New Writers: Please Take Note!

Have you ever wondered how some writers seem to have plenty of ideas to work with and others very few? Well, here perhaps is one reason why . . .

If you have ever listened to anyone say something along the lines of 'I had this most amazing dream last night - but I can't just remember what it was about' you may start to guess where I'm coming from.

Firstly, it's not about writing about dreams! I just used that as an example of the nature of memory. Sometimes your memory is sharp and clear, usually about significant events. Ideas, however, can flutter off down the wind, never to be recovered. Just think about it and tell me you have never had an idea for a story that was gone ten minutes later!

So how to overcome this and retain those great ideas and thoughts that flit across your mind? Well, you could enrol in a memory-boosting course or practice mental control. Me? I use a notebook!

How simple is that? And yet so many people don't resort to this most basic of aids. Many writers keep different notebooks for different projects - they aren't used to write the actual story in, just to record thoughts and ideas, plotlines and character points and such like.

However, the notebook I'm talking about is, to me, the most important of all: I call it The Idea Book. Mine's nothing special to look at - just a small spiral-bound notebook about four inches by three. It slips into any pocket and the spiral binding is great for holding a pen or pencil. It can be used anywhere, anytime. I leave it on my bedside table at night and if I have a vivid dream that wakes me, or I remember in the morning, I write it down quickly, before the mental imagery fades.

Some people think that notebooks are old-fashioned and use modern digital dictaphones or the like. I've tried them and yes, you can leave notes on them just fine. The problem I found was being in public and using one. Unless you're a pretty out-going character, the attention you draw to yourself using such a device can be intimidating - especially if you've just had an idea about a juicy love scene for your new romantic novel!

Notebooks, on the other hand, are anonymous. Drag one out at the bus-stop and you could be writing your shopping list for all anyone standing nearby knows - not the case with a dictaphone. Budding writers are often very shy concerning enquiries about their writing and your trusty notebook will allow you to keep your ideas and thoughts private.

And don't worry if your handwriting isn't too good. As long as you yourself can read it, it doesn't matter. By all means transcribe it into a word processing document later but keep your notebooks! You'll be amazed when, leafing through them in the future, you find odd snippets and pieces that, when you wrote them, you just didn't bother copying into Word. That's one of the real values of a notebook - it's a repository of nuggets that may well lay undisturbed for years.

The very first short story I had published came about that way. I was flipping through an old notebook and suddenly spotted an idea. I couldn't even remember writing it down! I developed it, wrote it up, and got my first sale in a National women's magazine. If that had been the only time my notebook paid off, it would have been worth carrying it. I can tell you where my notebook is right at this instant - it's on the desk by my side. In fact, that little book gave me the idea for this article - I tossed it down and thought 'what a good idea - writing about notebooks!' And here's the proof that carrying a notebook works - even though (this time) I didn't write the idea down.

So I would advise you to bet a notebook as soon as you can. Go into your local stationery suppliers. Take your time about choosing one - it doesn't have to be expensive but it must 'feel right' for you. It's going to be with you for some time - until it's full, in fact - so make sure it's not too big or too small. Also, try to make sure it's a common make. Why? Well, swapping notebook types can, believe it or not, be very irritating (as I found out). Once you've found your ideal notebook, you'll want to stick with it.

And lastly - use it. This might sound obvious but using a notebook has to be habitual, not something you do to impress your non-writer friends, and the only way to form a habit is by repetition. Use it every day - even if it's only to scribble a few notes about how your day has been. In less time than you think you will wonder how you ever got along without it - and all your thought and ideas are captured forever.

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Fun Flight? You Bet!

Prior to September 11, flying in the Washington, D.C. area was a lot different. Seven years ago, getting a waiver to security regulations was as simple as a well-placed phone call. This is a story about one such flight – an aviation first – that will never be repeated.

