Join Me Today on blogtalkradio at 2

I'm doing an interview on blogtalkradio.com today at 2 PM. Listen in HERE.
blogtalkradio, interviews, kill zone, Vicki Hinze, books, suspense novels

I'm doing an interview on blogtalkradio.com today at 2 PM. Listen in HERE.
blogtalkradio, interviews, kill zone, Vicki Hinze, books, suspense novels
errors, mistakes, flaws, authors, writers, novelists, creative writing, nurture, positive environment, constructive solutions, resolutions, what we need, what we want Vicki Hinze, writers library
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Note: Vicki will be appearing on WSRE (PBS) tonight at 7 PM talking about writing.
errors, mistakes, challenges, attraction, positive environments, solutions, writing, author, novelists, vicki hinze, writers library
WARNING: This is a no-edit zone...
I’m interrupting my Mistakes We Make posts, because this opportunity will not wait.
As writers, we write about people. About the human condition. We connect with readers through emotion, which means writers must be students of emotion.
Right now the people of Iran are risking death--and indeed some are dying--and being imprisoned for a cause well known to Americans: freedom. With 140% of the population voting in many districts, the people feel betrayed, disrespected and undervalued by their leaders. They are passionate and their emotions are raw.
When emotions are raw, there is no veneer. You see actions and reactions that are impassioned and that cut close to the bone. If you want to know what someone is really thinking, observe them in an emotional situation. The more intense the emotion, the more honest and overt the reaction.
As human beings, we have felt many of the emotions being felt in force right now. Betrayal, hurt, feeling helpless and hopeless and small and insignificant. I am but one. What can I do? We’ve felt that. In observing it, we remember it, and we feel the violations all over again. That creates a bond of empathy, which is why if you are following on Twitter and have been since the weekend, you see posts that say things like, “Stay safe, my brother” or “today we’re all Iranian.” It isn’t that the speakers are related or they’ve changed their allegiance to their own country, it’s that they empathize so intensely with the injustice the other person is feeling, they align.
I’ve seen acts of great courage. One man posted before going to march in the first protest that he didn’t need to sleep because “today I die.” He believed--and for just cause since 7,000 were executed for defiance before--that if he went, he would die. But he went. And thousands on Twitter held their collective breaths until he returned and posted. We all understand fear. We all recognize courage. We all . . .
Tags: character, emotion, empathy, creative writing, author, writer, novelist, books, #iranelection, writers library, vicki hinze
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Self-Sabotage, errors, mistakes, discretion, human relations, vicki hinze, writers library, authors, writers, novelists, creative writing, author/editor relations
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Tags: Voice, creative writing, vicki hinze, writers library, mistakes writers make, point of view, character, writing craft
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We're living in a world that is rapidly changing--and not always changing for the better. Regardless of what your job is, but especially if you're an author or in the publishing industry, you need to keep an eye on this!
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Creative Writing, novel structure, authors, writers, novelists, sagging middles, vicki hinze, writers' library
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WARNING: This is a no-edit zone . . .
Recently I had eye surgery. The recovery time was projected to be two-and-a-half weeks. But the damage was more extensive than believed, and therefore the surgery more complex. Fortunately, I was blessed with a fabulous doctor prepared to deal with it, though I have to say that coming out of anesthetic to find my eyes sewn shut was a shocker.
Being blind for a writer is like a painter who can’t see color. Imagine you in your life, and how you would have reacted. Yet before I could even panic, someone was right there to tell me that it was temporary. Three days only.
That crooked place that could have caused so much anguish was made straight.
And it was temporary, so that one too was straightened.
Over and again, challenges cropped up that carried fears, and over and over again those fears were quickly put to rest.
But then the recovery time stretched. It’s been over a month, and my vision still isn’t normal, though it is much improved. But I hadn’t anticipated this lengthy recovery time, and so meeting my commitments became a serious challenge. I had a conference to attend, two lectures to prepare, and feedback on my first Crossroads Crisis Center, FORGET ME NOT, was due in from my editor.
