A Writer's Life Defined

I believe people fail to realize writers LOVE words. They love the sentences when words come together. They spend a lot of time trying to create one perfect sentence that will grab ahold of every reader and become part of the mainstream venacular. 

Writers are akin to philosophers because they spend countless hours pondering subjects searching for unforseen new ways to spin old and sometimes overused subjects. They are always wondering "what if."

But writers are more than story tellers and philosophers. Many are historians, armchair scientists, detectives, criminals, women who are men, and men who are women. They are whoever their story needs them to be to give the reader a book worth reading and once opened, never put down.

Writers are made of thick skin, rubber skin, skin of armor. They are made of these many different skins because they have to be in order to be a writer. People read their work they may have toiled years to get just right and reject it, criticize it, mock it, have contempt for it, or declare they are a much better writer than they are. Writers are not weak in any form of the word. Their spine has to be made of the material of Iron Man's suit each time they present their BEST work to the public to be adored or trashed. It takes real nerve to be a writer.

If you are lucky enough to know a writer, aren't you amazed at how they can form a character in their mind, give the character a detail rich home, a tragic or eviable life, a love found or a love lost, and a life altering choice in their life that would be difficult for any normal person. Writers create crises and also solves them. How good are you at creating your own crises and solving them?

A writer stares at a blank page on their computer screen, and creates an entire world. How can they do this you may ask? Because a writer's brain is never really at rest. They are constantly thinking. Their imagination is constantly triggered with ideas, plot twists, or new imaginings from everything and everyone they encounter in their day. I know even while waiting to go into surgery, I was thinking about crafting a operation scene in a work in progress I was writing. I was taking mental notes on everything medical and would have loved to have had a pen and paper handy to jot down how I would describe my operation scene in my work.

The five senses are crucial to a writer. Writers have to impart an experience to their reader. How a lover looked, smelled, felt, tasted, and sounded. I know you are saying you can do that with your own love interest. But does your love interest have the ability to make thousands, hopefully, millions of the opposite sex reader desire them? Writers have to dig deep into sexuality, sometimes heavy handed (almost pornographic), at at time with the lightest touch to leave the reader longing. I guess writers are also sex experts or at least romantics.

Writers are magicians. Their aim is to entertain the reader, surprise the reader, shock the reader, and never let the reader know the secret to their magic. They take the ordinary and do wonders with it and the lucky few can perform something never seen before. Writers are magical.

Before I forget, I must add writers are psychologists. Psychologists study cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior by observing, interpreting, and recording how people relate to one another and to their enviroments. They use their findings to help improve processes and behaviors. To write about humans one must understand people. Using their knowledge of human behavior, writers make you love, hate, or even feel indifferent about characters in a book. Many books take the reader on a journey discovering good and bad things about the human psyche. Writers make the the reader relate to heroes and villians tapping into the readers emotions. The reader may see themselves in the characters artfully written about in the pages and decide to make the same or opposite changes just as the character/characters did. Writers can inspire, encourage, and give hope to their audeience. Writers draw out the reader's smiles, tears, anger, sympathies, compassions, and even hatreds. 

I started writing twenty years ago and as most writers know, my first books were crappy. I loved the subject matter of my books but my writing skills were really bad. Fast forward to present writer Dorothy, and I'm much better. The one thing I have learned is that writers continually sharpen their writing skills. Their writing becomes better due to critism, helpful feedback, just continuing to write, and from having their work published. The win - PUBLISHED! But, nothing is certain in a writer's life. One book can be wildly successful and they are heralded as genius and the next book is a flop and the public says they were never actually talented.

So why do writers write? Because writers love words. They love the sentences when words come together. They spend a lot of time trying to create one perfect sentence that will grab ahold of every reader and become part of the mainstream venacular. They are magicians with a story to tell. To all my writer friends, never stop making MAGIC.

Please share, like, comment, and follow. Thank you. 

You can do it too.

