Speak No Evil: How Blogging Can Get the Professional in Hot Water

You've heard the stories: teacher gets fired for blogging; student gets in trouble for Facebook posts; office worker canned for email.
These days you don't just wear your professional face at work, you take it home with you too. People blog (as I'm doing now) for the most part to get some thoughts out to the world, mostly friends and colleagues, and genuinely let off steam.
Alot of the time you let down your hair and remove your mask when writing...that's why online dating is so popular!
The problem is when your true feelings come out on a blog and an angry parent or your employer sees something questionable then you get in trouble.
Why? What happened to freedom of speech?

Speech - yes. Writing - that's where it gets grainy.
As a professional writer I have to make certain I don't put anything down on paper that is considered liable or slander. If for instance I used a family friend's name in a novel citing events from their personal life, or wrote an article detailing false accusations on a celebrity, then I run the risk of being sued.
Does that translate into blogs and email?
The rules are not clear. Technology sprung up overnight and changed the world as we know it. Should there be a censor on our personal websites? I say absolutely not. But apparently the corporate world is saying otherwise.
A PA teacher was recently fired over a blog post about a student. It wasn't malicious and the teacher did not name names but the parents were so outraged that she had an opinion that this five year veteran at Notre Dame lost her job.
Is this really necessary? She wasn't fired over poor job performance, she was fired over something personal that shouldn't reflect on what she does inside the classroom.
I'm going to rant for a minute and say that people should think twice before demanding that someone be "reprimanded" at their business. If you have a legitimate complaint of course you will voice it but why, especially in this day and age, do you have to cost someone their job?
People are doing the best they can with what they have. Let me rephrase...MOST people are doing the best they can.
Back to my point. If you are a professional figure watch out what you write or post. You're no longer allowed to present your personality. If you do THEY will catch you. Big brother is always watching. BEWARE.

Are there rules when writing?

RULES of ENGAGEMENT

by CYNTHIA VESPIA

It was recently brought up in a chat forum about what the rules are for writing. First thing that came to my mind was that there are no rules! What a blasphemic word that is for a writer. Then I got to thinking, there are certain “rules of engagement” that are expected from the reader.

For instance a thriller needs to be fast paced; a romance novel has to be heavy on the passion; fantasy is expected to be otherworldly; and erotica...well, you get the point.

There are just certain elements that go into different genres that make fans continue coming back for more. It has been that way since the dawn of time, or at least as long as novels have been around. So as a writer we may as well embrace them as facts. However, it can also be said that rules are meant to be broken. To quote Bruce Lee: "Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."

In other words there are basic elements from which all stories springboard. But what gives each story and each author its own unique voice is taking those elements and making them your own. Don't be afraid to experiment. I've been known to compile almost every genre into one story...and y'know what, it works! It's called life. And whether that life is seen through the eyes of a Demon Hunter, or a guardian angel, or a female gladiator it is still life and it is painted with many different colors of emotion. Romance, suspense, comedy, horror, and yes even fantasy are all a part of our daily living so why wouldn't we include them in our writing? Readers are more apt to enjoy a story when it is relatable. Emotions are relatable.

Back to the rules. Half the fun of writing is that we get to create our own rules. We create different worlds, populate it with different characters, and watch like puppet masters as they all interact with each other. Maybe that's why I like The Sims so much.

Rules are there as a starting off point. If you're a writer just starting out I suggest you learn the rules of the genre you are writing in, but then as Bruce pointed out, add your own take on it. Whatever is uniquely you will shine off that page so don't be afraid of it. If everyone wrote in one certain style it would be a very boring universe in bookland.

Life itself has enough rules and I don't know about you but I'm tired of being regulated. In any event trust your instincts. When something is telling you to go down a different path than you may not have planned for just go with it. I remember following my character Bryan from LIFE DEATH and BACK down a weird and winding road all the while telling him to go back, that this was not the path I'd chosen for him. Fortunately I allowed him to take the lead and at the end of the road I wound up pleasantly surprised thinking “oh, that's why he did that!”

This is a metaphor, of course. I'm not that nuts. I don't see visions of my characters on random street corners. They only show up at odd hours to have a cup of coffee or maybe catch a movie.

So write what you are passionate about, kids. Don't censor yourselves too much. Have fun with it. Everyone is too damn serious these days and they forget to enjoy things. Writers and readers alike make sure you enjoy it. Enjoy the story for what it is, rules or not.

