Web Site, Critiques, Writer Madness

Barbara Deming, Writer, my new web site, is coming along nicely. Patricia Spork does such a lovely job and is so patient with a computer illiterate like yours truly, I would highly recommend her to anyone who feels they need a web site. It's about time I do this. Other writers have been telling me for several years that I really need to have a web site, to keep in touch with writers/readers and, I have proscrastinated--a writer's worst habit. But it's taking shape. Now, I have to figure out how to get the newsletter part to all of you who subscribed--since the shared domain won't let me have one there. Trials and tribulations!

Do you belong to a critique group? It's a good idea if you want to have your work published to have others read your efforts. And, if you have a choice, request a "constructive" critique. You don't want to hear that someone doesn't like your theme, the language you've chosen, or the way a character looks. You want to know if the story/article moves smoothly, if the content makes sence, or if the grammar/spelling needs tweaking. And sometimes you have to listen to things you don't agree with.

I try to be graceful when I don't agree--I really do. But sometimes it digs so deep you cry out. In the past few weeks I have been tempted to throw up my hands and never write another word. Why? Because, in critiquing my work, readers with their own axe to grind or ethnic feelings sitting on their shoulders waiting to be knocked off, have decided that I am "racist, not politically correct, and should know better."

In one story I wrote about a man who was quite capable in a criminal way who seemed in other respects to be only capable of working on his old Japanese truck. I was told that was a put down of all Japanese, that I was saying Japanese were dumb. Was that what I said?

One of my new quilt stories is told in the voice of a black child setting out on the Underground Railroad. One critiquer told me that I shouldn't refer to the child as black or colored as that was a derrogatory term; I should refer to someone in the Civil War era as an African-American even though the term had not been invented at that time.

I belong to a snail-mail critique group and am sharing a work-in-progress book titled "Ask Me No Questions." It is a romantic-suspense with the main character as the ex-wife of a mob member. I mentioned the Mafia and was told by a reader of Italian descent that no one wanted to read books where the Italians were stereotyped as criminals. DUH! There was/is a certain segment of that nationality (as well as many others) who were/are members of that group and were/are criminals. It's a good thing Mario Puzzo (spelling ?) didn't listen to such talk or we would have never known "The Godfather."

So, if I want to be politically correct, not be a racist, never stereotype an ethnic group or put my foot in my mouth, I should stop writing these stories that pop into my head. Or only write about the All-American family? What's that? Oh, I guess to do that I will have to forget the Asians, Mexicans, Cubans, or "new" Europeans and simply write about the family as I saw it when I was growing up. Living in a town where the "African Americans" lived in a separate section of town, there was only one Mexican family and the others were white Anglo Saxons, my writing would really be one-sided, wouldn't it?

Directing your attention to the topic of "writer madness"--no person in their right mind would take on: getting a web site off the ground including writing text and digging up info, be responsible for the next issue of an inspirational newsletter, attempt to create booklets (for the first time) for a book faire in September and help design/oversee the construction of a new storage/workshop unit--and at the same time try to continue input on a book and drop into this blog now and then.

No one would try this balancing act except: a mad writer.
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Schedule a time for writing--no matter what is going on in your other life.