What's In A Name? Beyond The Boobs

Everyone knows that both men and women have private parts that they tend to name. These parts are the ones that demonstrate the difference between men and women. As I was sitting in the bathroom today (which is where I do my best thinking), I began wondering about this.and why I should limit it to the Honeydew Twins (a couple of nice melons).

Choosing a name for other body parts is not something that comes naturally. You have to take into

Clinton and Reagan

consideration the natural traits of said part, which part it is, your relationship to that part, and your own sick personality for wanting to name your body in the first place. Have I totally over-thought this? Oh, yeah!

The first was my belly. It is far to much a major part of my life and it is big. Far bigger that I would want. So she became Bertha Big-Belly. That was easy. Now, the butt. Not as big. Overall, probably the closest I come to having anything that could be called "skinny." This one wasn't as easy, but I had it. "Back-sida Ida."

I reached into 1920s slang to call my knees "The Bees." The bees knees was a  phrase that was used to indicate something wonderful. The Bees have been a wonderful source of support all my life.

After that they started coming more easily (and at times strangely). My hands are Clinton and Reagan (left and right respectively -- Hillary and Nancy). My arms are Huggy Bear and Snookums. My feet are the Walkers. That is not just a name, but an encouragement to keep doing just that. My legs are Starsky and Hutch. No reason -- it just sounds fun.

My head and brain are the A-Team (although some days it shifts to the Twilight Zone).


This is about where I decided where I should really stop before someone decides that I need to be institutionalized.  I named just one more -- my face. I have chosen to call it Kenley..This is an homage to the two people who gave me this face -- Ken and Shirley.

By the way, did I mention that I have OCD? Not officially, just as a hobby. Next up? Traffic lights I have named.

Oh, how I wished I was kidding.

The Bygone-Era Bear -- Writing Down Memories

Many people write memoirs. This is not to same as writing an autobiography though. An autobiography is an all-encompassing and generally time progressed account of one's life. A memoir can be short or long and recount a single event or thought or a series of connected events. I started thinking of this topic when I was looking at an old friend a couple of days ago.

I have known him for most of my life and he has been my most constant supporter for all of those years. He is a wonderful listener, great at mopping up tears, and he is never stingy on the hugs. I am, of course, talking about my toy bear. His name is Pooh (but not Winnie-the). He is named in honor of that very famous bear of very little brain.

Yes, I still have my bear. He still hangs out on my bed, although he has been relegated to the foot of the bed rather than the head. He is the head of a whole group of bears that have entered my life in years since. There is the bear I was given after surgery years ago to help me cough. And the bear I received on a job for a job well done. Bears that were gifts from friends. They are his posse and keep him company while I am busy being an adult.

He is old. Very old. Most of his tongue has worn away, part of his plastic nose is missing, there is a splotch of blue paint on the back of his head. Dear Pooh has been through numerous surgeries as I have mended the areas were his fur has worn out. He definitively has that Velveteen Rabbit thing going on. There is a little patch of fabric under his tail that is as new as the day he came out of that ugly Christmas box that was yellow with red figures on it.

My pairing with him was brought about by my godparents (the first set, I had two pair) after my first bear had died tragically in a vomiting incident. That was back in the days when stuffed animals were not washable. It had been a horrible few months during which I had tried to transfer this relationship to other stuffed animals to no avail. When this Pooh arrived (basically he is really Pooh Too) it was love at first sight and we have been together ever since.

Perhaps part of the reason that I was so drawn to thinking of Pooh so hard in the past couple of days is because my godmother passed away recently after a lengthy battle with Parkinson's Disease. I haven't seen her or her husband in many years, but through the best toy I have ever owned they were always a part of my life.

Why do I still hang on to this piece of the past? Because he has been such an important part of my life. I was an only child and he was the closest thing I had to a sibling. It embarrassed my grandparents to know end when I would drag him along to go out to dinner and then insisted the he also have a booster seat to sit in. My mother allowed it because she knew how bored I would be during dinner with four adults.

Pooh was the only emotional support I had during my parent's divorce and nasty custody battle. He was there for me when my mother went back to work and I spent long hours alone. He was always there for everything. Now that my parents have both passed away and I never married or had children, he is still a strong constant in my life. I may no longer need to hold on to him to sleep, or talk my problems over with him, but he is a bit of reliability and stability in my life. Just seeing him spending his retirement years at the foot of my bed gives me a feeling of emotional security.

