solution and defeat the problem, and we all go home wiser and much relieved. End of the story, have a nice day.

What do you think? Does that make a decent how-to?

Maybe it’s too stuffy, too high-handed. Well, my child, let me explain…

One of my favorite lines from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day comes when Owl is trying to help Piglet to be courageous.

“I-I’m afraid I’m just a sm-small animal,”Piglet stammers.

“Then to ease your small mind, I shall tell you a story…”

Maybe How to Write a Story is not a good topic.

I’ll stick to How to Make Scrambled Eggs…

Thanks for the help!

10 Ways to Make Yourself Feel Stupid

Well, the novel is in the hands of the lovely sister once more, and I do believe it’s for the last time.

While it’s out, I found a really quick and simple way to make money online. Ah, but there’s a catch…

There’s this site called Listverse, see, and they’ll pay you a hundred bucks to provide a list of, well, really, on any subject you choose. You make a list, write a paragraph or two about each item, list your sources, and submit it. They like the list and pump a hundred bucks into your PayPal account. Done deal.

Come on. You’re a writer. You know how this goes. It’s like shooting candy from a barrel, or something like that. Come on. Make a list, right now, of ten things you know about that would be interesting to somebody…

I came up with one topic. And I got, like, seven items. How about this? Ten Common Phrases that have Nautical Origins…

Well, let’s see, there’s “three square meals a day”, and “there’s keep your powder dry”, although that one’s not so common. Howzabout “you’ll have the devil to pay for this.” That’s a good one, except nobody ever says it.

Hmph.

I’m a smart guy. I really am. I don’t have a PhD or anything, but I’ve been to the doctor’s office. And I played Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey at the Santa Paula Theater Center with a really good actor who played a doctor. That should count… Doctor by extraction or something. Anyway, I’m not a total dope.

At least I didn’t think so.

But I cannot come up with a list of ten interesting things to save my life.

Ten Euphemisms for I Feel Like a Dummy.

Hey! I got one!

Done Once More

I have rewritten the rewrite of this rewritten novel so many times, I believe I may never need to write a new book again. I shall just rewrite the rewritten rewrite!

You’re a writer. You know how it goes. There comes that moment, when, way down there in your writerly guts, you know there is nothing more to say.

Here’s a little passage from the book:

“There is nothing more to be said,” the princess stated coldly.

Auric stared at the princess, his mouth hanging open in surprise, his fists working in frustration, his eyes meeting her cold, determined, green-eyed stare in disbelief and anger. 

“Nothing more to say,” she said firmly.

“No, I imagine that there is not,” Auric replied haughtily. “When you change your mind, I am quite certain that you know where you may find me.”

It’s done, my writer friend. The rewrite of the rewritten rewrite of my current novel. D-O-N-E, finito.

And this done is done. You know, the one that’s finished as in there is no more to write. No words to say. It’s all out. We laugh, we cry, but we finish.

And, well, there it is.

Now it’s off to my readers, as a thanks-and-see-how-your-input-matters sort of a deal, and then off in search of an agent.

Oh, sit down, I must, for surely this is exciting, isn’t it?

Truly?

Express to Geezerville

So, like you, like every writer, like anyone and everyone who spends a great deal of time at a keyboard, I have eventually found myself stuck in the Carpal Tunnel.

My neurons, upset about the traffic, actually switched lanes and tried to take the Guyon Tunnel across town instead. No good. Blocked. Probably holiday traffic. So, I had to get them fixed.

One of the great mysteries of life is why stuff that is so easy to do is so very hard to undo. Perhaps the Pyramids were a vast mistake, which is why they’re still here.

Anyways, out from under the knife, one more day before the dressings come off, my puppy firmly wedged in my lap and absoLUTELY determined NOT to let me use the voice keyboard on my fold-phone, my mind reels back to things the nurses said to me…

“Don’t worry, sweetie”

“Oh, you’re a funny one”

“Put on your clothes now, cutie…”

Wait a minute.

These are not the words nurses say to virile men of a certain age. Those are not terms of respect.

We use those terms on GRANDMA!!!

OMG! They see me as a GEEZER!

They thought I was a feeble old man!

Sweetie? Dearie?

Pat your hand while you sit in the park and watch the birdies! Feed you milk-toast from a TV tray while watching Matlock! Shoes? Don’t you mean slippers?

How did this happen? How did I slip from cool video producer to vintage cracker-sucker in just one day? Successful writer and author to elderly gent in his jammies in just an hour? Cool guy goes under the knife, wrinkly old geezer comes out. Whaaaaat?

What kind of hospital is this?

I wasn’t scared of the surgery, but I’m sure as hell not getting anything else fixed! Not now that I understand the side effects! The risks are just too great!

Sweetie, indeed…

A Fantastic Twist

Oh, the Saga of Me continues… wait, don’t sagas usually have a dramatic grand finale? Uh oh…

So, in the meanwhile that I’ve been re-working the half-maligned-yet-quite-ballyhhoed rewrite of a previously published novel, I happened to mention to my OWN lovely sister that I was rewriting a book.

My sister the psychologist! I’d written much of Droppington Place with her in mind! How did I not send her a copy?

She asked to read all three novels (Sawdust Man, Droppington Place, and Marigold’s End), and I apologetically sent them along.

What a knockhead was I to have excluded her from my reader’s list in the first place. But now all was fixed.

She picked out precisely the themes I’d intended in the first two novels, but get this… Ready?

Okay, a touch of backstory:

Droppington Place is the story of a twelve-year-old kid who gets trapped inside a magical realm made entirely of paper, overseen by a silly-yet-kinda-maniacal Elizabethan playwright overlord made of sawdust. What? It could happen.

Sawdust Man makes the playwright a sympathetic lead character in a bittersweet love story that takes a thousand years to tell. Same guy, different story.

So, here’s the really cool twist:

My sister the psychologist saw that Sawdust Man was actually a SEQUEL to Dropington Place!

Holy cats! Do you see what this means? My sawdust playwright just might be a recurring figure in any number of magical realism stories!

Why had I not seen this before? Many, many thanks are owed to you, dear writer friend, for riding with me on this crazy adventure, and certainly to my lovely sister the psychologist for her unflinching support and her crazy, zany, utterly brilliant idea!

It’s the Founding of an Empire!