When Do Writers Celebrate?

Getting a manuscript finished does not mean you will get an agent to represent it.

Getting an agent does not mean you will get a sale.

Getting a sale to a publisher does not mean the book will make it all the way to publication.

Making it to publication does not mean it will have decent sale numbers. Or awards. Or good reviews. Or anything.

So when do we get to celebrate?

I’d say- celebrate every one of these milestone. LIFE IS TOO SHORT.

No, this is not an announcement. I celebrate every milestone, and have had almost every one of the above mentioned set-backs. I’m just doing my usual thing here- giving my four-cents worth.

Chin up, brave dreamers. Every bit counts.

Warning: RANT

Or: How I Became a RUDE Person

I’m no different from ninety eight percent of Americans. Inundated with sales calls, advertisement on sites, the airwaves, and practically everywhere I look, I count on my home being my sanctuary. I willingly climb the many steps that form an obstacle-course to our door, because they have kept most door-to-door solicitors away. Who wants to walk up two flights of stairs of a now-in-construction path when some homes have front doors at street level?

A few years back, the lauded Do-Not-Call Registry stopped stopping anyone. I still had the front door, though. But for some reason the unofficial moat is no longer working. The floodgates have broken, and the solicitors have been floating in at an alarming rate all summer long.

On our neighborhood Email group, alerts have been coming of rude solicitors who hurl insults, yell, and walk away name-calling. The number of unique descriptions has increased from once a week to a few a day, every day. Since it’s not a crime to knock on a stranger’s door or even walk away yelling at them, the police have no interest in such. The neighbors are left to  videotaping and sharing, and rubbing our ears in the hope we haven’t heard what we thought we did, then rubbing our hands in frustration. We glance at our NO SOLICITORS signs, and wonder why they didn't look as pathetic to us when we hung them up.

 

The word solicitous, which is related to solicitor, is defined as being concerned, caring, considerate, attentive, mindful, and thoughtful. Oh, really?

I used to be nice at the door. I used to listen and consider. I used to think about what the huffing ‘n puffing person had to say. After all, they came all the way up from the street. Only my very best friends would deem to attempt this feat, and only because they valued my company.

The other day DD told me my abrupt way of speaking to a solicitor who came back after I asked her, nicely, not to, was rude. “They are people,” she said.

I realized I had become rude.

Gimme’ your tired, yearning to breath free. I no longer know which of us are the poor. I should probably go away to recharge on some island for a while. Only I suspect the road to it will be littered with billboards eager to make sales/converts/conquests of the huddled masses. 

Packing, Shipping, Moving…

So here I am, an assistant packer to DS who’s moving to his second apartment. In a few days, when this is done, I’ll be assistant shipper to DD who is moving a lot farther, and then an assistant mover-in (a glamorous term for a tag-along) as she checks-in to her residence only three thousand miles away.

And then…

Back here, to what is euphemistically referred to as the empty nest. Empty? Not my cluttered abode. But without what has been the hearth and soul of it, the nippers.

My late mother, who was an avid bird-watcher, told me chicks leave the nest once and then return, before leaving for good. My family got to observe many nests of different birds and their hatchlings, who found our home and yard a desirable place to build theirs. My mother’s observations proved right.

And so it is with humans- they leave but return before they leave permanently. But it is never the same. A new stage is set, and the parents must move on to the third act.

But I can’t quite grasp it, because I’m too busy. That’s a good thing. Otherwise my grip may lose its grasp, and I’d become a puddle of muddle.

Advice, support, and good recipes welcome!

August Days

August, the summer's last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.

Henry Rollins

If you can explain this quotation to me, please do. I’m still thinking about it.

Some love summer, because less is expected of us in summer. The pace slows, and for those who take real vacations in other locations, August is a most likely time.

We dress lightly and do most anything half heartedly. Even where the heat is oppressive, the image of cool lemonade on a wrap-around porch is more August than any other. The burdens and undertakings are still a month away, around the corner, as soon as September peeks.

So put your feet up and allow it to sink in. There’ll be plenty of time for misery later.