Pooh has always supported my dreams, both realistic and foolish. He kept me company through my early writing attempts and never tried to talk me out of my dreams of being a writer. For a short time I tried to turn his life into a story -- in it he drove a VW Bug and lived in a house on a corner. While that tale never took off, he didn't take that personally. He has never told me to lose weight, or find a boyfriend, or wear more (or less) makeup. He always accepted me just the way I am. Writer's warts and all.

There. That was a tiny memoir. Now what are you remembering these days?

YouTube for Writers

There are many tools available to writers out there. One that you may not have thought of (but I hope you have) is YouTube. When you stop and say "what would it be like to do. . ." there is an excellent chance that someone did and filmed it. You don't want to use exactly what you are seeing, but use it as a seed you plant in your imagination and let it grow. Chances are that you will come up with something even better.

You can learn what it is like for people who own an exotic pet, how to build a variety of different things, cook, clean, be a jackass, and innumerable other things. Having these things as a visual reference can be much quicker than reading through pages and pages of text. Now is you need to do in-depth research and lots of precise facts you are better off with reading all those pages, but for a quick burst of knowledge a video is just the thing.

I am always hearing writers saying that they are at a loss for an idea for their next project. Another thing you can make use of YouTube videos for is story ideas. While I get the occasional idea for articles I write, it can also make great fodder for coming up with ideas for fictional stories. There is no guarantee that you will come up with a story idea, but think of all the fun you will have doing the research.

You can also scout locations this way. View a variety of world locations to prepare believable descriptions of where you characters live, work, or travel. You can research what people in China say when making a dog barking sound. Find out what it looks like to drive into a telephone pole, jump from an airplane, or descend into deep cave. 

A word of caution here, you can get mired down in looking through videos. Unless you are just browsing randomly for ideas, knowing precisely the sort of thing you are looking for can shorten you searching. Also knowing that you have been looking for too long means that you are on the wrong track can help. Bail on your search and try a different angle. Be sure to use plenty of key words to help narrow your search. It may take some time, but you will learn to tell when your search is going nowhere and stop yourself from wasting more time in fruitless pursuit.

Sometimes the best way is to do an overall Internet search for your topic and then zero in on videos that come up in that search. Along the way you might find other pertinent ideas and information that you may not have realized that you need.

At any rate -- happy watching!

X-Files

I'm not really big on journaling. I know that many people swear by it, but I find it time consuming and I tend to devolve into a list of what I did that day. I can do that by just keeping my to-do lists from each day. When I was a teen they tended to be focused on the latest boy I had a crush on. While that served a purpose, it wasn't all that helpful to me as a writer.

However, there are three things that I do write down and keep a log of.

One of these is a diary of the odd things that happen in life -- big and little -- that don't fit in to the normal pattern of things. I can go weeks, months, or even years between such things. And I do mean odd. If you have been reading my blog you can probably tell what some of them are. For example, I will write about the time I saw a UFO, found a python in my bathtub, locked my keys in the car while they were still in the pocket of the shirt I was wearing, or was charged by a buck while raking leaves in the my yard. I will also keep track of the cat throwing a dead mouse in my face while I was still asleep in bed and of the past life regression therapy I went through. These things are an important encyclopedia of life.

I don't need to keep track of what I had for breakfast or what I felt about it at the time. I do want to capture those offbeat moments. They can even be the more sedate that getting stung by a wasp on the pussy while in my own bathroom. They can be about the day two friends and I went into the mountains and set my mother's ashes free to return to the Earth Mother.

My journaling is for the extraordinary moments of life. The real keepers. These are the moments I will return to when writing in the future. Those other moments happen daily and I can reach out to them at any moment.

Another thing that I will journal about are dreams. I am not into taking them all down, but the ones that stand out are important. I don't need to make a note of the dream where someone was watering my
piñata, but I will keep track of the one about a girl who lost her memory and was only healed by the appearance of the family cat. That is the stuff of literature. I will also keep track of ones that give me insight into myself and my relationship with myself and others. These can teach me not only about myself, but how to write a meaningful dream sequence.

A recent example would be the dream I had in which I had taken up cohabiting with Patrick Jane (The Mentalist, played by Simon Baker). My father (who passed away 14 years ago) was in our apartment having a fit at me for living with him and not being married. I defended myself to him (which was difficult in real life) and my right to be loved. He finally stormed off and I turned back to Patrick, complete with all of my own insecurities about whether it was really possible for anyone to love me. There was another woman somewhere in the picture so I finally asked him if he really loved me. He looked very deeply into my eyes for a long moment before responding "Yes, I do." I was thrilled.

