If Something Should Happen - Darryl Worley

I couldn't get a version of this song to post on the blog, but you can see a good video of it on youtube.

If Something Should Happen

Buddy you and me go way back,
Camp Lejeune, all through highschool,
And before that
So I dont mind telling you I'm scared to death
The doctor's going in on the 25th
Its the same thing my daddy had
Thank God they caught it fast

But if something should happen,
Stop in sometime and say hello to Katherine
You and Mary Anne could always keep her laughing
She's going to need alot of that
Take her out to a movie
Its going to take some time before she's back on her feet
I know you think that I'll be fine and I'm talking crazy
But there's always that chance,
That's why I'm asking,
If something should happen

Little Nathan's growing up so fast
This november he'll turn 10
He wants to play quarterback
Im supposed to coach his team this fall
But I may not get to after all
He's going to need someone to catch a pass
And to throw it back

If something should happen
Oh promise me you'll take that boy out camping
Throw a line out in that water every now and then
Answer any question that he has
Maybe once he gets older,
You can sit and have that first cold beer together
And tell him a couple stories on his father
He's always known you were my best friend
That's why im asking,
If something should happen

I hope I live until I'm 80
And I get to see my son get married
And have babies
And make a million more memories with my wife
Yeah buddy I pray your right
But if its my time to leave
Would you watch over them for me?
If something should happen
If something should happen
mm hmm hmm

-Darryl Worley


Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian

Characters - Where do they come from?

I had a crises with my story project the other day. :-P I have so many versions that reach about 12,000 words and then I turn on them and want to tare them apart. I think I've finally diagnosed some of the problems and we are working on a treatment.


My male characters clear to me, my female ones....so boring!

So, I've been doing some serious thinking. I'm making two poster boards with character sketches, pictures, and anecdotes all around the edges and the plot timeline down the middle. I'm using post-it-notes for scenes and events so I can move them around as necessary.

One of the things I noticed after this critical rethinking and remaking was similarities or oddities in my characters.
First, all my cool guys are fall and thin and fiercely loyal. They either have blonde hair or black hair and are the quite thinking types. Yes, they all have differences, but I had to shake them up a bit.

This story has been in progress for a very long time (at least five years now).
Why are my guys this way?
It's not just this story either. All my heroes are pretty much like this.

There just sort of like....Sherlock Holmes meets Erich Hartmann....

I believe that especially at a certain age, we are very heavily influenced by what we read. I guess Sherlock Holmes and The Blond Knight of Germany really hit me during this time. :-)

My sister and I got out Erich Harmann's biography last night and I was pretty amazed flipping through it how much I'd obviously been influenced.

Other assorted influential characters since the beginning of my scribbling (which pretty much started way before I could spell) include: Sir Percy Blakney, Stonewall Jackson, George Washington, the hares in Redwall, and my brothers. :-)

How weird is it all?

Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian

P.S. For those of you who may not love Germans in general or World War 2 aces in particular and have been to lazy to look up Erich Hartmann on Wikipedia, he was a pretty awesome German Ace.




(And it was okay because he shot down Russians, not Americans, and he was indoctrinated so he didn't know what he was doing. :-) After the war he traveled through England and America and was very sweet to everyone.)

He is the highest ranking ace ever in aerial warfare with 1,404 combat missions and 352 personal victories!
After the war he spent 10 1/2 years in a Russian prison camp, but was eventually sent home. Here's a short hunk of what Wikipedia had to say about him along with a youtube video at the end... If you couldn't tell, I do recommend reading The Blond Knight of Germany. :-)

Imprisonment

After his capture, the U.S. Army handed Hartmann, his pilots, and ground crew over to the Soviet Union on 24 May 1945, where he was imprisoned in accordance with the Yalta Agreements, which stated that airmen and soldiers fighting Soviet forces had to surrender directly to them. Hartmann and his unit were led by the Americans to a large open-air compound to await the transfer. The number of prisoners grew to 50,000. Living conditions deteriorated, and some American guards turned "a blind eye" to escapes. In some cases, they assisted by providing food and maps.^[41]

After being handed over to the Soviets, the German group was split up into groups according to gender. Hartmann witnessed widespread rape and murder of civilians. When the outnumbered Americans tried to intervene, the Soviet soldiers charged towards them, firing into the air and threatening to kill them. Order was later restored, and some of the guilty soldiers were hanged "on the spot" by a Soviet commander.^[40]

Initially, the Russians tried to convince Erich to cooperate with them. He was asked to spy on fellow officers and become a stukatch, or "stool pigeon". He refused and was given 10 days' solitary confinement in a four-by-nine-by-six-foot chamber. He slept on a concrete floor and was given only bread and water. On another occasion, the Soviets threatened to kidnap and murder his wife (the death of his son was kept from Hartmann). During similar interrogations about his knowledge of the Me 262, Hartmann was struck by a Soviet officer using a cane, prompting Hartmann to slam his chair down on the head of the Russian, knocking him out. Expecting to be shot, Erich was transferred back to the small bunker.^[42]

Hartmann, not ashamed of his war service, opted to go on hunger strike and starve rather than fold to "Soviet will", as he called it.^[43] The Russians allowed the hunger strike to go on for four days before force-feeding him. More subtle efforts by the Soviet authorities to convert Hartmann to communism also failed. He was offered a post in the Luftstreitkräfte der Nationalen Volksarmee (East German Air Force), which he refused:

