The “Q” Word

Over this past weekend, I opened one of those envelopes we all hate: the SASE with the single sheet of paper in it, saying, “Thanks, no, thanks.” In short, Guideposts Books rejected Rainman’s Bride…and the editor said nothing about any of the other books that I had proposed as a trilogy with RB, only encouraged me to consider Guideposts with my future writing.

Now, for those of you who don’t know the drill, that encouragement is good news…but only to a point. It could have been worse—the letter could have closed with one of those say-no-evil sorts of endings that neither encourages you to submit anything else nor enjoins you never to darken the door again, just wishes you “luck” in your writing career (which most authors, being naturally paranoid, will look at and wail, “She hates it! She hates me!”).

Or, it could have been much blunter and conveyed the editor’s dislike for something particular about your work or your style—thereby effectively shutting the door on you for any further conversations. (And yes, I have gotten letters like that!) So in that context, being told to feel free to consider them again for other work is encouragement of its own sort.

It also must be said, in fairness to the editor in question, that she did not send a form letter. Far from it. This was two to three paragraphs in which she told me, quite specifically, what she liked and didn’t like about the premise and the story. So in that sense, it’s kind of like that MasterCard commercial: there are some things money can’t buy. In that context, there are authors out there who would kill for that much detail in a note from an editor, and the sage multi-pubs among us would be nodding their heads in agreement: Yes, this is very good. Personalized, detailed, it means you’re very close.

Trouble is, I was getting letters like this back in 1988. And sage multi-pubs were nodding their heads meaningfully then.

Twenty years ago.

So I think it’s only fair to wonder, at a point like this, just how long one can be in very close land before one has to face the possibility that one really hasn’t gotten any better in twenty years…or that one really is only kidding oneself.

That’s not a question you want to be mulling on a Saturday afternoon.

The added complication in this mix, of course, is that this work in question wasn't exactly "recent" work. What I did was take a pretty darn good book (Golden Heart good, in fact), tweak it, polish it up a bit, and send it along. I've toyed with completely rewriting this book several times; every time I do, however, I get into it and start thinking that if it was good enough to win a national award ten years ago, doesn't that mean it's good enough to sell...to the right place...today?

Apparently not. Because in the subsequent time I’ve been submitting it to various places, it’s gotten reactions ranging from polite indifference to a return with grammar markups on it (!) to—probably the most interesting one—a multi-page “rant” from a publisher who all but advised burning the thing and starting over.

What it hasn’t gotten is a read sympathetic enough to merit the letter that says, “…should you elect to make this change, and this one, and this one, we’re inclined to go to contract.”

It’s bad enough when one’s ten-year-old work is treated this way, but when work that’s more recent than that—or work that is revised and redone, based on the much-improved talent one has now—also gets a similar reception...

Well, it's not like I've never "quit" before.

Many authors do. Or want to.
We get to some point or other in this endless cycle of euphoria and despair/disgust where we don’t want to do this to ourselves anymore. We don’t want to keep hoping. We don’t want to keep pursuing a dream that seems “stalled out” at a point two decades old.
So we quit.

And that is what I’m going to do.
I decided that Saturday afternoon at the kitchen sink.

Again, maybe not an optimum situation in which to make an important decision about one’s writing. But I’ve spent a generous amount of time thinking stories through, mulling over plot problems, and dreaming of success at the kitchen sink—so when I come to an important crossroads, thinking about it with my hands in water is not necessarily a bad way to go.

But before you howl too loud...

Hold tight and I’ll explain what “the Q word” is going to look like in my life.

In the next post.

Stay tuned!

Janny

“At Home” in Indiana?

I’m one of those souls blessed, and cursed, with what can only be called a form of wanderlust. When I was growing up, we never went anywhere…except for a very occasional one-day trip to Indiana Dunes. My father apparently considered that enough “vacation” for the family. He took my brother to an occasional Cubs’ doubleheader—when those things used to be regular occurrences, on selected holidays—but, of course, my mother and I never went along on those trips.

That’s how it came to pass that, until I went to New York over one college spring break, I’d never been farther away from Chicago than a few inches over the Wisconsin and/or Indiana state lines. People who had summer cottages three, four, or ten hours away? Alien life forms, for sure. Families who thought in terms of “where are we going this year?” Speaking a foreign language.

So I’ve grown up figuratively Down on the Farm and couldn’t wait to escape—which explains why I’m one of those people who, if she is at an airport, a train station, or the like for whatever reason, longs to simply walk up to the counter and buy a ticket out of town. Wouldn’t even much matter where.

But the flip side of that wanderlust is a paradoxical mirror-image sentiment: the obsession to find “the best place” to live, put down roots, and stay there…perhaps even at the exclusion of trips to see the Rest of the World.

From time to time, you’ll hear it said that if you truly found the right place to live, you would be “on vacation” every day, in a sense, and thus have no real desire to spend any time anywhere else. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Life as a permanent vacation?

Getting to that ideal place, however, can be trickier than it sounds.

Back in the Chicago area, to live in a place I would have considered “ideal,” I would have had to have the income of a brain surgeon, (the late) Johnny Cochrane, or a drug dealer (or maybe all three). Even if one did manage to score the coup of getting the income in place, finding a great house in a great location, and protecting one’s environment so that some bright-eyed developer wouldn’t end up putting a strip mall behind one’s back yard…the hidden cost of a “perfect” place in an area like this is the lack of time to actually enjoy it. Many suburbs in the Chicago area are practically legendary as vast stretches of breathtaking neighborhoods that, during weekday daylight hours, are ghost towns. The irony of the fact that, during the week, the “help” spent more time in these gorgeous homes than their owners did was inescapable…and illuminating. Seeing such a thing, a normal person starts to think, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

I used to say I liked to be close to the city for the sake of “culture,” “concerts and plays,” and the like—until I asked myself how often we actually did those things. The fireworks downtown, maybe twice or three times; we went to one opera, no plays, no concerts. It was embarrassing to realize that this great “cultural” life I claimed was so important to be a part of, I wasn’t even using…but it was freeing as well. If you don’t “have to” be tied to a city for any particular reason, you can live anywhere, including a place where it doesn’t take you 25 minutes to drive three and a half miles.

Inertia is a tough thing, however—as is a job for the primary breadwinner located smack-dab in the city center. It’s a rotten tradeoff: you go to where you can breathe the air, see the stars, and afford a decent house…but you pay for it by commuting 4 hours a day to that job.

Until you lose that job…and suddenly, everything changes.

Long story short, we had a job in Chicago vaporize, one in Indiana appear, and so—swallowing my inborn revulsion to embrace all things Hoosier—I signed on the dotted line. (Although I will admit, I passed up this job listing at least once because I didn’t want to move to “godforsaken, where in the h*** is Huntington, Indiana?”) I got here on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, in the black of early-winter evening, was esconced in the Parish Center of a local church, was pointed in the general direction of the new office, fed dinner, and bidden goodnight…and I was on my way.

Fast forward to now, and an odd thing is occurring. I’m beginning to see that one has to be careful what one wishes for—because one might get it, in the most unlikely place one could imagine.

For the first several months I was here, when I was trekking back and forth between the still-unsold house in Illinois and the various apartment places I landed in as temporary housing in Huntington, I wondered approximately once a week what kind of insanity had prompted me to do this. I would get home from Illinois and just sob for a couple of hours. No doubt part of the emotional turmoil was missing the family, the cats, or just the fact that our ties were rapidly being cut with a church we’d been in for 17 years and an environment that was at least familiar…but interwoven in that conflict were a whole bunch of generous “pluses.”

