Month: August 2023

As a reader, what do you think of flash fiction?

The novels I’ve drafted or at least outlined are not going to be short. They aren’t going to be 1,000-page tomes (300,000 words!) like the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon either. A sweet spot for historical novels falls somewhere between 90,000 and 120,000 words. I’m aiming for the low 90,000s.

At the other extreme is the genre called flash fiction or minimalist fiction. By definition, flash fiction falls somewhere between six words and usually 1,000 words. There are some 1,500-word exceptions.

For me, it’s easier to write a story of thousands of words than one of a thousand words. It’s a challenge to develop characters and a plot in 1,000 words.

But I mentioned a starting point of six words. The example of such a concise story is attributed to Ernest Hemingway, although, the efficacy of that attribution is not proven. Nevertheless, here is that six-word piece of flash fiction:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Wow! You would be hard pressed to find six words that pack more of a punch! The author could have gone on to explain why the baby shoes had never been worn, but isn’t it more effective to let the reader’s mind fill in the blanks?

Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash

In fact, it would have been easier for the writer to elaborate. Boiling down an entire story into six words is nearly impossible. I can’t imagine that I’d ever be able to do it, but fiction writers today are encouraged to delete all unnecessary words – to make every word count.

That’s the lesson flash fiction teaches a writer, so I think it’s a good exercise for aspiring novelists to practice.

I submitted a 28-word story to an “On the Premises” mini-contest in May. The guidelines were to write in any genre a story of 25 to 50 words in which two opposing points of view were shown. It was an interesting exercise. My first two versions were exactly 50 words. I continued to pare down the unnecessary words. Satisfied with my eighth version of the story, I hit the “submit” button.

Here’s the story I submitted:

This house has stories to tell. Close your eyes. Just listen. You hear that? Children laughing and playing.

Yeah, then going off to war and not coming home.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

The winner out of the 212 entries was announced on May 10. My story wasn’t the winner. Perhaps I edited out too many words. I’ll keep trying.

If you’ve never read any flash fiction but are curious about it, here’s the link to an April 23, 2023 blog post on Reedsy: https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/best-flash-fiction. The 25 stories are clickable. One of them, “Where Are You?“ by Joyce Carol Oates, was published in The New Yorker in 2018. Here’s the link: https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/where-are-you. Take a minute (or maybe two) to read it.

Or, you can go to your public library system’s online catalog and do a search for it – or ask a librarian for suggestions. If you prefer, you can do a search on Amazon or a general search in your favorite search engine.

Since my last blog post

I finished writing the first draft of a devotional book designed especially for people who have Seasonal Affective Disorder in the colder months of the year.

With the family cookbook my sister and I have compiled finally formatted, we started the tedious proofreading phase.

I started proofreading the historical short stories I’ve finished writing.

Until my next blog post

I hope you’re reading a book that is so engrossing you didn’t want to put it down to read my blog.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter by visiting https://www.janetmorrisonbooks.com. Thank you! I plan to send out my September newsletter the first week of the month. Remember, subscribers to my newsletter receive a free downloadable short story I wrote:  “Slip Sliding Away”, which takes place in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1870s.

Make time for friends and family. They won’t always be here.

Remember the people of Ukraine, Maui, and Jacksonville, Florida.

Janet

#OnThisDay: Anniversary of Hawaii Statehood, 1959

When I was planning my blog post topics for August, I considered writing about today being the 64th anniversary of the statehood of Hawaii. I thought the 64th anniversary was a ho-hum time to draw attention to it, so I planned to write about a different subject today.

Then the wildfires erupted on Maui. Fanned by hurricane-force winds, the fires became a raging inferno and in the blink of an eye, at least 1,100 human lives were lost (as 114 deaths have been documented and more then 1,000 people are still unaccounted for as I write this.) Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed and thousands of people were left not only homeless but with nowhere to work.

A 200-year-old church sanctuary was destroyed, as well as the local public library – along with everything else in the town of Lahaina.

There is speculation that the fire was sparked by a tree connecting with a power line. However it started, it was fed by low level winds created by Hurricane Dora some 300 miles away and another weather system thousands of miles to the north. The converging wind circulations of the two weather systems created a recipe for disaster.

Should someone or a government agency have seen it coming and issued warnings? That’s not for me to say. This isn’t the time to place blame. The wounds are still too raw. I’m sure the situation is being carefully investigated. I hope the result will be improvements that will give residents and tourists in the future a better chance to evacuate.

Hawaiians should be celebrating the islands’ statehood today, but instead they are in mourning for the lives, beautiful landscape, jobs, history, and property lost in the wildfire.

It’s too early to tell the prognosis of the massive 150-year-old banyan tree on Front Street in Lahaina. I understand it was quite a local landmark.

Lahaina was the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which makes the total destruction of the town even more painful and significant.

I’m old enough that I remember when Hawaii became the 50th state in the United States. We heard about it at home and we talked about it at school. It happened during the first week when I was in the first grade. It was a big deal.