If, after I am home in the West, you make me a normal contract offer, a business deal such as people sign every day all over the world, and I like your offer, then I will come back and work with you in accordance with the contract. But if you try to put me to work under coercion of any kind, then I will resist to my dying gasp.^[42]

[edit]War-crimes charges

Hartmann had gone too far with his resistance. He was falsely charged with war crimes, specifically the deliberate shooting of 780 Soviet civilians in the village of Briansk, attacking a "bread factory" on 23 May 1943, and destroying 345 "expensive" Soviet aircraft.^[44] He refused to confess to these charges and conducted his own defence, which was a waste of time, according to the judge.^[44] Sentenced to 25 years of hard labour, Hartmann refused to work. He was eventually put into solitary confinement, which enraged his fellow prisoners. They began a revolt, overpowered the guards, and freed him. Hartmann made a complaint to the Kommandant's office, asking for a representative from Moscow and an international inspection, as well as a tribunal, to acquit him of his unlawful conviction. This was refused, and he was transferred to a camp inNovocherkassk, where he would spend five more months in solitary confinement. Eventually, Hartmann was granted a tribunal, but it upheld his original sentence. He was subsequently sent to another camp, this time at Diaterka in the Ural Mountains.^[45]

During his long imprisonment, Hartmann's son, Erich-Peter, was born in 1945 and died as a three-year-old in 1948, without his father ever having seen him. (Hartmann later had a daughter, Ursula Isabel, born on 23 February 1957).^[46]

In 1955, Hartmann's mother wrote to the new West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, to whom she appealed to secure his freedom. A trade agreement between West Germany and the Soviet Union was reached, and Hartmann was released along with 16,000 German military personnel. After spending ten and a half years in Soviet POW camps, he was among the last batch of prisoners to be turned over. Returning toWest Germany, he was reunited with his wife Ursula, to whom he had written every day of the war.^[47]

In January 1997, the Russian government, as a legal successor to the Soviet Union, exonerated Hartmann by admitting that his conviction for war crimes was unlawful.^[2]

Brother Wind - Tim O'Brien

Made up my mind to go
Some place so far away, I headed west
Without a sad goodbye
No hugs or tears that way, it's probably for the best
Sent cards along the way
Said I was looking for a brand new life
I never settled down
My wanderlust would always cut the ties like a knife
Sometimes the lonesome wind
Calls out just like it knows me
And on a night like this
When I don't know where to go, he shows me the way

He knows me, my brother wind
He's lonely too and he takes me away

I always looked ahead
I was so afraid that I'd be caught behind
Followed a crooked stream
To places I'd never seen and one more highway sign
Just like some other guys
I count the hours 'til the day will end
But it's not so I can rest
For me it's the time that's best for talking to my friend

Cause he knows me, my brother wind
He's lonely too and he takes me away

Now half my life is gone
The only home I have is open road
My skin is cracked and brown
A mirror to the dessert ground and the dusty wind that blows
I never made a mark
Just scattered footsteps on the shifting sand
Whatever pushes me
It's something only he can understand

He knows me, my brother wind
He's lonely too and he takes me away

Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing - David Morrell

Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing: A Novelist Looks at His Craft
By David Morrell (Ph. D)
Writers Digest Book




Rating: 10!!!!

Readability: 9 (But I love reading writing books :-)

Read it Again: Yes! Several more times!
Recommend it: Yes, to anyone who is serious about getting published or would like to understand literature and writing better.

David Morrell is best known for creating Rambo, but the Rambo most people know isn't exactly his creation. Silvester Stallone is the underdog, the Rambo of the book is a hard, killer machine. The movies are a series, if there was a second book for First Blood there wouldn't be many people alive to play the parts.
If you brushed off Rambo and it's author as mainstream bash 'em up characters, then I challenge you to take another look. ;-)

This book is amazing for anyone interested in writing. He covers basics that will affect your writing while helping you cultivate a unique style. He digs deep into what will change your work and what will change your readers. I think he's an excellent balance between literature and mainstream writing. (He used to be a literature professor.)

Morrell also covers the basics of getting published and shares humorous anecdotes of his own experiences. He shows the doubts, road blocks, and miseries of writing and makes you still want to be an author.

A very inspiring book that will make you want to sit down and get to work. I couldn't set it down I enjoyed it so much. (But then I love reading writing books. :-)

From the Book:

"After storytelling skill and technical ability, the next quality you need is determination. I've known many writers with far better imagination and verbal talent than I have. But they never had a career because they didn't want it badly enough. They didn't do what was necessary, which was to sit down on their chairs and do the work.

Writers write.

They don't talk about writing. They don't promise themselves that, one day when inspiration strikes, they'll start putting words on a page.

They do it."


Even if you don't like Rambo, go out and buy or borrow it. :-)
Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian

Acceptable?

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

Call to Arms - Edmund Blair Leighton

Forever Young - Bob Dylan

This has got to be one of my favorite songs ever! This is also recorded on Tim O'Brien's CD Red on Blonde. I love the way he sings it.
I could only find a very bad live video of O'Brien's version, so I'm going to include that along with the Bob Dylan video. Enjoy!







May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

-Bob Dylan


Sorry Dylan, you are lyric genius, but I like Tim O'Brien's voice better.

Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian