Today is my third day following the Book In A Month plan. And, all I can think about is owning an iPad2 – not because I have anything else Apple related – other than an original ITouch that my daughter snarfed and then cracked the screen. The news is doing it's job – or rather Steve Jobs is doing his job making you want more – more – more. And, I need to turn it off and just write – write – write.

The mind is evil with distractions.

My villian has a problem. I can't decide how evil to make him or her. I have a two people making life hard for my protagonist. I even have another outside person brewing conflict so you aren't quite sure where the problem is until the end.

See, I KNOW that building conflict is what creates the tension that makes the story exciting throughout the whole book and causes the reader to read your book until their eyes are drooping at night. Or, they carry it on the plane or to the beach or even ignore guests to finish it.

"Wait- wait – I'm getting to the good part."

But, how do I take my characters and make them more conflicted, more tense when I personally avoid tension and conflict at all costs? I like a happy life. I surround myself by happy people. (See the cool picture of the Apple building. Now that will make you happy just looking at it. Look at all the cool fun dots.)

Evil people – could I interview you? Okay, people who ARE reading this are probably NOT evil because you're MY friends. I need to branch out – or just read more great fiction where masters of the word have figured it out.

Maybe I just need to read my Bible. God's got plenty of examples of conflict, irony and triumph of good over evil in there.

Or, I could just watch the news. PUH-LEEZ stop talking about Charlie Sheen. I am going nuts.

Or, I could go try to wake up my daughters for school. I am certain to get evil looks when I turn on their lights and say in a super chippy voice. "WAKE UP. Time to RISE and SHINE."

You know what gets great ratings – posts that are informative, that guide and entertain. Sorry, this is a bit rambling. I am exercising my blog rights to ramble. It grows the creative mind. I need to work on that too – descriptions. Maybe I'll go somewhere and just sit and describe everything around me.

Ahem . . . mind is wandering back to the iPad2 – great to take with me in my journey . . . I don't need an iPad2.

Mikey Rooney is on the news talking about elder abuse. What a dear old man.

Oh, no, not Charlie Sheen again.

Alright – time for more coffee – more musings . . . more creative description writing. Today, I think I will focus on my settings, my location descriptions. AND, some character development – so I know what motivates each one – and therefore, how those motivations will add to potential conflict and tension and suspense.

Dangers are lurking but where exactly do I point the finger – and then, poke?

Two days out of four and I am full to overflowing. Imagine if I had gone all four days. You'd be picking me up off the sidewalk outside the conference center.

Blown away. Absolutely blown away. The Greater Philadelphia Christian Writer's Conference was such an incredible experience, I am speechless. (Temporary condition, I assure you.)

I talked to authors. I talked to editors. I talked to traditional publishers and self-publishers. A few of them tried to figure out the convoluted seeds of fiction whirling around in my head. I KNOW. Can you believe it? Such patient souls. And, some of them actually seemed to like where I was headed with my epic plans for several multi-series fiction pieces and a couple of non-fiction articles. As I described my thoughts, they helped me make sense of it all and finetune and hone in. It was a beautiful process. At least it was for me. Now, I have to focus – do the hard stuff – butt to chair writing. The real deal.

Of course, then, there's life. Like hurrying out of a great conversation with editor Jesse Florea of Clubhouse magazine, my last of the day, to get home and help my kids set up tents for a sleepover. Life. And there's the trashcans on the curb my husband had to have driven by and never picked up that I saw as I pulled into the drive and the dog poo in my front dining room b/c the kids didn't walk the dog during the day while I was gone. Life.

And then, there's that nagging self-conscious thought: How in the world can I honestly believe I'll write any of these ideas into full books or publishable articles? ME? God, are you sure you are calling ME? And yet, after a week like this after meeting down-to-earth people doing what they love – doing what you want to do, a stronger more powerful voice says – YES I CAN. I can and I will. This is going to happen.

Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Amen.

(And of course, running into Pat Moyer, the speaker at my last prayer retreat and mom of a wonderful woman, Karin, in our church and seeing Kelly of Awesome God Ordinary Girl were extra bonuses for the week! Not to mention getting to know the precious Marti Pieper, Kathi Macias and more!)

Last night, I invited the president of the college where I teach to speak about his weekly column in the local paper. WOW.

After years of writing sermons and weekly Bible studies, Dr. Meyer shared with us that his column is a work of commitment, discipline, creativity, and passionate curiosity. At this point, he has written for more than 365 weeks of "Think About It" and is considering a book with a page for each day. Each year, he publishes a collection of the articles for the year. Each student received one for the 2008 year last night.

Dr. Meyer is not a large man in stature but his interest in the world and intensity for life were bigger than the room last night. He shared both scriptural quotes and ones he appreciated from inspiring authors.

Some of the quotes included:

"If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you." Natalie Goldberg

""Who am I writing for?" & "Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it." (Get on the plane.) William Zinsser

"We are writers and we never ask one (an)other where we get our ideas; we know we don't know." Stephen King.

Dr. Meyer also shared how he writes in spare moments, how writing plays into both his personal and work life regularly and how he uses his love of photography to compliment his work.

Judges 19:30 says "Everyone who saw it said, 'Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!' "

In the same way, Dr. Meyer uses his local column to encourage people to stop, consider, think and ask more questions. He encourages creativity in a godly way that I found truly inspiring.

His four questions we discussed included:

What About Intent?

What About Content?

What About Process?

What About Improvement?

With each point, Dr. Meyer shared stories from his own writing life and inspired students (and ME) to consider each step of the process and be open and transparent with others.

Excellent!

Well, you have heard me talk about all kinds of fun events from the summer (from Zhu Zhu Pets parties to the Philly Moms Blog Launch to meeting Kelly Ripa in support of Ovarian Cancer Research to meeting Billy Ray Cyrus in support of Feeding America and so much more. Whew.)

Now, it is time to get serious about feeding young minds because I am teaching college and I am supposed to be a little serious about it, you would assume or that is at least my theory (systemic, informed set of hunches) about keeping and expanding my job as a professor.

So, why is a dog man’s best friend? I couldn’t have answered that question until our family decided to take the plunge and get a little brown beagle named Carmel.

In my observation, a dog is man’s best friend because dogs don’t get the meaning of “personal space.” They don’t read your expressions and say, “Whoa, bad day, better back off.” No, they come running and jumping and leaping and licking. By the time they have figured out that you might be in a bad mood, your mood has lightened and you can’t help petting their soft squishy ears – or at least that is the case with my beagle’s ears which are incredibly soft. (In fact, I think my beagle has a ear fetish. She has stopped chewing up whole stuffed animals and will only chew off the ears. Weird, huh?)

I mention this concept because I am teaching Communication Theory right now and we are learning about personal space expectations as expounded upon in Judee Burgoon’s Nonverbal Expectancy Violations Model. Burgoon defines personal space as the “invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual’s preferred distance from others.”

Kids are kind of like dogs in that they start off not understanding personal space either – which is what makes them so adorable — because by adulthood, we have learned all the social norms and punishments for breaking  the rules of personal space. We hold back and follow “the rules” lest we are thought of as “weird” or too personal. Kids and dogs are rule breakers. Sometimes, it is a beautiful thing — an ice breaker to the stiff traditions engrained in us old codgers. Sometimes, it is a cause for great distress when someone with bad breath or poor body odor gets in your face. Boundaries are useful sometimes.

And then, there are different expectations in different cultures. Edward Hall, an anthropologist in the 60s, coined the term proxemics, or “the study of people’s use of space as a special elaboration of culture.” Apparently, Americans have four proxemic zones:

1.       Intimate Distance – 1 to 18 inches

2.       Personal Distance – 18 inches to 4 feet

3.       Social Distance – 4 to 10 feet

4.       Public Distance – 10 feet to infinity

When we visit my sister’s house for a party, her Italian in-laws all get out of their seat to hug and kiss you on the check –coming in the house and leaving – men and women alike. Despite growing up in the gracious, huggy South, it took me a couple of visits to get used to this. My family weren’t huggers, much less cheek-kissers. This was a new experience in my learned distance boundaries. I could accept it and run with it or start waving from the other side of the room and ducking out before anyone could reach me. For the sake of personal relations, I hug the closest ones and wave across the room to the rest.  I have had to adjust my nonverbal behavior to conform to the communication rules of a loving Italian family.

