The Writing Life Archives - Page 46 of 62

What Message Are You Sending in Your Writing?

May 23, 2013 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I have a three-year-old daughter, and that has made me very aware of the messages we send our girls in literature, movies, magazines, etc. Our culture sends messages that are at best annoying and at worst destructive, not just to girls but to boys as well.

So I read Karen Jensen’s blog post about messages we are sending our kids in YA with great interest. She noticed a trend in YA where 2 things happen: 1) a girl tells a boy firmly and repeatedly that she does NOT want a relationship (not sex, just a relationship) yet he does not take no for an answer and she ends up capitulating, and 2) in the final climax, it is the boy that saves the girl—the girl does not save herself.

I decided to look at my own YA work-in-progress (WIP) to see if I fell into those traps.

First, did any of my male protagonists ignore my female heroine’s “No” to a relationship (thus reinforcing the “no doesn’t mean no” culture)? To my relief, this was not the case. There is a boy who pursues a friendship with my heroine, even though Polly is hard to get to know, but she clearly WANTS to be friends with him and she communicates that.

Whew. One down.

Second, does my male companion end up saving the female heroine? That one’s a little harder. In the end, Polly does end up physically saving HIM, so at first it seems like another win for me, but… There is a moment, a key moment, in the climax where Polly needs to have an insight in order to save the situation. And the key insight is made by…the male companion. But is this a problem?

Every heroine has their sidekicks. Buffy had her Scooby Gang, and Harry had Hermione and Ron. All the sidekicks chimed in with important information—often key information—at times. In the end, though, in that climactic moment, it was always Buffy or Harry who stepped up and put it all together to save the day.

So is mine a case of a sidekick bringing valuable info that the heroine then acts on? It could be interpreted that way. And none of my beta readers have flagged that moment as not working.

But.

I am going to change it anyway.

Why? Because I think it is important to Polly’s character that SHE be the one to have the insight. She needs to have the moment of understanding and then wrestle with the new knowledge herself. This revelation she has fundamentally changes her perception of herself and her relationship with the world. It will be much more powerful for HER to realize this than to have someone else tell her.

So I thank Karen for her article, because even though I got it about ¾ right in my WIP, this will enable me to get it right all the way. I try very hard to think outside the cultural messages we’re all immersed in all day, every day, but it seems even I fall back onto those messages unconsciously. That is why it is so important that as a writer of YA and middle grade I take a step back and objectively look at the subconscious messages my books are sending. Not that I want to moralize or lecture—far from it. I just want to show my readers what kids can be.

I want to show them that their greatest strength lies in being true to who they are.

What about you? Do you ever think consciously about what messages your writing sends? At what stage in the process do you think about it?

Gavin’s Trust Project: Building hope out of tragedy

May 16, 2013 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Followers of my blog will no doubt remember last month’s sudden death of my friend’s 5-year-old son. Young Gavin had touched many people very deeply. He died on his mother’s birthday, and she asked that we do an act of kindness in his name—to which the Internet responded in breathtaking fashion. My friend Kate and her family also chose three charities to donate to in lieu of flowers, and again the response was enormous.

But the generosity of Kate Leong and her family did not end there.

You see, because Gavin was a special needs child, Kate learned a lot about advocacy. She saw the struggle to get things covered by medical insurance. She saw how much is NOT covered by medical insurance. She saw therapists who had to share equipment, which meant not every kid got the therapy equipment they needed every time. She saw schools making due with duct-taped communication devices because of underfunding for their programs. She saw so many people whose children did not have the advantages Gavin had simply because special needs ran head-on into financial need.

Once she saw, Kate could not unsee.

So this week, Kate unveiled Gavin’s Trust Project. She is raising money to donate to the Chester County Intermediate Unit (CCIU) for their Pre-School Multiple Disabilities programs—a group that did so much to help her son thrive and blossom, and yet are sorely underfunded. Kate knows that many families go without much-needed equipment at home because finances simply don’t allow it. CCIU can help with that—if they have the funds. Kate wants to help these other families and these wonderful therapists so that all the children they serve have the chance to reach their full potential.

Gavin’s Trust Project has already made its first tangible difference. With the astonishing amount of money left over from donations made to print Gavin’s memorial service programs, Gavin’s Trust Project has bought Gavin’s school classroom and school several pieces of equipment long on their wish list. More details of the project can be found here.