I needed to prepare. I couldn’t see to do it. I couldn’t stand the light from the computer screen, and because the eye muscles had been cut, they tired easily. A couple paragraphs and I was history for hours. The knots in my stomach had knots.
In all my years of writing, I’ve been late on a deadline once. Once, when I was caring for my dying mother, and then I needed an additional two weeks. Messing up someone else’s schedule really bothers me. I know what it does to me when it happens to mine, so I do what I must to avoid it. But this time, I couldn’t avoid it, and while my editor repeatedly offered me extra time if needed, I knew I’d be adding late nights and early mornings to her schedule to accept. I prayed on it. Hard. And I cited the verse captioned above, Isaiah 45: 1-3, which I’ve cited so often, I knew by heart.
I didn’t see a way to fix this challenge. Jesus repeatedly said let he who has eyes see, but mine were in the shop, so to speak. Healing, yes. But not healed, and they wouldn’t be in time to get these workshops and revisions done. Let’s face it, when you can’t read the words on the page, you’ve got a serious challenge in writing words on a page. It wasn’t something I could just hire someone to read to me and fix. I needed a writer’s mind and eye, and a lot of that writer’s time. But you know what a writer’s time is worth, and so you’re very reluctant to ask them for a week of theirs--even if they’re a good friend. I couldn’t impose like that. So I prayed for healing, strength, wisdom and help. I didn’t know what to do. So I sent God an intense SOS.
He knew exactly what to do. A writer friend, Kathy Carmicahel, who had helped me right after the surgery, wanted to come to the conference. She came early--it’s a long drive and she didn’t want to be worn out when she got here.
I’d been reading the editorial feedback in snatches, a couple paragraphs at a time, but I had trouble remembering it, and what I wanted to do with it--I was defeated on my own. But Kathy read to me, and then wrote my notes. What could have been a defeat turned into a victory. We went through the entire thing and I had notes on what to do and where to do it. She’d read the manuscript already. She was a writer--a very good writer. And she looked at the work through a writer’s eyes. I didn’t see how it could be done, but God did, in Kathy’s willing heart. That crooked place was made straight.
She agreed to do the lectures with me at the conference. We made and printed handouts and a bullet list of things to be sure to cover. With that as assurance the attendees would get what they needed, I could talk on these topics off the top of my head. We ended up filling in and doing a third workshop with no time to prepare, but together, it worked, and went well. On all three workshops, we were repeatedly given unsolicited positive feedback. One attendee even said that one of the workshops was worth the cost of the entire conference. My relief that they weren’t disappointed was immense. I didn’t see how that could happen, but God did, and that crooked place was made straight.
We also filled in doing a welcome address--Kathy reading the names of guests and presenters, and me off the top of my head. No one threw food, so I’m guessing it went okay. That crooked place was made straight.
And we did about an hour-long interview with Talk Radio’s Elaine Tucker and Ken Walsh. I hadn’t expected that, but it went well, and was actually fun. Like sitting with a group of people with similar interests and just chatting. I’m guessing that went well; I got double hugs from the hosts afterward, and an additional 25 people, I’m told, came in and signed up for the conference. No doubt that was due to the skills of the hosts. That crooked place was made straight.
I worried about navigating at the conference, but Kathy was there, and when we’d come upon a slant in the walk or an incline, she’d warn me. That fear soon dissipated, and that crooked path was made straight.
I could share more, but those things are enough to illustrate my point. Sometimes we entertain angels unaware. Sometimes God elects to instead use willing hearts. In this case, Kathy’s willing heart.
I learned a lot from this experience.
I learned that if I’ll just trust God, he’ll straighten those crooked places. When I see no way, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one; only that I can’t see it. But He can. Trust Him, ask Him, and He’ll do more than you can imagine.
