Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Monday, February 19, 2024

Going Backwards

When I was 5, my father had me and my brother in a vehicle when he stopped at a convenience store on Apperson Drive.

I don't recall what kind of car we had in 1968, but I want to say it was a Dodge Charger. At any rate, he left us both in the car while he went in to fetch whatever he was after.

In 1968 I suppose there were car seats, but we didn't use them. I don't think we used seat belts either, for that matter. Yes, I am of the generation that rode in the bed of the pickup truck, drank from water hoses, and lived to tell about it.

After my father hopped out of the car, my brother climbed into the driver's seat so he could pretend to be driving. I don't remember if the car was running, but I'm guessing my father left it in neutral and put on the parking brake. I think the parking brake was located where today most people would find a cup holder and a console.

Somehow my brother disengaged something, and the car started rolling backwards.

As in, out of a small parking lot and into a busy highway.

My brother seemed oblivious to what he'd done, but as soon as I realized the car was moving, I started to scream. That made him cry. I remember feeling terrified because while I didn't know how to stop the car, I knew we were in trouble and that if the car went into traffic, we would be hurt. I was screaming and crying and trying to get my brother out of the driver's seat while at the same time looking at the store where my father was. 

"Daddy, Daddy!" I screamed, all the while trying to tug my sobbing brother away from the steering wheel. Somehow, I managed to hit the car horn.

I don't know if he heard me, but I saw Dad look up and realize what was happening. He dropped whatever he had in his hands on the store counter and ran toward the car. I was still screaming when my father wrenched the door open and stuck his foot inside and on the brake. I was able to grab my brother then and pull him over to me in the front side passenger's seat.

It was a close call.

My father yelled at me for not stopping the car (like a 5-year-old is going to be anything other than scared to death in this scenario) as he got in the driver's seat, pulled the car back up, put it in park, and went back in to pay for his stuff. I imagine it shook him up a little, we were so close to rolling out into the road.

I'm also pretty sure he told us not to tell our mother what happened. I don't remember if I ever did.

Mostly I remember feeling so angry that he blamed me for something my brother did that the fear went away, to be replaced with a seething darkness. I couldn't tell him how unfair he was being - I did not have those kinds of words yet, or that kind of courage - nor could I take it out on anybody (except maybe my brother, but I was a good girl). Maybe I went home and beat up a Barbie doll. I don't recall. But this incident has always stood out in my mind as a fine example of unfairness tinged with total terror, and it comes back to me when I have the feeling that I'm going backwards in life instead of moving ahead.

I'm not really going backwards. Being sick for a month has set me back. I was doing more physically before I caught this respiratory thing, and now I'm going to have to work to build up my stamina again. I went to Food Lion today and it wiped me out. 

For some reason, though, my life does feel like I'm trapped in an uncontrolled vehicle slowing heading into traffic, with no idea how to hit the gas or the brake pedal because my legs aren't long enough.

Monday, February 05, 2024

Monday Monday

You really can't trust Mondays. One never knows what a Monday will bring.

Today brought me more of the same viral thing that I've had since mid-January, along with a new source of work.

Short term freelancing is always good. Fortunately, it's mostly internet research and I won't have to talk on the phone.

Good thing, because my laryngitis is bad. My half-deaf husband hasn't heard a word I've said for 3 weeks.

He's probably good with that.

Monday, August 21, 2023

Happiness Challenge - Day 21

 

Today I finished up an editing project. It was a lot of work, and I was pleased with the job I did. The manuscript was interesting and that always helps.

It has been a while since I edited a full manuscript for someone. This would be the 12th book I have edited. I have learned a lot since I started editing manuscripts and I think I do a much better job now than I did when I first started. For one thing, I learned that the manuscript needs to be as perfect as I can make it in all ways. Publishing houses do not check for discrepancies or fix things anymore. The first book I edited had mistakes in it because the author told me not to fix them - he said the publishing house would correct things and he didn't want to pay me to do it (mostly the problem was different spellings of the name of the same person). However, after the book published and I received a copy, I saw that the publishing house didn't correct hardly anything, if anything at all. So now even if I'm not being paid to fix something, I do it anyway.

To ensure I catch everything, I read most of the book aloud as I go through. Generally, I read through a chapter, make changes (using the track changes feature in MS Word), then go back through the chapter again using the "final" view and read that chapter aloud to ensure I didn't miss anything. Then after I have finished, I review the whole book for consistencies in headings, chapter headings, numbers, etc., and pick out chapters or paragraphs to review to make sure things are flowing properly.

I use Chicago Style but most authors also have their own preferences, so I keep a notepad of those to refer to as I go along. I also list names here, characteristics if relevant (you wouldn't want Barbara to show up with green eyes in chapter 10 when they were blue in chapter 2), and things like that.

This project made me happy because it is something I do well and it was enjoyable work, if a bit stressful because of a deadline. I actually like to work when I enjoy what I'm doing.


Friday, June 02, 2023

An Outing

The evening took us away from our house and to an event hall filled with people, many of whom we knew.

