One Little Elephant

My previous temp job called me back to work a 2-3 week contract. So I'm putting in long hours to tuck away a little back-to-high-school-and-college stash for the kids.

But if you dropped by I didn't want to send you away empty-handed. Here is a must-read article by Stephen Ransom, PHD. His predictions about the future of Publishing's Big Six and what it will mean for writers and why are definitely food for thought. Read it all. He doesn't get to the more interesting points until several pages in.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17243194/RansomStephens-FutureOfPublishing

So what do you think? Is he right or wrong?

Something that's helping me write today: A notepad and pen. Even when I don't have time to sit and write for long stretches I can still plot storylines in my head and jot them down during odd free moments.

“You’re going to regret planting all those trees.”

She stands before the floor to ceiling windows that march across the back of my house, looking past the stretch of lawn to the dense stand of greenery beyond. It’s a ritual, this Condemning of the Trees, repeated each time she visits. I say nothing, forever bewildered at her inability to savor the dignified majesty of the oak, the colorful flirtatiousness of the crepe myrtle, the gentle serenity of the redbud, and the mysterious promise of wondrous autumn color secreted away in the green leaves of the maple and elm.

Blue jays and cardinals dart between the birdfeeder and birdbath. Their smaller less flashy cousins flit among the trees, alert for a chance to dive in for a bath or a meal when the more aggressive fellows are distracted.

She scowls at the trees, the birds that ornament them, and the beagles that loll in lazy comfort beneath their shade. “If one of those trees falls it’ll damage the house. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Again I say nothing, thinking of the mighty twin oaks felled by a spring storm last year. They missed the house, but as my husband said as we stood in the yard together grieving them, he could have fixed the house. Eighty year old trees are harder to replace.

“Trees are trouble,” she states firmly, then wanders away from the window. I sigh, relieved that the ritual of the Condemning of the Trees is nearly over.

She’d once had trees in her own yard, some even larger than my twin oaks. But after her husband died she’d removed them, one after another, glowing with relief as each was cut down, smiling with satisfaction as its dissected trunk was hauled away, its glorious branches fed to a shredder. I remained silent. Her yard is none of my business. But her elation at the sterile expanse of grass remaining baffled me.

When the trees were no more she removed the bushes and flowers as well, razing the flower beds.

Time passed and she began to complain about her neighbors' trees, fretting over their very existence, annoyed that each autumn her large fenced yard, now unprotected by a tree canopy, became a collecting basin for the leaves falling and blowing from the suburban forest beyond her fence. The leaves blanketed the grass like multi-colored snow, inches deep in some places. They piled in yellow and orange drifts against her shed. It was the one time of year her yard looked pretty. To me.

“Trees,” she says reproachfully as she settles on my couch, her back firmly to the glorious display beyond the window.

I take a seat facing the birds and beagles and beauty. And we talk about subjects on which we can agree.

So what does this little tale have to do with writing? Each person has their own version of what is pleasing, beautiful, and nurturing to them. Create for yourself, from yourself, what is pleasing to you. Share it with those who appreciate it. Don’t be disconcerted by those who do not.

Something that’s helping me write today: the coo of mourning doves.

The dress was ink-black perfection. The swingy skirt flirted with dancer’s legs sculpted by dashing heels. The cinched cummerbund style nipped in a waist tiny enough to turn a Victorian green with envy and the rosette bodice was at once sassy-chic and mother-pleasingly modest. The look was sophisticated elegance; modern but with echoes of 1940's Hollywood royalty that harkened back to a time before shocking fans had become more important to movie stars than enchanting them.

"This is the one," she announced, turning to and fro before the dressing room mirror. The skirt swirled it's enthusiastic agreement.

I reached out and snagged the tag. Then frowned at the price. Fifty percent off? Why? It was new stock. Just in. I made her stand still while I hunted over the fabric. There. Two inches of seam had come undone at the base of the spine. I smiled. A simple fix, one the store apparently didn't think worth their time since they'd discounted the dress so radically, but a boon for my bank account. We left the store jubilant. She had the dress. I still had some money.

Her cousin's wedding was in two weeks. The seam would have to be mended before then. I could easily do it myself, but I'd wanted to find a good tailor for other more complicated projects for some time and a darling little seamstress shop had opened nearby. I'd been passing it for weeks, admiring the custom work in the eye-candy window displays. Finally I had an excuse to go inside.