“We don’t fly north of our airfield. That’s where the Andrews Air Force Base controlled airspace begins.” I told this to thousands of flight students from 1984 thru 1998 when I worked as a full time ultralight flight instructor in Fort Washington, Maryland. Thoughts of flying into such secure airspace – home of the president’s Air Force One and some pretty lethal “fighter” aircraft – conjured up visions of being shot down in flames for veering a few feet into Andrews’ airspace. In the Nation’s Capital, you do not think about even vaguely resembling a terrorist. A sense of humor is not a job requirement for those employed by the FAA, FBI, Secret Service, etc. When it comes to work, they are all business. Period. And that was seven years ago when terrorists were only a theoretical possibility.

My friend Jerry Carlson and I were just minutes away from doing the impossible and forbidden: flying an ultralight aircraft into Andrews Air Force. We envisioned the display at the annual Open House - which attracts up to a million visitors – as an exciting opportunity to spread the word about open-cockpit flight.

We discussed communication procedures in the event they could not hear us over the engine and wind noise of our open-cockpit craft, or if radio contact was lost. All of the contingencies seemed to be covered.

Jerry sat in the front seat furthest from the engine and its noise, to handle radio communication. I sat in the back seat and flew the aircraft. A take off in an ultralight airplane is a 100-foot hop, skip and before you know it, you are airborne, angled back precariously - staring straight at the heavens. As we climbed to 500 feet, Andrews was in sight. This is not to say that our vision rivals that of an eagle, it’s just hard to miss an airfield that seemingly occupies half the state of Maryland. At 1,000 feet we leveled off, throttled back and contacted Andrews’ approach control.

Jerry: “Yellow ultralight”

Tower: “Yellow ultralight, say your heading and position.”

Jerry: “Andrews, Yellow ultralight 060 entering airspace over Route 301.”

Tower: “Yellow ultralight, approach downwind west of tower, then turn downwind.”

At this point, the controller must have thought that we were flying a lot faster than say, 50 mile per hour. In an F-16 it takes just a few seconds to go around the traffic pattern at this monstrous airfield. In an ultralight aircraft, one must allow at least a half hour.

After a few minutes, we were now to the west of where our base leg would be.

Jerry: “Andrews Tower, Yellow ultralight requests authorization to turn base.”

Tower: “Yellow ultralight, turn base runway one left.”

My eyes caught sight of several F-16 aircraft on the runway about to take off, and to our amazement, Air Force One taxiing behind! “What a photo that will be!” I exclaimed, only to realize that I had forgotten my camera. To my surprise, Jerry unveiled a camera from underneath his jacket and began clicking away. As we enjoyed this aerial view of the dozens of military aircraft on the flight line, I pointed out anything of interest.

Inching along, we neared our 90-degree left turn for final approach. I was somewhat perplexed, however, as two F-16s had just departed, and two more were waiting at the end of runway one left behind Air Force One. As I became convinced that we would spend eternity circling waiting for clearance to turn to our final approach, the traffic controller’s voice came over the radio.

Tower: “Yellow ultralight, would you land runway one right? Please be advised that the last 2,500 are not useable. The runway length is 10,000 feet. Will this present a problem?”

Since ultralight aircraft take about three hundred feet to land, Jerry and I agreed that with an incredible sense of the elements and superior airmanship, we could avoid overshooting the limited runway.

Jerry: “Ultralight turning final. One right.”

We held cruise power to fly the ultralight over one-half mile to the taxiway turn off. Meandering through the grass, I imagined the Tower Manager looking at us through binoculars, observing our scenic route to the display area. “Can’t those stupid ultralight pilots keep on the centerline of the taxiway?” she must be wondering. Nonetheless, the tower got us across runway one left – where seconds ago an F-16 thundered by at a few hundred miles per hour before rocketing straight up and out of sight. I can only imagine she let out a huge sigh of relief as she turned us over to ground control.