I learned that when lecturing at a conference, the last thing you need to worry about is that your hair is brushed not styled, your face is bare and not made up. I still had swelling and bruises, but no one cared. They were appreciative that I’d come to share with them in spite of those things. When you get nervous in the future, remember that. It’s what comes from you on the inside that you want to share and that others are most eager to hear.
I could have bowed out and stayed home. But if I had, I’d have left Joyce in a lurch. She works all year long on this conference and that would just be unacceptable. Personal pride had to take a hit, but that proved to be a good thing. I expected to be uneasy. I had a fabulous time and laughed at times until my sides hurt. Lesson? When pride gets out of the way and you do what needs doing the best you can, your own crooked places are made straight. That insight was an unexpected, supernatural blessing. God really is happy when you trust Him and ask Him for help.
We all have crooked places. At home, work, in our relationships, and inside us. Often we stew and mull and search everything and everywhere except God for ways out, solutions, resolutions. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. Usually we have a little success--just enough to get us out of crisis.
But if we trust God, ask Him for help, he doesn’t give us partial fixes. We are His and he wants us to have abundant life, joy, not to exist just shy of crisis. The lesson in that--and the major lesson of this experience--is to go to God first. Before you get the knots in your stomach and drag yourself through hell worrying. Trust. Ask. The door will be opened and before you know it, a willing heart connects with a solution. A real solution.
Maybe you’ll entertain an angel unaware. Or maybe God will touch a willing heart like Kathy’s to facilitate a solution. How He does it is His domain. What I know now is mine. And what I know is that what Isaiah said was true and right.
God will go before you and make your crooked places straight.
Blessings,
Vicki
P.S. to Kathy (if you ever read this): Thank you for having a willing heart. You’re a blessing. One straight from God.
Tags: author, books, emerald coast writers, novelist, Vicki Hinze, writers newsletters, Writers Zone, Writers' Zone
On October 15th, my beloved mother-in-law, Leona Hinze, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She has now passed.
She was a courageous woman to the very end, and one who experienced many changes in her ninety-one years. For 68 of those years, she played the organ for her church, St. John’s Lutheran. In my 34 years with her, she often said when she reached playing for a hundred weddings, she was going to retire, but then someone would ask her to play for their wedding and she always did. At the time of her death, she had played 127 weddings and over 300 funerals.
Music was her ministry and her passion, and I, along with many others, were privileged to hear her express her heartfelt passion often and for a long time.
Once, when I thought I was dying, I told her I had been blessed. I’d had a life of being well loved and of loving well. In real life, that’s about the best it gets. A few days before her death, she told me that she’d thought about loving and being loved and she’d been blessed with a wonderful life. Now and forever all of us treasure those words from her and we’re comforted by them.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested contributions to the Leona Hinze Memorial Fund at St. John’s Lutheran Church. The address is 3316 Hummingbird Lane at Hwy 77, Robstown, Tx 78380. This memorial fund is dedicated to a new organ for the church.
Blessings,
Vicki
There are patterns in life, and one of them I’ve tagged the Cluster Factor. I’m sure some scholar has tagged it something else, but my observation is merely an observation, not a theological or academic study. That doesn’t make it more or less true or real, just based on different criteria.
The first evidence of the cluster factor I noted was in writing ideas and pertains to thinking patterns. I don’t typically think a book, I think a series of books. Often, ideas come to me in threes. When I first noted this, I noted it but didn’t really deem it significant. Cluster novel ideas was just the way my mind worked.
Then, during a conversation with a relative who informed me there’d been a death in the extended family mentioned “deaths always come in threes.” Sure enough, two more deaths followed within a matter of a few months--and looking back, I noted that this had also been the case when my brother had died years earlier.
Intrigued, I talked to a few friends about the cluster factor and discovered that...