I lived in a place where I commuted 5 minutes to work.
I lived in a place where I could walk to church, to the library, and to a grocery store…among other places.
I lived in a place where, bare minutes out of town, I had not one but two major reservoir/lake picnic and camping areas—including one with a swimming beach—reachable by country roads lined by woods.
I lived in a place where I was close enough to Fort Wayne to get a “mall fix” but far enough away that when I’m not in the mood for a mall—which is often!—I don’t have to contend with the incessant traffic of those who love them.
I lived in a place where most people in the local shops didn’t let you get away without a conversation.
I lived in a place where, for the last year of my son’s baseball career at Michigan, I was a full hour and a half closer to him than I was in Illinois.
And best of all, I lived in a place—eventually—that is as physically close to my “dream house” as I’ve ever been…a house I couldn’t even dream about paying for in Chicago.

When the rest of the family got here, and we began the real adjustment process—otherwise known as “no, we’re not living in Chicago anymore”—of course, things were a bit rocky once again. And more than once, after having visited some neat place in Illinois for some fun reason, I’ve wished that I could just transplant what I have here…back there.

But I knew I’d turned a corner of sorts when I drove to Illinois one Sunday to sing at a special anniversary Mass—requested by my former pastor—and realized, once I got to the church, that I was really glad I would “get to go back home to Indiana” that night.

Back home to Indiana. Four words that I never thought in a million years would be reassuring to me. Four words that I never, ever imagined would come out of my mouth. Four words that I still can’t believe I say.

But four words that are starting to really feel comfortable. Strange, yet comfortable.

Don’t get me wrong. You can take the girl out of Chicago, but you don’t take the Chicago out of the girl that easily. Any glance at the links here will tell you that. :-)

But, living as I am a “red” girl finally in a largely “red” state…has produced an ease of spirit I can’t say I’d readily want to give up. And I know this because, at one point in here, a job possibility actually opened up for my DH to go back with his previous employer on a contract basis…for scandalous money, in terms of what we really could use here. And it was tempting to jump at it.

Until we realized that would mean we’d have to live a commuter marriage again—because we couldn’t give up my job here and still make ends meet, even on what the potential contract job would give him. We had no reassurances that the contract job would last any particular length of time; it was a “permanent” position…but so was the one he was laid off from after 21 years. And knowing that we’d go from everyone living together to, once again, one of us having to set up new housekeeping somewhere else…with all that that entailed…

…we couldn’t do it. PM stepped back from it, making the decision to stay here and commit himself to his new career rather than trying to “play both sides of the fence”…and we are now rooted to our spot, for better or worse, for the duration.

I still don’t consider this necessarily the ultimate “perfect” place to live, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’d love to be on water. I’d love to be in the Snow Belt.
I’d love to be further north, with more pine in the woods than oak. And as far as “embracing all things Hoosier” goes…that ain’t gonna happen any time soon. In fact, I’ve taken to referring to this place as “the far east side of Chicago.” It makes things a lot easier to take. :-)

But when I drive down Route 24 to go sing at the beautiful new performance hall at IPFW…
…or I go swimming in the reservoir…
…or I take a jaunt uptown to look in the shop windows…
…or I walk to my church and, once again, am convinced it’s the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen…
…I do feel “at home in Indiana.”
And…in Chicago…not so much anymore.

Scary? Yes. I don’t know if I’m ready to consider the possibility of never being back in Illinois again…or living the rest of my life here, as opposed to any other “near perfect” place.

But for now, one day at a time, it’s not all that bad.
For right now, it’s home.

Thoughts?

Janny

The Religion of Eeyore?

An interesting comment came through on my previous post about the enthusiasm of Scott Hahn—to the effect that no doubt, his “on fire” nature came out of his Protestant roots.
Catholics, it seems to many people, are not “on fire” for anything; Catholics, it seems to many people out there, are kind of glum, cynical, lazy, dull, depressing, sad…

Yeah. Kinda like our friend here.

Well, yeah, there are some glum Catholics. For good reasons, in most cases. But, no, the reasons aren’t contained within the Church, her teachings, or her character itself. The reasons are a bit closer to home — like, say, Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy. With people like that claiming to be in our Church, who needs enemies? Think on that too long, and you will get glum.

But what Archbishop Noll said so long ago is true. It has always been true, and it will always be true. The Catholic religion—faithfully followed—is a religion of joy. So if you’re encountering joyless Catholics, it ain’t because they’re “too Catholic” or “too constrained by rules and regulations,” or such. If anything, it’s because they’re holding themselves back from the real joy that comes from total surrender, from embracing Christ in His Church, and from being embraced in turn by the world’s biggest family, with God as its Head.

You see, the best kept secret in the world is that being Catholic is really easy. It’s easily the simplest way to be a Christian. The most supported. The most rewarded, and rewarding, and grace-filled. But that secret is so murked up nowadays with people who make false claims about Catholicism, or who muddy it up with their own agendas, that “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” can, at times, sound like a bad joke to the people in the pews.

But it doesn’t have to be thus. At its heart, it isn’t. At its heart, Catholicism is simple, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. And the more one learns about this Church, the more one comes to love her, and her Spouse, more deeply.

“Getting” that might just make even Eeyore smile.

Thoughts?

Janny

One Down, One (or More) To Go

Well, today the proposal for Rainman’s Bride—and its accompanying spinoffs—goes out the door to Beth Adams at Guideposts Books. This is the signal, boys and girls, for everyone to start praying hard…because I truly feel that Guideposts’ “happening” to decide to expand their fiction line (s) to go into the trade market in a big way is a wide-open door for me. Added to that the fact that Beth and I got along like gangbusters at our ACFW appointment—well, let’s say that as much as I’m afraid to hope for anything anymore, this opportunity has tempted me to start believing again. I truly believe that Guideposts is as close to an ideal match for my style as it gets; time and experience will tell. But it’s time to get that Golden Heart book out on the shelves where lots more people can read it!

The next project to pitch is Voice of Innocence, which I’ll be putting together a proposal on and pitching to an agent electronically. This doesn’t stop the pitching for that piece, but it may end up being the last stop it needs to make…until it sells. Let’s hope so.

OTOH, I’m having nagging doubts about this piece, I will admit—if for no other reason than it’s met with such resounding indifference in the agent marketplace. Yet when I entered it in a contest where booksellers judged, they gave it overall high ratings, including one perfect score. One particularly poignant comment came off those contest sheets, from the bookseller who said, “I want to meet this author, and I want to read this book.” To which I murmured, “From your mouth to God’s ears, honey.” All comments were anonymous by nature, but I wished I knew who and where this bookseller was…I would have e-mailed her, or maybe even gotten on the phone, and asked her if she knew any literary agents with taste like hers!

So it’s a mixed bag this morning, but the good news is I’m bringing myself one step closer, on at least one front. Now, does anyone know Guideposts’ response times????

Staying the course (as best she can),
Janny

One More Awesome Video before I Write Again...

To me, obviously, you can insert the word "Christians" into this and it works just as well. :-)

Janny

This is awesome. Just sayin'.

Now, This Is Inspiring!

Thanks to TL Hines for bringing this onto my radar!

Janny

Press On!

In times of deep discouragement you should never make a change, but stand firm in the resolutions and decisions that guided you the day before the discouragement.

— St. Ignatius of Loyola

More to come soon....

Janny

Just. Shut. Up. (Part I)

Let’s face it. You take one look at the title above, and you figure the Catholic Writer Chick is probably hacked off about…something. Well, yes and no. :-)

Fact is, something did fry my bacon this week, but that issue will be dealt with in another post. This, however, is simply a quick and dirty complaint. Or maybe…shall we say…a suggestion? 

Please… PleasepleasePLEASE… If you are putting together a blog, website, or other online station where I’m likely to land and stay awhile to read, please resist the urge to use the “playlist” feature to piggyback music onto the reading experience. 

