From Bashful to Blogger

Published on by David Christensen Category: General

If you’ve ever tickled a child, played peek-a-boo with one, or just watched them play, you know they were not born bashful or shy. For that reason, I don’t thing I was either. But somethings must have happened to turn me inward–to cause me to withdraw.

Some of them might have been me letting my older brother dominate over me. Perhaps having a father who worked out of state during critical bonding periods of my life contributed. But I kind of think it was simply because of an inborn tendency to be afraid of interacting with others, be they peers or adults.

Several years ago I engaged in a conversation with my younger sister, Connie. She is a retired therapist and about as bright a one that there ever was. I had brought up the idea that I was unhappy at being an introvert.

Then she taught me something I had never considered. First, being shy, bashful, withdrawn does not mean one is an introvert. Being outward going, gregarious, talkative does not make a person extroverted. She explained that being introverted or extroverted simply indicates where one goes to rebuild energy, to refocus, or just to relax.

In other words, a party person may rekindle his/her energy in a good book or taking a long solitary walk. A librarian or accountant might go dancing or organize a party to refill her/his energy banks. From the time of hearing this explanation I have felt a lot better about secluding myself while I write a book, or sitting down for hours on end composing a piece of music.

I graduated from college at the age of 30. I had spent two and a half years in a foreign country and four years in the navy, having served one tour of duty in Viet Nam–stationed just outside Da Nang. I had taught mathematics in the navy and received numerous letters of appreciation and accommodation for things I had done at my several duty stations. It all began during bootcamp at the Naval Training facility in San Diego where I was designated my company’s Honorman.

Let me digress a moment. In grade school I was chosen to take our classes March of Dimes contribution down town (Kansas City, Kansas) and during a radio broadcast present the money and tell everyone on the air how much we raised. I ran errands for the principal, distributed letters to the teachers, skipped recess on occasion to give a student a makeup spelling test. I was a main character in a story presentation we did for the parents of my classmates. I was responsible for setting up the chairs in the auditorium for instructional movies, PTA meetings, etc. And I was such a reliable crossing guard, that I held the position for most of my 6th grade year. (There was a street that ran between the two buildings which made up Chelsea Elementary and the kids crossed it before and after school and lunch and the big kid’s play ground was across the street.)

In junior high school I really pulled inside myself. After all, several elementary schools were all mixed together and the percentage of students I knew had drop drastically. In my 7th grade home room I don’t recall knowing anyone, yet I was elected sergeant at arms my first semester and president my second semester.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. Oh well, just one more. When I was a sophomore in high school I had a little reputation as an artist. I was asked to serve on the publicity committee for a couple who were running for Yearbook King and Queen. During the first meeting I had this incredible campaign slogan and it must have taken ten or fifteen minutes to get up the courage to raise my hand high enough to catch anyone’s attention. The candidates names were Sharon O’Neal and Larry Dimmit. I suggested we write their initials vertically along the left edge of the badges we were going to make–badges to be pinned to student’s shirts or blouses.  The slogan? “I’m SOLD on Sharon O’Neal and Larry Dimmit. They loved it and at the end of the year in what they wrote in me yearbook, you would think I won (yes, they won) the competition for them single handed.

I don’t know why none of these experiences built my self-confidence.

At my first job after college I had an office right next to the chief structural engineer for a large precast concrete company. I must have had some status, but I never caught on. I remember going into my bosses office and having my voice crack–I was so insecure and nervous.

Several years ago I finally observed some key factors in overcoming my people and situation fears.

I was born with a huge helping of HOPE. This never failed me and eventually I had accomplished so many things that I had to believe in myself. I was the first person in my family to serve a foreign mission for my church, to have a book published, to be a professional, etc.  I was the only one in my family to serve in the military, to build a house, own his own business, to fly over the north pole, to visit Europe and Asia, etc.

And now I write blogs and you are welcome to read as many as you like. I hope that from time to time you will pick up something that will motivate you to follow your dreams and make all the good ones come true.

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The Power of Coincidences

Published on by David Christensen Category: Art, Music, writing

In 1978 there was on television the most incredible series. It was called, Connections. It was created, written, and presented by James Burke, a science historian. The idea behind its 10 episodes was that each of today’s incredible inventions began years ago with some totally unrelated invention and through subsequent inventions today’s miracle inventions exist.

Have you ever noticed that certain aspects of your life came about in a similar way? I have. I was not born a writer, a composer, nor an artist!