I awoke from this dream with some warm feelings about Simon Baker/Patrick Jane that lasted temporarily. What was more important was that some part of myself that was represented by him had given myself a level of approval that I was desperately needing -- so much so that I shut down the negative voice (Dad). 

The third thing that I will "journal" is the story ideas that come to me. Sometimes they come fast and furious and other times not at all. This is a way to keep a well of ideas to refer to when I need a new idea. I don't need to worry about not having an idea because I have a large record of them. This is especially important with the approach of each November and National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

NaNoWriMo is the annual challenge to writers for them to write a book (50,000 words) in a single month, Many of the writers who do this approach the month of November with trepidation for not having any ideas. This will NEVER be a problem for me. To all of those baffled Nanos out there -- yes, I am willing to share.

Some of these ideas can be kind of strange, but I catalog them all. I will undoubtedly never use them all, but they are there for me should I need them. I do a similar thing with article ideas, but that is recorded by bookmarks for websites.

You will never find me straight journaling about doing the laundry, but you might find me creating a humorous essay about it. That is a different blog post.

Villanelle -- Writing to a Specific Form

Most of you have probably never heard of a villanelle. It is a 19-line poem composed of five tercets and a concluding quatrain. It is a rhymed poem with only two rhymes and two lines that repeat alternately throughout the poem. Sound intimidating? I assure you, it is.

 I know that the bulk of you reading this are never going to write a villanelle, or even poetry for that matter. I am just using this as an example for how your writing -- or anything else creative you do -- can actually be enhanced by having to work within  rigid structure once in a while.

Back in my poetry days I was faced with writing one (ultimately several) and I was a bit taken aback. How was I going to do this?

Having to write to a prescribed form is always difficult. You must take your creative genius, which is vast and wild, and cram a bunch of  into a little box that it doesn't seem to fit inside. It is kind of like learning to pack a suitcase with a maximum of stuff -- you have to learn a new way to fit everything together.

I struggled a lot with this. First of all was coming up with a topic. So I thought about my favorite things. I love rocks and once wanted to be a geologist. So I took that as my subject. Two rhymes only is tricky because you want to choose rhymes that will give you a lot to choose from if you can. So "rocks" was obvious for one and "stones" worked for the other.

This being settled upon I took a sheet of notebook paper and laid out the rhyme scheme I needed to follow:

A1
B
A2

A
B
A1

A
B
A2

and so forth. This helped a great deal -- like having a road map to where I was heading. It turned out that once I created the first tercet I realized that I had finished a good share of the poem because of the repeating lines.

I wriggled uncomfortably and twisted and turned many a word to get the lines just right. At times I felt like I was sweating blood. In the end I was amazed at what I had before me on the paper. It was far better than what I had hoped for.

Mother Ship (a Villanelle)

Here on our great starship of stones,

We oft forget the importance of rocks,

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

The desert wind of the Sahara moans,

Blowing sands that scour pyramid blocks,

Here on our great starship of stones.

Boulders huddled like ancient, hunchbacked crones,

Gathered for one of their gossipy talks,

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

Elegant towers of wind-carved sandstones,

That rise above shepherds tending their flocks,

Here on our great starship of stones.

Down charming streets paved with smooth cobblestones,

Up lichen-covered stairway walks,

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

From the gold and lapis on royal thrones,

To pebbles lining the gullets of hens and cocks,

Here on our great starship of stones –

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

This was my first time writing a villanelle. I entered it into the contest and won first place. When it was read out loud to the members of the Poetry Society of Colorado at the annual awards luncheon there was an audible "wow!" at the end. It made of the struggle worth it. 

By having to follow a tight framework I had had to amp up my creativity to a new level. I had to dig deeper, reach further. I found there the writer I was working to be, the writer I wanted to be. 

Gems and jewels are made from high amounts of heat and pressure. So don't be afraid  of the pressure and constraint. It is good for the writer's soul -- and you never know when you will strike gold.

Udderly Amoosing

Trying to write to a specific topic can be very difficult and challenging. It requires  some serious

lateral thinking. The example that comes to mind is from back when I was writing a lot of poetry and I was faced with writing a love poem. This was a baffling topic for me since I am not exactly a hearts and flowers kind of gal.

