write « Robin Writes

Boy, it’s been an interesting week around here. I won’t go into the whole long, sad story because unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re familiar with the details and the start of this fiasco.

In spite of underlying racism, however, if Mike Brown had only followed directions when Officer Wilson told him to move out of the street, things could have been very different.

Since our illustrious prosecutor decided, for whatever reason, to wait until after dark to announce the verdict, and our idiot governor was basically useless, a lot bad stuff went down. Riots, arson, looting—and you can say, all day long, that “most” of those arrested were from outside the area, well, someone let them in; someone said, hey come on down and let’s do some shit. And just because “most” arrested were not from here, it doesn’t mean local peeps weren’t involved.

Like Louis Head. Mike’s stepdad. What a loser. Nope, I’m still not racist—by any definition, he’s a loser. Mike’s dad, Mike Sr., well, he’s a good guy as far as I know. Jury’s still out on Lesley McSpadden—I’ve heard a lot of things, but I’m not impressed. Yeah, jury. No pun intended. Ha.

Why bring up Mike’s family? Because they’re front and center:

Mr. Head incited a riot, calling for arson.

Mr. Brown called for peace.

Ms. McSpadden, well . . . She got all up in people’s faces over T-shirt sales; she went to Geneva to talk about torture (WTH?). I get the grief, the horror, the loss. But good Lord, woman, grieve already—take the time to think about your son, get him a headstone for crying out loud, and get the hell out of the public eye.

Sorry, but I have to think that if it were my son, my first move wouldn’t be hiring an attorney and starting a bunch of crap. Nope. Seriously—why hire an attorney?

And that guy? Well, I’ve heard him speak. Seems like a nice guy. But he was griping about not being notified of the decision ahead of time. Um, dude. It’s not a civil case. It was a criminal case. That means that the state prosecutes (if it does) on behalf of the state; the parties are the state and Officer Wilson, not YOU and YOUR CLIENTS. Duh.

So, we still have peeps running around yelling, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Even though, according to the official report, that didn’t happen. Whatever.

Look, all this rioting and looting and marching and chanting and stopping people from working and traveling and everything else does NOTHING. And we’re all sick of it.

Learn to write, learn to speak. Stop blaming everyone else for every single thing. Get a job, go to work, be smart about your money. Run for office. Just know that there are no shortcuts, you don’t just make a difference because you WANT to, you have to work for it. It takes time. You can be angry all you want, but you can’t just fly off the handle. Leaders don’t do that. Be a leader. Work behind the scenes, or go on TV—but if you’re going to represent, be rational and reasonable and actually do the work.

It’s important.

Here you go, the handy dandy guide to writing that book you were always planning:

Have a story
Write it down
Check for plot consistency
Check for mechanical errors
Let someone read it.
Make any necessary changes

Simple, right?

Everyone has a story, their own story; some people come up with other stories—which are really just big what-ifs. What if this happened, or that, and how would it progress, and how would it end? Ideas can come from anywhere at all: dreams, real-life occurrences, and just plain daydreaming.

Now for the hard part—writing it down. You don’t have to write a certain number of words each day, and you don’t have to write every day, and you don’t have to write at the same time every day. However, if you skip more than a day or two, you run the risk of getting out of the habit of writing, and while that won’t necessarily preclude your finishing the book, it will extend the time it takes.

You might want to also make notes, or a timeline, as you go or even before you start.

After you’ve finished, and I don’t care what NaNoWriMo says, a novel is NOT 50K words, it’s almost twice that, at minimum, read it back over again to make sure you wound up all the loose ends and didn’t change someone’s name or description in the middle.

Make sure it’s believeable, as any good story is, and be sure you haven’t inadvertently used some colloquialism or slang term specific to your region, your family, or your business. Historical facts and actual places should, to a point, be accurate insofar as general readership is concerned.

Once you’ve made any changes, read it over again to check for mechanical errors: spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. Fix them.

Now you can send it to someone to read—or several someones. Make notes of their feedback, and decide if you want to change anything.

There you go—you’re finished. You wrote a book. Congrats!