Who of you struggle like me with “keeping it simple, stupid,” and not waxing too literary? The complaint I hear most often… I love your prose, but I had to reread it. Well, I’m writing romance novels. No one should struggle anywhere at any time reading any scene or dialog. I believe I’m making strides these days and that is thanks in part to short insightful articles from Writers Write like this one.
Check it out. After you mull over the idea of distilling your writing into statistics like the ones provided in this blog, investigate subscribing to a platform like AutoCrit, which is the one I use, or an equally popular competitor like ProWritingAid. You won’t believe how much and how quickly you can tweak your weak spots and hone your strengths.
In the early days, I scoffed at the readability statistic category. “I have to dumb down my writing?” I grumbled to myself. This article really helped me understand what readability is all about. There’s always poetry when I have the urge to play with pretty words, which I’ve been dabbling in this year and enjoying more than I imagined I would.
If you’d like to learn more about the Dame herself, the image links you to an excellent article about her life, and PBS has a marvelous documentary, Inside the Mind of Agatha Christie.
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Well, I took another step in this amazing writing journey, tiny but sure. I’ve been wanting to do a reading of a story, and what better one to start with than Adrift No More, a nanofiction nugget at 250 words. I wanted to give it a try before investing in fancy equipment, but it’s pretty amazing what you can do with the basics.
I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please like and subscribe to my channel. That would be amazing and so appreciated.
I’ve created a page for my videos for future reference, but here is my one an only video to date for your convenience.
In my bio, I call myself a multi-crafter. I even share photos of my works because I can’t help myself.
In simple terms, it means I engage in multiple crafts. But there are layers to this label. Maybe levels is a better word. Some love all things fiber (the yarn hoarders). Some love all things needlecraft (cross stitching, embroidery, needlepoint, etc.). Some love mixed media because you can hoard every kind of medium found in traditional art stores or out in the world if you’re one of those who love to repurpose discarded things.
Then, there are the ones like me who become obsessed with all of the above either at separate periods in life or all at once. See what I mean? Layers. These are my main obsessions. There are others I won’t bore you with. Ironically, writing has been the cheapest craft of all and takes up way less space in my craft room!
I have enjoyed every crafting journey over my rapidly growing decades. But the one I went the most crazy for (while also engaging in knitting and crocheting) was the modern cross stitch wave (as opposed to the 80s wave and the 90s wave I also went crazy for… in bursts). The period started somewhere around 2014 with the first YouTuber stitcher creating a “Flosstube” channel. The stitchy video sharing blew up and reached a peak around 2018 or 2019 (which is where I came in) and is still going strong.
This fun channel belongs to a hard-working wife and mom in Pennsylvania. Karla is listed in my acknowledgments in Tigris Vetus because she’s also an avid reader and did an ARC read for me. I’ve been following her since 2019 (from my crafty account) and when I sent her signed books, she kindly featured them in her latest video.
This is the crossover part. The layers. The levels of multi… the obsessions that make a community.
Karla’s channel is called Craft_Adictk. She likes to work on full coverage, massive projects, and they are amazing.
Other amazing stitchers who have influenced me…
Mother and daughter, Pam and Steph of Just Keep Stitching. I have a T-shirt with their faces on it. They’re up to 350 plus videos with thousands of views.
Ellen Reid of Crash Test Dummies fame shares her Maximum Cross Stitch Power Hour. Talk about multi-crafting! She has recently become a designer of vintage samplers in between touring with the band.
Mostly, I felt the need to talk about a craft where the obsession has waned a bit since my Pod People took over my brain. I miss it. The obsession that is. I still stitch in my rare downtimes. But instead of rotating twenty projects, I’m rotating about eight. There are even layers in the amount of the obsessions inside the obsessions.
Happy stitching and happy writing or whatever craft is in the air tonight.
Oh and that 40-year obsession with cross stitch that keeps cropping up. It finally resulted in a finish for a project I started for my dad during the first craze – Finished in 2020 and fully finished (the term stitchers use to mean framed or otherwise finished for display) by my stepmom in 2022.
I didn’t get into the final rounds, but I made the most points to date in the five Writing Battle competitions I’ve participated in since Fall 2022, earning an Honorable Mention, so it’s worth mentioning! And sharing.
Each contestant participates as a judge in the Duals by reading ten fellow participants’ stories, two at a time. You must pick one of the two, which moves both along to the next dual, and they either drop out or earn points along the way. Your story undergoes the same peer judging by ten participants, hopefully earning points in its genre. There are four genres and you only compete against your own.
Once the dual rounds are complete, the stories are divided into houses, ranked from 1 to 10 (10 being the top score), and moved to the final 64, then 32, and so on until professional writers select the finalists. There is a nice cash prize.