Each year the Poetry Society of Colorado would have their annual contests for members. There were twenty or so contests and I became determined to enter every one every year. Unfortunately for me there was a category for writing a love poem. I wracked my brain for days. Nothing was coming to me. I reread the description. ANY kind of love. Hmmmmm. I could work with ANY. What kinds of love were there? I didn't have to stick with the gushy, gooey romantic stuff that is ordinarily associated with a love poem.

So what was love to me? What examples of love did I note around me? Mother and child. Brother and sister. Father and tools. Humans and pets. My stepmother and housecleaning. I was getting closer. Having opened up alternate definitions of love was having an effect on me. From out the the blue I remember seeing a news story of a moose somewhere back east that had fallen in love with a cow.

Those gears in my head started grinding to loudly that the neighbors were complaining. I didn't need some saccharine tome to love. No indeed. I could go with my true strength in life -- humor! So I set to work. Boy, was this gonna be good. And it was. The resulting poem took second place in the contest.
Check it out here:

Opposite Attractions

©2000 by Laurie Kay Olson

The course of true love makes no excuse –

As was the case with a certain moose.

Though I can’t really tell you how,

He fell in love with a Jersey cow.

In the field where she placidly chewed her cud

He stood as though rooted in ankle-deep mud.

The townspeople tried to remove him in vain.

The harder they tried the more it was plain.

He watched his true love with adoring eyes

While she regarded him with mild surprise.

I’ve heard that those two are standing there yet,

As much in love as two species can get.

The moral of this story is simple and sweet –

Love may be found wherever two hearts can meet.

It is short, to the point, humorous and definitely falls into the category of ANY kind of love. I learned that I can write to just about any topic I'm given as long as I keep my mind wide open to the possibilities and don't just say "Oh, I can't do that!" The truth is that yes, I can. If I am really saying I can't I need to be honest with myself and say "This topic is so intimidating that I choose not to." 

Are there topics that I would choose not to write on? Well, certainly there are. I'm not into porn, Goth, punk, heavy metal and so on. I'm not taking some moral stance, I just don't have the background to go there -- not even with lateral thinking.

So before thinking that you can't write about something, take a small step to the right or left and take a look at the topic again. That may be all you need to see the subject in a different way and give you the inspiration to write something wonderful.

Quilts -- A Writer's Love

When I was a little girl my family would make an annual trek to Minnesota to visit family. The change in altitude and humidity usually laid me low for a couple of days, but when I was about four I did actually get sick enough to be put to bed in my grandmother's house.

I lay all alone under the sloping room of the spare room with nothing to do and did not feel at all like sleeping. My eyes strayed across the patchwork quilt. All of the different patterns and colors caught my eye. I started out picking and choosing my favorites.

From there I began making up stories for the different patterns -- which ones came from dresses, which ones from house coats or aprons, a blouse, a shirt -- whatever. Chances are that my mother set me off on this path or I wouldn't have known that quilt fabrics had a previous incarnation. Still, I liked to think that the purple floral print had once been Grandma's favorite summer frock.

It helped me pass the time when I would rather have been outside looking at the hollyhocks in the garden or taking a walk down to the lake with Grandpa -- or my favorite past-time -- "bumping" down the stairs. This was sitting on the top step and proceeding to descend by bouncing down on my butt.

Perhaps this was the start of my fascination for writing and storytelling, but I kind of think I was born hard-wired with the gene for that kind of self-punishment.

After many years that quilt is now mine. It is very old and the fabric is rotting in a few places, but it is still beautiful. I know that it was carefully hand-stitched by my great-grandmother. The pattern is Grandmother's Flower Garden. To me ir represents a history of the women in our family -- a long line of very strong people.

I also know now that much of the material was purchased rather than saved from clothing, though some is.

When my mother passed away and I was going through the many things that my mother had saved from the family I knew that I could not keep much. So I chose to keep those few things that meant the most to me. I kept the quilt and the china-faced doll, and a ceramic collie that my mother had been given as a teen for dog-sitting. Most of what I kept from my mother is the love of writing -- and a disc she left behind with the manuscript of the book she had been writing. Something left for me to finish.

Ancestry -- A Writer's Journey Into The Past

I took several writing classes through Continuing Education at the University of Colorado post college.

They were the best classes I ever had on writing because they were taught by published writers instead of academics. One of the early assignments I was given in the first class I took was to write a recipe for me.