PLEASE. 

 I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon here. Heck, I’m a musician. You’d think I’d love to sample the music that other bloggers enjoy, and listen while I read...right? 

Well, actually, not so much. Here’s why. 

The first, and most obvious, reason is that my tastes in music and yours are probably not the same. In some cases, I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to the music I find on blogs. So the blog itself—the writing—is often compelling, witty, entertaining, or otherwise extremely enjoyable…but I can’t enjoy it because in my face is some rattly noise that sets my teeth on edge. This does not encourage me to stay and page through your blog; it encourages me to get away, and fast. To be blunt, creating a setting that makes people want to escape…is rather counterproductive to the idea of blogging in the first place. 

The second reason—one more specific to me—is that unlike many writer/readers, apparently, I am not wired to be able to write or read with music playing in the background, especially very active music. Even music I enjoy—actually, even more so, with music I enjoy—I simply cannot do those two things at once. I can edit with music in the background, as long as it’s fairly quiet and fairly subtle: think classical here, or the most subdued Celtic folk. But trying to create something? Or trying to read things I’ve never read before? Let’s put it this way. My hearing is extremely sensitive, to the point where if there’s music playing around me, no matter how quietly, my brain gravitates to it like a cat to canned tuna. I have bought not one, but two, “white noise” machines in the past several years, just for the purpose of blocking out external sounds while I’m trying to concentrate. They work, I relax, and the brain stays clear. 

But I can’t plug in my white noise machine when I’m surfing the Net…especially not when your music completely takes me by surprise. 

No doubt some of you are muttering, “Well, you dolt, just mute the stuff.” Easier said than done; in every blogging/playlist platform, the ways to do this can vary slightly. So making your readers hunt for which link is the “magic key” is, to say the least, inconveniencing them. Some of you add insult to injury in this matter as well: one particular blogger (who shall remain nameless) didn’t help matters by tossing off a remark about “those of you who are too stupid to figure out how to turn off the sound.” 

 Lemme get this straight, then; not only am I subjected to your taste in music just by clicking on your link—but should I find it tricky to escape having this stuff shoved at me, then I’m stupid, too? Yeah, that makes me want to come back! 

The late, great Uncle Bobby at WGN Radio used to say, “It’s easier to stay out than to get out.” He was referring to trouble, of course—in all its varied forms. But in this case, that “proverb” seems to apply equally well. Want to avoid irritating your readers, inconveniencing them, or giving them an excuse not to read your blog? Simple. Keep it simple, keep it straightforward…and keep it quiet. Many, many, many of us will thank you for it.

Thoughts? 

Janny

Perking along!

What’s for Dinner? The menu at Glenfarg over the past week:

• Chuck Wagon Chow...if you don't know what this is, I'll post the recipe. :-)
• What my dad used to call "Concoction" and what I call "College Student Spaghetti": the most unbelievably simple recipe on God's green earth. It's 1 medium onion, chopped and sauteed in butter until transparent; one 6-oz. can of tomato paste; and cooked, drained spaghetti. Combine, salt to taste, and watch it disappear! Perfect for Fridays in Lent. :-)
• Pork steak simmered with garlic, chopped onion, fresh sage, and frozen french cut green beans. In the last three minutes, add 1 package of Oriental flavor Ramen noodles--break up the noodles, add a bit of water, and sprinkle the seasoning from the packet overall. Works with chicken just as well!
• And, of course, the usual grilled delights: yesterday we had thin, lean beef steak, cheddar dogs, and turkey burgers with all the trimmings, plus potatoes, garlic, and broccoli roasted in foil on the coals. Can it get any better than that?

As for the rest of the weekend, it was spent the way weekends should be spent: mostly, working in the yard, interspersed with sessions of watching baseball in lovely air conditioning. This was, of course, after we puttered on Saturday chasing dust bunnies...

Hey, it's not a frantic life, but it's mine. :-)

Tonight? We putter in office, probably chasing some more dust; we work on writing tasks; and we watch THE CLOSER.

And then it'll be Tuesday!

Perking along,

Janny

When in Doubt, Reboot!

more cat pictures I will write more as soon as I clear the Cat Jam. Really. Janny

The Absolute Sure Cure for Writer's Block!

Thanks to Pub Rants for this wonderful stuff!

Janny

What’s For Dinner? Leftover Stuffed Green Peppers...featuring ground turkey, tomato sauce, onions, garlic, and homemade bread crumb topping. Yum and a half! (This is, of course, pending what happens now that Daughter is back at home after being out and about for the 4th of July weekend. There may be punting if I get home and what was left over...isn't anymore!) For dessert: chocolate chip/chunk and pecan bar cookies. Double yum! If I'm really, really good, I'll eat fewer of them and more of the fresh fruit I bought... More to come in a bit! Janny

Of All Stars, Pot Roast, and...To Be Continued

You Need to Do This! Well, okay, let’s put it this way: if you want to reward some truly outstanding baseball performances this year, go to the All-Star voting site, click in on the NL ballot, and vote for Cubs. Specifically, vote for Kosuke Fukodome, Geovany Soto, Alfonso Soriano, Mark deRosa, Ryan Theriot, and Derrek Lee “Fuk” deserves to start the All-Star Game if anyone does; Soto more than likely will, barring a complete breakdown in the voting; and I truly believe Derrek Lee deserves way more respect than he gets. Theriot and DeRosa would be really nice to have on the squad as well, and Soriano…goes without saying. But voting ends at midnight TONIGHT…so do it while you have the chance! (This diehard Cubs fan will thank you.) What’s For Dinner? Pot Roast, slow-cooker style. One beef roast (a couple of pounds), one-half of a medium sized sweet onion (rough chopped), a half-pound of mini carrots, a half-cup or so of mixed frozen pepper and onion mix, a can of chopped tomatoes, one stalk (about 5 leaves) of fresh sage, two bay leaves, kosher salt, lemon pepper, and about a quart or so of water to simmer it all in. It’s on LOW at the house now. Should be ready for my lucky husband’s lunch today as well as stay warm for dinner for me. Y’all come over! If I need to stretch it, I’ll bake a couple of potatoes to ladle it over. :-) And yes, I do have something else to write about today as well...to follow shortly! In the meantime, go do your baseball civic duty! Janny

The Writer Chick Cooks...

What’s for Dinner? Pasta! More than likely, aforementioned cheese ravioli with a little garlic-and-tomato sauce, a bunch of spinach (or two), and lots of parmesan cheese... (So how many guests should I plan on? ) More in a bit, Janny

Today's Writerly Kitchen Musing...

What’s for Dinner? Chicken Salad: chicken, celery, onions, dill pickle, poultry seasoning, mayonnaise...served open-face in sandwiches or just plain by itself! ...that is, if I don't decide to do cheese ravioli instead! Whatever you have, wash it down with a glass of killer wine. Janny

Beware! Writer in Kitchen!