While Gavin may be gone, Gavin’s Trust Project builds a legacy in his name that will affect hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of children over time.

Please spread the word about this amazing project. That Gavin’s life was cut short is a tragedy; that his legacy will bring hope to so many is a miracle.

Why I do things the “right” way

May 9, 2013 By Kerry Gans 1 Comment

When I first started doing genealogy, I had no idea how to properly cite my sources. So I did it any old way. Now, I do know how to do it right, and I am engaged in a time-consuming process of going back over my source citations and correcting them. Since I’ve been doing genealogy for about 20 years, that’s a lot of source citations!

So why am I bothering? What I have is adequate, in that a person looking at it will know where my information came from. For example, I had a lot of entries from the Philadelphia City Directories. I noted the year of each directory, but not the page number. Good enough, right? I mean, someone else could easily look up the page number if they wanted to. Yes, they could. But it’s not the proper way to cite something. So I spent several hours re-finding the pages and entering them into the database.

Why, when what I had was good enough? In this case, it is because I want people who find my tree online or who read my book to take my work seriously. I want them to have the confidence that my sources are correct, that I am not guessing or engaging in wishful thinking (often an issue with amateur genealogists).

The same goes for my fiction writing (and everything I do, really). I can get to “good enough” in most aspects of the craft very easily. But “good enough” is not good enough for me. This is different from perfectionism, which is never satisfied and will never let go of a project that isn’t “perfect.” I know perfection is impossible, but I want to give my best effort on all levels at all times. I want to put everything I have into a project—cross all my t’s, dot all my i’s. Even when I don’t HAVE to.

Why? Because I am serious about my craft, and I want it to show. So I take the time to do the extra round of editing, to do the search and find on the “to be” verbs and “ly” words. I take the time to storyboard the book several times during the process, to make sure it all fits together and that I am not forgetting something. I take the time (and money) to have a professional editor give me feedback to make it stronger.

We all have experienced times in our lives when other people gave half-hearted effort and yet still got ahead—they got a better grade than you, they got a promotion, etc. We all know that doing things “right” is not a guarantee of success, or even a guarantee of acknowledgement. Sometimes I think my life would be much easier if I could be the type of person who settles for “good enough.”

So why do I bother trying to do things “right”?

Because at the end of the day, the product I put out reflects on me. Whether it be a book, a short story, a batch of cookies, a video, it is a product I created. I want to be able to take pride in the work, no matter if it gets me accolades or book deals. I want to know in my heart that this particular piece of work was done as well as I could do it at that time. That it reflects the best of me at that moment.

I suppose this strong work ethic was instilled in me by my parents (for which I thank them). But I have internalized it because of the satisfaction it brings me. Knowing that what I put out there is the best I can do is a rewarding experience for me. Another way to think about it: Most of us don’t leave much behind when we leave this earth—I want whatever I leave behind to be the best of me.

What drives you to put so much effort into your work?

A Mile in My Daughter’s Ears

May 2, 2013 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

Some of you are aware that my preschool daughter wears a hearing aid in one ear. We are lucky that she has one good ear, so she did not have trouble with speech acquisition and the like. In fact, she often seems to be able to hear me very well even without the hearing aid, so I have sometimes wondered just how much she really needs it.

I got a taste of her life this week.

On Saturday night I took myself to the emergency room. My ear and the area around my ear were in so much pain I was shaking. I couldn’t rest my head on anything. I just wanted the pain to stop. I could think of nothing else.

And then my eardrum burst.

Sitting in the ER waiting room, I heard a “shhooom” noise in my ear and then clear fluid started trickling out. The pain trickled out with it, and slowly it dropped to a manageable level. They gave me antibiotics for the infection and sent me home.

I am now deaf in that ear.

Hopefully, it will only be for a few weeks as the perforated drum heals, but it has given me an unexpected insight into my daughter’s world. Granted, she can hear something in her bad ear, but it’s still a pretty good approximation. I’ve learned a lot.

If I lay on the side of my good ear in bed, I cannot hear anything. This is not good, because I need to hear the baby monitor (my husband cannot hear it). So I am sleeping on the side I don’t usually sleep on, so I can keep my good ear up.