READ MORE
Tags: series of events, related happenings, related occurrences, commonalities, advancing, authors, writers, novelists, readers, books,creative writing, career strategy, success, problem-solving, conflict resolution
Vicki's website: www.vickihinze.com

We’ve been worried about Noah. He underwent very dangerous surgery but came through it with the resilience of a blessed nine-year-old. The tumors were benign. The prognosis looked very good for him to have a long and healthy life. He was moved from ICU to a private room last night.
This morning he passed away.
Emotions riot at such times. We ask why, knowing there is no answer. We think of him, his parents and his brother, and our hearts are ripped open, raw and wounded for and with them.
We remember the last time we saw him, all of them, the occasion, the conversations, the laughter. Now we feel the pain and shed the tears.
The practical issues will be dealt with in time, but for now, emotions reign. We know he’s heaven bound. That he isn’t alone but in the palm of the purest love. We know he hasn’t left home but gone home.
And yet we mourn. For the loss of him in daily life. For his family. For those who love him, and those loved by those who love him. We think of their pain and the emptiness they are feeling, and we pray that God will mercifully fill that space with peace, and we regret that the season for mourning coincides with the season for celebration of Christ’s birth. It offers reassurance, yes, but to a freshly grieving heart, all that is felt is the isolation and loss, the pain, and so the season of comfort and reassurance is not now, but will follow after this season passes.
Some will offer platitudes and well-intended words, hoping to offer some germ of something that will ease the suffering. Their efforts will be appreciated, but the suffering remains. Grief is a merciless master and demands its due. It can’t be ignored or denied; at best, only postponed for a time. But it returns. It always returns. And only after it has can the healing begin.
I watched my mother bury a child. I’ve watched too many friends bury their children. The pain runs so deep it can’t be pinpointed or expressed. Not with words. It’s like describing faith or love. Every attempt falls far short.
One thinks of seemingly strange things at such times. Thoughts of the gifts for the child waiting at home under the tree. Gifts he will never open now. Of his parents looking at them, and doing something with them--the symbolism of which is letting go. Of doing so knowing that a parent truly never lets go of a child. A parent endures the loss and survives it, but always remembers. Memories burn strong forever in that mind, in that heart. Tormenting and heart-wrenching long before they become fond and comforting.
This I know, and I think today of Noah and in particular of his father, whom I’ve known well since he was in high school. I know that never again will life for him be the same. Never again will Christmas be the same. Not for him, not for his other son. There will come a time when life and Christmas will be good and laughter will again fill his home, but that will take time, and even when it has, he will always remember the child gone home, first with inconsolable grief, then with a sad, empty ache. With time, with tugs at the heart, and then with wistful longing for what was a bright and shining time in life that is no more.
These passages each will be difficult, but finally comfort will come, and eventually with it dulling the sharp pains to dull aches he will find acceptance. And then there will be room in his heart again to hold joy. Then, Christmas will again hold joy. He’ll still remember, still speak a Christmas wish to his child and feel pangs of sadness that he isn’t with him, but heart will also embrace hope and joy and laughter.
My wish this morning is that grief is tempered and the only Comforter who can comfort comes to them all and sustains them, strengthens them, consoles them in their journey to acceptance and to peace.
Until then, I’ll pray for them, and cry with them. Godspeed, Noah.
Blessings,
Vicki

May you and yours have a blessed Christmas and a prosperous, joyful and peaceful new year!
Blessings,
Vicki
Holidays are supposed to be happy times of celebration. Times when friends and families gather and share the joys of the season.
So why then are holidays the most stressful times of the year? Why do suicide rates soar? So many suffer depression and others are absolutely miserable?
In part, the very thing that brings us together--holidays--also brings to bear the greatest stresses.
Here are a few of the substantial stressors that magnify during the holidays:
Additional tasks.
There are more obligations and social events to host and/or attend. Gifts to buy, special meals to shop for and prepare, trees, houses--inside and out--classrooms, offices, stores or other workplaces or additional places (church, lodge, club) to decorate, presents to wrap, cards to send and a multitude of other preparations to make. Social obligations/engagements require extra preparation time (program practices, dishes to make, clothes to wear selected or shopped for, haircuts and so on).
