Toward Choosing a New Anthology

 Selection Process  1 Response »
Feb 122015
 

I said I would use ten obliques without knowing how to choose the ten, so I decided to use every fifth one in the list. Therefore, my considerations are these:

  • What does it look like from above or below?
  • Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is?
  • What is the very first thing to do on it? The seventh?
  • Which season of the year suits it?
  • Who is the villain in the mystery?
  • What do I actively not want to do? Why?
  • Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so?
  • What can I do in the next minute to advance this project?
  • Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?
  • What has convinced Henny Penny the sky is falling?

And the issue to be resolved using these questions? The focus of the tenth Silver Boomer Books anthology. By definition, the anthology will be a collection of memoir and nostalgia in the form of prose and poetry from a wide variety or authors all over the world. By tradition we will have four editors for the book, and some of those have been from outside for the last three anthologies. Those already published are described in the previous post.

  1. What does it look like from above or below? It’s obvious utilizing arbitrary obliques in a somewhat boxed in context can get interesting. Above? I think of Flashlight Memories where the idea is a child hiding under the covers reading after bedtime. What’s above that? Certainly The Harsh and The Heart – Celebrating the Military with the jets flying in formation on the cover. Ideas coming from those could be other childhood activities that affected adult lives and other honored professions such as teaching and first responders.
  2. Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is? Could the anthology be about items not in normal use in the 21st century but central to our past? Breadboxes perhaps, but record players, typewriters, Green Stamps, the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue, flashbulbs, slide rules, milk bottles on the porch…
  3. What is the first thing to do on it? The seventh?  Find a subject? Find editors? Structure a call for submissions? Actually this is the first thing, looking for a subject. The seventh? Without actually counting, I’ll say a call for submissions. This oblique seems to miss the mark on this issue. On to the next.
  4. Which season of the year suits it? We’ve done an anthology on holidays throughout the year in A Quilt of Holidays. Would one on seasons work? One on months? Weather? Weather-related activities?
  5. Who is the villain in the mystery? Hum. An anthology of real-life mysteries? The grouchiest person I ever knew? Evil people? (Do I get veto power now or must this stay chain of consciousness?) So, good people I didn’t get at first, the good in people I didn’t like?
  6. What do I actively not want to do? Why? Well, if we were to do an anthology around songs that meant a lot to us, there would be a terrible copyright issue to address, and I’d avoid that at all costs because of that cost in time and – perhaps – cash. But we could do one on quotations that touched our lives.
  7. Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so? Well, Cup of Comfort bit the dust but Chicken Soup is going strong – 250+ titles. SBB author Madonna Dries Christensen has a call for submissions for a Serendipity anthology, and NYMB (Not Your Mother’s Book) with SBB author Linda O’Connell has ten titles at his point. Silver Boomer Books is in great company and has a role to play in the genre. Again, no real meat to answer the query.
  8. What can I do in the next minutes to advance this project? I could keep on writing here if I didn’t have to take the dog to the groomers in 22 minutes. Okay, I can finish this post. I can continue with the give-away of SBB books this month. But I need to – and shy away from – reach out to others who can expand the reach of this blog and therefore of Silver Boomer Books.
  9. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?  Writing the oblique I didn’t think of calling on the dead, but the first I think of is my grandfather, Rhapherd T. Breedlove. I’ve got some of his writings posted on my genealogy pages. What could I learn from Pop? One thing would be to solicit verbal stories from some people perhaps. Pop wrote some great family history but when he sat down to write for publication, it lost the heart and soul of his just telling the story, orally or in letters or sermons. A collection of letters is a possibility. Or sermons. Nope. Don’t want to read the ones I wouldn’t want to publish. Spontaneity is what comes to mind: Pop telling the stories from the pulpit and Grandmom, from the choir loft, correcting him for what she believed to be factual errors.
  10. What convinced Henny Penny the sky was falling? I’m laughing. I wrote the question but I just now researched the stories and in the nineteenth centuries they had endings totally politically incorrect today. Maybe my answer is stated in #7: “Cup of Comfort bit the dust.” What this is telling me is that the fate of a small publishing company and it’s products in the 21st century may well be an endangered species: i.e., the sky may really be falling. But then again, it will if I quit, and I don’t intend to quit and can’t control the future, so we’ll move on to the next books to be published by Silver Boomer Books and its imprints, ignoring the possibility of annihilation.

The results of the quest: The focus of the tenth Silver Boomer Books anthology might be…

  • childhood activities having lifelong affect
  • teachers
  • first responders
  • items of nostalgia
  • seasons
  • months
  • weather
  • weather-related activities
  • real life mysteries
  • grouchy people
  • evil people
  • good people I didn’t like
  • quotations that touched our lives
  • answers yet to come from readers of this blog post and the prior one
  • oral history passed down or recorded

A Practical Application of Uniques

 Anthologies, Selection Process  1 Response »
Feb 052015
 

Silver Boomer Books has nine anthologies published. The next anthology will probably be done through our imprint Eagle Wings Press, but we’re by no means finished with SBB anthologies. To date we have:

In Silver Boomers, we began as a partnership principally of silver-haired Baby Boomers and invited others of our ilk to remember our lives. We began the two unique features of these anthologies of a crawl line (beginning with the birth of the first Baby Boomer in 1946 and ending with the first Boomer to receive Social Security, with all the pages of the book being part of a continuing block of text telling of our generation and the turning point events and people) and a poem at the end by the “quartet” of four editors. Freckles to Wrinkles expanded the age range as we accepted contributions from authors older than we as well as those born after the end of the Boomer age, 1964. Again, the contributions were poems and prose pieces telling of our lives from childhood freckles to the wrinkles of aging faces and hands.
This Path expanded the scope as we looked back from decades into our lives but included children looking ahead to the future. Few of us could have foreseen at age 10 or 20 where we’d end up at 40 or 50. The subtitle of From the Porch Swing says it all: memories of our grandparents. Like the other anthologies, we had worldwide contributions so our memories differed but were startlingly similar.
 How did you learn to love reading and books? Like many of our authors did your history involve Flashlight Memories as you hid under the covers at night? The memories of our service men and women and their families and powerful and poignant. It was our pleasure and privilege to allow some of these wonderful people to share their stories. and to bring these to our readers.
Our original partnership of four had ended by the time we published the last three anthologies, and we had guest editors who added greatly to these three. On Our Own – Widowhood for Smarties meets a need and is a great gift for those new to the pain as well as those looking forward to life, different. A Quilt of Holidays is just that. A patchwork of days, major holidays and days we notice on some calendars. Labor Day, Flag Day, Passover, Christmas…and many more.
Waiting for hours in a dentist’s office or for months beside the bed of a love one, waiting elongates time. But it passes more easily with Longest Hours – thoughts while waiting. Let’s use ten of the obliques to figure out what the next anthology should be.

I’ll be looking at my list of obliques and selecting ten, at random I hope, to come up with suggestions for the next anthology. You can do this, too! Or just use one or two, or suggest an anthology without dealing with obliques. The comment box awaits your answers.

My First Fifty Obliques

 Writing Prompts  Comments Off on My First Fifty Obliques
Feb 012015
 

Last time I named these obliques, ways of looking at a problem from a different angle:

  1. What would it look like made of sheet metal? (My mother’s and grandmother’s question, married to tin smiths)
  2. Where’s the puce?
  3. If it were a pig in Angry Birds, how would I attack it?
  4. Are there mores I need to ignore here?
  5. What does it look like from above or below?

And I continue thus:

  1. What do I want to  touch?
  2. Does it have a smell or a sense of smell?
  3. On a ladder, how high is it?
  4. Do my sons understand it better than I? How would they describe it?
  5. Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is?
  6. Brogans or stilettos?
  7. Where is the fear?

And speaking of fear, my analytical mind is telling me this is a silly waste of time, that these can never have any validation, could not possibly help, and if I put together a hundred of them I’ll never again look at the list. But my dreamer mind is saying, well, whispering, “Maybe…” so I’ll continue.

  1. Can it ride on ruby rails?
  2. Thinking of the last book I bought, how would it change this?
  3. What is the very first thing to do on it? The seventh?
  4. Why do I care?
  5. Toss aside the oughts, where are the wishes?
  6. Am I just doing this to avoid the one I know is the right answer? What would that be?
  7. Which superhero does it best?
  8. Which season of the year suits it?
  9. What period of history fits best?
  10. How do you explain the problem to a child?
  11. Tell an engineer what you want to do.
  12. Spin a romance novel plot around the issue.
  13. Who is the villain in the mystery?
  14. Did Mother have a generational curse? What?
  15. Did Daddy have a generational curse? Do I have it?
  16. What gifts (talents) have I received that I do not use?
  17. What gifts (presents) have I received that I do not use?
  18. What do I actively not want to do? Why?
  19. Go to the word of the day and see what it contributes.
  20. Go to the quote of the day and see what it contributes.
  21. Look at your favorite comic strip for today’s date.
  22. Pick up the last thing you write and choose only the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th and 25th words. Put those five words into a sentence about your issue.
  23. Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so?
  24. Why do I not want to do this but say I do?
  25. State the word most closely related. Look up the synonyms of the word. Does that change anything?
  26. What four ideas do I want to get across.
  27. What’s the least I can do? Why haven’t I done it?
  28. What can I do in the next minute to advance this project?
  29. If it were a seven-piece set of Russian nesting dolls, how would each differ from the last and expand the entire idea?
  30. If you had or have an imaginary friend, what thoughts does the pal contribute?
  31. If you dropped the idea on a Monopoly board, where would you want it to land?
  32. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your friends? Why?
  33. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?
  34. Who do you want to work with you on this from among famous people? Why?
  35. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your historical mortals? Why?
  36. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your fictional characters? Why?
  37. How would the little engine that could get over the mountain?
  38. What has convinced Henny Penny the sky is falling?

I’ll have more obliques to write, but next I’ll put these to a practical use and let you use them (and yours) to help me plan the next Silver Boomer Books anthology.

Obliques

 Writing Prompts  1 Response »
Jan 272015
 

I mentioned Dr. Davis’s blog and motivational speech last time. Another take-away from that was the concept of Obiques. Her discussion can be found at Step 2:Start, including her list. I have intentionally not yet read that list, but I will. Oh, I will!

So, what is an oblique? It’s a geometric term: neither parallel nor at a right angle, coming in from an odd direction. In this context if means a way of breaking through trite writing processes. Some thought provoking bits she quotes from her source are these:

Some examples: What would your closest friend do?
Your mistake was a hidden intention.
What is the simplest solution?
Repetition is a form of change.
Don’t avoid what is easy.

My purpose in bringing this up is twofold. The basic need is for me to come up with entries for this blog that will beckon you. But on a deeper level, I need a list of ideas, of thought-starters, of more creative ways to write whatever I’m doing. That would immediately include writing biographic sketches for a group of historic women; a poem every day; my next great book to write; my next great book to publish (other than those I write or have accepted now), and (gulp) in what direction to take my life now.

My first five obliques:

  1. What would it look like made of sheet metal? (My mother’s and grandmother’s question, married to tin smiths)
  2. Where’s the puce?
  3. If it were a pig in Angry Birds, how would I attack it?
  4. Are there mores I need to ignore here?
  5. What does it look like from above or below?

I’m more to write. But first I’ll read Dr. Davis’…and yours if you’ll put them in the comment form.