The Dirty "C" Word, Part I

Okay, now, don't get too excited.  Of the many "C" words that might occur to you, the word I'm talking about today isn't actually risque--except, perhaps, in the minds of fellow creatives.

That word is...competition.

(Some of you may need to sit down and fan yourselves at this point. Feel free.)

A pretty ridiculous notion has taken over the creative world of late. This wouldn't be surprising, in itself: creative people can be just as ridiculous as uncreative ones. But this notion has been embraced so rapidly, completely, and radically that it borders on the closest thing to religion some of these people have. And fundamentalists ain't got nothin' on them when it comes to upholding this shining credo, and shaming those who dare to challenge it.

The notion?

That as writers, we don't compete with each other, because "we're all in this together."

Whoever came up with that notion? Ought to be taken out back and doused with cold water. In January. In the Northern Hemisphere. 

Because it's simply NOT TRUE.

Let me say that again.

Wonderful, warm, and affirming as it sounds to say that all creatives are "in this together"--and therefore, never, ever, ever, ever, EVER in (gasp) competition with each other--it's NOT TRUE.

Real life experience will prove this over and over and OVER again. It's even common sense, not to mention backed up with fact. 

But just try going on social media and saying that out loud.

Go ahead. I dare you.

This blog post is even stepping out on a ledge.

So where did this cockamamie notion come from? 

I suspect it has its roots in a couple of sources.

First, the influence of New Age thinking, The Secret, and all the rest, which preaches a "limitless universe" and scolds us against a "scarcity mindset." And, in one sense, this has some veracity. Publishing, after all, has become rather limitless; you can put together a book and "publish" yourself, any time you like. You simply have to have the resources to cover all the details involved, from buying ISBNs to cover art to copyright registration (just to be on the safe side), and voila! You're a published author. You're independent, you collect all the profits yourself, and no one stands in your way. 

In terms of publishing "freedom" and "access," this is great. In terms of quality?

Yeah. Sometimes, not so much. 

(But the few times I've said that out loud, I've gotten raked over so many coals that no wonder my skin gets thicker every year. Never mind that it's true; it still gets the kind of knee-jerk vitriol we used to reserve for animal abusers and serial killers. 😒)

Second, I believe it comes straight out of the participation-ribbon mindset: that people should be rewarded and applauded merely for showing up, breathing, and standing upright. That heaven forbid we should dare to say one thing is "better" than another, or that one "wins" and another "loses." The self-esteem damage of losing does terrible things to our young ones' confidence. It demotivates them. It depresses them. It can damage them forever, and forever keep them from achieving their true potential. Potential, according to these people, needs constant affirmation, watering, nurturing, reinforcement, and praise in order to develop fully. Any negative assessment of efforts to do so? Any aspersion cast on them, or evaluation of them that is less than glowing, or constructive criticism of them? Will bring about certain disaster. Maybe even physical damage, but certainly emotional. And, hence, tragedy.

Apparently, potential--be it writing talent, musicianship, artistic endeavor, or anything else--has no strength in itself. If not coddled like the proverbial hothouse flower, it will wither and die before it even takes root. Young (or even not-so-young) artists are to be celebrated for effort, and rejoice in that the only people they're "competing" with are themselves. 

Only problem is...that ain't how the real world works, Karen.

And it's long (DAMN long) past time someone was brave enough to say it out loud.

Before the denial of reality does way, way more damage and breaks way, way more hearts than that evil competition monster could ever do in a thousand lifetimes.

I'm here to tell you that not only is competition not an evil monster...

...but that we're all doing it, all the time. And it's long (DAMN long) past time we realized that, admitted it, and put it to work for us, instead of trying to shame it out of existence.

We'll talk more about that in part II!

Janny

Timing...Is...

Long ago, the hubs and I did a prank message on our answering machine that has the title above as its punch line...but this post isn't about that. Trust me: if you're curious about that story, I can tell it in another post. And I probably will.😀

This is about a realization prompted some time ago when I heard "The Swan of Tuonela" on Music Choice--and was swept away with memories.

But also, with wonder at the genius of God's timing.

Let me explain. 

