A Post About Truth

Sound familiar?  Probably because last year I wrote a blog with a very similar title.  But, in that case, I was going a slightly different direction.  That blog was more about speaking up.  Not so much about what truth really is, how to find it, or how to know it when you see it, but more about saying what you really feel, popular or (far more likely) not.

This is a blog about truth itself.

So...the inevitable question...what is truth?

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A Post About Happiness

 So, a blog about what I think happiness is.  I’ve been experimenting with the idea that it’s a decision.

Now, that’s an easy statement to argue.   You may say, “But there’s so much I can’t control, and it makes me unhappy.”  Right.  True.  There’s a lot we can’t control.  But if we could be happy anyway, then we could be happy.  Case in point: 

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A Post About a Bookstore

My first true mentor was author Jean Brody (Gideon’s House, A Coven of Women, Cleo).  I met her when I first had the guts to join the Cambria Writers Workshop and read my work out loud (picture if you will: hands trembling as they try to hold the printout; hammering heart; much pausing for life-giving oxygen).

She wasn’t an “easy” or “soft” mentor.  In fact, I once stayed away from the group in despair when she announced that all my authority figures came off as stereotypes.  I respected her knowledge so much that I allowed it to crush me.

Why did I go back?

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About the Truth

I tend to think of myself as someone who speaks my mind fairy easily.  So I’ve been quite surprised by my recent foray into a whole new realm of truth-telling (not as opposed to lying, which I haven’t done in years, but as opposed to keeping quiet about how I feel), because it’s shown me that I’m not nearly as good at it as I thought.

Not everyone is pleased by hearing my truth.  I guess there’s no such thing as a world where you can say what you mean and enjoy everyone’s approval.  And that, I think, is the real bottom line on speaking up.  I guess it just boils down to this one key question:  How much do you care what others think of you?  More than I thought, I guess, but I’m doing it anyway.  Because once you pull the covers off a pattern like that, there’s just no going home again.

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Cliff Notes

The Cliffs at Ragged PointI seem to have a preoccupation with cliffs, both in fiction and in my everyday life.  In Love in the Present Tense, Leonard launches his home-built hang glider off one.  In The Day I Killed James, James drives his motorcycle off another.  I quit my day job and became a writer.

Sounds like a one-time jump, but nothing could be further from the truth.

This morning I took a good look at my appointment book for the rest of the year.  It’s a lot different from last year, because of my landmark (for me, anyway) decision to stop traveling and speaking on behalf of the Pay It Forward concept.

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$@%*!!! (Reprint)

I have gotten quite a bit of blowback about the language in that book (always from adults, never from youth). Almost none of it has been said to my face. For example, at one of these town in IN, I was told that the school had received phone calls from parents troubled about a handful of words. But when I speak, and open for questions, it's very rare for anyone to bring it up directly. I wish they would. I have opinions on the subject, and I'd like to have an open discussion.

I guess that's what blogs are for.

So here are my opinions:

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