Hawaii is 5,000 miles (or 8,000 kilometers) from North Carolina. I didn’t know anyone who had been there on vacation and couldn’t dream in 1959 that I would ever know anyone to do so. Even by the black-and-white photographs we saw, we could tell it was an exotic place of incredible beauty.

Photo by Neora Aylon on Unsplash

Hawaii still holds a mystique for me and probably most Americans in the other 49 states. I don’t expect to ever visit the state, but the photographs of the lush green of the land and azure Pacific Ocean waters on all sides bring the word “paradise” to mind.

A sizeable portion of paradise on Maui got burned beyond recognition just over a week ago. The landscape is changed forever. I’m sure people will rebuild most of the structures that were destroyed, but lives and artefacts cannot be replaced. The history of the place will only live in the hearts and minds of the people who knew the area before the sudden fire.

Since my last blog post

I finally finished formatting The Aunts in the Kitchen: Southern Family Recipes except for the introduction through the help of Atticus.io. It was beginning to look like it was only going to be an e-book, but technical difficulties caused by my ignorance were eventually ironed out. My sister and I hope to publish the cookbook on Amazon in paperback as well as for Kindle in November. I’ll let you know when it is available.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to hold your interest this week. I hope it inspires, educates, and entertains you.

Appreciate your friends and relatives, even if they disagree with you politically.

Remember the people of Ukraine and the Island of Maui in Hawaii.

Janet

My Take on AI

I receive spam emails almost daily from people wanting to tell me how I can greatly improve my website by using Artificial Intelligence. Trust me. I will never let Artificial Intelligence write content on my website or write my blog posts. Furthermore, I will never let artificial intelligence write a short story or novel and then put my name on it as the author. 

Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

Here’s an example of the emails I receive offering to help me write: “I have just took an in depth look on your  janetmorrisonbooks.com for the current search visibility and saw that your website could use a boost. We will improve your ranks organically and safely, using state of the art AI and whitehat methods, while providing monthly reports and outstanding support.”

Yikes!

It took me a minute or two to get past, “I have just took…” so I could glance over the rest of the email. I continued to read out of curiosity to see if there were additional grammatical errors. The only thing that would have made this email worse would have been if it had gone on to say, “I had saw….”

Thank you, but I think I’ll just keep plodding along and doing my own writing.

Fortunately, almost 100% of such emails are identified as spam. They don’t clutter up my inbox, but I have to skim over the subject lines before I delete them from the spam box.

Writers Guild of America Strike

On April 18, 2023, the vast majority of members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted to go on strike. Yay for them! They’re striking to get higher pay and guaranteed residuals from the streaming of the TV shows and movies they wrote. I applaud their courage in drawing attention to the way their work is undervalued. They’re being taken advantage of and this was their only choice after negotiations broke down.

Writers never have gotten the respect they deserve because their faces are what people see when they watch a TV show or movie. But make the actors ad lib and see how entertaining that is.

WGA members also don’t want their writing talents replaced by narrative and scripts being written by AI.

Granted, some shows I see advertised don’t appear to have any substance. Maybe the writers of such pitiful TV programming will find another way to make a living during the strike. They should.

Screen Actors Guild Strike

On July 13, 2023, members of the Screen Actors Guild in the United States voted to go on strike for several reasons. One of the reasons was they wanted better protection against AI. They don’t want their images to be hijacked and used in movies or videos without their permission. I’m glad to see the actors standing up against AI.

Another example of AI

I have a new email account with another company since the Windstream data breach fiasco around June 1. One thing I’ve noticed is that it tries to write email content for me. It’s very irritating. It starts throwing out the next three or four words it thinks I want to say. It’s worse than the words my iPhone thinks I want to say next when I’m texting.

The good things about AI

I would be remiss if I didn’t include the other side of the debate. The most promising thing about AI is the ability it will give researchers and medical professionals the ability to access information instantaneously that will potentially lead to new drugs and cures. Of course, how they will keep (or already are keeping) the hackers out of that process remains to be seen.

We all know there are unscrupulous people jumping on the bandwagon to perpetrate harm in other areas of our lives. The MOVEit and Windstream data breaches this summer are proof of that.

AI and the future of writing

Artificial Intelligence writing doctoral theses. Artificial Intelligence writing textbooks. Artificial Intelligence writing term papers. Artificial Intelligence writing essays for university applicants. Artificial Intelligence writing a novel.

Where will it end?

Worse than that, though

These are uncertain times and we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg. Just wait until the 2024 US Presidential Election campaign ads are running 24/7 on your TV and you will not be able to tell truth from fiction. You will see and hear candidates for political office doing and saying things they didn’t do and never said. It will all be smoke and mirrors and our very democracy will be at stake. That’s much more serious and dangerous than AI writing novels. It is our democracy being overcome by AI that should have every American’s attention.

Until my next blog post

I hope you’re reading a book that’s so good you didn’t want to put it down to read my blog post! But you did – so thank you! That book, no doubt, was written by a real human being who worked many years to learn and hone their craft so you could hold that book in your hand and be transported to another place and time.

Enjoy your friends and family, even if they don’t agree with you when it comes to politics.