After two days of sharing flying stories with the new friends we had made, it was time to go home. The Ground Control personnel advised us on the radio to trail behind the FOLLOW ME truck. It soon became obvious that this driver leads aircraft that travel a lot faster. Racing toward the runway at about 50 miles per hour, we were fighting to stay on the ground. At the runway, the truck peeled off abruptly 180 degrees to the left, as we comically banked in our right turn onto the runway.

A green light from the tower gave us the all clear. Checking high and low in both directions revealed no other aircraft. Good to go!

Departing the field we saluted the accommodating tower personnel and the audience with a rock of the wings, and we were on our way.

Author : Bruce Andrew Peters

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Paranormal Phenomena -the Story Of Pier Fortunato Zanfretta: 11 Times Taken By The Aliens On The Shoreline Of Liguria.

Liguria is still an ancient and strange territory. Here you can still taste a coastline not polluted by human intervention, as the wonderful shorelines of Cinque Terre. But the splendour of its coasts it's not the only feature of Liguria.

Liguria is the Capital of the UFOs in Italy, after the Pier Fortunato Zanfretta file. At that times he was a night guardian in Liguria, and he sustains he has lived, between 1978 and 1981, 11 episodes of meetings with alien beings. He describes these aliens as being grey, tall almost three meters, with great yellow triangular eyes.

The problem of regressive hypnosis – Lies from an unconscious mind?

The conflicting opinions of the experts The psychoanalysts Mauro Moretti and Caesar Musatti, that Zanfrettas submitted to sessions of regressive hypnosis, affirmed that the declarations around such events would be done in good faith. On the other side, Roberto Pinotti and Henry Baccarini of the Center Ufologico Nazionale (CUN), also holding important the "case Zanfretta", they wrote on UFO Notiziario that the hypnosis would irremediably have been polluted by the intrusion of an enquirer, Luciano Boccone.

The regressive hypnosis is considered generally a method a great deal are not trustable, since it is easy for the experimenter "to feed" the patient with false memories. This type of technique in fact it's not admitted anymore today in the courts. For the thesis of the forgery it also deposes the fact that the beings drawn by Zanfretta are similar to a monster of the film “The monster of the black lagoon” of the comic strip Zagor.

The witnesses' declarations – Something strange is really happened in Liguria

Some witnesses, among which different colleagues of Zanfretta as well as numerous residents of the communes of Torriglia in Genoa declared to have assisted to strange correlated episodes to the presumed abductions. The marshal Carlo Toccalino, that the night between 6 and December 7 th 1978 was of turn to the operator of the cooperative of guardianaggio, told for example an interview that just before the first presumed meeting, happened around the 24, Zanfretta had asked help to his colleagues via radio exclaiming: "Damn, they're too hugly! They are not men, they are NOT men!". Just in those times, some inhabitants of the near Torriglia would have seen where a strong shine in direction of the place Zanfretta it was found.

Alarmed by the interruption of the contact radio, the colleagues Walter Lauria and Raymond Mascia they put on to the search of Zanfretta: they found him tand affirmed that his body was very warm despite the cold of that night. Zanfretta was in state confusionale and feverish.

During the sopralluogo during the next day it would be noticed on the ground two horseshoe imprints having a diameter of around three meters. The thickness was of around 15 cms. Subsequently the was compiled "informative Relationship around the sighting of flying objects not identified and umanoidi from Zanfretta Fortunato"; it will be sent to the Pretura in Genoa.

A life destroyed between science and superstition in Liguria

Under hypnosis, Zanfretta told he would have suffered clinical examinations on board of an UFO. It will report, besides, that the presumed alien would have manifested the intention to move in the future on the Earth.

The history of Zanfretta has inspired, in 1984, a book joint today to its third edition, to signature of the journalist Rino Di Stephen that can be considered "the father of the Zanfretta case".

Zanfretta affirms besides that the story of that events provoked repeated and humiliating episodes of derision invading his private life: "Unknown people phone me. I don't know what I have seen, however I have seen them. I am not a liar".