What’s for Dinner? Cornmeal-coated Perch Fillets, sautéed in olive oil and served with…well, that part’s to be determined. But I do know There Will Be Fish. (This space for drooling) Yup, you’re seeing what I hope will be a new feature here at CWC, and something to take our minds off all the associated writer-angst that so often fills these pages, and our everyday writing existences. What better to cheer us all up than FOOD? (Hey, as a good Italian mother might say, “Ya gotta eat.”) If I actually have a recipe for what I mention, I’ll include it. But I’m one of those instinctive cooks who measures by the “pinch” and “handful” and “when it looks like enough…” so don’t hold me to teaspoons and tablespoons unless it’s someone else’s recipe! My favorite cook at the moment: Barefoot Contessa. More to come, but in the meantime, what’s for dinner at your house? Janny

“Hammered”…and Not

One small aside on the title of this post: a few weeks ago, I remarked to my dh something along the lines of anticipating being “hammered” on the job, and he sweetly observed that it was about time I had the sense to drink my way through this gig. I set him straight, but not without difficulty. And it is a nice thought, albeit it would make staying awake in mid-afternoon tougher than it already is. (!) Anyway, this is one of those rare interludes in the publishing biz—when an editor has projects in the hopper, but for the moment, the next steps involved in said projects are something for which she’s not responsible, something someone else has to accomplish. This likeable state of affairs usually occurs a couple of times a year; it can last anywhere from a few days, or less, to a few weeks. Such lulls are usually preceded by the kind of couple of weeks I just went through, hence the reference to being “hammered.” As in, “put the hammer down.” As in working oneself, literally, to the point where one’s eyes no longer function. I arrived at that point last Thursday afternoon. Fortunately, the most intense part of the work I had to get done…was done. By Friday morning, I had turned over one of the last Fall books to Production; I still have one out there that’s going to require some detail work and some waiting, and I have one last manuscript to start on this afternoon—but this book should be short, sweet, and fairly simple to do, which means I should make my deadlines with time to spare… So I finally have time to put some blog posts up for a change. Which will be good news to that pair of you out there who are regular readers. :-) In the meantime, what are we reading this summer? Or writing, if we’re lucky enough that the Muse has not gone en vacance somewhere and left us holding a blank screen? And what else are we looking forward to this summer by way of nonwriting fun? Thoughts?

Janny

Well, They Always Told Us to "Keep It Simple..."

"All Brian Tracy's Fault," part II

And then we came to the second part...
First of all, I feel a disclaimer is in order. If you happen to have stumbled upon this entry by Googling Brian Tracy, you need to know up front that actually, I have nothing personally against Brian. I’ve been listening to him since Earl Nightingale first introduced him on the old “Insight” series of tapes from the Nightingale-Conant Company (and they were cassette tapes, an admission which dates both me and Brian, although not necessarily in that order). That first speech I heard—about the difference between high achievers and those who fell short—was delivered at a rapid-fire pace that conveyed either a) a breathless passion for the subject matter, or b) a script with too many words to fit in the allotted time period …
…or both. :-)
I just knew that that frenetic, enthusiastic young man had a message that was inspiring, convincing, and challenging all at once. I bought it. And that, in the long run, has become my problem.
Brian, and most motivational gurus like him, preach one consistent theme when it comes to work: “Do what you love.” To this day, I can hear his voice in the back of my head saying, “If you don’t love your job enough to want to be the best at it, get out of that job and find something you do love. Life’s too short to waste it doing something you don’t love.”
But the best part about that was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If you found what you loved to do and became the absolute best—indispensable, in fact, at that job—good money would absolutely follow. Some of you scoff at this, but in the 80s, this was leading-edge. This was what all the business/career/self-actualization books said.
Trouble was, it’s never happened.
When I first got out of school, I was convinced my husband and I would both make our living as musicians. We graduated from good schools, we were good at what we did, and we were in Chicago, a place that offers myriad performing opportunities. So we went on auditions—one memorable one in particular, a Civic Orchestra audition my brand-new husband went to on the day after we got back from our honeymoon. (He probably played with a big smile on his face, but the judges didn’t know…they were behind a screen. :-) ) I, too, did audition circuits—to the point where the people at some of these places may well have muttered, “Oh, no, not her again.”
This, mind you, was around moving twice, having a baby, and all the rest of that newlywed-stuff. And I did keep singing; I joined an early music ensemble that sang Palestrina and other great stuff all over the Chicago area.
Of course, none of this paid. Which became a whole ‘nuther problem.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I did get the occasional stipend for a wedding or the like. But most people think singing is easy, and so except for union professionals who work major opera houses or the like, singers as a whole are lucky they make grocery money, even in major cities. Most of them actually live on teaching lessons and directing church choirs, not the performing itself. And there are only so many church gigs to go around, even in a city like Chicago.
So music wasn’t paying, not in any way remotely close to the “abundance” that was supposed to come from doing what I loved in an excellent fashion.
Much the same thing happened in the writing trade. After staying home with kids for years, writing and polishing fiction, I had a nice collection of rejection letters but very little else. Finally, faced with losing everything, I went out into the work world and found (what I thought was going to be) a great job being an administrator and newsletter editor. The sky was the limit with this organization…or so I thought.
Unfortunately, that sky turned out to be a heavy overcast as well.
So it’s not like I haven’t tried the formula, in various guises: full time. Freelance. Contractor. I’ve been a newspaper columnist, written for magazines, and tutored writers “on the side.” I even did one of those slightly-shady “term paper” jobs for awhile. But the bottom line still was that I worked for years providing “excellence” for people who went on European vacations, lived in neighborhoods I could only dream about, or sponsored Romanian orphans, while I worried about whether I could hang onto a two-bedroom townhouse and keep my utilities on.
So was the promise hollow all along?
And what do I do if it is?
If I talked to Brian about it, he might well say, “Have you truly given this your all? Have you done your best 100% of the time? Are you willing to pay any price, go any distance, to be the best?”
To which I’d have to say Yes. Maybe I haven’t been able or willing to hop on a plane at the slightest provocation to do endless “informational interviews.” But I have hopped on planes to go to writers’ conferences where I’ve networked…which in essence is the same thing. And yes, I’ve practiced visualization. And affirmation. I’m a positive-attitude person enough to choke most people I know. So this isn’t “not happening” because I give up too easily.
Trust me on this. :-)
I entered the Golden Heart for ten years before I even finaled, and that year I not only finaled but won. Persistence ain’t my problem.
So what is?
Here I am, in a career I’m still giving my all…and the brass ring keeps going to someone else. I’m still struggling just to pay my bills. European vacations? Providing for orphans? Don’t make me laugh. And it ought not to be this way.
So I’m wondering…what does Brian say to people when that happens?
Does he plead exceptions to the rule?
Or did I just waste my time for the last twenty-some years, chasing dreams that had no chance of ever paying off the way I’d been promised they would—sold to me by a man (and many others like him) who’s made multimillions off telling me I just need to “work harder” and “believe better”?

Many of us already think professional motivators are selling nothing more than snake oil. That they know a certain percentage of us will never get where they promise, no matter how hard we work, smart we make ourselves, or persistently we try. As long as some of us make it big, that’s good enough for them to keep peddling that same oil to the rest of us, and they don’t much care about the results.
I don’t want to think that way, for many reasons.
But I do have to wonder.

Thoughts?
Janny

It’s All Brian Tracy’s Fault!

Okay, now that ought to get your attention. :-)


The present dissatisfaction levels I’m having with various aspects of my job, my writing (or lack of same), and the remainder of my circumstances, I’ve gone over in laborious detail, in this blog, in conversation, etc. (Some might say ad nauseam, even.) (And I’d agree with you.)

But I’m here to tell you, Amen and Hallelujah!, I’ve had a breakthrough.

In the “old days,” they used to say, “Identifying your problem is half the solution.” (Lucy even quotes something along those lines to Charlie Brown, as I recall.) But our culture has evolved over the last generation or so, yessir, we have. Now, we know there’s a whole ‘nuther level to solving a problem, one that merely “identifying” it doesn’t cover. Merely “identifying” a problem doesn’t “affirm us in our okayness,” as one pundit puts it. It doesn’t bring an “oh, good, it’s nothing I really did wrong” feeling to us all; it doesn’t give us warm fuzzies of emotional “all rightness”…and that’s why mere “identification” or “labeling” of a problem only gets half the picture for us.

