The Blog Tour

My Thanks to Tibby Plants for inviting me on the Blog Tour.  Happy to be aboard.

I’ve been writing creatively for about 8 ears, but during my prior career I wrote often on technical topics.  Today my favorite subjects are whatever comes to mind.  For me, that is usually memoir and humor with occasional stories that often have a tinge of fantasy. My work has been published in hardcopy anthologies, magazines and online journals.  I self publish an anthology of my work each year, usually consisting of about 25 stories with a few essays mixed in.

What am I working on?    I continue to produce short stories and memoirs of about 1 to 2,000 words.  If the content of an article warrants, I call the piece an essay.  But frankly I'd rather write fiction or fictionalized “slices of life.”  In addition to short-shorts, I write an occasional 5,000 word short story and have turned a few of them into novellas, publishing these as individual hard-copy volumes and on Kindle.  

How does my work differ from others of its genre?    I should know, since I publish the work of other authors right here on the More Stories Place.  But I really would find it hard to differentiate.   Besides, I'm not sure I care.  We should write about what's inside us in the most honest way possible, practicing the best principles of our craft.  Who cares if it sounds like anyone else?

Why do I write what I do?   I'm retired.  I self-publish and I write what I want.  I don't expect Stephen King's agent to call me and I don't believe I’ll ever make any serious money from  writing. I have no need to be famous and therefore I am completely free to write what pleases me.  Maybe that's why I find writing relaxing and usually not a chore.  I’m simply a narcissist with a pen.

How does your writing process work.    I wait for the urge to write to descend upon me. I can feel it.  Ideas begin to drop into my mind and I begin to look forward to practicing the craft of writing.  Putting it down on paper, revising, making it sing.  (This blog entry will probably not sing; I’m writing it in a bit of a hurry.)  I start writing and I quit when I’m stuck or run out of enthusiasm.  I give the piece a working title, store what I have written on my computer and enter it into a log of “Starts.”  I have around 200 starts all stored in PC files and backed up.  Each Start may be a plot idea, some dialog or even a mostly complete story lacking a key ingredient.  When the urge to write strikes me with no accompanying story idea, I open up my Starts file and pull a few out on the screen and work on them.  The process often yields a story or at least some progress. 

I find I can make the characters sing more fully rounded notes when I let them take over the plot.  What results may be a story completely different from what I originally intended. And so, much of what I write is stream-of-consciousness.  As you might imagine,  I spend a great deal of time going back and making the pieces fit together into a sensible story.  Sometimes it works.

My master story list is here:
http://www.windsweptpress.com/essays.htm

My Writing Blog is here:
http://windsweptjournal.blogspot.com

And the Front Door to my website is here:
http://www.windsweptpress.com 
 

Information on next blogs on the tour will be available by the end of this week.

Marksburg Roses

                           Photography by Clarence Wolfshohl

The Rose Garden of Marksburg

In May of 2011, Patricia and I went on a cruise of the Main, the Rhine, and the Moselle rivers with our old friends, Mark and Betsy Vinz. As you can only expect, the event was wonderful and the scenery was  picturesque. The vineyards climbing up the slopes from the rivers, some at 45 ̊ angles; the cliffs along the Rhine Gorge or the Upper Middle Rhine Valley; the many castles along all three rivers, but especially the over twenty castles in the Rhine Gorge; and all the other sights from treacherous waters of the Lorelei to the statue of Germania high above Rudesheim were spectacles that enchanted us. But one of my favorite spots was the rose garden of the town of Marksburg below the medieval castle of Marksburg. The roses, many varieties of many colors, could not go unphotographed.

To see the remarkably beautiful photos, click here:


http://www.greenapple.com/~aapa/ejournals/AQOnline/Roses 2.pdf



Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus of English at William Woods University. He has published  both creative and scholarly writing in small press and academic journals.  He is a member of AAPA and operates El Grito del Lobo Press.  A native Texan, Wolfshohl now lives with his writing, two dogs and one cat in a nine-acre woods outside of Fulton, Missouri.