Ever watch “Leave It To Beaver.” I know, you have to watch reruns on YouTube now. How about Dennis the Menace? Okay, still before the time of young people today but you get the picture. Some kids are annoyingly ignorant of our personal space and for some, we love them and for some, we would rather they just go away. Why? What is it about the way some kids can enter your space and make themselves welcome while others are perceived differently and told to back off? What about other adults?

Burgoon studied these contributing factors to come up with the violation valence and the communicator reward valence:

Violation Valence – The perceived positive or negative value assigned to a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violater is.

Communicator Reward Valence – The sum of positive and negative attributes brought to the encounter plus the potential to reward or punish in the future.

Studying these factors of communication help people think through what might happen if they act in an unexpected way and get either pleasing or unpleasing results. It helps us to sort out the end-result in our minds and decide what we should do next time. As we interact, we have to learn to adapt to and learn to anticipate future interactions when things don’t mesh with our current expectations, needs or preferences.

If I brush off the love of my children, eventually they might stop running up to hug me, which to me would be sad. I don’t want my children to learn not to hug. I want their interaction with me to be positive. BUT, I do need my personal space when I am getting out of the shower and getting dressed, especially as we ALL get older. I love my children, but I am telling you now, that I will yell at them if they enter into my precious moments of silence and private space. Call me an ugly American, but I do have to have some boundaries.

At the same time, if another person’s children come running and hugging me, I have expectations that we have built some sort of relationship with the parents of those children. Again, we go back to dogs and children and how at times it is refreshing when someone (or some dog) is completely unaware of your expectations for personal space. And then, sometimes, they have to learn boundaries – all of which takes time and more interactions to sort through.

I enjoy learning about these theories and their applications because it does help to see where people are coming from and where we are all going with it– which
has infinite number of possibilities.

What do you get when you combine a local columnist, a retired reporter, a well-established jazz blogger/copy editor and a novice mommy blogger? A writer's group and no loss for words!

I had the incredible pleasure to be the novice mommy blogger in this group of seemingly normal people with pasts that blew me away. I was in hog heaven. I was able to get valuable advice for the storyteller essays I have begun writing for a site called Story of My Life.com.

Here is a story I wrote about a childhood experience of a previous co-worker who was backstage at the 1964 World's Fair. Friday night I spent an hour interviewing a woman researching slave genealogy. I am hoping her story will be up by the end of the week.

 A couple of things our group discussed involved interviews and other writing elements such as:

1. Use a recorder and have a back up.

2. When on the phone, use the speaker phone with the recorder.

3. If you don't have these devices, shorthand still works.

4. Writing narrative after an interview is harder than Q & A but of course, very doable.

5. Use life's anecdotes to research and create whole new articles.

6. When submitting, make sure you have rewrite or first rights.
    * rewrite rights allow you use the same material in another way.
    * first rights mean the publication prints the material the first time and you are allowed to submit the material as a reprint to other sources.
    * all rights (NOT a good option) means you can never use the material again. The publication owns every part of the piece to reprint, reproduce, harvest, etc.

7. You are not wasting your time getting an English degree in college even if everyone around you keeps asking what you will do with it.

What this group taught me more than anything was that if you want to be inspired in your writing, go to where the experienced writers are and make friends, which is true of the blogging world and really any industry where you want to improve. SheSpeaks writer's/speakers conference was another wonderful place to be inspired but this group was free and local which fits my budget quite nicely!

PS. Did you know that my spell check has yet to accept the word "blogger"? Shouldn't that be in our dictionaries by now? I mean, hello smart dictionary people!