Since most readers inevitably become writers, and most writers started out as readers, let me pose this question to the group: Do you have a ritual...not necessarily a rule...that you have before beginning a new novel?

Cynthia is the author of character driven suspense fiction. Her new paranormal thriller

Life, Death, and Back is available now. Find out more at www.cynthiavespia.com

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Review

Emily Dickinson has always been one of my favorite poets. Next to Poe she wove dark, and soulful poetry that captures you in a few short lines. Jerome Charyn takes on that dark soul in his novel The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson.

It is a fictional account of Dickinson beginning with her short tenure as a student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Charyn add's Emily’s real father, brother, and sister-in-law into the story making this fictional account seem that much more real. The novel plays out through Emily Dickinson's perspective and follows a series of events that ring true of who Emily was, or could have been.

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson has been highly acclaimed in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post and more. It is well worth a read even if your interest doesn't lie with the famed poet but for a novel full of fun and adventure.

Jerome Charyn's  Bio:
Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.”

New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”

Since the 1964 release of Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.

Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until he left teaching in 2009.

In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn’s book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong."

Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.

Blog Tour web site:
http://thesecretlifeofemilydickinson.blogspot.com/

Jerome Charyn's web site:
http://www.jeromecharyn.com/

Jerome Charyn's Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/jerome.charyn

Jerome Charyn's Twitter:
http://twitter.com/jeromecharyn

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/SecretLifeOfEmilyDickinson

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Twitter:
http://twitter.com/EmilySecretLife

W.W. Norton & Company web site:
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=17221

BookReporter.com's Top Books of 2010 (#52)


Paperback
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 9780393339178
Pages: 352
Release: February 14, 2011

Hardcover
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 9780393068566
Pages: 348
Release: February 22, 2010

What Loss Such is This Familiar Friend I See Again

What Loss Such is This Familiar Friend I See Again

by Cynthia Vespia

February 5, 2011, 11:12 am

You ask of loss. I've known loss as a companion since I was very young. Loss has been a part of my world that I've had to adapt to many times over. Always with a different face but inevitably the same recurring pain. Something has been lost. Most recently I lost myself.
Over the years I endured a string of heartache associated with the loss of loved ones to suicide, murder, alcoholism, and the silent killer of cancer. My little world that I once thought so impregnable by any danger or malice crumbled around me. Year upon year someone else took the fall. It began to feel something like a curse. Once a joyous family unity now wrought with despair. We became "those poor people"
It brought with it attention. However unwanted the circumstance it shaped me as I still grew into a dark, despondent individual who knew only of woe because it had become such a familiar fixture. This was my identity until the day that I found my life again.
I didn't want a pity party. I wanted to be recognized for achievement. Sports helped me. Becoming physical and challenging myself changed my outlook. The clouds lifted and I became a new person, an achiever.
Then into my life came glory above all other achievements: LOVE
Love was found, requianted, and full of all the magic that those songs on the radio are all about.
But yin without yang, sun without moon, Heaven without Hell is not possible...it would obstruct the balance.
Suddenly one day that love was gone. No warning, no rhyme or reason. Just disappeared like a theif in the night. My old war wounds once bandaged so tightly and healing were torn open that day. I bled out.
Like a fish taking its last breaths upon a dry shoreline I felt immoble for days. My world had been turned upside down. Once again the same facet of loss reared its dark cloud upon me but this time I just couldn't understand WHY.
In the darkest recesses of a writer's mind you can come up with many different stories. You can plague yourself with more woe than is actually warranted of the situation, and believe me I did.
Somewhere in the midst of all this pain, having to endure loss one more time in my young life, I realized that I had given myself away. I had used up so much of the inner strength that I forged after the deaths just by giving it to other people. Left with nothing else for myself I became a shell of my former self.
Where I had been able to pick myself up before I found I had no strength left to do that at all. But what choice do you have really?
What I had, what I still have is a brilliant gift for the written word that God has blessed me with. It would be selfish of me to keep it to myself. And beyond that I have found that within my writing comes my therapy. As I am writing this blog now, exposing bits and pieces of my soul, my past, my anger, hurt and anguish, I am leaving it here. It will no longer curl around my neck like a noose.
That isn't to say that all the pain of loss is gone...it isn't. It probably never will be. These stations in life that you go through forge you into who you are. The pain and pleasure both carve at your soul. It's a fine balance.
Have I found myself again? Perhaps some of me. Who I was is certainly gone. A different me emerges. Always different after the storm. Always different. Sometimes I miss me.