If I am on the phone, I cannot hear anything in the house. This can be a good thing, because I do not get distracted by my daughter’s constant chatter, but it usually results in her trying to climb up my leg to get my attention, so on the whole it’s a wash.

If the sound I want to focus on is on my bad side, and there is any noise at all on my good side, forget it. All I can hear is the sound on the good side. This is why positioning my daughter in school so her good ear is always toward the teacher is so important.

Localization is an issue. I know this from my daughter—she never knows where a sound is coming from. Losing your other ear is akin to losing one eye. If you cover one eye for long enough, you will lose your depth perception and have trouble judging distance. The same with losing one ear—you can’t judge accurately the distance and position of the sound. Because I am older and have more experience hearing normally, I can usually tell where the noise is coming from, but not because I can hear it—just because I know.

The weirdest phenomenon for me has been the phantom music. My bad ear can hear nothing. If you’ve ever been in a completely silent room and you just hear that low hum of nothing, that is what I hear. But the ear must also be picking up other sounds I am not consciously hearing, because I hear strange noises—a voice that isn’t there, music that isn’t playing. Last night I could have sworn I heard circus music in my house. My brain is obviously trying to make sense of random auditory input it’s getting from that bad ear. Does my daughter hear things that aren’t there? She’s too young to tell me.

Lastly, I was not aware of how much energy it takes to simply pay attention when you can’t hear well. People with 2 good ears learn so much information from passive listening—from the information overheard rather than sought out. When you can’t hear well, you need to always be seeking so you don’t get left behind. It can be exhausting.

I don’t advise puncturing an eardrum to experience what deafness is like, but having it thrust upon me has given me a new appreciation for my hearing, and a new understanding of what my daughter deals with every day. Hopefully, it will help me make the right choices to help her achieve her full potential.

How about you? Have you ever had an unexpected insight into another person’s struggle with a mental or physical challenge?

The Gavin Effect: A Tsunami of Kindness

April 25, 2013 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

As a writer, I routinely place characters into situations where they are caught up in events larger than they are. It is rare in anyone’s real life to feel something similar—but I am feeling that way right now.

My friend Kate Leong’s 5-year-old son Gavin died last week. He was pronounced dead on Kate’s 43^rd birthday. But instead of screaming the heavens down with the unfairness of it all, Kate posted on her blog that for her birthday she would like anyone touched by Gavin’s life to do an act of kindness in his honor.

Boy, did people around the world respond.

Kate’s blog, Chasing Rainbows, has chronicled Gavin’s remarkable journey from babyhood. She has followers all around the world. Her request did not fall on deaf ears. Whether it was people like me who felt like Gavin was a part of our own family, or people who had found Kate’s blog for the first time and were moved by her generosity of spirit, acts of kindness rippled out from their epicenter—one small boy who never spoke a word.

I watched as the word spread through social media. I saw it hit other highly-popular blogs. I saw it make headlines on Huffington Post. I saw people sending Gavin’s story to the Ellen de Generes show. I read as people donated to charities, collected toys for children’s hospitals, made soup for local families in need, donated to hippotherapy or asked their local special needs teachers what they could do to help. The company who makes the popular communication software Speak For Yourself gave away 30 free apps in Gavin’s name. A jeweler named their new keepsake pendant “Kate’s Heart” in honor of the Leong family. A person kindly donated her talent to creating the program for Gavin’s funeral service, and so many people contributed money to help defray the cost of paying a printer that she ended up with well over $5,000 (anything not going to pay for the printing will be donated to the “in lieu of flowers” charities the Leong’s suggested). Everywhere I looked, people reached out to one another, to strangers—to help.

This tremendous wave of generosity, a tsunami of kindness, is something far more than any of us can comprehend at this moment. Certainly, the peak of the movement will fade as Gavin is laid to rest and people return to their normal lives, but this courageous little boy has reached out and changed us all permanently.

Some people will become organ donors who otherwise might not have. Some people who have begun helping organizations in his name will continue to do so out of their own newfound passion. Connections have been forged between people who might not otherwise have met. Any one of these things—EVERY one of these things—has the potential to change someone’s life.