Back from the Boondocks

Well, I’m back and not worse for wear. In fact, I felt rested from no-cooking-dishwashing-driving and all things computer. “Felt,” because as soon as I opened my Inbox a deluge poured in. Two weeks of neglect made my computer furious. I could hear it hissing, “Who do you think you are not checking-in for ions?”

When it was done rumbling and grumbling, 486 messages were waiting to be examined. That’s four-hundred and eighty six, yes Ma’am.

Two days later, and I am almost caught up. Many messages were discard-able, true. But discarding three-hundred plus messages takes time. Then there are the others.

This got me thinking that I spend entirely too much time with Email. I’m not running a corporation; I’m barely running my life as a manager of my family. I value staying connected. I've gotten a lot from E-connectivity and can’t remember how it was before, in cavemen’s days. But maybe I don’t need it as much as the folks I see on their portable devices in all places at all times.

I now value even more the needed disconnection. Reminder on my E-calendar: do it again sometime.

Still Away...

While DD plays,

I try to stay cool.

In more ways than one.
Back next week, calm and collected.

Off of Blog-land...

...But just for a wee bit.

I'm an official chaperon for DD for yet another international piano competition.

I take a break from E-communication, while my computer stays home with DH.
Back in two weeks...

Hot ‘Nuff for You?

Well, it is July.

But I was also thinking about the other kind of hot.

What makes one person’s blog popular? What makes one book zoom straight into the interstate highway while another gets stalled at a gas station on a side road in a desert town long abandoned?

Wait a minute- maybe this image is better for a screenplay.

It’s tempting, reading such, to suggest that the quality of the writing is the reason. Bad writing, (see the preceding example) and the book can not ever make it to the hotties list. Same with personal popularity. A mean-spirited person’s snarky blog will never garner a large following.

Ahmm. I have shining examples to disprove that. But this is not the point of my post, so I won’t name names. Bet you know what I’m referring to, though.

So back to today’s pondering- what makes writing "hot?"

If you have any ideas, tell me. It may be July, but the temperature at my place feels decidedly chilly. Come to think of it, maybe I could use some chili. C’mon over and we’ll share.

Really Good Chili:

Ingredients:
 3 pounds lean ground beef
 2 large chopped onions
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon dried ground cumin or to taste
2 tablespoons fresh chili peppers ,chopped
Coarse salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
3 to 4 cups fresh tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 cup beef broth
1 cup red wine
 2 tablespoons molasses
2 cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained

Chopped green onions

Preparation:
In a large soup pot over medium-high heat, sauté ground beef, onion, and garlic until the meat becomes gray in color. Add cumin, chili peppers, salt, pepper, tomatoes, beef broth & wine. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, approximately 3 to 4 hours, stirring often.
Add molasses to taste to cut down the acidity of the tomatoes. Add beans and continue to simmer another 30 minutes.
For maximum flavor, cool chili and refrigerate overnight so flavors will mellow as chili is best made 1 day ahead to allow the flavors time to marry.

Re-heat and garnish with green onion.

Counting Our Chickens

An old man and a young man were travelling on a train, when the young man asked the old man, “Pardon me, sir, but do you have the time?”

The old man didn't answer, so the young man rephrased, “Sorry to bother you, but do you know what time it is?” The old man kept silent.

Seeing a watch peeking from under the old man’s cuff, the young man couldn't help himself. “Sir, may I ask why you won’t answer me?”

“Young man,” said the old man, “This is the next to the last stop on this route. Shortly after that comes the last stop. I don’t know you, but if I answer you now we’ll strike a conversation, and at the last stop I will have to invite you to my house which is right next to the station because it is dinner time and my wife has dinner ready. You’re good looking, and my beautiful daughter who’s home from college will be there. You’ll both fall in love and the next thing we know you’ll get married. So you tell me- do I need a son-in-law when what I could really use is a new watch that actually keeps the right time?”

I thought of this old Jewish joke because it occurred to me how in life we often admonish ourselves not to count our chickens before they’re hatched. Not to think of a submission becoming an offer and an offer becoming a contract. You’ve just sent the query, for goodness sake.

But when we write we do the opposite- we must think ahead, well ahead. Even if parts of our story are a surprise to us as well, deep down we know the story. At least for me, a story’s outline is the first step, and the chickens are counted before they get hatched.