It was an exercise in creativity. It posed the question of how to define myself. We had no other guidance in how to approach the subject. It was up to us.

After due consideration, I chose to use my ancestry to create my recipe. As a writer I couldn't just list all of the countries that make up my bloodlines. I had to find other, more creative ways to same thing.

On my father's side I am Scandinavian. His father was from Norway and his mother was a Swede. So I started with several cups of light from the Lands of the Midnight Sun. Then I added a bit of Viking stubbornness and ambition.

My mother's side was a bit more complicated. While her mother was all German, her father was a mix from Britain (what I call British mutt) and a dash of French.

So I continued with a bit of Teutonic determination and ingenuity. A tablespoon of English stiff upper lip. An ounce to two of Highland second sight. A wee dram of Scottish pride. A splash of Celtic humor. A large dash of Gaelic fire. A pinch of French style and grace.  A trace of Gallic rudeness.

Season with the salt of the earth. Spice with a peppery temper, a touch of sage for wisdom, thyme for longevity, and ginger for spirit. Mix in an old soul and bake at 98.6 degrees in mother's womb for 9 months. Cover with American culture before serving.

Somewhere I still have the actual recipe I created, but it would take a major search of my papers to find it at this point. The instructor liked the result so much that she read the result out loud to the class. It was a delightful moment of validation after years of silent struggle and a stack of form rejection slips (yes, it was back in the days of snail mail).

I have always been intrigued by my ancestry. As a writer that makes a lot of sense. Ancestry is not just about bloodlines and relatives. It is about stories. The stories of the people I am descended from.

What made my ancestors leave their old, familiar lives and journey into the unknown America? I had heard that my great grandmother left a nice board house in Norway to come and that when she first laid eyes on the dirt sod house she was now to live in made her sit down and cry. What was the story of my Irish great-great-grandmother and her escape from the potato famine?

Most interesting was the General. General Robert F. Smith had been a colonel during the civil war at an age when most men were winding down.  So I went on Ancestry.com and began the backwards search. This was far harder than the website would have you believe. The further west you go the sketchier the record keeping. I would run across obvious holes in this history so I would question my mother. She did her best to help me, but she was old enough to be slipping away from many of those memories.

There were places where what she told me did explain some holes. One part of the family tended to go by their middle names. Mum telling me that allowed me to connect some dots that Ancestry.com would never have been able to.

She also told me about her great uncle who was something of a black sheep. He had come to stay with her family when he was ill and no one else in the family would talk to him. My grandfather eventually had to ask his uncle to leave since the family was starting to turn on him as well. After many years Mum had come to realize that this bachelor uncle had been such a family pariah because he had been gay. This explained why his name disappeared from the family records permanently.

I finally made my way back to the General, his wife, and all 14 kids (whew!). When he enlisted to go into the Civil War he had already done his military service. He had chosen to go to war to defend the Constitution of the United States and the rights of all people to be free. The day I found the record of his entering into the army for a second time was 150 years to the day later. So wild!

My frustration started then. There were no further records going back. I had hit a mysterious brick wall that even Mum couldn't help me get past. I cancelled my Ancestry account (I couldn't pay $40 a month for something I wasn't going to be using until I received additional information). All of the information is supposed to still be stored on the website so that I can return later when I am ready.

Last year my mother passed away. Only one of her relatives was able to come to the memorial service -- one Robert F. Smith. No, not the General, of course, but Mum's younger cousin who had been named after the General. The day after the memorial service we sat on my patio and chatted. He had done deeper research on that part of the family. He had gone to the places and looked up records and letters for himself. He lived in Georgia right in the area where the General had led his men in the war.

It turns out that the General is an enigma in the family, not just to me. He had been largely disowned by a father who thought he would never amount to anything. Daddy dearest had actually left all of his money and property to a young woman on the condition that she marry Robert, but maintain control of these assets. They did marry, but somewhere along the drama Robert had changed his name to Smith. The family name may have been Engle or Engel, we aren't sure.

What had he done to tick his father off that much and believe that he couldn't handle money or property? That may remain a mystery forever unless Cousin Bob finds a new thread to pull on to unravel more of the family tapestry.

The Smiths had moved west from Philadelphia to Illinois where they purchased land and started a general store. They made part of their money by selling their land and buying it back again with the ebb and flow of the economy. The man who would amount to "nothing" became an army colonel and after the war he was promoted to General by Ulysses S. Grant. Later he was charged by the Governor of Illinois with the military duty of moving the Mormons out of the state.