Author : Gwen Daylar

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William Of The Pare Mountains

There are no hotels or lodges in the Southern Paré of East Africa therefore it is difficult to reach this part of Tanzania, that is, difficult for a tourist. This area does not cater for westerners, except for those willing to spend time traveling to find these hidden jewels. I have worked on Serengeti safaris, climbed Mt Kilimanjaro and traveled several times to Zanzibar. All this was a fantastic adventure but I was not quite satisfied. I wanted to experience Africa proper, to experience as much of Tanzania as I could. It was time to visit somewhere where there were few, or better still, no tourists, where I would experience the real culture of Africa.

When my chance came it was, unfortunately, under tragic circumstances. Now I was finally to journey deep into the Southern Pare Mountains. I wished that this journey had never presented itself. The circumstances of this journey began as I lived in Arusha, Northern Tanzania.

The village where I stayed was called Ngulelo just south of Arusha on the misty slopes of Mount Meru. My near neighbors had befriended me, along with their eight-year-old son, William. My Christian name was unpronounceable for many Tanzanian’s and as my surname was Williamson I became known in the village as William. This sharing of a name with young William forged a bond between the two of us.

Williams Mother and Father had never been able to afford a marriage certificate but his business had looked up and William’s father had decided he would marry the mother of his child. The date of the wedding was set.

The morning of the wedding William was bitten on his face by a dog. He almost lost his eye – he did miss the wedding.

Weddings in Tanzania normally take the whole afternoon and evening. Usually, on these and other community events, William would sit next to me and we would talk and meet people, laughing and crying with the community. William would share the adventures he had experienced since the last community event - that is, since the last time we had spent time together.

I missed William at his parents wedding. I sat alone and the empty seat I kept for William remained vacant as his wounds were tendered to at the hospital. The following day some of the elders thought the dog might have rabbis but others said categorically that it did not have rabbis. William’s father was asked to take William for shots just in case the dog was infected. William did not go for the shots as the cost was deemed not worth the hassle and the money, offered by the elders for the medication, was refused.

William died very quickly. I was not present at his death, so quickly did it occur. Early one morning I met Mama Gifti the wife of the Pastor. It was unusual for her to be out so early. She stopped me and asked if I heard that William had been admitted with rabbis into hospital the night before. I had not.

I then hit me that Mama Gifti was in tradition dress, a Kanga. The Kanga is two matching pieces of fabric, one tied around the waist, the other used as a shawl and instead of the normally colorful print, the kanga was plain white. This traditional piece of attire was not usually worn by Mama Gifti. This could only mean one thing. The Kanga is worn by all women at funerals. White is also the color of death.

William was dead. The men had split into two parties. The Pastor and some of the men had gone to pay the hospital bill and make arrangements to pick up the body. Others had gone in search of William’s father who had gone missing, distraught that William had died. Blaming himself, he had fled from home to be alone for a few hours.

Mama Gifti told me that as William lay on the hospital bed the night, before his mother wept. William comforted his mother telling her pleases not to cry. ‘Yes’, he told her, ‘soon I will die but I go to a better place’. William died soon after these words. The day he died was his eighth birthday.

I went straight to see the mother of William – she gave me a parcel and dispatched me to the Hospital. The Pastor and I met in the hospital mortuary, we chose a nice coffin for William. We opened the brown paper parcel. William’s mother had given me his suit. The suit William had never worn, the suit for the wedding just a few days before. The Pastor left to pay the medical bills and thereby release the body. I watched over the body of William as the mortuary assistant dressed him and used super glue to glue his eye lids closed and then his lips.

William’s parents asked me to accompany them to the funeral; William would not be buried in Arusha Town but taken “home” to the Paré Mountains.