We do not always know the results of the good that we do. Something that seems like nothing to us can have a deep impact on someone else. Even a small act of kindness on our part—an old iPad given to a school, a $5 donation to a cause—can be the thing that profoundly changes someone’s life. Any act of kindness might be the act that opens another person’s eyes, or becomes the helping hand a person needs to turn their life in a positive direction, or gives a child the freedom to reach their full potential. Any act of good we do can be the key to changing a life, and that life we change could be the key to changing the world.

Even after the initial tsunami of kindness fades, the effects we set in motion will continue. They will cascade and pass on from person to person. We may never fully grasp the impact Kate’s request and our response has upon this world.

But I know we made a difference and will continue to do so.

So to anyone out there who doubts that one person can change the world, I hold up the example of Gavin Leong.

One person CAN change the world—even if he’s only 5 1/2 years old.

The World Lost A Superhero: Farewell, Gavin

April 18, 2013 By Kerry Gans 9 Comments

On April 14, 2013, the world lost a superhero: Gavin Leong, age 5 ½.

Gavin had the biggest heart I ever saw, so it is the cruelest of ironies that his heart was what failed him in the end.

Gavin was special needs, but most of us would describe him with just the first word: special.

I never met Gavin in person, which shocked me when I realized it, because I felt like I had. His mother Kate has blogged about his amazing journey from the time he was born, and took us with him on her blog Chasing Rainbows. Kate and her family allowed us unprecedented access to their lives, sharing both their joy and heartbreak. But Gavin’s house wasn’t the house of a special needs child…it was a house of miracles.

Gavin’s parents were told when he was a newborn that his issues were so severe that they should just “keep him happy.”

But his parents saw more potential in their son than the doctors did.

After a long stay in the NICU after birth, Gavin was home barely a few weeks and he was back in the hospital for a two month stay, battling two illnesses that should have killed him.

Kate and Ed were told Gavin had permanent hearing loss as an infant—until the day the audiologist told them his hearing was normal and he no longer needed his hearing aids.

They were told Gavin would never eat without a feeding tube. He graduated to pureed foods and some solids.

They were told Gavin would never sit up. He started walking unassisted at Christmas 2012.

They were told Gavin would never communicate. Two days before his final illness, he independently and repeatedly sought out and pressed a button asking for water.

Gavin’s body may have been frail, but his spirit was not.

Gavin did everything in his own time in his own way. He faced his challenges with patience and courage, and even when crying in frustration he continued to fight. He never gave up, and his parents never stopped believing in him and his strength.

We were so privileged to experience it with him. At his preschool, Gavin had the goal of walking the equivalent of a 5K over the course of the school year. When he made his final lap, the entire preschool lined the halls to cheer for him. Gavin probably never knew that he had an entire Internet cheering section as well.

When Gavin needed the final miracle that never came, so many, many people prayed for him, rooted for him, and sent him positive thoughts. Many people displayed the Super-Gavin logo.*

Sometimes it seemed as if half my newsfeed had changed their profile pictures to Super Gavin. People who had never met him, never read Kate’s blogs, shared it on their walls and sent their support. This little boy who couldn’t talk touched the world, and taught us so much.

He taught his mother the power of hope and faith.

He taught his father the power of unconditional love.

He taught his little brother the power of compassion.

He taught me to celebrate the everyday triumphs of my daughter—to rejoice in her running around even when she exhausts me; to find joy in her constant talking and singing even when all I want is a moment of quiet; to be grateful for her health and her love even in the whirlwind of life.

The answer to why Gavin was taken from us so early will never be fully understood. But the answer to why he was placed on this earth in the first place is clear:

Gavin was given to us to teach us the power of persistence, of hope, and of love.

And the greatest of these is love.

Farewell, Gavin. You are now free of the body that failed you so often in this world. You can talk and run and play with your grandparents, your sister, your twin, and your other siblings who never made it to this world.

The world lost a superhero today—and Heaven gained an angel.

Spinning Plates…on a Rollercoaster

April 11, 2013 By Kerry Gans 3 Comments

I’ve written several times before about my quest for balance—balancing my writing life with my mommy life, in particular. I have learned one thing from all this searching:

Balance is a pipe dream.

Balance can’t be found, largely because I don’t control all the variables in my life that I need to balance. Just when I think I’ve got it all figured out, something changes. For instance, I am now used to having 6 hours a week free to write. Then summer will come and that time will vanish like a mirage. Or my kid gets sick. Or I do. Or technical issues stop my progress. Always something unplanned gets in the way.