If others are “coming home for the holiday” to your home, as glad as you’ll be to see them, that’s more tasks on your To-Do List. If you’re going home, there are travel plans and packing, making sure the car is ready for the trip or tickets to purchase and schedules to coordinate, and much more.
Holidays--even when we are looking forward to them--break routines and place extra demands on our schedules. They require preparation that demands extra efforts from us. If your schedule is normally hectic, during the holidays it can become frantic.
What can you do? The extra work isn’t going to minimize just because you wish it would. That means you have to act to make the effort less stressful. Here are a couple tips: READ MORE...
WARNING: This is a no-edit zone...
One of the greatest challenges we face in our professional lives is success.
That sounds like an oxymoron, but truly it isn’t. Why? Because too often we allow others to define success for us and then we generally find it impossible to meet their measure of it--or our perception of their measure of it. As much as we crave success, too often we don’t recognize it when we’ve gotten it because we’ve been so busy struggling and striving for it that we’ve never stopped to define it.
This struck me last night while watching a CMT tribute to “Giant” Alan Jackson.
He’s an unassuming man. Classifies himself as “simple.” He’s all about family, values, and staying true to himself in his work. Admirable, in my estimation. He hasn’t forgotten his roots, and never pretends to be other than he is.
Now Alan Jackson has known professional success. He’s written 32 Number One (#1) hits and has sold 50 million “records.” He’s also been named Entertainer of the Year a total of nine (9) times. By industry standards, by the estimation of his peers and colleagues, by his fans and the general public, he’s considered successful--and deservedly so. For me, the song he wrote about September 11 was a significant contribution to healing for Americans, and that alone qualifies him as a huge success in my opinion.
And yet he remains humble (a becoming asset more should adopt) and--here’s the zinger--he still feels he hasn’t achieved the status to be on par with his heroes (George Strait and George Jones were there, and referenced.) When approached, Alan assumed the CMT Giants tribute extended the honor of “Giant” to him because he’s so tall.
That this was earnestly spoken set me to thinking. And what I thought was that there’s good lessons for writers (and everyone else) in Alan Jackson’s attitude. Ones worthy of adoption.
He knows who he is and makes no apologies for it, no bones about it. A calm acceptance, contentment, and comfort in his skin. Those are great qualities for anyone and particularly helpful attributes for a creative writer.
He’s earnest. In the writing I see in judging competitions and from critiques, one challenge often repeated is mannered writing. Where an author works so hard at perfection that s/he edits the voice right out of the work. Much of the realism and relate-ability is unfortunately lost under the manner hammer. Let’s face it, when an author writes to sell, what s/he is selling is his/her voice. So that’s significant.
He still doesn’t see himself as being on par with his heroes. Now some would say this is a good thing, and in a sense it is. He’s still striving, stretching and growing, and that’s something we all want to do throughout our careers. Never stop growing is a widely embraced mantra among writers.
But some would say that’s a bad thing because it intimates that one never feels successful because one either hasn’t defined it or has allowed others to define it for them. And that too is true.
It also brings home the importance of defining success for yourself. For some, it is to simply write. Not to write well, not to write to sell, but simply to write. For them, having written, they have succeeded. For others, they use benchmarks to measure their own success.
Typical benchmarks might be READ MORE...
Tags: Author, Writer, Novelist, Creative Writing, Books, Reading, Writing, Vicki Hinze, Writer's Library, success, sacrifice, benchmarks of success, voice, career, professional challenges
I've just posted my December newsletter. If you're interested, you can read it at:
NEWSLETTER
CODE #: 18391243
If you are buying books at Barnes & Noble online
or in the store today,
please use the code number above.
BN will send a portion of the net proceeds to
Edge Elementary School.
It costs you nothing,
it can provide the resources
to really help the little ones attending this school.
Blessings,
Vicki
Edge Tigers