Three of his daughters never married, were suffragettes, and opened and ran businesses in a time before women did this sort of thing. One of those daughters became an agent for an insurance firm in Chicago.

We may never know the actual story of the General, but has been an incredible journey finding all of this out. We seem to carry these stories in our cells so maybe one day it will reveal itself to me.

What do I mean by that? I went to hear author Amy Tan speak years ago. She was talking about writing "The Bonesetter's Daughter." She had reached deep inside of herself to pull out the story. When she had completed it she showed the tale to her mother. Her mother freaked out and demanded to know who in the family had blabbed the family secret. It was something Amy had never known about and that the family did not talk about. Still, she had managed to find it within herself.

A dear friend is working with a cousin of hers to write a book based on the experiences of their great-grandmother and her experience of being kidnapped by Indians during difficult times in the early days of Colorado. They find themselves constantly becoming emotional in the endeavor, as though they were experiencing it themselves.

All families have stories like these. Don't assume that nothing ever happened in your family. What are your stories?

Aftermath -- Looking Back at the A-Z Blog Post Challenge

 I did it! I completed the month and all A-Z blog posts. Of course, this did not happen without consequences and rewards.

This last month has been a blast working to meet this challenge. It was surprisingly freeing and, after a year of writing as a professional blogger, brought me back to fun and the reason I write in the first place. It's not that I don't have fun writing professionally, but writing for my own blog loosened me up again. More ideas started flowing. It helped my professional writing start flowing more easily as well.

I took some chances with my writing over the last month that I might not have otherwise taken. I revealed myself in ways I never had before. This led to some family issues, but it also opened us up to a greater understanding of one another.

I gathered more followers to my blogs as well. So that extends the reach of my writing. Some of my posts did better than others. I titled one "Uncensored" and that seems to have put people off. I think people may have assumed that it had something to do with sex and language, which it only did indirectly. It was mostly about writing truthfully and not allowing your inner censor to limit you.

Towards the end of the month the number of reads began to drop off, but I can't say I was really surprised by that. It can be a lot to read.

I plan to do the challenge again. This time I will do it totally on my own and probably not every day. The whole A-Z concept has given me so many ideas to write about that I want to continue. It is like I managed to pry the lid off of my brain and let out the whole can of worms.

I also have two other blogs that are seriously in need of additional material, so I will A-Z them as well.

So join me moving forward as I tackle Ancestry, Bullying, Comedy, Depression, Earthquakes, Falling, Gay Rights, Hoarding, Internal Voices, Just Joking . . .

Xena -- Warrior Writer

I have a Halloween costume for a sorceress that I named Xena -- long before the warrior princess.

She is a seer and a wise woman, a medicine woman, wearing a scrying glass, and carrying a crystal ball and an enchanted staff. She wears her hair in a braid coronet around her head. She has become a whole character, not just a costume. I'm a writer. It's what I do.

There are armies of characters billeted in my head. There are whole worlds, some already discovered and many more yet to be discovered. Fortunately, I do not have costumes for all of them.

There is one world in which I have been spending a great deal of time. I am editing one book that takes place there and planning a second book. The place is the fictional Succotash County, Arkansas, a magical little corner of the world in my head. It is a place were the funny, strange, weird, and bizarre are in play at all times.

I don't know if I was born with all of these people in my head or if I somehow collected them along the way. I suspect the latter. Somehow they appear just when I need them. Kind of like old friends I haven't seen for awhile. I don't spend a lot of time agonizing over character development.For me they come fully developed and usually charged with plenty of attitude.

A writer friend on Facebook recently asked the question of our writing community of how we create characters. There were many different responses, from writing a page on each character to filling out worksheets. I seem to take a more intuitive approach. My response was that I "get to know them as I write." They know who they are and, like making friends,  I find out as I go along.

They seem to come in and exit on cue like actors on a stage. I do not choose how they look, they just appear in my mind. Otherwise how can I explain that my male main character looks like television chef Alton Brown? It I had been thinking it instead of feeling it he would have been likely to look more like George Clooney. To be honest, the Alton Brown look is far more real. I would like to say it was a stroke of genius, but it was more like just a stroke.

The only characters in the book based on real people are the main character (loosely based on myself), the MCs mother (loosely based on my mother), and the cat (based not-so-loosely on my cat). Everyone else is a complete denizen of my mind.

