Author Joylene Butler Offers Me a Soapbox for My Top-of-Mind Concerns

For several years I wrote a monthly guest post for author Joylene Butler’s website about book marketing and other related topics. This run of posts ended when Joylene started a project for a new author website for herself.

Then just before January 2020 Joylene contacted me again. Her beautiful new website was live and she missed my guest posts. But what would I write about?

Joylene had read my December 25, 2019, post here on my own website — “Beware of Social Media Disrupting Family Harmony” — and she offered me a soapbox on her site — a blog on which I could write posts about my top-of-mind concerns.

And here is an overview of the three “top-of-mind” guest posts I’ve written for her so far:

JANUARY 2020 — “RETURNING TO JOYLENE BUTLER’S BLOG WITH AN EXPANDED PURVIEW”:

For this first “return” post and for the start of 2020, I’d like to discuss history. Or rather movies as a way to learn history wrapped up in entertainment.

The new World War I movie 1917 opened in Los Angeles on December 25, 2019, and I saw it that day. It is an excellent portrayal of the miserable trench warfare of what was then called the Great War. The film, directed by Sam Mendes and written by Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, includes recognition in the end credits of Mendes’ grandfather who served in this war.  (My husband’s paternal grandfather, serving with the British, was gassed by the Germans in this war and never completely recovered.)

WWI started in Europe on July 28, 1914 and ended with the armistice between the Allies and Germany on November 11, 1918. The United States did not enter the war until President Wilson called for war on Germany on April 2, 1917, which the U.S. Congress declared four days later. The story of the movie 1917 takes place on April 6, 1917, focusing on two British lance corporals with no mention of the U.S. entry.

WWI in Europe is known for trench warfare – and Sam Mendes has done a brilliant job of conveying the miserable conditions of such warfare as the two young protagonists struggle to make their way through the crowded British trenches and then through the empty trenches of the Germans and on into no-man’s land.

Read this entire guest post now.

FEBRUARY 2020 — “LEARNING FROM HISTORY PART II: WHAT THE HOLOCAUST CAN TEACH US FOR TODAY”

One and a half years ago I said to my friend and frequent writing project collaborator Susan Chodakiewitz that I felt badly that these particular accounts were lost to history because they were published before the internet. Susan said, “Why not write a play of these accounts?”

And that’s what I did – rewriting and rewriting, choosing which firsthand accounts fit into a timeline of the historic events leading up to Nazi Germany invading Poland on September 1, 1939, and the actions of the Nazi regime intent on murdering every Jewish man, woman and child in all Nazi-occupied territories along with murdering other “undesirables.”

Susan worked alongside me to craft compelling sequences in the play and to develop free content (selected reading list, discussion questions, etc.) to accompany this project. As we worked – and as the rise of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. and elsewhere increased dramatically – we realized that this play should be a free theater project for middle and high school students.

In contrast, for example, to elementary and high schools in Germany, where education on WWII and the Holocaust starts at a young age (7 or 8 years old according to one friend of mine in Germany), Holocaust education for high schools is only mandated in a very few states in the U.S. This means that the majority of young Americans have no idea of how one step led to the next step led to the next step until it was too late to stop.

Read this entire guest post now.

MARCH 2020 — “THE PUBLIC SERVICE RESPONSIBILITY OF FICTION WRITERS”

When we write fiction – novels, screenplays, short stories, poems, limericks – we should encourage responsible societal behaviors whenever possible.

Safer sex portrayal:

Unless there is an absolute necessity in your fiction for an unplanned pregnancy, fictional characters should practice safer sex. And even if you need an unplanned pregnancy, it can be attributed, for example, to a defective condom.

Why is this important? Because for many, many people fictional characters are real people, and their fictional behavior encourages emulation by real-life people.

As a fiction writer you don’t want to be responsible for real-life teen pregnancies because you had two teen characters not use easily available contraception.

Protective helmets:

A bicycle helmet saved my father on a bicycle when a car hit him, and a bicycle helmet (or motorcycle helmet or a certified protective helmet worn when skateboarding, rollerblading, etc.) can save others. If you can work it in when your 10-year-old characters ride their bikes or skateboard together, mention their nifty helmets.

Read this entire guest post now.