Jean Sibelius's "Swan of Tuonela" was one of many pieces on a listening list for music theory and ear training for me, 44 years ago this summer at Harper College. And, yes, I remember most of the pieces almost indelibly, for many reasons. One of which was, it was one of the few times in my life I've ever gone to summer school. The reason behind that, and how what came next unfolded, leaves me in awe to this day.

I was in summer school to take semester 2 of Music Theory and Ear Training/Sight Singing for the Music major track. Our instructor in the 101-102 track had alerted us that we needed to take these over summer; if we didn't, the 102 courses wouldn't be offered again for another year, and that would screw up the sequence of being able to accomplish two years' worth of music education in, literally, two years. 😉

A very small group of us took these courses. Maybe a dozen, total. Of which one was my future husband. Which I didn't know at that point...because at that point I was already (unhappily) married to someone else.

Come the fall of 1979, my ill-advised (and invalid) marriage dissolved...and I became friends with Patrick. And, as they say, the rest was history.  But consider, for a moment, how God arranged this timing.

It's only dawned on me recently that Patrick wouldn't have been in those classes, in that sequence, with me had he not started at the same time I did--which was January of 1979--in Music Theory 101. But he graduated from high school in the summer of 1978. So the logical time for him to start in Theory would have been fall, not January. 

Only for some reason known only to Harper College (and God), the Theory sequence didn't begin during fall of 1978.  Had it begun at the point a freshman might reasonably expect, he'd have been ahead of me. Which means we might never have met...had Harper College (and God) not timed their course offerings the way they did. 

Had he been in a "track" a semester ahead of me, we would never have done homework together.

Would never have been thrown together for tutoring, as one of our professors did when she realized I was pulling As in Ear Training while he was struggling.

Might never have been in chorus together, although that's still a possibility...but that association was so peripheral that were it all we had, it wouldn't have carried us into the closer relationship that sharing the same classes, for the rest of our music education, did.

I've always said I "lucked out" in terms of meeting Patrick, and getting to know him, when and how I did. Because there were three guys in our Music Theory track: one was married, one was stoned half the time...and then there was Patrick. And I was the fortunate woman who ended up catching his eye.

But I wouldn't have ever been able to catch that eye had we not been plunked into the same classrooms together, slogging through the same theory and analysis, and gradually growing closer by the day. Because we helped each other. We made each other laugh. Eventually, we fell in love.

And God, who knew we needed to meet and bond in these particular ways, not only arranged my life and Patrick's, but an academic schedule, so that could happen. When it did. How it did. And to the splendid, heartbreakingly wonderful conclusion it did.

Part of that plan, I know now, was summer school. 

And listening lists.

And Sibelius. 

And God's timing was perfect in all of it.

If anyone ever doubts how much God cares about whether we're happy in His will...this story ought to help reassure you. 

To a musician, timing is everything.

And I praise the Lord who knows that. 🙏

Thoughts?

Janny

Caution...Frissoning Ahead!

For years and years and years, romance novels in particular have used a word I never saw anywhere else: frisson.

As in, "A frisson of unease went through her," or  "A frisson of awareness sparked between them" or the like. While I never ran to the dictionary, the context was usually enough to give me the hint of what a frisson was: a shiver. A tingle. 

Imagine my utter dumbfounded shock, then, when I actually looked it up...to make sure that, if I used it in one of my books, I'd be using it right...and discovered it's a thing.

Something backed up by research, no less.  

And something I've had all my life.

I've always considered myself a bit eccentric for it. I feel music, to a point and at a level I haven't heard many other people talk about much. I know virtuosic artists must feel this to some degree--there's a reason a brilliant player will, in a very real sense, "make love" to his or her instrument. 

But in my ordinary, everyday life, even in music school, I stood out to others for the intensity of the exhilaration and excitement I felt. It was more than merely enjoying music, or loving it--far more. It was an intoxication, a "high" that probably explained why I never dabbled in chemical "highs" of any kind, not even during high school or college.

But as I've grown older, it has an additional component that comes over me when I'm truly making music. Or, as I'm fond of calling it, "kicking musical butt." When I'm in the "zone," in the "flow," or whatever you want to call the results that happen when years of hard work, love, and learning all come to fruition. 