There are some associations to the outside world. Somehow Sheriff Harlan Tuttle is the cousin of a redneck, gravy-loving character that Jay Leno used to do on the Tonight Show. Who knew? These things happen.

Foxworth Memorial Park is a tribute to one of my muses, comedian Jeff Foxworthy. I also named a business for comedian Bill Engvall for the same reason. Just to be clear here, the book IS humor.

The minister's daughter is named Georgia Brown Fanning because she was born at a Harlem Globetrotter's game in Atlanta.

But I digress.

The reality of all of this is that in someways all of these people are me. Much like actors in different roles, writers take on different personas  The trick is that we do it far more often as we spend a few hours writing. Like an actor performing in a one-man show, we can cycle quickly though the characters in a scene. We may take a pause occasionally to regroup our thoughts, then we keep going.

We constantly walk around with this cast of characters in our heads. Sometimes they stop talking to us and we experience writer's block. Other times they all start talking at once and we take up drinking (just kidding).

Sometimes I think of it as having an alternate universe inside my head, or perhaps just a different dimension of this one. We are never alone. (Cue eerie music here.)

U -- Uncensored

A lot of writer's talk about learning to turn off their internal editors so that they can write freely

without that voice in their heads telling them to go back and rewrite that last sentence, or to rethink that last paragraph. The internal editor interrupts the flow of the proper act of writing.

Just as important as turning off the internal editor is turning off the internal censor. This is the voice that stops you in your tracks by reminding you that someone out there may judge you unfairly by what you have written. It is like being shy about your characters having sex or having to pee in the woods. The censor is the voice that creates unnecessary embarrassment.

This doesn't mean that you have to be explicit about every little thing. That can end up being more tedious than offensive, and is a far more heinous crime in the world of literature. Tedium is tolerated by very few people.

You can lead people up to the sex, give them a glimpse, and then discreetly close the door. When they need to pee in the woods they can step behind a tree.

The point is that we all need to pee in the woods once in while. So incorporate it into your story. Let the urine flow. Let it knock the bark off the tree if need be. Let the reader hear the sound of it hitting the scrub brush. Let this identify the zip up. It will not only make your characters more real, but your story will be richer overall. This is the sort of detail of which life is made.

Don't worry about what mom and dad may think of the subject. Neither of them is the writer. They'll learn to live with it. If not, well, then that's their problem.

I do give my inner censor a little more free rein when it comes to swearing. I will use it only when it is germane to the character. This is because I find that many people who use foul language regularly either have poor language skills or are trying to impress or shock the world with it (or both). So I save it for a character tag to fill out particular personalities.

The main place I have had to learn to silence the censor is when dealing with difficult emotions and things that poke around difficult memories for me. The scenes where I have to strip myself emotionally bare in front of the entire world and stand there unabashed in all of my inner nakedness are always the most difficult. I want to run and hide. The inner censor is hollering at me.

That is exactly when I need to stand my ground. That is when my writing really becomes real. That is when I fly.

T -- Taking Time

A lot of people ask me how on earth I find time to write. The answer is simple but not easy: I make it a major priority in my life.

I always hear about those martyrs who stay up later or get up earlier to make time. I too fond of sleep for that. Especially since getting plenty of sleep is one of the keys to creativity. I have a very active dream life, so that gives me a great deal of fodder and inspiration for my writing.

At my last job (with approval from the boss) I would stay after work each evening and write for an hour or two before going home. This part was made easier by not having a husband or children, though the  cat was often ticked off by this habit.

In my home the dishes may go undone for a bit, the trash have to wait an extra day before going out, the sheets don't get changed quite as often as I would like, the litter box can require a major excavation. I have a minimum of houseplants because they will die of neglect. When I cook I try to make enough for several meals. They are little bits of time here and there, but it adds up. My home is never going to win any sort of House Beautiful award.

Perhaps the biggest sacrifice is that I don't get to read nearly as much as I would like. The pile of books I have bought is stacked up on the dresser next to the bed. I am approaching critical mass and the risk of avalanche. The carnage could be heavy if the cat and I are nearby. For now reading is a multitasking event combined with the call of nature.

This all is a tall order since I have really strong hoarding tendencies that I inherited from my mother. I often clean with the hoarding television shows are on so that I can remind myself what I must always  guard against. My sacrifices must be tempered by the reality that I still exist in this world as well as the ones I write about. Living in this world does require a certain amount of maintenance.