The other half—the far more important half, as we’ve all come to know in recent times—is who’s to blame?
Let’s face it. We all know that nowadays, you can’t even begin to get to the heart of a problem by merely identifying it. You can’t even solve it by “owning” it, by “claiming” it, by “looking it in the eye” or “taking it by the horns” or…well, insert whatever catch phrase (read: cliché) you want here. Nope, boys and girls. That’s not gonna do the trick.

You can’t really deal with anything in our present day—get closure, if you will—until you know who you can point the finger at and say, “I wouldn’t have this problem if it wasn’t for YOU!”

Well, I now know who I can point the finger at for my present malaise.
And I feel so much better knowing that, I’m about ready to go on Oprah and jump up and down on her couch. I’m not as cute to look at when I do those things as Tom Cruise is when he does them, but hey, that’s not my problem.

Brian Tracy is.
He did this to me.
Hallelujah! I finally know who’s to blame for this—and that it’s not my fault!
Do you realize what a terrific breakthrough this is for me?

I’ll have some more specifics in Part II…to come shortly. Once I remove the tongue from my own cheek, I’ll be able to explain much better anyway.
In the meantime, if you’re tired of me whining…blame Brian.
It's okay. He can take it.

Thoughts?
Janny

Crisis of Confidence

Why does it always happen this way? Why is it that no sooner do I get in the midst of submitting, querying, et al, on a work I truly love…but I look at it and think, “This really isn’t very good”? When I read the work, I’m fired up. Some of the sentences I read, I literally forgot I wrote. I look at them and say, “Darn, I wrote that!” But then I get into the submission process…and all I can see is dreck. I look at the first ten pages and think, “Well, no wonder no one’s taking this on. It’s dull.” In my heart of hearts I think I know better…but then I get to wondering. Maybe it’s due to the lack of any kind of response I’m getting on this book of my heart. Maybe it’s due to simply being worn out from trying to do too many other things, at the expense of my own work—the fiction writing I used to love so much. And I know all the platitudes; heaven knows I’ve told other people them enough. “It only takes one.” “It’s a numbers game.” “It’s a crap shoot.” “It’s part talent, it’s part timing, it’s part dumb luck.” Maybe I should stop reading ten-year-old MHC books while I’m doing this. You know, her books were so much better ten years ago, when someone actually edited what she wrote (as opposed to more recent work, which apparently is rarely touched). Those books. The ones that made me sit back and think, “Well, now I know what to shoot for.”:-) In a way, I don’t even have “idols” to emulate at this point. In this particular sequence, it’s just me…the book of my heart…and a bunch of query letters, for something I’m not even sure is any good anymore. It is worth noting that the last time I wondered about that, I won a Golden Heart with the material in question. So maybe when a writer is the closest to significant success is when she’s almost convinced she should just give in, bite the bullet and call that truck-driving school. :-) But I do wonder why it is that these second and third thoughts always seem to hit me in the midst of the process in which I’m laying my stuff most thoroughly on the line. Thoughts? Janny

“Why Aren’t You Retired?”

I’m not going to apologize for not posting for awhile—not because I’m not sorry, but because attempting to *have a life* and then apologizing for doing so is probably silly. (!) During this “having a real life” stuff, however, I had an interesting encounter, more especially in light of some recent spiritual conversations I’ve been having… Here’s how it went. Saturday afternoon I was in the front yard, finishing up the mowing, when a young man approached me—and not to sound insensitive, but by looking, I could tell this young man was in the category of if not mildly mentally retarded, at least not in the upper echelons of his class. We get more than our share of this kind of person walking our small-town streets and striking up conversations with anyone they see, so when he headed my way, I was pretty much prepared for anything. First, he said, “I’ll do that for you,” meaning the mowing. I said I appreciated that, but that I liked mowing, and I wanted to do it myself. I did have to repeat that part, but I said it with a smile, so he got it the second time or so. Then he asked, “Do you work?” I bit back the obvious answer that came to mind (!) and said, “Yes, I do.” “Where?” he asked. Now, at the time I was mowing the yard, I was wearing a bright brick-red T-shirt with white letters across the front spelling out the company name. It’s a leftover shirt from my competition in the Battle of the Businesses last September, and like all these sorts of shirts, it’s so comfy you don’t care if you’re advertising…you just like wearing it. But apparently, that wasn’t clear enough of a hint for him. I didn’t say, “Can’t you read my shirt?” As I answered, I believe I pointed to the shirt at the same time, thereby accomplishing the hint without saying so. :-) And I smiled. Really. I did. To which he said, “Why aren’t you retired?” Now, in my old Chicago persona—which still lives right behind my tongue—the only fitting answer to that question is, “That’s none of your business.” But, again, I’m not in Chicago anymore. I’m in small-town Indiana, and in small-town Indiana, you answer a question like that more kindly, especially in an instance like this one. But what to say that wouldn’t sound really pathetic? I mean, am I going to tell a complete stranger, “I can’t afford to retire”? That’s more information than they really have a right to know. Am I going to say, “Because I have such an interesting job I hate to leave it”? Not exactly; besides, that invites more questions, and I was more interested in getting the lawn mowed so I could get on with the other work I had waiting for me indoors. So what did I say? “Uhh…because I don’t want to?” Accompanied by a shrug, this seemed to do the trick. The young man nodded, wished me a good day and went his way. But what he ended up saying to me, and how and why he said it, I’m still pondering. I can readily surmise that he asked that question primarily because in his eyes, I’m a little gray-haired lady, and little gray-haired ladies are supposed to be retired. Maybe I’m making a giant leap of illogic here, but I don’t think he would have asked that question had my hair still been auburn. The other pondering I’m doing, however—and more pointedly—is about my answer. In the plainest and simplest possible terms, it was a lie. A little white lie, maybe; a lie with a good cause, maybe; but it’s still a lie...and I don’t like lying. Because, fact is, I do want to retire. At least from the day gig. And I want it more and more every day. As it happens, the Lord and I were talking over the issue of “work” and such the day before this young man asked me the question. In fact, I specifically asked the Lord to give me a sign about when and how I could retire, or if I was supposed to be thinking that way, and to make it snappy, if He would please. :-) I can’t help but wonder if what this young man said to me has something to do with a plan in mind for that specific desire of mine. So why am I not retired? Well, of course, short answer is, “I can’t afford it…yet.” So if the Lord plans on dropping a huge windfall on me soon, so He can set in motion the second part of that plan, I’m ready. :-) But also, seriously speaking, I have to admit I’m one of those souls who’s never gotten used to the rhythm of “work” in this country. I knew intellectually that, unlike students, most workers don’t get three months off for summer vacation in the middle of the year. (Kids don’t even get three months off anymore, but that’s a whole ‘nuther problem I have, for a whole ‘nuther blog.) So right there, I knew there would always be a time of the year when I would wake up, look outside, and think, “Why am I doing this again?” But it also dawns upon me that maybe “retiring,” for me, could actually mean doing something in which I can get three months off in the year. Like…teaching. Some schools still believe in summer breaks. Some of them even believe in summer breaks, Interim breaks between Thanskgiving and New Year’s, and a generous spring break to boot. Now, let’s think about this. Teaching writing for nine months of the year, with three months off. Where do I sign? I guess I’ll be looking for more indicators of whether this is the way to go, in the near future. Peeking under educational-opportunity rocks. Seeing what my credentials will get me by way of access to a possible class or two…or three… If the novels don’t take off first. :-) In the meantime, look for me outdoors as much as I can get there. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be behind the lawn mower. (!) Thoughts? Janny

Some Positives on a Monday Morning

Last time, I talked a bit about things I’ve been “aiming” to do, but am not doing so hot at…to which a couple of you responded, quite kindly, about things I do do right. (Thank you.) It was also pointed out to me during that same period of time that, in true editor fashion, I may in fact be my own harshest critic. They say most of us are, so that’s not too surprising.

But anyone who knows me well also knows that one of the principal controlling threads of my life is “fairness.” I like balance. Very few things will send me off the handle faster than perceiving that something is “rigged,” “stacked,” or otherwise tilted one way or the other. More than practically anything else, I crave an even playing field. So despite feeling like there are more ways that I screw up than ways I fulfill expectations, in the interests of fairness, here’s some of the feedback I get from the “universe” on things I’m doing right:

1. Apparently, I write really, really good query letters. In at least two instances, I wrote query letters that were too good; I wrote them before manuscripts were half done, to houses known for loooooong delays in responding, figuring I had time to finish a book before said house would even send me a form request of any kind.

Well, you know what happened. Ten days later, when I’m three chapters and barely a fourth into a book, I get a letter back from said Tortoise-Paced Publisher saying, “This book sounds intriguing. Please send the entire manuscript as soon as it is convenient.” (!) So, yeah, I think I probably write reeeeeealllly good query letters. And I’ve learned to query carefully since then. (!!) Querying skills: A. Timing skills: B, working toward an A.

2. People tell me I am an extremely supportive friend. I don’t see it that way, but I truly appreciate the fact that in this case, I may just be wrong. After all, who knows if they’ve been supported better than the friend saying so? So, as a friend, apparently I rate higher than the D or so I’ve been giving myself. I’d give myself an A-, based on the compliments I’ve received. Yeah, it’s a jump, but when you get a good critique, you’re entitled to go with it. (!)

3. The great majority of the time, I’m really organized. This hasn’t happened by accident, of course; “organization” and “just happens” are pretty much incompatible concepts. :-) I’ve always been a great fan of checklists, and once I discovered FlyLady and realized that yes, one didn’t have to clean one’s entire house in one marathon session once a week—that it would actually look “pretty good” and fit for company for days on end with a slightly different approach—I have had a fairly strict housecleaning and chore routine that has worked very well. It’s had to be amended at times, like when the Three-Day Flu flattened me in February (alliteration notwithstanding)…and sometimes, if the weather is just too nice or I just have too many reasons to do things other than what’s on the list for that day, the house doesn’t always look company-ready. But it’s getting there, most of the time, and that makes me happy…because everything in me functions way better in cleanliness and order. Despite the occasional rolled-eyes from my friends about a woman who actually enjoys cleaning, I’ve discovered I’m in some very good intellectual and spiritual company when it comes to needing order, cleanliness, and organization around me in order to be at my best creatively. So there’s validation on more than one front for the attitude of “cleaning = instant gratification.” Grade at housework organization? A-. Not perfect, but darned close. :-)

4. I have a whale of a good vocabulary. I know this because even in everyday conversation, I occasionally have to define a word I’ve just used for someone. (I still can’t get over this, at times. Didn’t everybody spend her childhood doing the “increase your word power” quizzes in Reader’s Digest?) In commercial fiction writing, unfortunately, this is somewhat of a handicap; I’m not writing “literary” work aimed at an audience that would appreciate a phrase like “the discomfiting cacophony behind her eyes” to describe a heroine whose thoughts are frazzled. :-) (Never mind that the first time someone told me, “Write this to a sixth-grade level,” I almost said, “In sixth grade, I knew what cacophony was.”) Slowly, it’s been brought home to me that no, people don’t read dictionaries for fun, and my writing style has adapted accordingly. If sometimes I find it constricting to trim a “five-dollar word” from my text, I can bear it for the sake of good storytelling and good communication. So it’s a mixed bag on this one: A for the sheer word power, B for the ability to find a simpler, yet still vivid, way to communicate!

5. I know that putting spirituality last on a list can say either that it’s an afterthought or that it’s the most important aspect of all…but I’m putting my transformed relationship with the Lord in this spot anyway. :-P

For years, I’ve been sincerely trying to commit everything to the Lord, which is really, really hard to do. I was always striving for this, but I also became increasingly aware that I wasn’t really doing it. For awhile, I was willing to buy into the preaching we’ve all heard that the only reason we hold anything back from the Lord is some kind of “selfishness” or “pigheadedness” or “pride.” Yeah, and that sure made me feel better about my intentions. (NOT.) Only recently, when I’ve hit several levels of bottom on several fronts, did I realize I hadn’t been holding back from the Lord out of selfishness or wanting to do things my way…but out of fear. And just between us, I think that’s true of a lot more of us than any nonsense about “pride” or “pigheadedness.”

What do we have to fear when we commit our entire lives to the Lord? Well, I know what I feared. I’ve been a Catholic long enough to be familiar with lots of saints’ lives; lots of them no sooner committed themselves totally to the Lord but they were hit with horrible, painful, nasty diseases. Or soul-searing tragedies. Or both. Yeah, like I wanted that to happen? I’d had quite enough challenges in my life, thank you very much. I didn’t know how I’d cope with any more. I certainly wasn’t going to be stupid enough to ask for them—and to me, that total surrender was in effect asking for trouble.

But then, one day when I was broke, scared, and out of any other options, I encountered writing about the Divine Mercy…and everything changed. I realized that the people who’d preached all those years to me about what a vile, selfish thing it was not to “give it all to Jesus” had completely missed the point—as had the souls (well-intentioned though they were) who deliberately asked for only the worst from the Lord. Noble as self-sacrifice may be, that’s not what surrender to Jesus is all about. It’s not something He’s waiting for, impatiently tapping His foot. It’s not a bargaining chip whereby we give Him something, and then, and only then, does He dispense grace. Unlike me, Jesus doesn’t see everything in terms of balance sheets. He doesn’t see everything in terms of a level playing field. It’s not level—it’s tilted toward Him, and that’s the way He wants it to be…because He wants me tucked into His arms even more than I want to be there. And that's amazing.

Once I saw that, once I really got that, I understood. For the first time, really grasped it. And for the first time, really surrendered. Everything. My life. My health. My husband. My kids. My money. My career. My house. My writing. My everything. It was a heck of a session in front of the Blessed Sacrament, but when I was done with that…I was done with a lot of other things as well.

Yeah, I’ll freely admit that part of the surrender was founded on “Hey, it can’t be any worse than what I’m up against now. I’m already miserable.” :-) And a generous part of the prayer was, “I’m scared to do this. I’m scared to death to do this. But I’m going to do it anyway.” The surrender still has to happen every day when I simply say, “Jesus, I trust in You. I’m still scared, but I still trust in You.” The great news? Our Lord told St. Faustina that the mere act of saying, “Jesus, I trust in You” is good enough for Him; the very act of saying those words, in His eyes, manifests the trust He is looking for out of us. Even if we say the words hesitantly, even if we have to confess being scared…it’s still enough. He’ll honor it immediately. He’ll take us to His heart, drown us in His mercy, and we’ll never be the same again.

And I’m not. Already. In a lot of ways that have “come along” and “happened out of the blue.” I’ll talk more about those on future days; just suffice to say that if you have not discovered St. Faustina’s writings about the Divine Mercy, do yourself a favor and read some of them.

The book that helped me more than I can ever say happened to be this one,

so I highly recommend it, for starters. If this whets your appetitite, you’ll be led to where to find more. I hope you do—because it’s sure worth it.

No, I’m not even going to give myself a “grade” on this one. (!) It’s way beyond that. But I needed to proclaim Jesus’ mercy this morning—another thing He asked St. Faustina to do—so that’s our closing thought this morning. May your Monday be drenched in mercy…because that’s all you’ll need, for this week and any week to come!

Thoughts?

Janny

If You Spend Six Months of Your Life on Something....

...you really ought to promote it. So here it is!

Even if you don’t have kids, you might just plain enjoy leafing through this book; it’s gorgeous. Plus, it’s got all kinds of neat crafts you can do, should you be so inclined—or goodies to cook and bake, should that be your calling. :-) And since I spent the greater portion of six months of my life buried in, fixing problems with, collaborating with the author and designer to work on, and sweating over the final result of this book—yes, I have a vested interest. It’s a great book, and the author’s a hoot.

Take a look!

Danger! Failing Grade Alert!

This title may be misleading, so not to panic: our only college student, my daughter, isn’t really failing any of her classes at IPFW. I did make the mistake of mentioning in an e-mail to the inlaws that she was “pulling B’s in most things”—which then prompted them, unbeknownst to me, to write her an e-mail chiding her for such a lukewarm accomplishment as “only” pulling B’s in college work when she was “an A student before.” Putting aside for a moment the fact that my daughter was her grade-school valedictorian (something that still amazes me), the plain fact of the matter is, of course, that as far as her dad and I are concerned, A’s are great, you ought to strive for them, but B’s don’t necessarily mean you’re slacking off, either. This is college work, not grade school, and we allow for that real difference. Even an occasional C isn’t cause for undue panic. Yes, we expect “above average” out of our kids—but neither of us was a straight-A achiever, so at least we have no unrealistic expectations of perfection out of anybody. Her dad and I are both also former music majors, and Jess is a pre-major in fine arts, so we know as well about such things as “subjectivity” in arts grading. Other family members are not so inclined; having never been in an arts program of any kind, they seem unable to comprehend the notion that simply “trying harder” and “concentrating better” doesn’t always equate to A’s in an artistic course of study. We merely shrug and go our own way, and at least my daughter was smart enough not to whip back a response when, as she put it, she “couldn’t think of any nice way to respond to that.” That alone may prove she has more smarts than most A students on campus. :-) All that being said, what I’m really thinking about this morning is a self-report card. When I sit back, take a breath, and evaluate how I’m doing so far on the things I wanted to improve this year…I’m not doing so hot. I wanted to get more sleep this year. Sometimes, I do. Most times, I don’t. The reasons are wide, varied, and sometimes even chemical…so they’re not always due to not “trying harder” or “concentrating more” on my part. I have noticed that I do actually get in bed earlier than I was before, so maybe that’s a step in the right direction. Even if I’m sitting up in bed awake at 10 or 10:30, reading (the best way to end the day) …or (heaven help me) finishing up e-mail or some other godawful thing to be doing at that time of night, at least being physically in my pajamas, in bed, beats being still in my jeans and gym shoes washing the kitchen floor. So I guess progress is progress. But I’m still dead tired much of the time, so obviously, I still need a lot of work on that resolution. Overall grade: C-. I wanted to get more of my own writing done, and sold, this year. “Selling” I know I can’t control, but getting the writing and pitching done…ach. I’m the original synopsis/pitch queen, but every time I think about doing it lately, I nearly go into overwhelm. Overwhelm is not a place from which one pitches well, unfortunately. Once again, the reasons I’ve written precious little are wide, varied, and sometimes even chemical (!)—and they do go hand in hand with not getting enough sleep/rest, since sleep deprivation also diminishes creativity. Unfortunately, the more pressing concerns of cash flow have dictated what times I spend both creating my own worlds and resting from them; this will, with any blessings at all, be a temporary situation soon relieved. Overall grade on that: D. Barely passing, hoping for better things. And a third thing I really, really need to do—resolve to do every year—but never quite seem to get a handle on is keeping up contact with friends and family. Yanno, sending the birthday cards, the anniversary cards, the thank-you notes, the letters…all that. It’s not that I don’t think about them; I do. I just don’t follow through the way I’ve always wanted to; it just never seems to get done. The reasons for this are also wide and varied, and although less chemical (!), are certainly hereditary. I grew up in an anti-social household. My mother wanted to be involved in family things; my father kept us all under his thumb, and instilled in us a paranoia about others that is still difficult to shake. So while I really love having my friends and family, and I find myself thinking, “Gosh, I need to get together with these people more often,” it hardly ever happens that way. Three people I meant to send cards to already, I’ve failed to send to. I should have. Every year, I make up my mind to do it…and every year, I’m either short of cash or I neglect it for some other reason. With the start of this new quarter, of course, I can redeem myself, send some belated cards, write some letters…if I can pull together the time or energy or both. The only thing I then have to battle is the nagging voice in my head saying, “Hey, if you didn’t start out the year doing it, don’t bother now, it’s too late.” (Can you spell perfectionist?) It remains to be seen whether I’ll be comfy forgiving myself for failing so thoroughly so far this year, and just pick up and pretend that this is how Janny is going to be from now on. (!) (I have actually managed to do some of this kind of thing, just not the number and frequency of contacts I feel I “should” have to be a better daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, friend, parent…you get the idea.) For now, my grade in this is a D-. Hanging on by my nonexistent fingernails. There are some positives I’ve been able to swing this year, as well, though. It’s just that for the moment—probably due to spring fever!—most of what I’m seeing is the need to play catch-up. But never fear. Next post, I’ll talk about some of the things I may be “forced” to give myself an A in…or at least a B. That’ll be way more fun. :-) Valedictorian, I ain’t. But the year is young, there’s time…right? Thoughts? Janny

Words To Write By?

From the Communion antiphon for today's Mass... You are a people God claims as his own, to praise him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light...alleluia! Now, insert the word writer into this text, and meditate: You are a writer God claims as his own... Is that awesome, or what? Janny

Can't Resist This One...

Never read books you aren’t sure about morally, even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?

— St. John Bosco

Have You Hugged A Critic Today?