There is truly nothing like the "high" I've felt at those times. 

Like nailing that high A in Gounod's Ave Maria...at 7:30 Mass on Sunday morning.

Or giving the solo on Michael Smith's All Is Well all I had on Christmas Eve...which I did for several years running.

Or pretty much anytime, with anyone, that I can sing the Hallelujah Chorus.

When I've done those things, I've felt a physical chill run down my spine. A subtle one at first. Not dramatic. Just...there.

Now, however--probably because of my "seasoned" status as a music maker--that chill isn't subtle anymore. I'm feeling it regularly. And strongly. Both when singing, and at the piano.

I have a couple of pieces I work on now that I was working on 40 years ago, in school. Yes, 40 years ago. No, I hadn't mastered them yet then, and I was away from the keyboard for enough years that I didn't master them in the interim.

But they're in my blood. And, so, I've hauled them out again--this time, determined to get them under my command, and fit for public consumption.

This hasn't been easy. Because these are not easy pieces.

One of them is the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor. Look it up. It's one of the most awesome things you'll ever spend your hearing on.

Another is the Chopin Waltz in C# Minor, famous for what most of Chopin is so famous for: running lines up and down the keys, this one culminating in a lovely high C sharp at its end.

I've been working these things and working them and WORKING them. Because 40 years away from something usually means you need to reintroduce your hands to it. And, at my age, some of that practice is a bit more challenging, due to arthritis that wants to rob the mastery from my fingers.

I've gradually gotten better, though. To the point where Rachmaninoff is about halfway along, and Chopin is "almost there."

I'm also taking on new stuff I never played before. Grieg Lyric Pieces. Mendelssohn Songs Without Words. Beethoven's Pathetique and "Moonlight" Sonatas. And an Elgar piano reduction of Nimrod, from the "Enigma" Variations, that is loaded with emotion in and of itself.

So, when I play any of this fairly well...? I have to fight off physical shivers. And if you think that's easy...think again.

But I'm welcoming them. Because now I know not only am I not crazy to be feeling these things--there's actually a word for them. An official, recognized, scientific term.  A name for the spell music casts on me, and I try to cast in return.

It's called frisson. And it's real.

So if a day comes when you see me play these things, and my hands are shaking...
...know that reaction probably has little to do with nerves and a lot more to do with an artist trying desperately to keep control of her musicianship while she's breaking out in goosebumps and feeling a chill clear to the roots of her hair.

It's almost scary.

But I hope that, as long as I listen to, learn, and make music...I never lose it.

Thoughts?
Janny

Who's Been SIlenced, Again?

We hear a lot in the media now about "underrepresented" populations. "Marginalized" groups. "Own" voices. 

And publishing is doing its level (woke-fueled) best to cater to groups it sees as (or has been told are) underrepresented.  Inadvertently--or, if you believe the propaganda, advertently--silenced. If not outright censored, then at least ignored. Passed over, in favor of "white-bread" work that publishers wanted to sell to their target "white-bread" audience.

Unfortunately, this attempt to make perceived "wrongs" right isn't being done well.

Oh, it's being done with all the good will in the world...but, like any other quota system, it's a self-defeating phenomenon. It will, eventually, embarrass itself, and collapse like the flimsy house of cards it is.

But that's not the reason behind this post.

What's inspired this is an "own voice" that has been silenced for generations.

It's been disparaged. Discounted. Ridiculed. Called "toxic." And...worse.

It's the voice of men.

It's no secret I love men. I always have. I always will.

In junior high and high school, this got me points with my girl friends, who couldn't figure out the secret of "how to talk to boys." I, who had boys hanging around my house all the time, had deduced that secret ages ago:  that boys were, in the end, just people. Like girls were people.

Lest we have any misunderstandings here...I didn't have boys hanging around my house to be with me. They were there for my brother, and the garage bands he was perennially forming, reforming, and playing in.

But they were still boys. Members of the male sex. 

And I loved 'em all.

However, for a long, long time, our culture has not loved men.

I can remember, as a kid, hearing people complain about how TV shows and commercials--even then--typically portrayed men as bumbling fools. 

If something got solved on a commercial, it was a woman who did it.