FAMOUS QOUTES FROM CLASSIC LITERATURE

• “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

• “I have been bent and broken, but— I hope— into a better shape.” —Charles Dickens, Great Expectations 

• “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” —Truman Capote, Breakfast At Tiffany’s 

• “The thing is—fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.” —William Golding, Lord of the Flies 

• “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 

• “Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 

• “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick 

• "It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present" —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

• "It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it." —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 

• “If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory.” —Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

• “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” —Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

• "Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs." —Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre 

FAMOUS QOUTES FROM POETRY

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning.” —Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

• “To be or not to be: that is the question” —William Shakespeare, Hamlet 

• “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the road less traveled by” —Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken 

• “Every time I travel I meet myself a little more.” —Yrsa Daley-Ward, Coordinates 

• “Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without words And never stops at all.” —Emily Dickinson, Hope is the Thing With Feathers 

• “You can trodme in the very dirt, but still like dust, I rise.” —Maya Angelou, Still I Rise 

• “Be an outcast, Be pleased to walk alone.” —Alice Walker, Be Nobody’s Darling 

• “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 

• “To live a little better and  always be forgiving, to add a little sunshine to the world in which we are living.” —Helen Steiner Rice, A New Beginning 

• “Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man,But soon or late the man who wins Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!” —Walter D. Wintle, The Man Who Thinks He Can 

FAMOUS QUOTES FROM ROMANTIC LITERATURE

• “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 

• “If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.” —George Orwell, 1984

• “Who, being loved, is poor?” —Oscar Wilde, A Woman Of Importance 

• “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further.” —Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

• “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

• “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” ―Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

• “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” —Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

• “We love the things we love for what they are.” —Robert Frost, Hyla Brook

• “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.” ―Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

• “I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.” ―Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

FAMOUS QUOTES FROM CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

• “Promise me you’ll be braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think.” —A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh 
• “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” —Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse 

• "Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow." —Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden 

• “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

• “The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.” —L. Frank Braum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

• “The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.” —Shiamin Kwa, Mulan

• “The more he gave away, the more delighted he became.” —Marcus Pfister, The Rainbow Fish

• “But all the magic I have known. I’ve had to make myself.” —Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

• “Real isn’t how you are made, It’s a thing that happens to you.” —Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit 

• “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” —Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You! 

• “Never hurry and never worry!” —E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web 

• “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” —Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables 

A WRITER'S LIFE: Tim Cagle

 

Have you heard the saying, Indecent Proposal? Well, author, Tim Cagle, had an "Indecent Rejection." Tim is the first of hopefully many writers I will be featuring on my blog in a segmaent tiltled, A WRITER'S LIFE, in which I interview writers and how they deal with the hills and valleys that come with a writer's life. 

Even though Tim is one in a million in his writing, he is also one of thousands of writers who have received the dreaded rejection letter from agents and publishers. But thankfully, he was not deterred from creating magic with words. What he did after reading the rejection letter is probably something some of us would love to do also (Or has done?).

I hope you will be inspired and encouraged in your writing journey after reading his interview. Make sure to check out his contact information at the end of the interview.

1.  I have been a writer since the 1990’s.  I was a medical malpractice, products liability and wrongful death attorney for decades and began to write as a way to share stories about clients I could not help because the law or the facts were against us. Unfortunately, at that time, I was working 100 plus hours a week and did not have the time to bring my books up to publishable standards until I retired.

2.  I have written two medical/legal thrillers, Unexpected Enemy and Class of Two, as well as one book about songwriting, Whispers from the Silence, based on the time I shut down my law practice after I passed the bar and went to Nashville to write songs. My big break never broke and I learned I would always be a songwriter trapped in a lawyer’s body.

3.  I have lost count of the number of rejections I have received. Most of the time, agents did not even provide the courtesy of a reply, and I consider that to be a form of rejection.

4.  The worst rejection I received was from an agent regarding my most successful novel to date, Class of Two. It is the story of two lawyers, one black and one white, ex-college roommates and football All-Americans, who reunite in Boston to go to trial against the country’s leading heart surgeon. They were the first black and white teammates to live together in Texas in 1964, during the height of the Civil Rights movement. It highlights what the turbulent 1960’s were like, and how the friendship of two men could overcome the evils of society.