We left in a couple of battered 25 seater buses, especially hired for this trip. The coffin was in the isle of the bus, and young William’s body had begun to smell. We left in the evening at 10 pm. About thirty of us squeezed onto each bus. We raced and rattled through the darkness, out of Arusha, then through Moshi town, when, after passing Kilimanjaro to our left, we turned south toward the Pare. After about four hours of travel, we entered into a very small town named, Somé. Here we left the comfort of the tarmac and traveled for another hour, maybe two, along deep sandy roads, lit thankfully by a full moon, shining down from clear skies.

Eventually we arrived at the base of the mountain range. It was still dark and therefore impossible to negotiate the narrow rocky roads up the side of the mountains. We parked in a one street town. It was so quiet, I didn’t know it was possible to experience such stillness and quiet. As we stretched our legs our voices echoed and ricocheted about the place and we wakened the locals. A few roadside stalls opened to sell toothbrushes and hot tea and we brushed our teeth out in the open, spiting into the sand. Then sitting on the stone steps of the old buildings drinking black sweet spicy tea, we waited for the light of morning.

William’s father and mother never left the Bus. They waited in silence

At 6.00am we were off again, this time a steep assent, up and up and up. The mountains here are breathtakingly beautiful, rolling into the distance, with trees, birds and water everywhere. We took a further ninety minutes to get to the home where were to burry William. The land was terraced and we sat outside a small house under a tree. The whole community had come for the burial. The views were breathtakingly beautiful. We were so high, looking down onto the tops of lesser mountains covered in thick forests and early morning mist. The people were warm and welcoming, plying us with more spiced tea. The buses had arrived with not only the body but sacks of rice and supplies to cook to supply the masses with food after we had buried William. The women became busy preparing the food, the men sat around in silence, broken now and then with murmurs of conversation.

This trip was full of sadness and regret about the young boy. We were all feeling we had not done enough to save him. The grave was on a steep incline close to the house. As the long funeral dew to a close I stood next to the grave and said my goodbyes to a very brave little friend whom I shall never forget. At this point the Pastor paused and asked that the only non-African at the funeral say a few words about William. I started to speak of our friendship but my voice broke and I wept, I could not continue. Every time I speak of this, tears are not far away. Even now, as I write about this event, my eyes fill with tears and my lip it trembles.

One day I plan to return to the Pare Mountains to explore them for myself. To take some time and drink in Africa - away from tourist and phony or over-organized cultural visits. I will take some flowers and visit the grave of William and even though it is only a grave I will talk to him of all my adventures since our last meeting.

Author : Ian Williamson

http://www.isnare.com/?aid=179141&ca=Short+Stories

Be a Clown

My hands clutched the door handle tightly. I was angry with my relatives, and frustrated with the fact that my parents weren't taking a stand for her. They were going to kill my Granny today. She'd lain on the bed for less than a week, and yet they had made the decision that she would not recover.

There she was, her chest heaving labored breaths, as a ventilator provided her weakened lungs with oxygen. A crust had developed on right side of her mouth, the product of a covenant between the saliva, skin, and a large tube. Her tongue had become thick and sluggish, and they swabbed her mouth every hour-on-the-hour with a swab that smelled of lysol and lemons. There she lay.

I had just seen her a few weeks ago, sick, with a cold. It wasn't pneumonia, or anything that serious. It was only a bad cold. She was sitting on the new, floral patterned sofa she had just bought, which would in future days inhabit my family's living room. We said "Hi", and gave her a kiss, and then retreated to our usual spots in the small living room: My mother to a recliner, my sister at my Granny's side, my Dad to the edge of the kitchen. My brother and I fought for the warmest spot next to the gas logs. Honestly, it really didn't matter, as the blower put out enough hot air to roast you alive from 20 paces. It was more a marking of territory, and I managed to win. Whether I prevailed through brute force, or stole the spot from him as he went to use the bathroom, I couldn't tell you.

It was a short visit, but with plenty of time to talk. For the sake of this story, I wish I could say we discussed something profound. We did not. The usual "Goodbyes" were said. She didn't walk us to the door, or do the usual schtick of "be a clown". "Be a clown" was a tradition. To an outsider, it would be absurd. To us, it was priceless.