The occasion was the celebration of a friend's 25th year in business. She is a massage therapist (with emphasis on the therapist), and now about 64 years old. I saw her for many years, and sent my husband to see her, and gave gift certificates to friends and family to enjoy her services (though I suspect most of those went unused, stuffed in some drawer).

It is unusual for a massage therapist to last so long; they generally wear out, from what I understand. Bing says the average career of a massage therapist is 5 to 8 years. The fact that Karen has worked for long - and kept herself in shape so that she was able to do it - was indeed something to celebrate. Giving a massage is hard work.

Despite the fact that we have 33,000 people in our county, it's really a small community. The event was held at the Kyle House, once known as Bolton's Store, in the county seat. The building is an events venue, and there were easily 50 plus people there when we arrived.

Since the most public places I have been since 2019 are grocery stores, this was a bit much for me; the sweet, cloying scent of perfumes, powders, and colognes, so many people in a smaller space than a massive market.

But I had accepted the invitation knowing that I am trying to claw my way back to civilization, having become almost - but not quite - agoraphobic during the pandemic, seldom leaving the house, only venturing out to purchase food. As for other items, let's just say the UPS man and I are on a first-name basis.

So, this was a personal test, which I passed. I am grateful that I went, happy to have seen so many familiar faces after so many years of seeing only scowls in the supermarket. These people were happy, caring on pleasant conversations, and enjoying themselves.

The people I knew included my physical therapist, whom I hadn't seen since 2019. She suffocated me in an embracing and long hug the moment I walked in the door. I stiffened at first, having determined previously that I didn't want physical contact, but she was so sincere, and I like her so much that it was only a moment of light panic, and then I hugged her back with similar intensity. 

I also saw a former county supervisor, whom I'd really enjoyed working with and was sorry to see retire many years ago, a cousin who said she wants to meet for coffee, my dear friend Leslie (another hug) and her brother, who informed us he had retired as a surveyor that very day, (I also called him by another brother's name, oops), and an ex-husband of another dear friend. I also greeted a former employer and his wife, a contractor and his wife, both of whom have known my husband most of his life, a former high school pal, a former firefighter's wife, and of course Karen, who was throwing herself this bash.

I had a couple of chicken salad sandwiches and a cookie, along with water. A pile of articles about Karen sat on the end of one table, and I only had to flip over a page before I saw my byline, again and again. I've written so much about this county and its people over the last 30 years. Of course I'd written about Karen. In fact, I wrote the first article about Karen's business, I think.

My former employer (a lawyer then, retired now) saw one of the articles and then chased me down to show me. "Here's your name," he said, thrusting the story at me. He pointed it out to someone I didn't know. "She wrote this."

Yes, I wrote that. It was nice to know it meant something to someone, or several someones, even though it was years old.

No one had on masks, including me. Everyone is over that, although I still wear one when I go pick up drugs at the drug counter. If there are going to be germs anywhere, it's in there. I had a mask in my pocket, but I didn't put it on (I admit it was tempting).

Almost everyone was dressed up, in nice work clothes or church clothes, including us (although I had on my sneakers because I can't get my orthotic in any other shoe). I enjoyed myself. My husband enjoyed it. We left after an hour, with things still going full swing, when I finally felt the perfumes and smells seeping into my lungs and felt an asthmatic wheeze coming on.

I guess I'm coming out into the world again.

Monday, May 22, 2023

Why News Media Should Unite for the Greater Good

Way back when in the old days of journalism, the local media fed off of one another. I could see when the local TV station, for example, had read the weekly paper I wrote for, because they'd pick up a story I wrote and make it their own.

While I enjoyed the thrill of breaking a story and "beating the competition," I never enjoyed or endorsed the competitive nature of the media beyond that point. Once I had the "scoop," I was happy to share.

However, other reporters for the "big paper" seldom talked to me, and the TV outlets were even worse. Generally, they acted as if I was not there. Occasionally, a reporter would be friendly, and I never hesitated to offer up background or whatever another writer needed for a story if asked.

But I was seldom asked. I know journalists are supposed to work the room themselves, find their own resources, and do their own follow-up, but I have found that it never hurts to talk to a colleague to get another perspective or to have background information I may not otherwise find. Nothing says I have to use their information. It's like reading Wikipedia - a good place to start but then you go on to do the rest of the research.

Journalists generally attended multiple meetings and saw a project or whatever from various angles, more so than the average person. I appreciated their point of view and their knowledge. I wasn't trying to steal from them, or them from me. But I did want accurate and complete information to pass on to my readers. It helped to know how a project went from point A to point B.

This has never been a thing, having media work together. With democracy on the line, I would argue that now is the time for that to happen. It is time for a national narrative that ignores the dollar bills and instead promotes the will of the majority and the good of the people.

Otherwise, we're going to end up with fascism and the destruction of the Constitution, and the end of our republic and the demise of democracy.

With newspaper readership declining and opinionated "entertainment news" all over the TV, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift, emphasizing the numerous benefits of collaboration among newspapers, TV stations, and other news media outlets. This, hopefully, would enhance journalistic integrity, accuracy, and the overall impact of news reporting.

Collaboration does not imply compromising individual identities or perspectives but rather harnessing the collective strength of the news industry to fulfill its critical role in society. It's not called The Fourth Estate for nothing.

Collaboration would foster an environment that promotes journalistic integrity. By working together on a story, news media outlets could pool resources, share information, and conduct comprehensive investigations. Such cooperation could reduce the risk of biased or incomplete reporting and enhances fact-checking processes. Moreover, by collaborating, journalists would hold one another accountable and maintain higher ethical standards. Collective scrutiny would ensure that journalists strive for accuracy and objectivity, safeguarding the public's trust in the media. If news media outlets prioritized collaboration, they would send a powerful message about their commitment to the truth and the fundamental principles of journalism. This is especially important now, when so many news outlets are underfunded and understaffed.

Multiple media sources
Coordinated efforts among news media outlets would have the potential to amplify the impact of important stories and increase public awareness. By sharing research, sources, and perspectives, media organizations would be able to construct a more comprehensive narrative, bringing greater attention to crucial issues. This is essentially what the TV media, and some print media, did to ensure the election of #45 and the loss of Hillary Clinton in 2016. He received way more attention (for ratings) and free press than she did.

Collaborative reporting would allow for a deeper exploration of complex topics, reaching a broader audience and inspiring meaningful conversations. Additionally, when multiple news media outlets present a unified front on critical matters, public trust would be reinforced, further emphasizing the significance of the reported stories. By working together, news media could create a collective voice that is louder, more influential, and capable of effecting positive change in society. There would always be dissenters who would see such collaboration as some kind of conspiracy.

In an era where misinformation and disinformation run rampant, collaboration among news media outlets should be indispensable. By sharing resources, cross-referencing facts, and aligning narratives, media organizations could more effectively counter the spread of false information. Collaborative fact-checking initiatives might help distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones, empowering the public to make informed decisions. Furthermore, joint efforts could expose disinformation campaigns and highlight their deceptive tactics. By presenting a united front against misinformation, news media outlets could collectively protect the integrity of the information ecosystem, fortify public trust, and prevent the erosion of democracy.

Collaboration allows news media outlets to overcome resource limitations, particularly in an era of shrinking newsrooms and financial constraints. By pooling together their expertise, skills, and equipment, media organizations could undertake ambitious investigations and in-depth reporting that might otherwise be unfeasible. Shared resources enable the efficient allocation of limited budgets and personnel, ensuring the coverage of essential stories that may not receive adequate attention otherwise. Collaboration could also facilitate knowledge exchange, fostering professional growth, and expanding the collective capacity of the news industry.

By prioritizing collaboration, news media could enhance journalistic integrity, amplify the impact of stories, combat misinformation, and overcome resource limitations. Collective efforts would send a powerful message about the commitment to truth, while fostering public awareness and trust in most arenas.  Ultimately, by working together, news media outlets could inspire positive change, promote informed citizenship, and uphold the fundamental values of journalism.

It's a shame I fear we're too far gone for this to even be considered by other media.


*ChatGPT assisted with this essay.*

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

The Craven, the Crazies, and the Rest of Us

Over the weekend, an Oklahoma newspaper with no online presence printed this as its front page of its weekend edition:


You can hear Rachel Maddow discuss this at this link, if you want.

I have written local journalism for 39 years. My first article was published in 1984. I've written for nearly all of the local publications, including many that no longer exist, and for statewide magazines. I estimated once that I've published over 2 million words in multiple publications.

My editor at The Fincastle Herald always told me if I didn't have someone angry at me, I wasn't doing my job.

Suffice to say, I did my job. Over the years, I have been threatened by various and sundry people, including a sheriff in nearby county. He stopped me as I was entering the courtroom to listen to a board meeting. "How do I know that's water you have in there?" he demanded, nodding toward my ever-present water bottle.

I took a drink and held it out to him. "You're welcome to the rest of it. It's just water."

"I could haul you in right now for having liquor and who'd know different?" he said. He banged his hand against his pistol on his thigh for emphasis.

"Everybody knows I don't drink alcohol," I replied, and I walked past him to my seat. I could feel him glaring at the back of my head.

Later that same night, I nearly wrecked my car on the way home as I drove over Caldwell Mountain and the tire went flat. In the shine of a flashlight, I discovered my tire had been slashed with a knife.

Yes, someone in the next county over had tried to kill me. Caldwell Mountain is a dangerous drive, over twisting, winding roads. My car could have gone off the pavement and down the mountainside, not to be found for possibly years.

That happened about 25 years ago. So, while this is nothing new, the rhetoric now has been taken to a whole other level.

It was not unusual for me to receive phone calls from people complaining about stories I wrote. "I didn't say that" was the usual complaint. I carried a tape recorder and I'd play it back to them, if I had to.

They backed down then.

Sometimes, though, the complaint was not that I wrote what they said, but that I didn't write what they said.

Sometimes people simply sound so stupid to me that I paraphrase or leave it out completely if it's not relevant to the main part of the article. It is my job to tell a story that is truthful, but that doesn't mean I have to use ignorant, racist, homophobic, fascist, or antisemitic language. Paraphrasing is allowed.

But some people want their words - no matter how ignorant they sound - in print. They want their opinions, word for word, stated. That's how sure they are that they're right. That's how sure they are that their closed-minded world view is the one that should rule the day.

So it was that last week I found myself listening to someone rant about how I hadn't printed exactly what this person had said at a supervisors meeting. 

The person threatened me. I hung up on this person, and I called the police and reported the phone call. I also blocked the number.

Twenty years ago, I would not have done that. I'd have ignored the call. But these are different times, and people feel mean and emboldened, and being a bully is now in fashion. 

I was taken aback by the phone call because it was literally over nothing, as far as I was concerned.

These are the times we live in. People feel emboldened in their fascism and narrow-minded thoughts. They have no room in their brains for open-minded thinking. My way or the highway, as my parents used to tell me.

However, we are all adults, not children in need of being sent to our rooms. And if someone can't have an adult conversation with me that doesn't involve threats, screaming, or insults, then that is not someone I care to talk with.

And as for the report above, it just shows how low people can be. To call these people snakes would be an injustice to snakes. The people in the article/photo above are lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. They're so low, there is no bottom for them.

I hope they all lose their jobs.


Wednesday, December 07, 2022

Every Time We Go Away


 

I found this amusing, but also sad. Subscriptions to newspapers are dying - we're dinosaurs, my husband and me, who subscribe still to the print editions.

But without the journalists watching the town, ensuring the local government doesn't slide its way into fascism or some other unwanted form of governing, who will keep the officials on their toes? Citizen journalists with blogs? 

The local officials aren't scared of citizen journalists with blogs. They aren't scared by online newspapers, either. Online copy is ephemeral. It can be easily changed, removed, deleted. It's easy to say it didn't happen, even if the online article states it did.

Print, though - that's permanent. When the print articles say something happened, it happened.

I am part of the local news media, even though I do not write as much as I did. My medium now is an online one, where I write government stories. The print paper that I used to write for still exists but does little in the way of real journalism. There are no hard-hitting news stories there, no small bomb-drops of information that make the public take note.

The online paper is free; the print paper is also online but behind a paywall. I don't know how many digital subscribers it has. The online paper I write for says it sometimes gets 20,000 hits on an article. Other times, not so much.

My work in the online paper sometimes aggravates the local officials because I pull no punches. I don't sugar coat, but neither do I offer opinion. I simply state what happened at a meeting. If someone says something outlandish that I think the public needs to know about, I report it. If the local officials are doing things that I think the public needs to know about, I report it. I don't exaggerate or minimize; I leave it to the reader to decide if this issue is important or not.

Most of my long-time readers know if I report on something, I think it is important and something they should know about.

I am the one who watches the local officials for Freedom of Information Act violations; the one who questions the number of closed sessions they take, the information that comes out of those sessions, and any number of other things. Even when I was writing for the print paper, many times I questioned but the public never knew I was making inquiries, protecting their interests to the best of my ability.

As best I can tell, the less drama for the print paper, the better.

My inquiries with government officials are taken seriously, in part because I've been doing it for so long, but not as seriously as they once were (or so it seems). 

Without a good newspaper, a community suffers from lack of information. As the comic strip notes, where do the people who fuss about things on social media sites actually get their information? From local news reporters, whether that's print or TV media. 

Or an online community journalist.

Subscribe to a paper, even if it's digital. It supports democracy, and we all know that needs all the help it can get.

*Edited

Monday, August 01, 2022

Seeing A Stroke

Many years ago, perhaps around 2003, I went to interview an older woman named Emily. She was in charge of the local historic society and ran the museum.

I had worked for her about 15 years prior, spending time at the museum cataloging items. She and I had a falling out because I wanted to set up a database on the computer for the items; she wanted everything written on a yellow legal pad. I threw up my hands and quit; it was a part-time job, and I could do without the hassle. 

She didn't speak to me for years after that. I became involved in a different historic society and perhaps that helped her come around.

Anyway, since we were on speaking terms again, I went to Emily's house to interview her for the newspaper about changes in the museum (which by now was computerized, etc.) and her efforts to catalogue every school that once existed in the county.

She greeted me cordially and offered me a glass of tea. I admired her house, which was one of the older ones in town, and then proceeded to move on with the interview, asking pertinent questions about what the historical group was doing, her research, etc.

Suddenly, she began slurring her words. She looked funny to me as well, almost like she was drunk and falling over. I stopped the interview and asked her if she was ok.

She said she was diabetic and probably needed some orange juice; would I get her a glass out of the refrigerator?

This I promptly did, and then waited anxiously while she drank it.

My grandmother was diabetic and had what she called "sugar drops," but they were nothing like this. This did not seem to me to be a diabetic issue. This was scary, whatever was going on.

However, I am not a qualified health care person. When I suggested that I should take her to the doctor, who at that time was about four blocks away, she grew angry. She told me the interview was over and I should leave.

Having been tossed out of the house, there was nothing I could do but go. However, I came home and called the only people I knew who were related to her and left a message on their answering machine asking if they could check on her.

They never called me back, so the next morning I called Emily to see if she alright. I was quite anxious about her.

She told me that after I'd left, she'd driven herself to the doctor who thought she'd had a TIA.

A TIA is a transient ischemic attack, also known as a mini-stroke.

I'd never witnessed anyone having a stroke, and while I had some clue as to what to look for, having it happen in front of me was terrifying.

There are more than 200,000 TIAs in the United States annually, so this happens a lot.

The symptoms include:

  • Slurred speech and difficulty in understanding others
  • Vision problems
  • Weakness, numbness or paralysis on one side of the body
  • Loss of balance
  • Dizziness
  • Sudden and severe headache

She experienced the slurred speech and loss of balance. I'm not sure about the other symptoms but those I could see for myself.

I don't know why, but for some reason I woke up with this on my mind, so I thought I'd write about it. I hadn't thought about this person, who died long ago, or this interview, in many years but it was on my brain first thing this morning.


Friday, May 06, 2022

Musings on Three Pines

In the past year, I found Louise Penny's books about Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of Homicide for the police force in Quebec.

(There may be spoilers here, so if you haven't read all the books, you may want to stop reading this.)

There are 17 of the books, and I have listened to all but three of them.

I enjoy the books and like the characters.

My one complaint is that several of Penny's characters have head injuries from which they completely recover. (If I have names wrong it's because I listen to the audiobooks so I haven't the names spelled out on a page.)

Gamache is shot in the head and makes a full recovery, aside from a slight tremor in his hand.

Isabelle LaCost, one of his investigators, has a head injury, and makes a full recovery, except for a slight limp that appears to have disappeared, but I'll know more as I finish up book #17.

Stephen somebody, the 93-year-old godfather of Gamache, (he shows up later in the series) is run over by a van and has a head injury. He lies in a coma for most of the book - and makes a full recovery. (This one in particular I found quite difficult. He's 93. Really?)

I know this is fiction, and in a fictional world I suppose anyone can be shot in the head and make a full recovery. I also know that in real life, such things do not happen. If people do recover from a head trauma, they generally are greatly changed, either in personality or in body or both, because recovery can take not weeks, but months and/or years. 

I would very much like for Penny to find another place for a main character to be injured besides in the head. A shot in the knee, perhaps. 

The head injuries and subsequent quick recoveries pull me from the world of the book. My rational mind jumps in and says, "This cannot be." Anything that distracts a reader from the world of the book is something that needs to be reexamined.

That this has happened at least three times (there may be others that I'm not recalling), makes me think that a head wound is this author's go-to injury. And that would be fine, I suppose, if I hadn't lost a friend to a head trauma after she was run over by a truck, if I hadn't watched an older person have a TIA right in front of me during a newspaper interview, if a friend from college hadn't been in a car wreck and then spent years in therapy relearning how to live her life, if someone else I know hadn't had a head injury and then gone berserk and tried to murder his family a long time ago.

But I know these things, and have some experience with head trauma, however slight, and I don't think my knowledge is anything special. However, it's enough to pull me from the story when the head trauma injuries miraculously heal without much time passing.

This is mostly a note for me to remind myself that, if I ever do find my voice for fiction, that I need to be sure not to pull the reader from the world of the book by using an inappropriate prop for authorial purposes, instead of reaching for a harder or more prudent incident that would keep the reader in the story.

Wednesday, May 04, 2022

Book Writing Question

A very long time ago, a writer friend of mine . . . stopped writing. She'd been a columnist for The Roanoke Times for a very long time, but she wanted to write novels.

She was an excellent writer, and I'd taken a few non-credit classes from her. She was also a cousin, many times removed, but a cousin, nevertheless. I admired her work for the newspaper. I admired her spirit, and her ability to be who she was.

But, she confided to me, she could not write a novel that she thought would sell. She wrote five novels, none of them published. She blamed Hollins College, now Hollins University, the place where we both went to college, she graduating in 1973, me in 1993. Twenty years apart, though we were only 12 years apart in age.

The college had, she decided, beat the writing out of her with the professors' proclamations that one must write literary for it to count. Writing something like, say, a Nancy Drew book wasn't writing. Writing something like Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was writing. Everything else was banal, unworthy, and unwelcome. They were still teaching that message, more or less, when I graduated college there, too, so many years later.

But the college has produced its fair share of good, if not great writers. Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, Dillard, Margaret Wise Brown, and so many more. These authors are listed on the university website. But someone like me, who has published thousands of articles, is not listed there. Nor is my friend who wrote for The Roanoke Times.

So having tried, and in her mind, failing, my friend quit writing. "The world doesn't need another book," she told me, and turned her creativity to making handbags and other sewing and needlework projects.

Yet when she passed away unexpectedly several years ago, her husband noted her writing in her obituary, stating that she had written five novels. He did not mention that they were unpublished. Only that she had indeed made this accomplishment.

And it is an accomplishment, even if the novels only saw the inside the inside of a drawer.

I spoke about this memory to my friend's sister-in-law last year, a woman also a close and much-loved friend, but not a writer. She told me she agreed that the world did not need another book. It did not need, nor want, my book, she said, only months before she too passed away.

Was she trying to comfort me for my own frustration at failed efforts to put forth words that seem to stop where my head and heart cannot find common ground? Was she making a dig at me for even trying? Or simply agreeing with her sister-in-law as we discussed a memory I'd dredged up from the deep well of my mind as we tried to come to terms, her with dying, me with the knowledge that she would soon be gone?

My husband, upon learning of this conversation, said my friend was not really a friend if she told me that. It was not a supportive thing to say, he said. I remain undecided. She was ill, after all. And she was basically agreeing with someone she, too, had admired.

However, I find it a good question. Does the world need another book, when one can go to Amazon to see the world drowning in books, books that will never be read or studied, a book that may or may not make whoever wrote it even $1,000, if anything at all? Books given away for free for publicity's sake, books selling for 99 cents, books that someone spent 10 years writing only to see it on the remainder rack at the Green Valley Book Fair, if it makes it into a hard copy at all?

Does that time spent writing a book matter? Is it worth it? Who determines the value? Who determines the need?

How the hell does anyone answer such questions, especially when they become bound up with the images of dead people I loved?

Monday, January 31, 2022

Help Wanted

A very long time ago, back in the dark ages of the 1980s and 1990s, I knew how to find a job.

I opened the newspaper and I read the "help wanted" advertisements. There would be three or four pages of job listings. I'd circle the ones I was interested in. They were usually "blind box" advertisements, which meant I was sending in a resume without knowing what the company was. The newspaper rerouted the resumes through some service.

When it was time for me to change jobs, I'd perform this ritual, dropping the resumes in the mail. In about a week, the phone would start ringing. I'd go on a few interviews, and then I'd have a job.

Now the newspaper has very few advertisements for jobs (although I've noticed more lately). And I don't know how to find a job. I'm not really looking for one, especially not with Covid running rampant, but even if I was, I wouldn't know how to find one.

As best I can tell, today one goes to the place where one would like to work and fills out a job application. So, if I wanted to work for say, Bank of America, then I'd go their site and fill out the application and hope for the best. I'm guessing at this, since I've not done it.

The other way to find a job is to look at places like Indeed.com or jobs.roanoke.com.

I've thought about some kind of online work. I have DSL for my internet connection. This works for most things. Uploads are bad, though. It takes me over two hours to upload a three-minute music video to my youtube channel. I also don't know how to find online work that is legitimate. I've read so many stories about scammers using work ploys that I simply dread trying to figure out what is real and what isn't.

Freelancing remains an option, but the local markets don't pay that well, and to be perfectly honest, after doing it for so long, I'm tired of it. I don't want to have to listen to multiple editors or try to write words in a fake voice that suits some suit, something that isn't my own. I don't want to write about topics in which I have little interest. I also don't want to write 300 words for $5. My time is worth more than that.

So, while I don't know what I want to do, I would like to know how to find it when the time comes to go do something.

I miss the help wanted advertisements. That seemed much easier than the flux of today.

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Thursday Thirteen #725

These quotes are from Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury.

1. To try to know beforehand is to freeze and kill.

2. Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the great art of all.

3. We writers "build tensions toward laughter, then give permission, and laughter comes."

4. We writers "build tensions toward sorrow, and at last say cry, and hope to see our audience in tears."

5. We writers "build tensions toward violence, light the fuse, and run."

6. We writers "build the strange tensions of love, where so many of the other tensions mix to be modified and transcended, and allow that fruition in the mind of the audience."

7. "We build tensions, especially today, toward sickness and then, if we are good enough, talented enough, observant enough, allow our audiences to be sick."

8. No tensions . . . must be built which remains unreleased. Without this, any art ends incomplete, halfway to its goal. And in real life, as we know, the failure to relax a particular tension can lead to madness."

9. Again and again my stories and my plays teach me, remind me, that I must never doubt myself, my gut, my ganglion, or my Ouija subconscious again.

10. It is a lie to write in such a way as to be rewarded by money in the commercial market.

11. It is a lie to write in such a way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary group in the intellectual gazettes.

12. Each of you, curious about creativity, wants to make contact with that thing in yourself that is truly original. You want fame and fortune, yes, but only as rewards for work well and truly done.

13. What is the greatest reward a writer can have? Isn't it that day when someone rushes up to you, his face bursting with honesty, his eyes afire with admiration and cries, "That new story of yours was fine, really wonderful!" Then and only then is writing worthwhile.

Just an FYI, this is one of the few books on writing that I didn't really care for. The other was Stephen King's book, On Writing, which I know receives many oohs and ahhs from writers but I found it very male oriented and patronizing. Bradbury's book is simply out of date and reads dated, unlike say, Bird by Bird, by Ann Lamont, or Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. I have an entire shelf full of books on writing, and there are only a few that I did not find particularly useful. This Bradbury book had a few nuggets in it, but not enough that I want to keep the book, and nothing I'd not read elsewhere.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 725th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Friday, July 09, 2021

Artemis

I have a poem in Artemis, a poetry and art journal, again this year. I am very honored to share space with former Virginia poet laurates as well as two national poet laurates in this work of art.

My poem is called The Earth Journey. You can see an early draft of it from my blog in 2017 here. The poem as published is more polished.

It is also one of the few poems I've had published that wasn't workshopped when I was in college. This is a relief because I was starting to think I couldn't write anything current that was publishable. I guess I can!



Buy a copy for yourself today at Store – Artemis Journal.



Monday, February 22, 2021

Bent on Destruction


This box contains my journals. I kept journals from 1985 until about 2003. Then I stopped. I occasionally write something to get it off my chest, but I no longer write daily. It's a good thing, or I would have more to shred.

Yes, I am shredding these. I'm trying to clear out things so that when I pass away, there won't be so much to deal with. Ridding myself and my heirs of these journals was high on my to-do list, and this week, they are being destroyed.

I have noted that I certainly learned to write whilst writing these journals. A lot of them are from creative writing courses - nothing salvageable in them, but I certainly did a lot of writing. (The entire lot of journals, if I sat them side by side, would be about as much as a set of old-fashioned printed encyclopedias.)

Good riddance.

****

What do you need today? What is one way you can give yourself some extra care today?

I need to stop thinking. My brain is on fast forward and I'm having a difficult time turning it off today. I could go read a book. That would give me something else to think about.

Who is someone you admire? Why?

I admire my mother-in-law. She has accepted the pandemic with aplomb, although I know she's much more of a people-person than I am and staying in has been difficult for her. She did a decent job of raising her son - he knows how to fold his t-shirts, for one thing (he actually folds them better than I do). She has aged gracefully and well.

How do you want to feel today? Do you feel that way? What can you do that would help you feel that way?

This seems a lot like the first question in these journal prompts. I would like to feel well. I do not feel well. I am still having stomach issues and have doctors' appointments over the next weeks. Hopefully we can get things settled down.


February Journal Prompts. Join up at Kwizgiver's

Wednesday, September 09, 2020

Flu Shot Day

Today was flu shot day. It was also "husband is home and doesn't know what to do with himself day," which means I was a little out of sorts myself.

Tomorrow, hopefully, we will be both be back on our schedules.

I found out early this morning that my name is going to be in a book called Xena: Their Courage Changed the World, which is about the Xena fandom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. I am mentioned because of my involvement in WHOOSH.org, a website devoted to all things Xena: Warrior Princess. I wrote many show synopses for the show, a few articles for the website, and also did some editing for the website owner.

That was exciting news.

I meant to blog earlier but things were simply out of my hands today.

So here's a new song by Sheryl Crow that I really like.



Wednesday, July 22, 2020

I Miss School

I miss college. I miss the atmosphere, the ideas, the notion that there is a world where positive change is possible.

I hate living in this new world that evil has created, the one where everyone is angry, people are dying, and the life is being sucked out of everyone by a bully who thinks he can become the dictator of the USA.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending 45 minutes with one of my former professors in a webinar, along with many other Hollins students (most, I am sure, were former students of hers), and it was 45 minutes of bliss - the kind of relaxation I haven't felt in months (years?).

I felt at home. How nice to have a conversation about writing, about ideas, about creativity. A conversation that did not involve politics, stupid flags, police states, or the cost of pork and other meats. How beautiful to see the sparkle in my old professor's eye as she talked about her creative process, her work habits. How amazing to hear the solemn joy in her voice as she read one of her poems to us. How utterly decadent to spend 45 minutes doing something I loved, instead of the things I must do (like laundry).

How wonderful a campus is, where you can mention Rilke or Descartes, or talk about Sisyphus, and somebody knows what you're talking about. It's a place where ideas go to find their owners, because people on campus are creative learners, who want to learn, and they are seekers of truths and knowledge. They value knowledge and learning. They don't think that opinion is the same as fact; they understand the difference.

God, I miss college.

Tuesday, July 02, 2019

A Writer's Routine



It's not quite like that . . . but then again . . . maybe.

Swiped this from Writer Nation: Marketing Advice & Tips for Writers on Facebook.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

The Artemis Journal Launch

I don't know how other literary magazines present themselves to the world, but the Artemis journal has a "launch" at the Taubman Museum, which is in Roanoke City.

Friday night they had this launch, and several poets read their poems. They were accompanied by classical music and by ballet dancers interpreting their words.

It was rather beautiful, actually.


Here we are for our big night on the town.

This was an interpretation of a poem about baking bread.

This was an interpretation of a found poem, a memorial to the poet, who passed away.

The poet readers with their dancers.

I can't remember what this dancer was interpreting.

Unfortunately, I did not get names. I was there to enjoy, not report.

My iPhone does not serve the functions I need it for at various events. I've discovered while trying to use it at supervisors' meetings, at my niece's dance recital, and now at this event, that it simply does not replace a decent camera. I have older cameras that would have taken better photos than these. I think the iPhone camera actually tries to do too much - and you end up with less. It is okay if that is all I have on me, as I did this night, but honestly I am not impressed with the photos. I was when I first purchased the phone, but after a few software upgrades, in my opinion Apple has made the process of taking a decent photo worse.