It’s interesting sometimes, the view from this side of the desk. We’ve talked about this before, but I’ve encountered a couple of brand-new wrinkles, one of which poses an interesting scenario for those of us who occasionally struggle with this “brave new world” of electronic communication. You already know that you need to be careful what you say online, because people are listening. And some interesting things can happen because of that listening. This notion isn’t new; it’s the basis for the rampant paranoia that frequently masquerades as “caution” in our writing circles. But if we flip over that paranoia—if we actually start thinking in terms of “who might be looking at my blog, and why”—this notion, and the reality it represents, can bring about some pleasant surprises. As an example: I have no active web page URL anywhere—but my blog URL is on my resume, for the express purpose of showing potential clients, future employers (who knows?), and other publishing professionals that I not only can handle cyberspace, but I’m trying to be a quality contributor thereto. The results of this? Well, if I send in a resume for a freelance editorial gig, odds are very good that before the contact person e-mails me back, he or she has already gone to the blog and checked it out. I know, because when I check my statistics, I see the evidence of said reading, and this has happened enough times now that it can no longer be considered a fluke. It’s probably an indicator of the quality of this blog that once these people see it, they’re e-mailing me to ask about my availability for a phone interview. :-) This tells me that your blog can be not only an adjunct to your web page, but an effective substitute for one, and probably a more attractive and effective one in the case of writers or editors. If someone asks for a writing sample, all I have to do is copy and paste a blog post into an e-mail. The really unfussy ones will just ask for the URL where my writing appears, and they’ll read for themselves. It’s a whole new way to do business, save time, and give them an instant picture of who I am, how I write, and how I conduct myself in public. Not bad, for a few seconds in cyberspace. But this week, I also discovered another use for the blog: as a teaching tool, in and of itself. And I’m not even talking about the specific blog posts themselves—although I certainly try my best to make those instructional—but to the comments. Yep. The comments. On most blogs, the comments section can be a dicey place. Crazies have been known to surf widely, post erratically, insult freely, and spam comboxes, to the point where you may have myriad fans of your blog who never look in your combox. It’s just not worth the hassle of weeding through the nonsense to get to thoughtful conversation. On the other hand… I don’t often receive mail at my day gig; my authors and I communicate largely by e-mail, in some instances by telephone or by fax. Even our proofreaders who prefer “hard copy” to “track changes” will send their hard-copy page corrections via fax. So, unless it’s a Christmas card or something else wonderful from an author, I rarely have things addressed to me at OSV. When I got a package early this week, then, I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I opened it and found a book, and a note, from an author whose work I had criticized at some length, months ago, in the comments section of this blog. I admit, I opened the note with some trepidation; I’ve received more than my share of damning-with-faint-praise under the guise of such letters, and this week has been one of many challenging ones of late…so I wasn’t in the mood to be grownup and mature should that prove to be the case. You can imagine my surprise when I read a thank-you note—for my criticism. Yep, you heard right. I pointed out what I saw as glaring weaknesses in an author’s work…and she thanked me for it. She looked over the first several chapters of the book in question, thought to herself, “Yep, I can do better than that,” and proceeded to revise—based largely on the comment-conversations I and a couple of others had had about her writing. She’s self-publishing much of her work now, which means she has the option of making changes much more easily than with even a small press…so she took the opportunity to do so, and she wanted to give me credit for “inspiring [me] to continue to improve.” That would have been impressive enough—but she didn’t stop there. She also thanked me, by name, in the acknowledgment section of the new version of the book. Now, if you don’t already know this about me—or haven’t figured it out by now!—I am, as I often put it, “a sucker for lavish praise.” Everyone loves to be praised, of course, but I think I love it even more than average; so anytime I’m thanked on a page of a book, it’s an occasion to remember for me. I’ve had other authors do it, although not nearly enough times so it’s in any danger of “getting old” (as if being praised ever can). But I have to admit, this is the first time I’ve been thanked, in public and by name, for something I’ve said in what in essence can be a “throwaway” part of a blog. That, I think, says something important—even encouraging—to all of us. It’s one thing to recognize intellectually that everything you say can be heard by someone, and that what you put online stays up pretty much forever. It’s another thing entirely to realize that someone whose name you “take in vain” might be reading one day…might examine what you say and how you say it…and might have that resonate enough that your words become a learning moment for all concerned. That notion is heady stuff. And truth be told, that process is actually, in the end, why I’m here. To teach the craft—both to others and, in the end, to myself as well—since the best way to learn how to do anything better is to teach it to others. But getting thanked for those efforts may just make someone’s day. Be it a critiquer, an editor…or even some fool just holding forth in her combox. :-) Thoughts? Janny

Right Business...Wrong Job?

All my life, I wanted to be in books; as Chip MacGregor so engagingly puts it, he wanted to be a “book guy,” and I was the female equivalent of that. I read a book about how books are put together when I was very young and thought, “Now, there’s the business to be in. How much better could it be than to be in the book business?” Deciding what aspect of “the book business” to be in was part of the fun, I suspect. Had I dreamed of a dusty little shop on a dusty little corner, I would probably have become an indie bookstore owner, happily peddling my latest finds…or I would have run a (decidedly cool) used bookstore somewhere in the hinterlands, like an acquaintance of ours did in Rogers Park. But I have no retail aspirations, in that sense—except to do my annual share to contribute to Barnes & Noble and Borders’ stock with a book-buying trip every few months. I did, and still do, want to write and sell novels; occasionally I actually do write one (!), and occasionally, I pitch some of those products to various Big Name Publishers Who Can Make My Day With One Phone Call…but so far, none of them has. (I may be one of the few authors you’ll ever know who actually got a phone call from a Harlequin editor to chat with me on why she wasn’t going to request more of my book, so I guess there’s a dubious claim to fame there. :-) But, I digress.) More than once, I have thought about (and still consider) becoming a formal, in-the-front-of-the-classroom writing teacher. I’ve taught writing workshops online, and I’ve done one-on-one coaching as well as tutoring English composition, so I do have a bit of an idea what that life might be like. A few things deter me from doing that right now…one of them being trying to write a resume that effectively sidesteps the “Master’s degree required” bit of the job description. I may be a master at many things written, but the degree I ain’t got. A bit of creativity, and I might be able to set that up yet. But when I got the chance to be a real, live Book Editor, I figured I had taken a giant step forward into nirvana. Didn’t even matter that I’d be editing nonfiction, rather than the novels I had dreamed of doing…because I’d made enough living off nonfiction in the ensuing years that I knew I could handle it competently, and I also knew it didn’t have to be the be-all and end-all of what I did with my writing talent. I’d have plenty of energy left “after hours” to be creative on my own…right? I’m here to tell you that that ain’t necessarily so. That issue, we’ve touched upon before, and my trying to get that aspect of things in order is a work in progress. But what I was muttering about yesterday, as I took my 3 PM laps in the warehouse, was something I find myself feeling frequently after we have one of our periodic meetings about The Publishing Business and Where It’s Going. We had another one of those yesterday, over lunch, when staff who had attended the O’Reilly “Tools of Change” conference reported back on what they’d heard, what they’d learned, and the directions publishing was going to go…whether we all liked it or not. I don’t mean for that to sound negative—after all, I’m on board with lots of elements of “Web 2.0.” I was one of the few people in the room (if not the only one) who had heard of Library Thing before that presentation yesterday; and I’m also one of the few people in the company who blogs with regularity. But what I found distressing was the concept that content isn’t king anymore…what people do with the content, how they get at it, how they manipulate it, paste it together, chunk it, and how much of it they can get for free, is. This is distressing not because people aren’t reading, in some cases a lot; they are. But because to me, these proclamations only emphasize the rapidly-degrading attitude of people toward the folks who create that content in the first place. Yes, the “free content” is almost always used to entice people to buy—putting aside for the moment the web-wise but morally-deficient kids who will gladly hack into any site so they can get everything possible for nothing. But apart from hackers and other crooks, in the context of how this “new approach to content” affects authors, the one thing I heard that disturbed me more than anything else was a comment along the lines of what new demands or expectations publishers might have of authors. Apparently, in a nutshell, word on the street is that it’s “ask for the moon” time when they sit down with authors or authors’ representatives to talk about “rights;” increasingly often, authors come to the table ready to effectively “give away the store” to have their content “out there.” (Sounds suspiciously like the self-publishing business, only worse.) Publishing’s days of producing great work, finishing it, and sending it on its way are fast coming to an end; today, it’s all about “sharing content” and “giving the consumer what he/she wants.” All good ideas—since that makes everybody happy, right? The only problem was, I heard nary a whisper about the artist’s compensation for all this new, exciting use of content. In some circles, the author/artist who asks about such things is even presented as a backward, ignorant bit player who “just doesn’t know how to adapt.” In this brave new publishing world, that’s a death knell for one’s career, because authors who aren’t as “fussy” are out there…and those authors, and what they produce, represent a “fabulous opportunity.” I heard a lot of talk about authors’ blogs, self-promotion, and being “willing” to “work with a publisher” to “optimize revenue streams.” What I didn’t hear was any equivalent enthusiasm about how the authors would share in said revenue streams. And that was chilling. It points up, yet again, the obvious—something I can forget about most of the time when we all seem to be “on the same page”—which is, as long as I sit on this side of the desk, in some ways I’m not part of the solution, I’m part of the problem. When I see what I do from an author’s point of view, something as inherent to me as breathing, I don’t always like what I see. It’s a depressing state of affairs to find yourself feeling like you’re in the right business, but wearing the wrong “hat.” It tends to make you mutter to yourself during an afternoon walk. Other than muttering, though, I’m not at all sure what I can do…and that’s a little disheartening, to say the least. Thoughts? Janny