© Erica Aoyama 2003

Don’t dream about this; do dream about that. Here’s it’s crippling; there it’s a must.

Just bits of existential ponder on a Tuesday morning.

Public Me, Public You

When the great Nora Ephron died, the shock was that she died from a long illness she completely hid from the public. 
This was the Nora Ephron whose reputation was as a revealer of personal warts. The Nora who wrote so poignantly about the betrayal and disillusion of her marriage in Heartburn; the struggles with her aging appearance in I feel bad about my neck, and gave the same impression of intimate candor in her essays published by the New Yorker. 
This wonderful storyteller, who could be thought of as the original blogger, was the same Nora Ephron who was diagnosed with a terminal illness six years before she passed away, and shared none of it. Not with the public, anyway.

For me this makes perfect sense; she shared of herself, but not all of herself. This is what I do in my life and in my writing. This is what I do on this blog.

Here are my Public Me rules:

*Do not lie, fib, or invent glories. Praise should come from someone else.

*Share your failings if you think someone may find it helpful. Writing is about getting out of the isolation booth.

*Do not push all your warts on others.

* Never ever, no matter how tempting, share your children’s warts. Or your identified friends’. Or anyone who isn't begging you to do it.

*If you choose to write a rah-rah-aren't-things-grand-in-my-corner sort of blog, that’s all right. But no one wants to read those for long. Just the sunny-side makes a blogger a dull girl.

Public me is thoughtful.  Always navigating what to say, where, why, when, and to whom. No different than the “W”s of story telling.

I haven’t been diagnosed (touch wood and Tfoo-Tfoo) with anything interesting, and unlike Ms. Ephron I might have shared such. The private/public filter is a personal one. But wherever it’s drawn, I’m aware of it.

From Notion to Story

There are stories that come to mind almost fully delineated: the characters, what happened, and how it ended. But most writers say this is the exception.

I've had stories materialize two ways: a character that started taking to me, or a plot that only needed its main actors revealed. Speaking for myself only, most of my stories began with a plot. Most of the writers I know personally have told me theirs began with a character.

Examples from my writing life of a plot-first story: I pass a house and sense that something ominous happened there, and then know what it was. I can barely breathe thinking about the powerful events. Now I need to find out who was there to tell about it.

Example of a character-first story: I can see and almost hear this girl, Holly. Nothing ever goes right for Holly, yet she always comes out on top with her slightly dented dignity intact. I've only met Holly in my imagination, but I let her tell me of her many adventures, and, boy, can she tell a story.

I’ll let the master storyteller of them all say it, as he said it best: 

 

I keep six honest serving men. (They taught me all I know);

Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

                                                                            Rudyard Kipling

Writing in Your SECOND Language…

 I must fess up here: English is my second language. I grew up in Israel, and while it helped to have a mother who was American and gave me an American citizenship, my mother did not speak English to me. Except for the times she was so angry at me and English phrases got thrown in, it was Hebrew at home, on the street, and at school.

School was also where I learned English, beginning in fifth grade. I still remember some oddities from my formal introduction to the language, such as thinking the word young meant old. Or that the word stupid meant lazy. These could be remnants of hearing my mother’s raging and my not quite understanding, or some other muddle I no longer have conscious access to.

America- the land of dreams. I came to live in the country I did not know, but of which I was a citizen, when I was in my late teens. I sounded fluent and had good pronunciation, gratis of having an American parent. But my command of the written language was rather poor. You've heard of “high-school English?” That was about it.

 Even before the language changeover, I was a writer. I had a short story published in Hebrew while still in high-school. Making the language switch was harder for writing than for passive understanding or casual speaking. I spent some years in transition- on the road between two languages, two sensibilities, two worlds.

I was becoming more of one and less of the other, but  wasn't fully in either. I was a storyteller. I just didn't have, you know, the words. Words, sentences, paragraphs. The building blocks. I don’t know when I attained the audacity to think that I had these tools of my second language and could use them effectively.

I read a NewYork Times (book section) discussion of published writers whose first language was not English. They all felt that, for all their challenges, they had something special to offer not in spite of  but because of it. I wouldn't go that far, but then- I am not as successful as they are. I know that having lived elsewhere, (really lived and been a part of, not just stationed in or visiting) does give storytellers something natives don’t have. On the other hand, natives have something we never will- that deep and unwavering connection, psychically and linguistically, to their home base. So it’s a tie.

They say you raise your own kids either exactly as you were raised, or in reaction to it. I chose not to raise mine bilingual, because, to me, a foot in two worlds was not an advantage. I’m not right or wrong about this; it’s just my experience.

 

Words/sentences/paragraphs are just a part of this; it’s a mindset. I wanted my kids to be grounded and strongly identified. I did not want them to do the nervous dance I jitterbugged on tippy-toes, sometimes landing with a thud, barely navigating just-so between the arenas of a first and second language.

 DS is now a Linguistics major, while DD excelled in Latin, French, and took up Italian on her own. But when they write stories, there’s little doubt that English it is, and Americans they are. 

AM I GOOD AT THIS?

When you ask kindergarteners to raise their hands if they are good at painting pictures, almost all would raise their hands. YES, I am!

Gather the same group ten years later, when they are now teens. A small number would still raise their hands. Fast forward ten more years, and these folks are now in their mid-twenties. In most cases none would raise their hands.

Any objective viewer would say that on the whole, these individuals' painting skills have improved. The disparity is subjective. The years have added the accumulated weight of criticism and self-consciousness.