Remember the people of Ukraine and the people on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

Janet

Books I Read in July 2023

Although it’s already the seventh day of the month, it’s the first Monday of August. Therefore, it’s time for me to tell you about some of the books I read in July. I didn’t read as many books as I do some months, but I read one by Jennifer Coburn that I’m eager to tell you about.

Cradles of the Reich, by Jennifer Coburn

Cradles of the Reich, by Jennifer Coburn

If you follow my blog, you know my favorite genre is historical fiction. I happened upon the title of this book quite by chance and was prompted to investigate it. I checked it out of the public library and read it on my Kindle.

Cradles of the Reich, by Jennifer Coburn is a wonderful piece of historical fiction research and writing. It brought to my attention a secret baby breeding scheme conducted in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It started in 1935 and was called Lebensborn, which translates in English as Spring of Life.

In an effort to bring about the master white race Hitler dreamed of, young German girls and women were put in maternity homes where they had sex with German Army officers and other officials of the Third Reich.

There were at least 10 such Lebensborn homes were also where pregnant girls and young women who were not married were taken to be cared for and indoctrinated about the Reich, to be wined and dined, to be trained to be perfect German women, and to deliver their babies to be put up for adoption.

Cradles of the Reich follows the lives of three diverse girls and women whose paths cross in one of those maternity homes. The chapters move from one character to another, which at times pulled me out of the story.

A statement the author makes in her “Author’s Note” in the back of the book sent a chill down my spine as I immediately thought of the loss of autonomy women in the United States have experienced in 2023: “It is my hope that this novel about three German women provides fodder for discussions about the social environments that allow women’s bodies to be politicized and commoditized.”

Along those same lines, I found the following words in her “Dear Reader” section in the back of the book where she addressed questions early readers of the novel had asked her to be a chilling reminder of how it is incumbent upon us to stay vigilant: “Writing about man’s inhumanity to man was sobering…. But once I learned about this horrific program, I felt compelled to write about it because the most effective way to prevent the rise of fascism is to recognize its early warning signs. A key move in every dictator’s playbook is to control women’s reproductivity either by mandatory abortion or forced childbirth.”

I would add that it doesn’t have to be a dictator; it can be the US Supreme Court or a state legislature. Such government actions are insidious and usually presented under the guise of being for your own protection or for the protection of someone else.

Silver Alert, by Lee Smith

Silver Alert, by Lee Smith

I heard Lee Smith interviewed about her new novel on “Friends and Fiction” on Facebook on May 24, 2023. I love to hear Lee Smith’s buttery southern accent. It was hilarious to hear her tell what inspired the novel and the fun she had writing it.

The book is about a senior citizen in Florida taking a road trip with a much younger woman.

It hurts me to write my honest reaction to Silver Alert. There were so many “F-bombs” in the first two chapters that I decided to just return it to the library. The language distracted from the story and was excessive. I was very disappointed in Lee Smith’s latest novel. She is a better writer than this book demonstrates.

Granted, there are people out there who have such a limited vocabulary that they depend on expletives and F-bombs to communicate with others. Lee Smith is not one of those people.

52 Small Changes for the Mind, by Brett Blumenthal

52 Small Changes for the Mind, by Brett Blumenthal

I must be losing it! I read this book. It all sounded new to me. I took some notes. Last week I found I’ve read the book and taken notes not once but twice before. Perhaps three times will be the charm.

The book contains a lot of sound advice that ideally the reader will put into practice one small change every week for a year. I keep reading the entire book in a few days. That must be why it’s not sticking with me.

Books I read to help my writing:

The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage, or Fiction, by Erik Bork. This book is about how the idea is at the core of all writing.

The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage, or Fiction, by Erik Bork

Blog2Book, by Cathy Fyock. This book tells a blogger how to take their blog posts and turn them into a book. I’m not sure that will be the case for me. I write about too many different topics.

Blog2Book: Repurposing Content to Discover the Book You’ve Already Written, by Cathy Fyock

Since my last blog post

I enjoyed the discussions my blog post sparked last week.  I’ll get off my soapbox now and let everyone calm down. Just don’t forget to keep you eyes and ears open for future developments as we try to keep our right to read.

I’ve also gotten back to work on a Christian devotional book I’m writing. The tentative title is I Need The Light: 26 Devotionals to Help You Through Winter. I hope to have it out by the fall of 2024.

Just when I thought I was getting the ramifications from Windstream’s data breach sorted out, last week I received a letter telling me that all my personal and medical data had potentially been compromised in a data breach at MOVEit and Maximus, a company that stores Medicare records. It took them two months to let the specific Medicare patients know. I guess I need to just accept it as part of life in the 21st century.

Until my next blog post

Keep reading everything you want to read. I hope you hurried through my blog post today because you have a book you’re eager to return to. I’m listening to The Paris Agent, by Kelly Rimmer.

The Paris Agent, by Kelly Rimmer

Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter by visiting https://www.janetmorrisonbooks.com. Thank you!

Make time for friends and family. They won’t always be here.

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet