Mind-Blowingly Beautiful Image from SUNDÃRI

Image from Sundari.com

Copyright © 2012 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

The Greatest Line

Peter Straub, image from sff.com

Jesus she moved she can't she's dead.

In my opinion, the above sentence is the single most chilling and artfully used line in all of contemporary literary horror. It's from Peter Straub's Ghost Story, and it's  one of the things that make the book unique.  

In italics, deliberately bereft of punctuation, and placed out of context in the narrative, the line works both as a chilling reference to a past event and as ambiguous foreshadowing. Oddly placed in the text as it is, it almost presents as an editorial error. It is uniquely effective because it jars you out of the narrative at a point at which explanations are just beginning to be hinted at. The first time I read the novel, I felt a visceral thrill at the sudden intrusion of the strange line. I knew I absolutely had to know what it was referencing. As just about anyone who's read the book will tell you, monstrous horrors both past and future are its subject.

An ingenious stroke of artistry from the master of contemporary literary horror!

Cheers,

WKF

Time Out of Time

Sharing Your Creative Vision

If you're like most people, you've probably had the experience of becoming fully absorbed in some creative project, of getting "in the zone" and experiencing a burst of creative energy that took you out of time. Hours may have passed while you were in this state, but you were completely unaware of their passage. Afterwards, perhaps you looked at the result of your "time out of time" and wondered "Where in the world did that come from?" What's going on here?

One answer may lie in the view that the creative impulse that seized you for a time came from within but not merely from within. Upon reflection, you may see that while it availed itself of your inner resources, its genesis was actually something outside of you: a vast, unlimited, creative Source. Depending on your background, you may call this source the collective unconscious, The Higher Self, the Divine, or God. Whatever label you choose to give it, what will likely be clear to you is that you were helped along by a vast, benign wellspring of creativity beyond yourself. What may be equally clear is that the experience wasn't meant for you alone; you were meant to share it with the wider world.

Imagine how much poorer our world would be if creative geniuses like J.S. Bach, he Buddha, and Michelangelo had kept their work to themselves. We would have no Mass in B Minor, no Dhammapada, no David. You may object to any comparison of yourself to these luminaries, insisting that your creative efforts are no match for those of such world-class geniuses. But regardless of your native gifts and talent, you do have a mandate to share the results of your creativity with those in your sphere of influence. Who knows; history may prove you wrong in your estimation of your gifts!

Whether your creativity takes the form of music, art, writing, teaching, or something else, the importance of putting it out there for others to enjoy can hardly be overemphasized. Share your creative vision with us; the world will be a richer, more rewarding place if you do!

Cheers,

WKF

Copyright 2012 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

A Favorable Acquisition

Image from blog.freelancer.com

The acquisition of Scriptlance by Freelancer is good news for those of us with reviews on the old site. Freelancer.com has done an excellent, seamless job of getting our Scriptlance stats transposed onto their site--good stuff!

Just got started on a new ghostwriting gig today. It's an inspirational self-help title, always a treat to write.

Cheers,

WKF

New Quota

Image from Amazon.com

Image from Vanderbilt.edu

I've set a new daily quota for myself: 800 words a day on original fiction and nonfiction projects on top of my commercial assignments. Very doable, at least so far!

Cheers,

WKF

Ultra-dry

LOVE this: from HuffPostHill, go-to site for ultra-dry political hilarity!


MITT ROMNEY'S NAACP SPEECH WILDLY SUCCESSFUL - That is, he didn't wrap his arms around several young African-American women and nervously quip, "Who let the dogs out? Hoot...hoot," so it was a step up. Elise Foley: "Mitt Romney was booed Wednesday at the NAACP conference for promising to repeal the president's signature health care reform law, bringing him to an awkward halt in the middle of an otherwise civilly-received pitch for black voters. It was an awkward moment that forced him to go off script, after giving a somewhat pained smile as the booing continued. 'I'm going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program I can find, that includes Obamacare, and I'm going to work to reform and save --' Romney said before being interrupted for about 15 seconds." There were moments of applause, but they weren't super enthusiastic -- think "middle school assembly after it's been announced that the janitor is retiring." [HuffPost]

This is my kind of flash mob!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaHPND2QJg&feature=youtu.be

Teach Us to Sit Still

Teach us to care and not to care...

Teach us to sit still.

-- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Image from TheFamousPeople.com

While with an eye made quiet

By the power of harmony

And the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

-- William Wordsworth, A Few Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey

Image from LivingTravel.com

Cheers,

WKF

Burning through Straub’s Floating Dragon—again. What a ride! Some of Straub’s fiction – notably the Blue Rose Trilogy that followed this book—is dense, convoluted, and challenging. Don’t get me wrong; it’s great writing…it just requires some effort to get through.

Dragon, on the other hand (like Ghost Story and Shadowland before it) absolutely flies by…without sacrificing the sky-high Straub standard for character development and narrative structure.

Cheers,

WKF

Blessed Be

Sailing out on time's vast ocean,
Waiting on the pale orb to rise.
Riven by competing emotions,
And a faith that reason works to defy.

I contemplate a sacred constellation,
And the holy light that's shining within.
Can't pretend to know the destination;
It's a place I've never been.

Blessed be the sky and the sea,
And all we've left behind.
And blessed be 
The places that we've yet to find.

Our separateness--it must be an illusion,
One that we will soon awaken from.
It's a source of undeniable confusion,
As we ponder that great mystery to come. 

So we contemplate a sacred constellation,
And the holy light's still shining within.
We can't pretend to know the destination;
It's a place we've never been.

Blessed be the sky and the sea,
And all we've left behind.
And blessed be the places that we've yet to find

Sailing out on time's vast ocean,
Waiting on the pale orb to rise.
Riven by competing emotions,
And a faith that reason works to defy.

Blessed be the eyes that can see
All we've left behind.
And blessed be 
The places that's we've yet to find.

Copyright 2011 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

A Few Facts about a Few Characters

(from my novel-in-progress)


Madison Claire McCrae (Maddie) is 27 years old. She lives in a small renovated Cape Cod on the beach in North Beach, Maryland. She  inherited the house from her parents, who were killed in a car accident a year ago.


Maddie went to Towson State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She currently works as a freelance editor and classical music reviewer. She's an excellent flute player and has the distinction of having  been the only first-chair player in the Towson University Symphony Orchestra who wasn't a music major.  She loves photography, yoga, and swimming; she's also passionately in love with the Romantic-era symphonists (with Schumann and Dvorak topping the list).


She's  5 foot 7 and of average build, with shoulder-length auburn hair. She's had both male and female relationships in the past, but is currently single. Her sister Agatha Leigh (currently missing) is three years younger than Maddie. Aggie, as her friends and family call her, followed Maddie to Towson, where she earned a B.A. in Art and Design. She was working on her Master's thesis in Art History when she was abducted from the house she shared with three other graduate students.

Go with It

Miranda, The Tempest
By J.W. Waterhouse

What do you do when the novel you've been working on for a year suddenly decides it wants to go in a radically different direction?

Go with it, or wind up writing a crappy book.

A book takes on a life of its own during its creation. If you try to force it to conform to your original outline, it will fight you, and you'll lose.

Cheers,

WKF

Success!

 

If you ever have your intellectual property stolen online, don't be afraid to go through the process of getting it taken down--it works!

Cheers,

WKF

Equation for Success

French Roast...

PLUS 


French Press...

EQUALS

Productive Writer! 

Cheers,


WKF

Midsummer Nocturne

(All rights under copyright reserved)

Oceans of time, a starlit night,
Deep calls unto deep.
A train in the distance, hidden from sight,
Soon I'll surrender to sleep.


Mournful and low, the whistle sighs,
Piercing my heart with its calm.
Deep in the night, my soul will rise,
Singing a psalm.


Seven years on, now what is the sound 
Of moonlight on the bay?
Wait for the light in the hours before dawn
Wait for the breaking of day.


Mournful and low, the highway moans, 
Piercing my heart with its calm.
Deep in the night here on my own,
Singing a psalm.


Well I'm lost in a dream on this midsummer night
By the light of a wandering star.
It matters not who we are...


Oceans of time, a starlit night,
Deep calls unto deep.
A train in the distance, hidden from sight,
Soon I'll surrender to sleep.






Copyright 2010 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved 

Honoring the Practice as a Victim of Theft, Part Two

(Picking up from last post)

Immediately after discovering how thoroughly—and for how long—I’d been plagiarized, I found myself reflexively asking, “What would Thich Nhat Hahn do?” In his book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, Nhat Hahn recommends allowing anger to manifest, smiling to it and acknowledging it: “Breathing in, I know that anger is in me. Breathing out, I smile to my anger.” He teaches that by acknowledging and validating any strong emotion (and consciously smiling to it), we reduce its power over us.