So my new metaphor is spinning plates. You’ve seen what I’m talking about—the people in circuses who spin plates on top of thin sticks and then run around frantically spinning the ones that are slowing down so the plates don’t fall off.

Yeah, that’s my new life metaphor.

See, I don’t just have two things to balance—work and mommy. Each item has sub-items which become plates of their own. The writing has my fiction work, non-fiction work, blogging, sometimes editing for others, social media, and querying. The mommy has school, play time, dressing, feeding, washing, entertaining the child, among others. Household duties include everything from cleaning the house (that plate falls a lot) to doing the finances. And that doesn’t include other family and friends. Plates everywhere. Lots of running back and forth.

Inevitably, some fall.

Usually just one or two fall, and the crashing is cyclical. The social media will fall for a few days, then I’ll pick that up and the finances will fall. Then the finances are back up and the querying falls, etc. Eventually every plate gets picked back up, but it is rare I can keep them all spinning at once.

As if the plate-spinning wasn’t hard enough, I’m doing it on a roller coaster. It’s no secret that life has its ups and downs. Sometimes everything is going smoothly and I feel like my dreams are within reach. Then, sometimes just days later, I feel like everything is completely out of control and I’m a terrible mom, terrible, wife, and terrible writer. Usually the down time is when many plates have crashed to the floor simultaneously. All that shattered porcelain gets me depressed (did I mention my aversion to cleaning?).

But the thing is, I’m stubborn. Some people prefer the word “determined,” but stubborn fits me better. There’s nothing like life saying, “You can’t.” to get me saying, “I can.” Most successful writers I know are like this.

So, I’m stubborn and I pick up the shattered plate pieces, and I glue them all back together (I’m too cheap to buy new plates) and start them spinning again. I begin slowly, one at a time, and add them back as I can. But eventually, all the plates are back up, all are spinning, and I am once again on the upswing of the roller coaster.

What a wild ride!

What about you? Is stubbornness your key to pushing ahead when things are tough? Or do you have a different secret you can share with us?

Devaluing Ourselves

April 4, 2013 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

Humans are strange beings. We are forever envying what other people can do. Whether it is another writer’s success or that mom who always seems to have it all together, we always find something we wish we had or wish we could do as well as someone else. I don’t know if it is cultural or human, but this envy seems to be everywhere.

Here in America, we seem to feel that if we can do something easily, it has no value. Just think of the terms we use: we “earn” our paycheck at “work.” If we don’t have to struggle at it, then it’s not work, right? If we don’t have to work hard, then we haven’t “earned” anything, so what we did must not have value.

That thinking is false.

We all have skills—things we do more easily and better than others. Some of these skills are innate; some are learned. But all of us excel at something. It is ironic, then, that the very things we are good at are often the very things we devalue.

A few weeks ago, at my 25th high school reunion, we held a dedication ceremony for the new doors my class financed as their reunion gift to the school. We dedicated the doors to my best friend, Donna Hanson Woolman, who died of cancer 10 years ago. Along with speaking about Donna, I created a photo montage to show.

The number of people who cried at the montage shocked me.

Many people came up to me afterward and told me how wonderful it was, and what a good job I had done. I nodded and said, “Thank you,” but I was flummoxed. A photo montage, for me, is nothing. It is simple. I have been in video production for nearly as long as I have been out of high school. So to have people so moved and impressed by it felt a bit—embarrassing.

But it did make me understand, perhaps for the first time, that while we are busy admiring others’ skills, there are other people admiring ours. Putting together a photo montage for me is a few hours of work—for others it would be nearly impossible. Writing a blog post (once I have a topic) takes about half an hour. For others, it would take days.

We all have skills, either learned or innate. While we will never totally vanquish envy, when we feel particularly envious maybe we should stop and look at our own skills. We should remind ourselves that the person we are envying might be envying us our skills. Just because we find something easy or fun does not make it less of a skill.

We need to stop devaluing ourselves.

We all have gifts.

Our gifts have value—and so do we.

Contents and Endnotes and Index, Oh My!

March 28, 2013 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

I’m embarking on a new venture—non-fiction. It’s a whole new world.