While the man stood by making dumb remarks and scratching his head.

I suppose it was inevitable that, from that root, came the next phase: where the kids solved all the problems, while the parents stood around making dumb remarks and scratching their heads.

But even then, the dumbest of the dumb was still Dad.

The husband hardly ever won in any of these things. Be it a commercial, a sitcom, or even a drama...the butt of the jokes and insults (or the person who made all the foolish and/or thoughtless mistakes) was usually the man of the house.

And I agreed with people when they said, "Wait. This is wrong."

Fast-forward to my adulthood, in which for a brief time I was on the evangelical Christian side of the Tiber. Baptist, to be exact.

Now, these were good Christian women. Subservient to their men. Honoring the men's authority, their position as head of the household, et al. Right?

Hardly. 

The running joke in these households was a backhanded compliment to the wife: "We husbands are in charge, for all the world to see...but we know who really runs the house." 

That might've been cute, in its own tongue-in-cheek way.

But the women's running joke wasn't cute. 

It went along the lines of, "Well, we make him look good...but we all know men are just overgrown little boys. And you have to treat them that way."

(Don't look so shocked. I'm sure you heard it dozens of times growing up.)

Once again, I found myself thinking, "Wait. This is wrong."

Fast-forward again, to my writing conference days, when I heard a keynote address by none other than Susan Elizabeth Phillips in which she talked about why the "alpha hero" was such a popular trope in the genre. 

You know the alpha hero. He's the swaggering man's man; he's rough, he's tough, he's a shade uncouth at times, he might be a bit crude, maybe even vulgar--until he meets the heroine, who sees the gentle soul inside and "tames" him. 

Roughly paraphrased, she laid the steps out: the heroine teaches him to feel, to express his emotions, to control his barbaric urges and passions, to have manners....

"...in other words," she finished, "she turns him into a woman."

And the place roared laughing.

Only even as I laughed, I thought, "She's right." And, close on its heels, once again thought, "Wait. This is wrong."

And it is. 

Ridiculing men, calling their masculinity "toxic," decrying "patriarchy" as if it's some kind of evil (news flash: it's not)...it's all quite the thing to do lately. 

But there's an even more insidious wrong being done to men now, behind all the rhetoric and hostility.

And that wrong is the worst of all.

It's that men have, over time, been oh-so-subtly...silenced.

The most striking example I heard of this recently was a perfectly "innocent" commercial on the radio. For Xfinity, as it turns out. 

I have Xfinity. I like it. A lot.

I wish I could say the same for their commercials, most of which are embarrassingly not funny, or even mildly witty. (One has to wonder how low the bar is set at ad agencies now.) 

But this particular commercial brings out, in stark relief, what I'm talking about.

The setup is a kid--clearly, a young boy who sounds about twelve--pretending to be a "salesman" for Xfinity's new 10G network.  He begins, "Mom--Dad--Sis--"

What follows is gently funny--Mom asks why he's "in a suit," and Sis identifies his "card" as "just a gum wrapper with your name on it," and the like.

But the interaction, for the entire commercial, is only between the boy, his mother, and his sister.

Even though he begins the commercial saying, "Mom--Dad--Sis," Dad doesn't have a single line in the entire ad.

It's not like it's an ad dominated by a voiceover, either. There's quite a lively exchange between Mom, the kid, and his sister.

So where's Dad?

Is he asleep during this "presentation"?

Did he leave to get a cup of coffee?

His kid addresses him...so where is he?

And if his kid is "selling" the family on a major outlay for something like Internet service...shouldn't he be involved in the conversation somewhere?

He's not.

Which is odd enough.

But what's odder? And SADDER?

That this commercial went into production and no one corrected that.

It's a glaring example of what has happened to men, slowly but inexorably, in the media landscape. 

First, their voices have been decried as too loud, too boisterous, too uncouth, too unkempt...you name it.

Then, their authority and intelligence have been ignored--or, worse yet, deliberately undermined.

And now...they've finally done what the culture clearly wants them to do.

They've gone away.

They've become invisible.

And no one seems to realize they're gone.

You know what?

That's wrong.

You want to champion an "underrepresented" voice?