Another important precept he offers is this: It is extremely dangerous to speak or act when we’re angry. In that state, our brains are flooded with neurochemicals that demand action; our rational powers are temporarily overwhelmed by the primal commands of the amygdala (also known as the “reptilian brain”). Our heart rates speed up, our stomachs flip over; our breathing becomes fast and shallow. In this state, we’re not that much different from a wolf whose prey another predator is threatening to steal. Reacting thus may well be something the wolf must do to survive; among human beings in a state of civilization, however, it can be disastrous. We may find ourselves letting fly with horrid statements or acting in ways that undermine and invalidate both our spiritual practice and our health. That’s why the maxim, “Don’t just do something; sit there!” is so important to take to heart, especially when you’re in the grip of strong emotion.

By sitting with our anger, smiling to it and fully validating it, we use up a lot of the red-hot immediacy of its energy. We’re then free to start transforming it into something more pleasant. We should definitely not fail to honor ourselves with some kind of vague sense that spiritual practitioners should always ignore all offenses. To do so is a failure of compassion, both for yourself and for the offending party. You deserve to have your intellectual property respected; by ignoring plagiarism, you dishonor yourself and set up the offending party for more serious karmic consequences in the future.

Here are some ideas on how to honor your practice in this kind of situation:

First, spend as much time as you need in sitting meditation to stabilize yourself.

When you’re confident you’re back in balance, send the offender a friendly note acknowledging the plagiarism as a potential oversight, thus giving him the benefit of the doubt. Tell the person you’d be happy to write for him; perhaps you’d even be willing to let him use your existing work if acknowledgment is given.

If this overture is ignored for more than 24 hours, continue to smile and breathe mindfully. In a meditative state, write a Cease and Desist Notice. Don’t allow anger to resurface unmitigated while you do. Smile and breathe with full awareness while you nonetheless uncompromisingly insist that the plagiarized material be removed. Take special care when you reach the line, “If this notice is ignored, my attorney stands ready to commence legal proceedings.” Since this is a threat, it can easily hook our reactive minds and send us into a downward spiral of self-righteous anger.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we may find that (at some level) we actually hope that the individual won’t respond! Let’s face it: anger has its pleasures. Just as we evolved to enjoy sex (to make continuation of the species more likely), Homo sapiens came to find a certain pleasure in the emotion of anger. I believe the purpose of this was to make us more likely to respond with deadly force in a life-or-death confrontation. Our more recent evolution, though, is every bit as important: our species is now involved in learning to control, modify, and transform our primal responses.

If your Cease and Desist Notice is ignored, write a warning to the web server supporting the offending party, keeping the above concepts in the forefront of your mind. Don’t forget to breathe deeply and smile! The web host is required by law to take down the plagiarized material if their client fails to do so.

I sincerely hope that you never suffer either a break-in at home or a rip-off of your copyrighted material. The casual theft of highly reflective, personal writing is particularly vexing, resulting in a strong sense of personal violation. If it does happen to you, I encourage you to honor your practice; don’t allow the unscrupulousness of another to invalidate your spirituality! Instead, sit with your anger, breathe mindfully and smile. You can then then use the experience as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Cheers (and Namaste),

WKF

Copyright © 2012 by William Ferro

All rights under copyright reserved. 

When Thieves Break In and Steal

Honoring the Practice as a Victim of Theft

By William K. Ferro

I’m a strong believer in synchronicity. Groundbreaking psychotherapist Carl Jung defined the phenomenon as “an acausal connecting principle.” We’ve all experienced it: we sit in meditation with a particular issue—generosity, for example—and immediately receive a record number of requests for support from various charities we care about. Or we create and write up a new, healthier diet for ourselves, and the next day receive a call from a family member saying they've been diagnosed with a medical condition and needs to modify their diet.

That’s synchronicity.

It just happened to me—again! My most recent post (for a client's blog) was entitled Writing as a Spiritual Practice; in that article, I talked about how we spiritual bloggers “put our souls on paper—or into cyberspace—for the world to see.” The next day, I came across a blog that had reproduced one of my posts without acknowledging its author. I wasn’t overly concerned; such occasional “borrowing” is par for the course when you write for the web. However, going further back on that blog, I discovered that every post I’d written for the past year appeared there! Not only the text—written under my name with copyright information clearly displayed; but the graphics, too—which I had to pay for to use legally.

I’m sure other authors out there who’ve experienced plagiarism will agree with me: it’s almost precisely like coming home to discover your house broken into, and your most cherished possessions stolen. There’s an overwhelming sense of violation; someone has taken the carefully-crafted expressions of your soul and casually duplicated them without notice or acknowledgement. Fortunately, there’s a specific, well-established recourse available for those who are plagiarized on the web. For present purposes, however, I’d like to look specifically at how to honor your spiritual practice if you should find yourself in such a circumstance.

(To be continued)

Cheers (and Namaste),


WKF

Copyright 2012 by William K. Ferro
All rights under copyright reserved.