The bells on the door jingled as I entered the shop and I was delighted to find the interior décor fulfilled the promise of the window display. On one side stood a neat as a pin counter with a cash register. On the other side a set of wide stairs led up to a broad carpeted stage that was mirrored on three sides. It was a set, grandly designed to make one feel like a VIP while allowing the tailor to mark a hemline or pant length without squatting. A tiny smiling woman of indeterminate age came out of a hall that led to the back of the store where glimpses of tables, machines, and a colorful riot of fabric and thread spools could be seem.

She took the dress, charged me $9 (cash only), and said to pick it up in a week. A week? For a simple two inch seam repair on a black dress? Business must be good. That night I lay in bed mentally going over items I wanted sewn, wondering which to do first.

The following week I presented my ticket to the smiling woman and picked up the dress. I was rushing to another appointment so it wasn’t until I returned home several hours later that I took the time to examine the work she’d done.

The seam had been mended, but not with black thread that matched the dress. Instead a light blue thread had been used and the job could have been described, generously, as amateurish. The seam was puckered and crooked. So I got out my machine and some black thread and fixed it myself. And I mentally withdrew all those jobs I’d imagined taking to that so-charming little shop.

So what does this tale have to do with writing?

As a reader I’ve occasionally been lured to buy a book by gorgeous cover art and an intriguing blurb only to be disappointed by the craft of the writer once I got it home. I make note of those writers’ names so I can avoid them – and disappointment – in the future.

As a writer I need to be careful before I send a story out that it’s of a quality that won’t disappoint, because the reader may not give me a second chance.

Taking a few extra moments to load her machine with the proper color thread and be sure her work was straight and true would have won that seamstress my return business. Taking the time to be sure my work is the best it can be I hope will encourage readers to want more of it.



Something that’s helping me write today: this advice from entrepreneur Damon Schechter, “Build the road, so you don’t get stuck.” I believe learning my craft thoroughly and building routines/processes/disciplines into my writing that increase the likelihood of producing consistent quality are keys to success.

Necessity is the mother of invention or so the saying goes. For me it seems to be the cattle prod of progress.

I've taken a temp job in the hope of stashing enough cash to attend the RWA National Conference in 2011. My twenty-something boss is a good egg, but like most people of her generation she can text whole paragraphs at thumb-blistering speed. So naturally texting is her preferred mode of communication with me. Problem is, I'm expected to answer via return text, and before taking this assignment I'd never texted before in my life.

Close your jaw. Yes, I am aware this is 2010 and EVERYONE texts. And yes, I have needed to text messages on several occasions in the past: to communicate with a child who was in a movie theater and couldn't talk on her phone, to send a friend a requested phone number or email address to her phone, etc. But I'd never actually sent any of those texts myself. I didn't know how. So I'd call my husband and ask him to text for me. Pathetic, huh?

Well, it became clear quickly with this new job that using my husband as my text secretary just wasn't going to work. The volume of texting and the speed at which my boss was expecting an answer made that impractical. So in fits and starts, with laughable misspellings and texts sent to wrong recipients, and much strained peering with middle-aged eyes at keys sized for Lilliputian fingers, I've learned to text. I'm not yet quick, but I'm fast getting comfortable, and confident.

And that has me reflecting on something to do with my writing life.


For a long, long time I've put off learning how to do things I know will help me become a better writer and businesswoman. Things like learning to build and maintain my own website and create detailed synopsis-style outlines both agents and best-selling writers have told me are crucial to selling my work. Is it possible that, like texting, neither of these things is the monster I've imagined? Could it be that like texting, once I apply myself, I might find the going less painful than I've supposed?

I think I should find out.

Something that's helping me write today: this quote by John M. Richardson, Jr. "When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened." I'd add there's possibly a fourth sort: those who finally get off the sidelines and start participating in what is happening.

Way too much going on this week so I'll have to pass on blogging today, but I highly recommend you stop by Romulus Crowe's site. He has an interesting scientific measure of the soul up for discussion.

http://romuluscrowe.blogspot.com/



Something that's helping me write today: a temporary (4-8 weeks) job that promises to put enough money in the bank so that I can attend the RWA conference in New York in 2011. Yay!