I sent my manuscript to an alleged agent who wrote me back a scathing review. It was highlighted by the words, “I never knew one football player who was smart enough to go to law school, let alone two!” I was at my fiery, trial lawyer, take-no-prisoners, litigation self and wrote back to him the following, “Thank you for pointing how naïve I was to think that football players could have two separate IQ points to rub together. I am now on a quest to inform the following individuals that they are too stupid to survive, 1. Byron “Whizzer” White, J.D., University of Colorado and Pittsburgh Pirates (now Steelers) running back and US Supreme Court Justice, 2. Pat Haden, Rhodes Scholar, former USC and Los Angeles Rams quarterback, 3. Dr. Frank Ryan, PHD in Mathematics, former Cleveland Browns quarterback and considered a genius in geometric function theory, 4. Alan Page, JD. Former Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman and now Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, 5. Kris Kristofferson, Rhodes Scholar, Army Ranger, Pomona College end and prolific songwriter, and 6. Nick Buoniconti, J.D., corporate attorney and a graduate of Suffolk University Law School, my alma mater. I told the agent I would inform the foregoing individuals he considered them too vapid to exist and they should immediately withdraw from societal interactions.

5. The best way to bounce back is to keep writing!  This is the most subjective business I have ever seen. It is mostly based on guesswork and despite their frequent and multiple failures, even a bad agent occasionally guesses right.

6.  My best advice for writers is to be careful to whom you listen. Many writers consider agents to be god-like figures and all-knowing gurus, when in fact, they are often self-appointed pseudo experts. I once had an agent tell me a scene I wrote about a lawyer’s first meeting with a new client lacked form, originality, scope and substance. I told her that I was at a significant disadvantage because I only had twenty-five years of law practice and trial work upon which to base my descriptions, and would do my best to imagine how a Hollywood lightweight would write the scene.

Also, never forget that most agents have twenty-something year-old assistants whom they rely on to screen a writer’s work. I was also an Evidence professor for 25 years and have some insight into how the twenty-five-year-old mind works. Most consider someone of my maturity to be an irrelevant dinosaur and consider Taylor Swift to be a goddess songwriter. I have had conversations with them about GIFTED songwriters like Smoky Robinson, Jim Webb, Norman Whitfield, Jim Croce and John Fogerty and always ask how they would have handled Taylor’s insightful lyric about how “he didn’t like it when I wore high heels”, and wait for them to look at me with the same insipid glance as the agent who told me football players were too dense to do anything but run through a wall.

Finally, do not get discouraged. My success came after I abandoned the search for an agent as I can read and interpret my own contracts. Also, when it comes to agents, always consider the source. If the chance comes to become the next J.K. Rowling, Toni Morrison or John Grisham, make sure you have a top-notch advisor by your side. If success never comes, pull out every drop of fulfillment you can because you were able to so something few people can, finish writing a book.

Above all, keep writing and stay safe,

Tim Cagle, J.D.,  an ex-linebacker who made it through law school so I could deal with arguing with expert witnesses, after I finally stopped trying to run through walls.

PLEASE take the time to visit Tim's platforms, check out his work, and share with friends and family 

Twitter and Instagram:  @timcagleauthor

Facebook and LinkedIn:  Tim Cagle 

UNEXPECTED ENEMY https://goo.gl/joxZLH woman has interracial child after clinic gives her STRANGER’S SPERM;

CLASS OF TWO https://tinyurl.com/y2bsfgkt 2 lawyers, 1 black, 1 white, ex-roommates and football All-Amercans vs ELITE HEART SURGEON!

WHISPERS FROM THE SILENCE https://goo.gl/EVvYQZ two songwriters fall in love in Nashville & write songs by waiting for silence to whisper the lyrics....

***WANT TO BE FEATURED?*****

It's simple. Contact me at: rizerfall@yahoo.com