You can see above that my genre was Inanimate Romance. I love the imaginative prompts in these contests… and romance! Color me inspired!
You can find my past WB stories on my Short Stories page where they have been fleshed out a bit more, or the raw stories as submitted in my WB profile. Here is Adrift No More.
Come to me, my undulating emerald darlings. I am here, secure against this rocky cliff, waiting… Wanting.
You are no longer anchored to life. Let the turbulent sea drape you across my bent knees—my rambling elbows—my strong shoulders. Entangle your sensuous arms around my neck—your long, soft legs around my trunk. Fill my reaching fingers with your flowing strands.
Sense my strength and determination yet know I cannot endure if only one of you finds your way to me. I must have all who are lost.
Never will I refuse access, my darlings. I will hold you close and protect you in this ending between rising tides. There can be no satisfaction until I am quenched by thousands of your salty tears and doused in the collective pungency of your dying hours.
I am wood, once a mighty cypress rooted to the earth. Torn loose by an angry storm on a bitter day. Made to topple into the sea and set adrift through the ever-changing tides. Stripped of my external glory, pounded, battered, and finally… hewn into your loving shelter. My purpose is to cherish each of you wrenched so cruelly from your vast flowing bed by yet another craven tempest.
We will show these gods of the sea that even as they diminish us with their savagery, they cannot deprive us of our profound connection, our collective joining, our chosen finale.
Yes! That’s it. Hurry now. Embrace me, my lovely darlings. High tide is near.
D. L. Lewellyn
I think this one will stay intact.
The night the contest started, I returned home late after a long drive from my hometown where I spent a week with my dad who was recovering from a procedure. I never expected to have the energy or brainpower to write. When I saw the cards I was dealt (above), I pulled up a blank document and began. I finished an hour later. Then, of course, I polished it up multiple times until submission 40 hours after that.
Adrift No More earned six of the ten points.
The gist of my feedback was that the story read more like poetry or mythological lore. Some thought it too prosy, the words too complicated, and advised a simpler vocabulary. It was called eerie twice, once in a good way and once in a stalkerish kind of way. Hey, I was trying to get that Hoarder prompt in. I guess it worked.
A favorite commenter excerpt was, “WOW—what a poetic, sensual portrayal of seaweed finding driftwood. Your vivid, tactile description gave me chills!” Another, “When you open with this: Come to me, my undulating emerald darlings, I knew at the very least it was going to read beautifully. And hooboy did you not disappoint. This is a love song for the ages. It gives me old Greek god vibes, maybe even The Odyssey.”
Let me know what you think about the passionate call to dying seaweed from a lonely piece of battered wood who craves connection and love.
If you would like to go behind the scenes of this amazing contest platform and meet the creators, I’ve interviewed Max and Teona Bjork twice on my Spotlight.
Comments welcome! Give my stories a read and feel free to sign up for my newsletter where I make sure to offer you entertaining content and a free story to download.
As tragic as forest fires are and as scary when they’re two miles from your home, watching our heroes at work expertly flying so many types of aircraft is a privilege and a truly staggering sight. We have been watching from our deck and will never forget it.
We live at 5,000 feet in a high desert valley and face the eastern slope of Mt. Rose which rises 11,000 feet. The helicopters and huge tankers (even the Global 747 Supertanker for one staggering load of retardant) have been executing stunning maneuvers against that backdrop as they repeatedly haul and dump retardant or water from our valley lake.
This small body of water (made famous on the TV show Bonanza in the opening credits) sourced from the mountains it is currently aiding makes us more fortunate than our California neighbor who has fought over 6,000 wildfires this year alone.
The blazes in California have consumed nearly a million acres, including one huge one in July that burned so fast, NASA is studying it.
My home escaped the evacuation call only because the winds blew the the Davis Creek blaze northwest. We along with 14,000+ customers had our power shut off as an emergency measure. Roads have been closed, cutting off access. Again, we were the lucky ones who got electricity back within 24 hours. Around 3,000, mostly in areas still under evacuation, have not.
Sadly, 14 structures have been lost, and just as devastatingly, so have vast swaths of the mountainside. It started low in a campground, a local treasure, on Saturday afternoon when our infamous summer zephyrs blew in and it has been climbing up the mountain since, heading towards Mt. Rose Ski Resort and north towards many south Reno communities.
Our forests are burning out of control every summer all through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Cascades, and the Rockies. So much treasured country in Canada has been devastated that it blows my mind.
As of October 6, 2023, 45.70 million acres (18.496 million hectares) had burned in Canada due to wildfires. This was the result of more than 6,000 fires, which was the most destructive wildfire season ever recorded in Canada. The area burned was larger than England and more than double the 1989 record.