ART: The earliest of these three interests was art. I liked to draw, but never considered myself to be very good. I learned to draw from my older brother, who learned it from our father, who picked it up from his older brother. A few months ago I finished writing a 27 page short story entitled, The Princess Warrior, for my seven-year-old next door neighbor. It contained over twenty illustrations. (Actually, I gave her a much shorter version for her sixth birthday. She swiftly thumbed through it, asked, “Where are the pictures?” closed the three-ring binder and that was that. I fixed things for her next birthday.) I’m glad I learned to draw.

WRITING: Of course I had to write the usual book reports and research papers that came up in high school and college. But the event that eventually opened up a career in writing came about at the end of a university level class in history. Rather than giving his students an exam filled with dates, people, and events, the teacher simply gave each of us a list of about 50 to 60 words taken from the special part of history we had been studying. (Now this was long before personal computers and the internet.) We were to take a dozen of these words and write a paragraph about each one.

I chose to incorporate probably 20 or more words into a short story. It was my first attempt at writing fiction and I must have done well because I got an A on my paper and a nice compliment on the use of the specified  words in a well written story.

Years later after sitting on a book idea for about 13 years, another “connection” took place. I was introduced to and subsequently enrolled in a correspondence course specializing in writing for children. And then near the completion of this course, the last few lessons were changed to an option to write a short book–just in time for me and my old idea. Suddenly I was writing my first book. I’ve written several since then, but it all began with that first opportunity to have a tutor help me learn how.

COMPOSING: I found a piano practice room in the basement of the dormitory in which I lived. As I played the only piece of piano music I could remember from a few lessons I had had as a kid, a sudden thought popped up in my head. “I bet you can write my own righthand melody to go with this lefthand accompaniment.” And I did. I’ve been writing music ever since (48 years). In fact, during the the past eight months, my nephew, Bill Walker, and I have had published three books of piano music. We each contributed 12 original compositions for each book.

It seems that I have been nudged this way and that way for a long time and with each turn in direction I have developed a new talent or discovered a new opportunity. My life has been and still is quite incredible!

I wager in many ways, yours has been too.

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My Older Sister, June: the Writer

Published on by David Christensen Category: writing

I have an older sister. Her name was June, as you must have guessed from the title of this blog. I use the past tense, was, only because she died in an automobile accident in 1966 – just three months after graduating from college.

She was a straight A student – and a writer. She loved to write. Fiction: short stories, poetry, and plays. Non-fiction: articles for magazines and newspapers. She was the first, that I recall, in our family to have a passion for writing. She would not be the last.

During her final semester of college I had the privilege of staying with June, her husband, and their new-born baby girl, Kristen. Oh, how I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I remember seeing a large three-ring binder filled with poetry, short stories, articles, plays: some finished and some rough drafts. I didn’t take time to real them all. I suppose by now they have long been discarded.

I am writing about June because she had a profound affect on my life, although even I didn’t realize she was leading the way for me to pursue writing.

The first writing-memory I have of her is when she was selected to be the editor of the Nor’wester, the weekly newspaper published by Northwest Junior High School, Kansas City, Kansas. The year was 1956. Half way through the school year, our family moved to Bonner Springs, Kansas When the sponsor (advisor) found out June was moving, she appointed Mike Cogswell to be the second semester editor. I guess my sister hadn’t explained that we would finish the school year at Northwest Junior High. It was a 13 mile commute, but our parents wanted us to have at least that much continuity in our lives.

I must assume that my sister had exhibited some significant experience with writing, or she would never have been selected editor in the first place. But I don’t know what she had done up to that point.

During June’s senior year at Washington High School, Bethel, Kansas, she was editor of the Washingtonian, the high school’s weekly newspaper.

Then June was off to college. She must have dropped out of school (most likely to earn enough money to continue) long enough to help me with a research paper I got to write for senior English. I had completed all the research, but was struggling with just how to begin. The topic was a presentation of the interlinking of the lives of Omar Khayyam and Edward Fitzgerald. She suggested that I begin by comparing them to Rogers and Hammerstein, Addison and Steele, and Abbott and Costello. (I must have copied the first paragraph for my paper verbatim from her suggestion, for even today I do not know who Addison and Steele are.)

Our paths separated after I finished high school. I spent two and a half years abroad. She was just finishing college when I returned and only then can I pick up her story. I believe she had majored in English and minored in journalism. Or, it might be the other way around.

June had entered a play (under the name June Christensen Anderson) she had written, entitled Interview, into the semiannual, one-act play writing contest sponsored by the ASBYU Productions Guild at Brigham Young University. She took first place, for which the play was published in The Wye Magazine, produced by the Productions Guild and performed at the Varsity Theater, and yielded my sister a check for $100. (That was a lot of money back in 1966.)