Champion a man.

Let men speak again. In their own natural, wholesome, masculine strength.

Let men be men again. 

Without insulting them, accusing them, ridiculing them, or refusing to listen to their wisdom. Because they do have some, you know.

At least as much as a woman does.

Ladies, we're not the ones whose voices haven't been heard.

We've been shouting down the other half of the population at such a volume, and with such stridency, we don't even realize we've completely taken its voice away.

We all need to stop doing this (not so) "subtle" silencing.

Now.

Thoughts?

Janny

Enough.

The writing world is, in many ways, reminiscent of the Wild West lately.

It's got its share of outlaws lurking, too, seemingly more than there ever have been before.  And they have one target in their sights, constantly:

Traditional publishing.

And it's starting to get really, really irritating.

If you haven't heard the popular manifesto, it goes something like this:

"The traditional publishing industry is a dinosaur that deserves to die and, if there's any justice, it will. It's a closed system in which you have to know somebody, you have to have a celebrity name, you have to have 'pull,' and even then it's impossible to get an agent and even get your manuscript in the doorway. But say lightning strikes, and you do get in the doorway?  They'll then dumb-down your work, tell you what you can and cannot write, and ignore both your cover and your title ideas. By the time they're done with your story, you won't recognize it anymore. But, hey, at least they'll then take two years to get the book out, pay you a pittance, give you no marketing support whatsoever, and blame you when it doesn't sell. No one with a brain should subject themselves to that!"

Well, yeah. If all of that was accurate, no one would.

Only it's not.

But then, it brings about incidents like I witnessed recently in a writers' group on Facebook.

A writer posted that a publisher had contacted her with a four-book deal, and she was turning it down. Why? 

Because the publisher was going to make her take down two of her indie-published titles from Amazon when they took them over, and she didn't see that there would be a financial benefit to doing that. And she then proceeded to elaborate further on why self-publishing was the way to go because no publisher would ever make it worth your while to give up that precious independence!

But many, many of us raised questions.

Such as...why in the world would a publisher pitch an author?

(Note: unless for vanity presses, it doesn't happen that way. No. Not ever.)

This was by far the biggest question most of us had. About which some of us, myself included, expressed doubts that this "offer" was legit. 

Did the author thank us for caring enough that she not get scammed?

Hell, no. 

She lashed out at many of us--yours truly included--accusing us of calling her a liar.

She even had her friends chime in and lambaste us as well.

And in the mix, of course, were dozens of "me-too" echoes from people who repeated the same tired script about how horrible traditional publishing was...ad infinitum.

Only...

It should surprise absolutely no one to find out that in her initial post, this author hadn't quite told the whole truth.

A publisher hadn't approached her out of the blue to publish four new books; a publisher who had already published one of hers had expressed the offer to take on more. The offer wasn't a "pitch" to lure an indie author into the evil of Traditional Publisher Servitude.

This woman has published 40 books on her own, some of which look fairly competent. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, there's a reason.  I would have tried to explore more of them, but I couldn't; there were no "look inside" features for any of her stuff. The most I could glean was a blurb for one of her fiction titles--something so atrociously written that it was clearly done by someone with no clue what a "blurb" was.

(Something going the "traditional" route, by the way, can help you learn to do.)

If any of the people lambasting us took the time to read even that far on her author site, they might have smelled a rat.

I suspect very few did.

I did respond to the accusations of calling her a liar, by merely stating that in her initial posting, the publisher sounded like the liar...not her. And that some of us were sincerely trying to keep her from making a mistake. But that she also hadn't played fair with us, and I didn't need to stick around for more of that.

I left the Facebook group. And I ain't going back.

But let this stand as my manifesto of sorts, if you will. 

I'm fed up. 

Fed up with this slanted, error-ridden narrative. 

Fed up with how it paints an entire industry with half-truths, casts them in cement, and encourages newbies of all stripes to swallow them whole. 

And I'm fed up with spending social media "networking" time with other writers having to debunk, and debunk, and debunk...over and over and over again.

If you're out there independently published? God bless you.

Just stop lying about what the rest of us are choosing if we take the other route.

Enough...is enough.

Thoughts?

Janny