The first Monday in September is Labor Day in the US, a holiday marking the end of summer. This is the day we honor those whose labor keeps this country running. Over the years, I have worked in a wide variety of menial jobs. All were low-paying and didn’t garner much respect from those in higher-status positions or from management. But I liked my work and never did less than my best.
Childcare was always an issue. Sometimes, during the Carter years, I qualified for government-subsidized childcare vouchers, which was the only reason I could work such low-paying entry-level jobs. Later, my uncle cared for my youngest daughter after school until she was about ten. Because I had that childcare subsidy when my youngest was not yet of school age, I was able to support my family relatively well.
They should bring that childcare subsidy back. Once they reached ten years of age, my kids were latchkey kids, which wasn’t uncommon in those days.
In the 1970s-80s, I worked as a bookkeeper, an automobile detailer, a field hand for a (now defunct) multi-national Christmas tree company, a photo lab tech, a waitress in a bakery, and worked in a delicatessen.
During those years, my favorite job was as a field hand for the J. Hofert Company. They grew Christmas trees of all varieties, and I absolutely loved the work. It was outdoors, paid $3.25 an hour, and was seasonal, so I usually had a month off three times a year. I was able to work all the overtime hours I wanted during certain seasons, as field hands were as hard to get then as they are now.
Coins, Microsoft content creators
Sometimes, especially during the Reagan years and up to 1996, wages were low, and jobs were scarce. I held two, and sometimes three, part-time jobs to keep the roof over my children’s heads and food on their table. Trickledown economics never quite trickled down to my town.
In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, I worked as a hotel maid, a photographer’s assistant and darkroom technician, and as a bookkeeper/office manager for a charter bus company.
Life became easier in the 1990s. As a bookkeeper/office manager, I earned $7.50 an hour (two dollars over minimum at the time) and worked less than 30 hours a week with no benefits whatsoever. I drove for an hour each way, morning and afternoon, for that job.
As a hotel housekeeper in a union shop, on the days I wasn’t a bookkeeper, I made $8.50 (three dollars over minimum) and worked about 20 hours a week, giving me enough from the two jobs to live on and provide well for my children. I was still legally married to my 3rd husband, but he was seldom in the picture. The marriage was a shield between me and my well-meaning matchmaker friends.
I was divorced from hubby number three in 1997, and oddly enough, things became much easier financially. I was able to get by with only one job, even while raising my last teenager. (See? Everyone has a soap opera life, even famously unknown authors.)
For all the years I was married to my 3rd husband, no matter what other job I had, I kept my weekend job at the hotel. I kept it because I always had that to fall back on. I had risen in seniority and could work full-time whenever the other jobs went away.
My hotel was affiliated with a good union. We who did the dirty work earned far more than maids, housemen, and laundresses at other hotels. We also had benefits such as paid sick leave, up to two weeks a year of paid vacations, good health insurance, and a 401k, to which our employer matched our contributions.
In any hotel, housekeepers are considered the lowest of the low by the other employees. No one is of less social value than the person who cleans up after other people. Without the union, we would have had nothing more than the bare minimum wage and a cartload of insincere condescension from management.
Not every union is good or reasonable. But while I don’t agree with everything every union does and stands for, I am grateful that a good, reasonable organization protected my family and me during those years of struggle.
After 2000, I worked as a temp employee at Verisign, a tax preparer for H&R Block, and did data entry for LPB Energy Management. By 2010, I was thoroughly sick of corporate America and had returned to bookkeeping, this time for a local landscape company.
That job was a joy.
In my younger days, I worked every weekend and every holiday, and yes, it was not easy, but it was what it was. My kids were good and supportive, and they knew I was doing my best for them.
Every worker deserves an employer who treats them with respect and offers a fair wage in return for their labor.
The world is a different place now in many ways. Even so, someone must do the dirty jobs, the work that no one else wants. I have nothing but respect for those who work long, hard hours in all areas of the service industry, struggling to support their families.
My experiences working in the lower echelons of the labor force inform my writing. Look around you and see the people who make your life easier by being there every day doing their jobs.
Stylized drawing of a maid on a Works Progress Administration poster via Wikipedia
Every waitress/waiter, housekeeper, laundry worker, caregiver, bartender, welder, mechanic—everyone in the service industry is a living, caring human being with hopes, ambitions, triumphs, and tragedies. Every one of them has a story and a reason to be where they are, doing the task they have been given.
Say a little thank you to all those who endure verbal abuse when a customer is stressed out and “doesn’t have time to wait” or is upset by things they have no control over and vent their anxiety at someone who can’t (or won’t) fight back.
Give a little thanks to those whose labor enables you to live a little easier.
Another arc takes the protagonist on a journey that can end several different ways, all of them taking our characters down a winding path with many choices, roads not taken. They also are altered by their experiences for good or ill.
Knowing my intended word count helps me create a story, from drabbles to novels. For me, it works in stories with a traditional arc as well as those with a circular arc.
In a circular narrative, the story begins at point A, takes the protagonist through life-changing events, and brings them home, ending where it started. The starting and ending points are the same, and the characters return home, but they are fundamentally changed by the story’s events.
Word choices are essential in showing a world and creating a believable atmosphere when limited to only a small word count. I had challenged myself to write a story that told both sides of a frightening encounter in 1000 words, give or take a few. I wanted to expand on the theme of dragons and use it to show two aspects of a place whose national symbol is the Red Dragon (Welsh: Y Ddraig Goch).
Most of my novels and short stories begin life as exchanges of dialogue between two characters. Their conversations shed light on what each character’s role in the story might be.
Action: She comes down for coffee. He holds a notebook, gathers pens, and stands.