When a writer on a virtual chat board asked if there is a point where you know you are a good writer, most responded that there isn't. Not really. And not one point.

~~~

My first rejection was a personal rejection, and it was a very kind one. I was not aware of the mounds of slush-subs that never got a personal response. It was a rejection, and that was not a good thing.

But others spoke of years of form rejections, and I considered that maybe I could possibly be somewhere near the periphery of the edge of the ball park.

I’m forever grateful to that editor who wrote a long and very encouraging rejection. That kept me going through almost a year of forms, which followed.

When I got the first acceptance, I was told it was one in three hundred. The small publisher had a “call for manuscripts” in a writers’ magazine, and mine got to the top of that heap somehow. Perhaps, just-possibly-maybe, I was where I belonged.

DD just went through the arduous process of auditions to top music conservatories. She was accepted everywhere she auditioned and will be making music at Juilliard come next fall. A pianist friend, who had just as much parental support and validation, was turned down by all but one conservatory, where he got off the wait-list and enrolled. DD seems less confidant in her abilities that her friend is in his.

My point? Outside validation is only one piece of the puzzle.

*But it is a vital piece.*

At some point we need others’ validation. Hopefully, it would not come posthumously. (Think of John Kennedy Tool who could not get his novel published, but when it was, after he had taken his own life in desperation, the novel won a Pulitzer prize.) It may come from an editor's letter, one who isn't your cousin’s best friend. It may come with or without $$. It may come in drips and drops. But some validation from someone who does not owe you anything is a needed.

And when it comes, will you know then?

Not necessarily. It’s one piece of a puzzle. But, speaking for myself, it is an essential piece.

The Imaginary as Real

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within it the image of a cathedral.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

When DS was in fourth grade, we were warned about his teacher from parents of a student who had had her the year before. She had castigated the student for relaying an experience he imagined as real, when the homework assignment clearly said, “tell of something that really happened to you last summer.”

The parents of the other boy, both literary and well educated, felt journeys of the imagination were “something that really happened.” Possibly, they also felt the insult of embarrassing their child in front of the class. But their son was not embarrassed. Instead, he reasoned his case well, though the teacher would not relent.
“She is small minded,” they told me. “That is the worst kind of teacher for young people.”

 

 

At that time, I was of two minds about this. There were a lot of nuanced matters in this kerfuffle, and I could see both sides.

Some years later, when concerns of respect for authority, teaching youngsters to follow directions, and the matter of how public a correction should be, were behind me, I could think of the issue itself.

I've come to think as that boy’s parents did. Experiences of the mind are real experiences, and they really happen to us. Anyone who likes to read knows what I mean.
 

I think Saint-Exupéry said it well, though today he might have replaced the word “man” with “person.”

The May Days of Clumsies

Eeeek, I’m having one of those weeks.

You know the Jewish definition of a schlemiel- the one who falls on his back and breaks his nose. I've always had days where things seem to drop, er, slide out of my hand, I trip on things that aren't there, and don’t move my forehead out of the refrigerator door so rudely in its way.

But they pass, and I’m back to my usual almost graceful ways.

Only this week had started with all of the above and continued. For three days in a row.

My cats have been stepped on, (using the passive construction to evade responsibility here) and my dishes shattered at an alarming rate. I may be inching for a case of justified new china purchase. I’m afraid to use my car because that could really hurt.

No need for a neurological evaluation yet. I know what’s up. I am unfocused.

When my focus refuses to stay in and on one place, things happen. But a few of those boom-bangs and I say to myself, “Now focus!” and all’s well, until the next wave.

This time I don’t seem to even have the focus to refocus. I got the clumsies. I can think of reasons, but that doesn't help. What I need is…

Any ideas?

Slow Down, You’re Moving Too Fast...*

*…You've Got to Make the Morning Last."

From “Feeling Groovy,” a Simon & Garfunkel song

Some years ago my father marveled at a new photo developing shop that boasted they will have your film developed and prints made in an hour. Across the street a competitor sprouted, making the same promise but in fifty-nine minutes.

The days of bringing the film in and waiting for it to come back in a week were gone.

Two months later, yet another camera place said they’d get your order ready in thirty minutes. 

“What will they think of next?” my father gasped. “Maybe some sort of instant service? Your photos are visible as soon as you take them?”

Yup, he was onto something. The age of digital photography was not far behind.

“Maybe the next thing will be printed photographs before you had a chance to take them,” my father quipped. “You just had to think about taking the picture… .”

Not quite there, father. But I should not find it shocking. You are not here to witness, but your sense that the world was speeding up was spot-on before. Maybe after the mind-reading cameras, ones will be made to let you know what was on your mind before you even thought it. Ha!

Or maybe we’d re-discover the virtue of slowing down, savoring, and yes, even waiting for what’s worth waiting for. What a revolutionary idea.

Spring Starts with an S

A relative in Israel asked me if I remember Israeli spring.

{I do. Mostly, I remember it was too short.}

No, I haven’t joined the A-Z challenge that took over blogosphere last moth. All these S-words are part of the mini-silliness that strikes in spring. A giddiness that might be hardwired in our cells.

 We survived winter.

It may not seem like much in an age of central heating, modern hospitals and flu shots. But fall babies were thought to survive at a much lower rate than spring babies for a reason. Animals that live outdoors go into heat in winter and give birth is spring for a reason. Plants sprout up. Shoots and leaves make their first shy appearances, and humans have new springs in their steps.