Writing is as important as breathing to me and I'm not out to hold my breath. I'm not on this earth to be a literary asthmatic either. I write because I must. It is my calling from God. These things require sacrifice.You don't "find" time. You do without other things in life. I don't go to many movies. I don't eat out a lot. To relax I garden where can work out my writing problems as I plant, water or weed. Most of my closest friends are writers so that they know I may disappear for days at a time.

If I could get my hands on Hermione's Time Turner I would.

R -- Reality Review

One of the first pieces of advice every writer receives is to "write what you know." This can be extremely frustrating advice as you sit an ponder what it is you actually know and how you turn that into writing that someone would actually want to read.

The first thing to understand is to not to take this advice too literally. J.K. Rowling was not actually a part of a magical wizarding world. Stephenie Meyer is not a vampire. Suzanne Collins did not survive The Hunger Games. Tolkien did not live in Middle Earth. These authors still wrote what they knew.

They took what they understood about human nature and human behavior and created realistic characters and placed them into situations that could plausibly happen in the worlds they created. Collins took what she understood about the need of some sections of human society to subjugate others to demonstrate their inflated sense of importance thus creating a dystopian society in which something like The Hunger Games could flourish. Basing the games on an extreme version of today's reality television shows added a strong sense of reality to the tale. She then placed characters that most people can identify with into the situation.

Realistic characters come from creating people like us, complex combinations of heroism and flaws, happiness and sadness, and hot mess a good share of the time. We identify with these characters because they aren't perfect. Harry Potter would not have been the sympathetic character he was if he had not lost his parents as a baby and been raised in a Muggle household where he was treated unfairly. Frodo Baggins would not have been a sympathetic character if he hadn't been the reluctant hero facing his fears at every turn. These characteristics exist in all of us, both hero and villain.

Last year my mother read the first draft of my first novel before she passed away. She hugged the draft the her chest as she told me how much she loved the book, especially how realistic the characters were.

To put this in perspective, the book is about a small community in Arkansas where strange and often paranormal things happen almost daily. The characters take all of these things in their stride as though these things were completely normal. The characters are not perfect, some are deeply flawed.

I have never been to Arkansas, but at the time I started the book I was on the phone everyday for my day job talking with people in Arkansas. So I got to know the people. I love every one of my characters. They are funny but I do not make fun of them. The funny arises from being human in human situations.

I based the main character loosely on myself, so that I knew. I based my main character's mother on my mother. The other characters were people that took up residence in my head and won't leave. Most of them are rednecks of whom Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy would be proud.

My mother sure was. She was especially proud of how real it is, even though one of the characters gets abducted by aliens and meets Elvis long after he died.

I -- Imagination Inspires Invention

I had a teacher in high school who said that science fiction always precedes science. Always. What it boils down to is that the idea precedes the product. As writers we produce creative ideas by the ton. That doesn't mean that all of them are going to fly, but there is a chance that one will stick in the craw of the right scientist or inventor somewhere along the line.

For example, the Great Bird of the Galaxy, Gene Roddenberry, gave us the original Star Trek television series and within that the small, handheld communicator. Within 30 years we had them and called them and called them cell phones. In less than 50 years we have rocketed past mere communication devices and added music, videos, games, maps, Internet, books, and, well, we seem to be hot on the trail of fitting the entire bridge into a handheld device.

If H.G. Wells had not sent a man to the moon, would someone have become obsessed with actually doing it? If he hadn't created a time machine, would people still be trying to do it today?

The other half of this formula is believing that the impossible can be achieved. Many years ago I was working at IBM. A software engineer I worked with told me that personal computers couldn't go any further than where they had gone in the mid 1980s. This was because of the problem with the processor overheating. I could still see the future though and seriously doubted his negativity.

In case you hadn't noticed, we have gone far beyond those old dinosaur computers. So what happened? Just a little thing called superconductivity. Experiments in attempts to reach absolute zero achieved surprising results that led to technology solving the problem with the computers of the day.

Many writers also have a background in science. Kathy Reichs actually is a forensic anthropologist. Michael Crichton studied medicine and science at Harvard. Arthur C. Clarke was an inventor who won an award for creating a satellite communication system in the 1960s. Isaac Asimov was a professor of biochemistry.

The thought processes between writers and scientists seem to have a lot in common. We are the people who ask "what if?" and then spend time figuring out how that would work. We just have different levels of bringing these ideas to fruition.

As writers we are always creating -- even the future.