Paul Wartenberg – Funny Locations!

Our featured writer today is Paul Wartenberg.  Let’s give him a warm welcome!

If you would like your talent featured in the Authors in Our Midst series or Artists in Our Midstseries, send me an email message.  Don’t be shy!  I have no more Artists or Authors posts in the queue, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured.

Funny Locations

by Paul Wartenberg

Hola, and many thanks to WaterGirl for hosting these moments on Balloon Juice. Big shout and thank yous to the Balloon Juice commentators, and hugs to each of you these holidays and upcoming new year!

About what I write: It’s mostly been short stories. I’ve been writing ever since middle school, when I got into reading YA novels and various science fiction / historical non-fiction works that caught my interest. I was intrigued with the idea of being a teen writer for teens.

And then I actually got to writing. Ahh, well… Knowing how to write is one thing. Knowing what to write ABOUT was something else. I was still learning stuff about scenery, character, dialogue, and most of my stories when I think back on them showed little of any of that. (sigh) A lot of those story ideas are lost to time now, and good riddance.

Part of the problem I had was writing in a vacuum. There weren’t many other kids my age who thought of writing as an artistic outlet. When I won the Creative Writing award for my eight grade class for my school, the only reason I’d won was because I was the only applicant (I found out when the grade counselor had me redo two of the story submissions for content – one of them was a gruesome alien story – and then add a poem within a week to diversify the portfolio for the deadline).

I did get encouragement from the English lit teachers over those years. When they had us do the assignments of “write your own story” I fared well and got great grades. The 11th grade lit teacher Miss Linzie openly congratulated my work and said I wrote “like Hemingway” (at the time I thought she meant “stoic” but as I look back she probably meant “ham-fisted”)

I didn’t join up with other creative writing types until my final two years of high school when our theater teacher got an annual magazine going. I didn’t know about writing groups until a creative writing course at University of Florida, when I was finally able to get some help with wordcraft.

Input is wonderful. Honest – yet positive – critique is a good way to hone the writing skill and keep the interest going. Everywhere I’d written I was able to find a writing group to keep me focused. We’re all in this together (save for the awards season /owstophittingme). If you get into writing, I encourage you to find a critique group with a positive mindset (avoid the ones who use a chainsaw as a marketing logo).

I’ve written short stories over the length of my hobby/career, and that’s what I usually have for publishing when I get into the anthologies that are out there. I’ve been lucky that I got in with a local small press that publishes mystery and horror works, who were gracious enough to include my humor stuff among the books. It helped that they have a series of humor-horror anthologies called Strangely Funny, and I’d gotten praise for my works in several of those volumes.

This year, after struggling more with the novel projects I keep writing – and leaving unfinished – I decided to clear some of the stuff off my to-do list and self-published a story collection of my works. Focusing on the stories I considered humor – as a means of tying them together – I then focused on a follow-up theme of the stories happening in diverse locations. While I’ve written stories based in Florida due to location – having lived here since I was seven – I did have stories involving Las Vegas, Hong Kong, the Pacific Northwest, and New York City. At least I could give it a decent title: Funny Locations.

Goodreads link https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203658610-funny-locations