The event was very well attended, especially for a Friday night with downpouring rain.  I saw several people I know and who I hadn't seen for a long time. I used to attend these kinds of events more regularly but I haven't been to readings for many years. Hollins offers all sorts of cultural activities free to the public but because of my health I haven't been for some time. The campus is difficult to reach and while it is doable, I have to really want to go to something to get there.

Downtown Roanoke is also not my favorite place to go. I think this was the first time I'd been downtown in several years. I was surprised at how busy it was as I can remember when downtown was a ghost town after hours, for the most part. The place is full of bars and eateries now; not my scene, really. I'd rather be home with a book.

I think, though, I probably need to try to attend more of the readings at Hollins again. That's a nice goal, to feel well enough to do that. I enjoyed this event and I am glad we went.

And I really appreciate the fact that my husband went with me.

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Poem in Artemis

I have had a poem published in Artemis, which is a well-known literary journal published in Roanoke.

Artemis has been around for 42 years, although it took a hiatus in 2000 before resuming publication again in 2013. I worked as a copy editor on the magazine one year, a very long time ago - like 1989 or thereabouts. But I never submitted to the journal before.

I entered three poems and they chose the one I did not expect them to choose. The poem, Daughter by the Tomb, is a quiet villanelle, a form poem. While it is a good poem it was not the one I considered the best of my entries, but in reviewing the magazine I see that this poem fits in better with the other items in the magazine.

Artemis uses art to add to its attractiveness. This year the cover was by Sally Mann. The work of famous poets such as Nikki Giovanni is intertwined with unknown poets, such as myself. The mix of art and poetry makes this a unique magazine with great appeal.

The theme for this year was Women Hold Up Half the Sky.

The magazine can be purchased at http://www.artemisjournal.org/store/. It is $20 for a soft cover edition or $30 for a hard bound version.

My poem is on page 72, eloquently set off by the art of Judith Starchild.


Tuesday, June 04, 2019

The Rowling Effect

There's a tendency among writers today to make a sudden jump at the end of their book. Maybe they take us forward 20 years or all the way to the death of the protagonist.

Unfortunately, these generally ruin the book. The book likely should end before this jump occurs.

I call it the "Rowling effect" because that is what J. K. Rowling did in the last Harry Potter book of the series. Fans will recall that she ends the book and then has a final chapter that explains how Harry and friends grew up, married, had children, etc.

Blah. It was an excruciating chapter that should have been left out of the story.

The last book I read that did this was When the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. It wasn't a bad book - until the very end.

Then it jumped ahead about 35 years to the death of the protagonist and a relatively unbelievable revelation that the reader had figured out long before.

I see this more now than I used to, and I think Rowling's the reason. She made it okay to ruin a book's ending. She made it fine for an author not to figure out where the story really should be completed.

But it is not fine. A good ending can make a bad book better, but a bad ending can not help anything. At best, it makes a great book a little less great.

The ending should do no more than wrap up a few loose ends and show the ending of that portion of the protagonist's journey. If the rest of the protagonist's life is one big bore, we don't need to know that.

Wrapping up a book - or a TV series - with a bad ending is like putting a match to a stick. It was a good stick until you lit the match. Now you have a good stick that is burned and not so good anymore.

I could argue that Game of Thrones fits this scenario, too, with it's not-so-great final episode, but it did wrap up loose ends, and it ended the journey of its protagonists. In that show, it was the Stark children who ultimately were the protagonists, but in a show with so many characters it was never clear who the protagonist was. As people died off one by one and the story continued, one had to determine that the protagonist was someone left alive, or else conventional story techniques had been waylaid and perhaps the land itself was the protagonist, in which case anything goes, I suppose. In the end, though, we are left with several protagonists, all beginning new quests. Jon goes to live with the Free Folk, Sansa becomes Queen of the North, Bran the Broken is King of the Six Realms, and Arya sails off to the edge of the map. Their journey's aren't over. So this was, by my standards, a good ending because I didn't see the protagonists years later, dying or old or whatever their ultimate destinies may be. I can still think about them, maybe consider a day when the siblings are reunited - or not.

Big Bang Theory is a TV series that ended well. It wrapped up most loose ends - but not quite all - but still gave the viewer a reason to wonder about the characters. When you have something else to think about - will Raj ever marry, for example - then you have a good ending. These folks will go on with their lives, eating pizza on specific nights and doing their jobs. They may end up destitute or homeless or they may go on to do very great things (which most them already had done anyway). This part of their journey was done, though. The audience didn't need to know more.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that when a book ends, there shouldn't be an absolute end. If the protagonist dies at the end, there's nothing left to think about. The journey is over. I'm not sure books should end in that fashion. I like to think of more journey's ahead, more adventures, more growth of character.

Endings can mess up a book, but that's because the book isn't about the ending. The book is about the story. It's about the getting to the end, much like life is about its journey, not the final breath. If the ending messes up the story, then it's not the right place to end.

And that's the end of all I have to say about that. For now.