As you may know, I am heavily into genealogy. Several years ago, I compiled all my data into a prose format to distribute to my father’s family (I’m still working on writing out my mother’s). Now, I have more information, and I am updating the book. But this time, I am working on it with an eye towards a wider audience.

Now, I know that genealogy books do not appeal to the general public. However, to that sleuth searching for their family, for that one missing link, a book about their line is pure gold. I cannot thank enough the people who have helped me on my quest, nor can I fully describe the joy of finding a treasure trove of well-documented information.

I want to give others that “family tree high.”

My intention is to fully source the book with endnotes and citations, so anyone reading the book will know the primary source of the information. Wherever possible, I will include pictures and scans of those sources. And I will put it online for as reasonable cost as I can so that others can access the information easily. I also intend to donate copies to local historical societies and/or libraries with genealogical collections. I want this information to be found.

But writing this book is much harder work than I thought.

Not the content itself—writing about each family lineage and couple is pretty easy, as it is chronological and all the information is right in front of me in my genealogical database. It’s the rest of the book that’s making me a little nuts. Like the Table of Contents. And Endnotes. And Index. Oh my.

My version of Word (2007) insists on creating my Table of Contents for me. Which would be very nice if I could figure out how to do that. It’s got something to do with “Styles,” but I have yet to get the details right. I need to sit down and figure it out because once I do, Word will supposedly update the Table of Contents as page numbers change. But so far it has been a headache and I long for the days of the old Word where I could do it myself without my computer freaking out and trying to think for me!

The Endnotes are fairly easy—soooo much easier than on a typewriter!—but I had forgotten what a pain it is to cite every fact on a page. Haven’t done that since my Master’s Degree ten years ago. However, citing everything has been a wonderful way of double-checking my sources within my own database and finding holes I still need documents to fill.

Then there’s the index. What a Herculean task! As far as I know, there is no shortcut to doing this in Word. I have to go through each page of the manuscript and enter each name into my Index database, along with the page number. And if I end up adding or deleting things and those page numbers change, what a headache to go in and fix! If anyone out there has and helpful hints at this, please leave them in the comments.

So there you have it—my latest project. It’s growing alongside my fiction works-in-progress. I’m juggling this book project, two fiction WIPs, several short stories, the weekly blogging, and querying for a third fiction project. I’m kinda busy! But I prefer having multiple projects—it keeps me from getting burned out.

Do you switch between fiction and non-fiction? Does it help keep you balanced?

Sick Days

March 21, 2013 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

If you are self-employed and/or a stay-at-home parent, you know that sick days are a myth. First as a video editor and then as a writer, I have worked through fever, colds, and stomach bugs. After all, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. It’s that simple.

Any stay-at-home parent knows that you don’t get the day off unless you are at death’s door. Your kid needs what she needs when she needs it. I know I am always reluctant to ask my spouse to take off from work when I’m sick. After all, the parent job is much more important than the writing, and I do that even when sick. Besides, he has his job and I have mine, so I soldier on whenever possible. I even avoid taking my temperature when I think I have a fever, because I subscribe to the Schrödinger’s cat theory of illness: If I don’t measure the fever, I don’t really have one.

But it’s all different when it’s your kid that’s sick.

I can’t tell my 3-year-old to soldier on when she’s getting sick at 5 AM. I can’t tell her Mommy’s busy when all my feverish girl wants is to be held. A normally productive day grinds to a halt when she falls asleep in my arms for hours, or when her fever is so high she cries while I hug her and we wait for the medication to work. My daughter needs me, and the rest of the world—including this blog—has to wait.

And that is how it should be.

Cuddling my little girl, feeling her radiating heat, reminds me what’s really important in life. Comforting my sobbing child is a calling more urgent by far than any blog post or writing assignment. I know that it will not be long before a simple hug won’t stop her pain, and there will come a time when I will not be there to hug her. So I cherish these moments when I have this magic power to protect her, to make her feel better, to heal her with nothing more than a hug, a kiss, and my love. Because that time passes far too soon.

So that is why I have no urbanely witty and deeply philosophical writing-related blog post today. And I’m sure it won’t be the last time life gets in the way of a post. But without life, we wouldn’t have anything to write about, so it’s all good.

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