My writing projects begin with an idea, a flash of “What if….” Sometimes, that “what if” is inspired by an idea for a character or perhaps a setting. Maybe it was the idea for the plot that had my wheels turning.
I’m writing a fantasy, and I know what must happen next in the novel because the core of this particular story is romance with a side order of mystery. I see how this tale ends, so I am brainstorming the characters’ motivations that lead to the desired ending.
Plots are comprised of action and reaction. I must place events in their path so the plot keeps moving forward. These events will be turning points, places where the characters must re-examine their motives and goals.
Our characters are unreliable witnesses. The way they tell us the story will gloss over their failings. The story happens when they are forced to rise above their weaknesses and face what they fear.
Nowadays, I am rarely able to do in-person events due to family constraints, but I used to do four events a year. However, I have some tips to help ease the path for you.
The final thing you will need is a way of accepting money. I have a metal cash box, but you only need something to hold cash and some bills to make change with. A way to accept credit cards, something like 
Investing in some large promotional graphics, such as a retractable banner, is a good idea. A large banner is a great visual to put behind your chair. A second banner for the front of the table looks professional but requires some fiddling with pins.
Make your display attractive, but I suggest you keep it simple. People will be able to see what you are selling, and the more fiddly things you add to your display, the longer setup and teardown will take. The shows and conferences I have attended offered plenty of time for this, but I’ve heard that some of the big-name conventions require you to be in or out in two hours or less.
The posts I wrote for that first attempt at blogging were pathetic attempts to write about current affairs and politics as a journalist, which is something that has never interested me. I was lucky if I managed to post one piece a month and had no readers or followers.
Books.
I’ve made many friends through this writing adventure. I now know people from all over the world who I may never meet in person but who I am fond of, nevertheless.
Some people worry about plagiarism, and in this world of AI and entitlement, it’s a valid concern. To my knowledge, I have never been plagiarized. I have a notice clearly in the sidebar on my website that the content is copyrighted.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy has evolved over the years because I have changed and matured as an author.
I write what I am in the mood to read, so my genre is usually a fantasy of one kind or another. However, I sometimes go nuts and write women’s fiction.
But regardless of the genre, the basic premise of any story can be answered in eight questions that we will ask of the characters.
And thus Julian Lackland and Lady Mags were born, and Huw the Bard and Golden Beau. But they needed a place to live, so along came Billy Ninefingers, captain of the Rowdies, and his inn, Billy’s Revenge. When I first met Billy and his colorful crew of mercenaries, I was hooked. I had to write the tale that became three novels: Julian Lackland, Billy Ninefingers, and Huw the Bard. 
Mood and atmosphere are separate but entwined forces. They form subliminal impressions in the reader’s awareness, subcurrents that affect our personal emotions.
Subtext is a complex but essential aspect of storytelling. It lies below the surface and supports the plot and the conversations. It is the hidden story, the secret reasoning we deduce from the narrative. It’s conveyed by the images we place in the environment and how the setting influences our perception of the mood and atmosphere.
We want to avoid excessive exposition, and good worldbuilding can help us with that. Let’s say we want to convey a general atmosphere of gloom and show our character’s mood without an info dump. Environmental symbols are subliminal landmarks for the reader. Thinking about and planning symbolism in an environment is key to developing the general atmosphere and affecting the overall mood.
When we are designing the setting of a scene, which aspect of atmosphere is more important, mood or emotion? As I have said before, both and neither because they are entwined. Our characters’ emotions affect their attitudes toward each other and influence how they view their quest. This, in turn, shapes the overall mood of the characters as they move through the arc of the plot. And the visual atmosphere of a particular environment may affect our protagonist’s personal mood. Their individual attitudes affect the emotional state of the group—the overall mood.
We can create an atmosphere and mood that underscores our themes and highlights plot points without resorting to info dumps. We can lighten the mood as easily as we can darken it. When we design a setting, color brightens the visuals, and gray depresses them. Those tones affect the atmosphere and mood of the scene.
Intelligent creatures communicate in their own languages with each other, sounds that we humans interpret as random and meaningless or simply mating calls. But scientists are discovering their vocalizations must have meanings beyond attracting a mate, words that are understood by others of their kind. This is evident in the way they form herds and packs and flocks, societies with rules and hierarchies.
We humans are tribal. We prefer living within an overarching power structure (a society) because someone has to be the leader. We call that power structure a government.
Worldbuilding requires us to ask questions of the story we are writing. I go somewhere quiet and consider the world my characters will inhabit. I have a list of points to consider when creating a society, and you’re welcome to copy and paste it to a page you can print out. Jot the answers down and refer back to them if the plot raises one of these questions.
Power in the hands of only a few people offers many opportunities for mayhem. Zealous followers may inadvertently create a situation where the populace believes their ruler has been anointed by the Supreme Deity. Even better, they may become the God-Emperor/Empress.
First, is this character someone the reader should remember? Even if they offer information the protagonist and reader must know, it doesn’t necessarily mean they must be named. Walk-through characters provide clues to help our protagonist complete their quest, but we never see them again. They can show us something about the protagonist and give hints about their personality or past—but when they are gone, they are forgotten.
Novelists can learn a lot from screenwriters about writing good, concise scenes. An excellent book on crafting scenes is 
I took this absurdity to an extreme in 
One final thing to consider is this: how will that name be pronounced when read aloud? You may not think this matters, but it does. Audiobooks are becoming more popular than ever. You want to write it so a narrator can easily read that name aloud.
Despite my experience of reading fantasy books aloud to my children, it didn’t occur to me that the names were unpronounceable as they were written. We ironed that out, but that hiccup taught me to spell names the way they’re pronounced whenever possible.