The process went like this: My Granny and Papa would walk out into the middle of the circular driveway, and bow and flourish crazily. While they are doing this, my parents slowly turned our minivan up the driveway, towards the road. We would roll down the windows, and yell "Be a clown" in a sing-song way, all the way down the driveway, until they disappeared behind the long, double-row of magnolias and crabapple trees. It wasn't a fondness for clowns that endeared us to this ritual. It was the fact that two retirees would get out in the middle of their yard, and act like fools for three little kids.

That night there was only the lonely tire swing, and an old tobacco barn watching us as we drove out of sight.

A few days later, we received a call: My Granny had been found facedown on her bed, bleeding from her nose, and she wasn't responding. We rode to the hospital, praying the whole way that she would be okay, that she would somehow be able to talk. We arrived to a waiting room, full of relatives. My PaPa was there, looking worried and tired, with his oxygen cart in tow.

Days passed in that waiting room. Some claimed they had seen signs of life in her: A toe moving here, a tear there. Pastors came and consoled, folks took lunch orders, others just sat. After three or four days of this, the elephant in the room began to thrash about wildly. There were discussions of when we should pull the plug. Now, given the fact that a week had not passed, some of us were more than hesitant to speak about the termination of life. After all, the vitals were strong, the brain was still showing signs of life. She just was not responding.

My immediate family reasoned and pleaded with the other brothers and sisters, and to my Grandfather. It was all to no avail. They would pull the plug on Tuesday.

The drive to the hospital was a quiet one, sandwiched between sniffles and supplications to God for her deliverance. It was gray and rainy, not to mention cold. A tire blew out, and we kids all worried that they would disconnect her without us. I tried to help my Dad change the tire, but he shoed me back into the car. Come to think of it, he probably welcomed the diversion from the inevitable.

Finally, we resumed our trip, towards a destination none of us cared for. As we entered the Critical Care waiting room, the smell descended on me. That hospital smell, with the scent of soiled bedding and stale bodily fluids. Hopelessness for the nose, just in case your other senses missed the cue. We made our entrance silently,with a few tense greetings whispered amongst my Mom's brothers and sisters, out of the necessary courtesy.

By the time we arrived, everyone had taken their turn at the bedside, and bid her farewell. We were the last. The machines gave us their lackluster welcome, a steady drone of quiet, but substantive bloops, bleeps, and the occasional buzz. The prominent sound of the ventilator drowned them all out, and in that moment all we could think about was the person on the bed. There she was, my Granny, a formidable woman. She'd borne three children, overcome depression, breast cancer, and dealt with a double mastectomy. She was a fighter. Now, her life was no longer in her hands, and she'd have been hopping mad if she had been able to speak.

Everyone of us kissed her and prayed. We begged her to fight. Mostly we cried. In my case, slobbered and bawled. Then my hand gripped that door handle. I stood in the way of my family leaving. I refused. Eventually, my father moved me out of the way. My mother calmed me through tears. I walked out to face the rest of the family.

Then, we waited 5 minutes, and walked right back in, just after they took her off the ventilator. We sang hymns and spirituals as they shut down the machine. In an outcome nobody expected, my Granny breathed on her own, and continued to breath...for days. My relatives were no longer guilty of murder in my eyes. A weight was lifted. She improved so much that they moved her from the Critical Care floor, to the regular floor that housed stroke victims.

That move did it. Her body went into shock, her face turned green. Within two hours of her reassignment, she died. I was at home that day. My mom called to tell me. I sat emotionless. Tapped out, I walked through my living room. The final images of a life spilling over into eternity filled my mind.

This time, she was the one driving away from me. She had made the final turn, and I was the one waving goodbye in a silly fashion, bowing and flourishing. A singular voice resonated as the window was rolled up one last time....

Be a clown. Be a clown....

Author : Kurt Hartman

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