The 2023 wildfires caused billions of dollars in property damage, displaced thousands of people, and released air pollution that traveled as far as Europe and China. The wildfires also released nearly four times more carbon than global aviation.
In 2024, a little under 4 million acres have burned, which is below the long-term average for this time of year.
The California Dixie Fire ravaged the Sierras during the summer of 2021 when I was writing Books One and Two of The Starlight Chronicles. Our valley suffered a staggering 400+ air quality index for weeks, but we could only hurt for all the towns so severely affected. The disaster was the result of an arsonist, a college professor, who started multiple fires often right behind the firefighters, blocking them between blazes, until he was caught. Nearly a million forest acres burned along with wildlife, an entire town, and old-growth forests that will never recover in our lifetimes or generations to come.
Before it grew to nearly 1m acres and became the first known blaze to crest the Sierra Nevada, the Dixie fire destroyed Greenville in about 30 minutes, wiping away more than a century of history, displacing hundreds of residents and inflaming fears in a region already shaken by years of deadly fires. The Guardian, 2022.
One thing you will note from all of these facts, very few lives have been lost. And thousands of homes have been saved. That is due to the diligent, tireless efforts of the people on the frontlines, on the ground, and in the air.
I published Ursus Borealis and Drago Incendium in 2021 and dedicated them to the firefighters. They are truly my heroes, equal to the fiercest warriors of old, and I want to thank them again today.
I shot this zoomed-in video with my phone from my deck. It gives you an idea of how far across the mountains the fire has traveled. All those pink spots are retardant.
So many clever, eye-catching Insta posts sail through my fingers on any given day. I try to support as many bookish accounts as I can, especially for fellow indie authors. I’ve met some amazing writers this way and even interviewed a few of them. I’ve also enjoyed engaging with readers whose sincere joy is sharing a good book, a newly discovered author, or old favorites.
I never know when a completely new and unique opportunity might present itself and am always delighted when it happens.
Granted, I might have to carefully weed my way through the accounts trying to lure authors into paying for scam services, but it is worth it to find those who are truly dedicated to helping others enjoy a bookish experience. I recently collaborated with such a person, a fellow writer and avid reader residing in Belgium.
Chantal is opening a bookshop and has invited indie authors around the globe to supply it with books. She is also working with indie craft creators to provide bookish delights like stickers, bookmarks, candles, and anything else her customers will enjoy during a visit. But it’s more than just shopping. Chantal is offering indie book tour experiences.
That’s the lovely, unique idea that drew my interest. Check out her online shop and discover ways to relax in a magical forest of books in a little shop in Belgium. It struck my fancy to have my books end up there. Maybe one day, I’ll get to visit in person.
I am aware that we have a whole month to go until fall starts. But it’s my favorite time of year, so I get a little excited about this time in August, especially as the heat finally got knocked down yesterday by some lovely (albeit blustery windy) rainy weather.
That meant it was a day for binge-watching Hitchcock movies featuring Grace Kelly (thank you TCM) and working on an old Diamond Painting WIP that keeps calling me from my craft table. Three years and nearly 65% finished! Ouch.
Yes, that’s what happened to my avid crafting after I discovered the joy of writing fiction. But I manage to have days like this on occasion when I bring out my dozens of cross stitch, knitting, and crochet WIPS and enjoy Audible or TCM while I craft away. Those days increase in the fall because well, the days get cozier for couch potatoes like me.
Still, my pod people (aka my story characters who I like to say were seeded in my brain by aliens because what else explains their takeover) are with me. Some kicking back and relaxing like I am, some hatching their next scenes or new chapters, and many clamoring for a finish. If the truth be told, these days of mindful crafting unleash my pod people like nothing else can. I just need to keep reminding myself to take these breaks from writing their stories.
Our brains are a remarkable thing.
What’s your favorite time of year or way to relax?
I love the short, helpful articles I get each day in my inbox from Writer’s Write.
I thought I’d share this one about using the five senses in your writing, starting with the quote at the beginning. It so totally resonated!
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekov
Sixteen clever words, and I finally get it! How are you at using the senses in your writing? Any great tips? Writer’s Write pulled the quote from another one of their great articles, Literary Birthday – 29 January – Anton Chekhov
Well then, check out Part 1 of Pixie Dust and Stud Collars in my August Newsletter. Sign up to get Part 2 delivered to your inbox. Let me know if you like reading installments like the old days of pulp magazines. I know I do.
It was happening—in that wavering haze that made Shannon think of a desert mirage—if the desert was packed full of people, had a roof, and was the size of a giant basement. A Mirage. Humidity. Maybe a special effect manufactured by the band.
Those were the preferred explanations in the beginning, but no more, not after witnessing the phenomenon three times. That didn’t mean she had an answer…
By D. L. Lewellyn 