Tsss-Tsss…. Come to think of it, lots of Ss.

‘Nuff folly. I’m going dancing. Swaying and swooning, more like it.

Newbie Mistakes

A few weeks ago a friend asked me if I would help a new writer who was about to publish her first book. Could I answer her questions, or maybe connect her to others who might?

Everyone starts as a newbie. We were all there once.  “Of course,”I said.

Only moments later, the soon-to-be author made contact. All glowing with the radiance of first-time publication, she wanted to meet and talk. I, old fogy that I am, suggested she first email  the nature of her project and her questions to me.

Barely seconds later, a long and detailed Email came back. This writer’s enthusiasm was palpable. Her first book is coming out! Like now! She needs to market! She wants to show it to me! 

Some of her comments showed the cluelessness of a newbie. Well, maybe most of her comments. I've gotten wonderful advice in my newbie days, and continue to even now. I've given advice when friends ask, and on this blog- even when not prompted. I wanted to be helpful.

After a few hours’ thought, I sat down and composed a long Email congratulating this writer on her upcoming book. I suggested some links to places where I have learned a lot of useful things. I suggested the best chat-board in kid-lit as a good place to network, The Blue Board. I also included a link to the most informative professional organization for Children’s book writers. The  SCBWI also welcomes the yet-to-be published.

I confessed that I have no experience in self-publishing, which is the route she chose. I made a gentle suggestion that her intention to have her book be “picked up by a major publisher” is unlikely if she self-publishes it. It has happened. But, for the most part, self-publishing is a deterrent to eventual traditional publishing. I added that presenting her book as for age 0-6 would not advance her cause, as this is not, developmentally speaking, a real age category in publishing. Infants and six-year olds will not listen to the same stories. Rather, the established age categories might be toddler board books (1-3) and young picture books (3-5). [There is also an older picture book category for beginning readers, ages 5-8.]

After checking her book out, I enclosed links to similar books. Writers should know about what is on the market if they are also the marketers of their books.

All right, I spent some time, enclosed plenty of good links, and signed with very best wishes for the success of her book. I added that she may write back with any questions she has. I know I had plenty, and do to this day. We all have a lot to learn, and paying it forward is a privilege.

Which is why I posted it here. Someone may find a bit of it helpful.

 

The one thing I would add is that if someone bothers to think about your inquiry and respond, thank them even if you don't resonate or feel happy about their input. 

Maybe that should be Networking 101. Then pay it forward.

Tomorrow is the Busiest Day of the Year

Before I was published, DH used to tell others that I was trying to write. I corrected him time and again. I wasn't trying; I was doing it. I was trying to get my writing published, but writing was something I was already doing.

Spring is in the air and it is tempting to do less and dream about doing more. There’s always tomorrow.

 But today is yesterday’s tomorrow, and today is all we really have. Don’t try, do. Spring forth and bring it on.

Now.

Pep-talk for today, if you needed one. I sure do. 

About Work, or- How I Learned to…

Until my late twenties, I had difficulty with longer projects. Time management was not part of my schooling. If I couldn't finish a paper or a book in a month or two, I did not finish it, period. This shortcoming was something that prevented me from proceeding in school. (And from doing many other things, come to think of it.)

 In my late twenties, I decided this had to change. I picked up embroidery and started increasingly demanding projects. This form of tapestry is the most tedious way to create or re-create patterns, slower than drawing or painting. 

I learned how to parcel energy for the long haul, how to muscle up for the draining middles of longer projects when the enthusiasm of the beginning has worn off and the tailwinds carrying me to the end were not yet blowing 

I took this on as a disciplinary matter, not for its own sake. But the concrete results were there to remind me that YES, I CAN.

My efforts served me well later when doing restoration on antique textiles, and of course, with my writing/revising and such.

So this is where I am today, back to work writing a new story. If you're working on your taxes, that'll be over soon, and then comes tomorrow. On this final stretch, grab hold of the saddle and don't let go.

Elliot’s Peculiar Cruelty

“April is the cruellest month.”

T. S. Eliot

Why? Do tell, T. S. - and then tell of the extra L you put in there, which my proofreading eye keeps wanting to change to cruelest.

This signature line, the beginning of the epic poem The Waste Land, seemed a good place to start. Not because it is April, but because it made me think how writing peculiarities are what separates the very good from the great.

It’s the artist’s “know the rules and then break the rules.”

I wonder if the How To books and the mechanical spell-checkers computer writing programs affect real creativity. I doubt they add to artistry in any way, and worry they may squelch it.

I look back at the very first stories I wrote with the intention to put them out in the world at large. What I wrote the first two years would be classified as unpublishable. I had not yet immersed myself in industry-mavens’ wisdom. I wrote using intuition and native sensibility. I created wholly original stories that, I later learned, would have a prospective editor hurl the pages at the wall in exasperation. Or, worse, have the editor laugh and read them to colleagues as examples of ineptitude.

As I began to read about what was expected, I tucked my initial efforts deep in the drawer and shuddered at ever re-reading any of these embarrassments. But something in me made sure I didn't burn the pages or delete the files.

Yesterday I opened one of the stories by accident. I was looking for another file and clicked on the wrong one. I found myself face to face with a story that broke all the rules. Well, not all, but close.

I didn't cringe. I marveled. It’s probably unpublishable, but it is different, full of the unexpected, and connected to the life-source of good writing in a way many of my later, more conventional offerings, are not.

It may be time to get back to the beginning and forget a lot of what I have learned. Ah, the cruelty of April. 

May is going to be busy. Lots of shedding to do.