Then June died in an automobile accident on September 10, 1966, near Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. She was survived by her husband, Mark Anderson and daughter Kristen. Eight months later, a short story entitled Until, was published posthumously (under the name June C. Anderson) in The Relief Society Magazine, a women’s magazine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints..

During the 1964 earthquake in and around Anchorage, Alaska my older brother, Laurie, and a friend had flown into town from Fairbanks to pick up a car. My dad was working downtown in anticipation of the family moving there before long. My brother and his friend picked up my dad, who had been working late, to go to dinner. Had my dad remained working late, which was his pattern since the family was still in Fairbanks, my dad would most likely have died in the collapse of the building he had just left.

June was preparing a article for Reader’s Digest‘s Drama in Real Life. She never finished it. So, she never submitted it.

This blog has been long. Please forgive me for deciding to make it a tribute to my sister, June.

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Kindle in 30 Challenge

Published on by David Christensen Category: Books

A month or so ago, my sister, Connie Walker (connieawalker.com), and I decided to take the week beginning June 20, 2016 and spend it learning how to market our books. We had, months ago, purchased a course called Publishing Profit System, which offered some special help in what it termed, Kindle Training.

Then we both got so busy that we didn’t even take the course. Connie continued  writing books and I put my book-writing on hold and focused on piano: theory, technique, performance, and composition. No more books written, but helped composed the music for three piano books. See SHEET MUSIC.

Well, I have written eight books, five of which are in print, as you no doubt know from the BOOKS page of my website. But with all the focus on piano, I grossly neglected marketing the books I had already written.

This Kindle in 30 Challenge is a bonus which was recently added to the original course, and it is dynamite. It is a program designed by Kristen Joy, The Book Ninja, and assists an author through the process of writing, publishing, and marketing a Kindle book in 30 days.

As Connie and I got into the information, we each decided to pick a new book to write and to complete the process for it from writing through marketing. We felt it would be much more meaningful to roll up our sleeves and get down and dirty. That way, we will find producing each future book much easier – in fact learning and mastering this process just might help us write more books than we might ever have done otherwise, had we waited to discover all the steps to publishing and marketing on our own.

So, I am going to write The Mystery of the Windblown Feather, publish it on Kindle, and do some super marketing – all by the end of July.

Note that The Mystery of the Windblown Feather is the fourth book in the series: The Millerville Mysteries. The projects following this mystery will be the next three in the series. I’d love to have them all done by the end of 2016. That would mean a total of seven books done in this series alone. Not bad.

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Writing & Music: A Tug of War

Published on by David Christensen Category: Books, Music

I suppose it is appropriate that I make the first post, for my newly constructed website, about one of my life’s most interesting conflicts. Do I put my time into writing books or composing music? (And if I had the time I would also be torn toward illustrating several of my tentative books.)

I composed my first pieces of music in 1968. They were simple. I suppose today they would be classified as early beginning. In 1975 I had my first idea for a book. As far as it ever being written, let alone put into print, well that would have been considered a pipe dream.

I didn’t even know how to play the piano in 1968, let alone how to assemble an intelligent melody and arrangement. And by 1975, although I had written a few research papers, the one short story I had written was a far cry from a book.

Once I had begun to write music, I wrote a lot of it. I picked up a little theory here and some correct techniques there. I had my first serious piano lessons in 1970, but they lasted just 6 months at which time I was transferred to another navy base. From that time on, almost like clockwork, once a decade I managed to find a new piano teacher, obtained a year’s worth of lessons, and then something came up and I waited nine years for a new one to come along.

In the late 1980’s I took a correspondence course in writing for children. Then that 1975 book-idea I mentioned three paragraphs above, became a reality as did a second and a third book. The three were published in 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively.

Then piano became a serious thing. My nephew, Bill Walker, and I began the process of creating an online course (Pianos5th) to assist aspiring piano composers. Bill developed the lessons and as he did so, we ourselves took each one. Eighty-four lessons later, between the two of us, we had written enough music to justify seeking out the putting of them into print.

And finally, the piano thing for me became even more serious. I began taking piano lessons the way I had dreamed of having them for years. I found a teacher who would teach me to play the piano while using my own compositions for the development of theory, technique, and proficiency. In fact, had my 6th lesson just this morning. And best of all, my dream teacher is my Pianos5th partner, my nephew, Bill Walker. He is teaching me via Facebook’s Face-to-Face.

And what about my books. I have three which are completely written. They are each in one or another stage of editing. Then I have three books which are partially written. I will need to illustrate one of these.

Please feel free to follow me as I press my way through this fun and exciting dilemma.

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