Friday, December 20, 2024

Friday Done List

No Friday Done List next week. I'll be working on the Advent Project but taking a holiday break from blogging.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • I did 7 starts for my Advent Project. I'm seeing a real future with some of these things.
  • Fixed a subtitle on one of my published Medium pieces, for which I want credit.
  • Whoops! Just got another humor rejection.
  • Am working on revising the annotated reading post to publish myself at Medium.

Goal 2. Submit Book Length Work To Agents

  • Received a rejection on a middle grade book submitted last summer.
  • Have tentative plans to submit one of the adult books after the beginning of the year.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

  • Four blog posts! Five counting this one.
  • Promoted some of those blog posts.
  • Continue with the book challenge on BlueSky, which continues to get me a few likes and followers.

Thursday, December 19, 2024

Some Annotated Reading December 19

Wow. I did a lot of reading the last couple of weeks.


Books

It's not unusual to find booky women of a certain age who have read Georgette Heyer in their youth. Heyer was a writer of historical romance, as well as some more contemporary mysteries and other things. We're talking Regency romance. Like Bridgerton but without sex. I read her books as a teenager and during exam weeks while in college. Heyer was writing, I believe from the 1920s, and she died in 1974. 

Last week we had our usual December holiday hell experience with a child in the family in an emergency room for hours one evening and feverish for days. (Of course, he's okay. He's seven years old, not seven months.) To divert myself, I turned to my college exam reading...Georgette Heyer...and read The Nonesuch, which I may or may not have read before. You can find a great deal about this book on-line, because Heyer still has quite the following.

This is a governess/wealthy aristocrat story with a lot of meticulous writing and enormous amounts of period specific dialogue. While this did the trick for me as far as diversion is concerned, I could do a lengthy analysis of things going on in this story, especially if I knew more about romance than I do. All I will say is that the book ends abruptly, as if Heyer didn't have an ending and just stopped writing. And a couple of lines before the abrupt end, the male main character, the nonesuch (a real word meaning someone who is perceived as perfect) threatens to hit a woman. Another male character shakes his hand and praises him for his behavior.

This was jaw-dropping, not only because he threatened to hit a much younger, physically weaker person beneath him in status with absolutely no one batting an eyelash, but because it was totally out of character. This guy really was a perfect man before that point. Then he does this. Not a good ending, not a good ending at all. 

Does a lot of this kind of thing appear in twentieth century historical romance? 

Short-form Writing

The 19 tell-tale signs an article was written by AI | by Jim the AI Whisperer in The Generator. Recently I've been being followed on Medium by promoters of AI or, in one case, an AI cook chef. (Note it calls itself  "cook chef Somebody" and not just a "Chef Somebody." That's a red flag. Also a red flag? Calling itself an AI chef at its website.) I mute those accounts. I followed Jim the AI Whisperer back, though, because he writes about AI without trying to sell me on using it. Here is my own, admittedly limited, experience reading AI--It's short on details and has no voice. It sounds like  Internet writers who have done 30 minutes of on-line research about something and are writing something for a quick sale. Which is definitely not the case with The 19 tell-tale signs a article was written by AI

Richard Brautigan by Addison Zeller in Had. I just got through going on about my past reading Georgette Heyer, so I won't bore you about my past reading Richard Brautigan, though both pasts were going on at about the same time. While I don't own any Georgette Heyer books, I still have three by Richard Brautigan. And, no, I don't actually understand them.

The Most Exciting Debut Short Story Collections of 2024 by in Electric Lit. I'm interested in a couple of these.

5 Vegan Recipes From the Past for Your Next New Year's Eve Party by Danielle Herring in Plant Based Past Food and history! I am now following this publication.

Write Every Day? Why Should I? by Daniel Williams in Wholistique. My legion of followers are aware that I'm not a fan of the write-every-day demand, because it slaps down and belittles those who just can't manage it. But this guy makes the absolutely best case for doing it.

I, Your Iconic Adirondack Chair, Am Distraught Over My Decline in Social Stature by Thomas Pease in Jane Austen's Wastebasket. This was published at a humor site, but I'm placing it under short form because it reads like a witty essay and witty essays should have their own place.

'Heart of Darkness' Is All Kinds of Relevant by Jessica Minier in Books Are Our Superpower. When I was in college, I read one of Joseph Conrad's books for class. But I think it was Lord Jim.

What Nobody Tells You About Those Year's-Best-Books Lists by Janice Harayda in Thought Thinkers. In my experience, it's rare for anyone to write at Medium about writing outside of Medium

Humor

The Worst Advent Calendars of All Time by Richie Zaborowske in Frazzled. I haven't bought an Advent calendar in years. And now I won't be buying one for years.

The Time Has Come to Tell My Son He's Adopted and Also a Grizzly Bear by Aaron Chown in Jane Austen's Wastebasket. Aren't all kids grizzly bears?

I'm a Dad--Isn't It Hilarious How I Don't Know Anything About My Kids?! by Jeff Bender in Slackjaw. Is it?

Sorry Kid. You Can't Stay Home Until You Can Handle Emergencies The Way I, an Adult, Definitely Can by Lily Hirsch in Frazzled. Please take care of me.

Positive Affirmations For Terrified Public School Teachers by Katie Burgess in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I love affirmations.

I'm a Thoughtful Drunk by Alex Baia in Slackjaw. "Why do I want to ask so bad whether you ever read--*Hiccup*-- Infinite Jest? HAHAHA. I hate myself."

Ultra Dad Book For Hardcore Dads: Holiday Gift List by Alex Baia in Slackjaw. It took a little commitment to get into this one, but it was so worth it.


Wednesday, December 18, 2024

While Rejection MAY Mean You're a Terrible Writer, It Could Mean Something Else

Cottonbro Studio on Pexels
I don't submit a lot of book-length manuscripts anymore, especially in the field of children's lit, but a couple of days ago I received an interesting rejection on one I submitted to an agent this past summer.

"I thought this was a really interesting plot (and my dream is to solve murders in an English village!) Unfortunately, MG is so very saturated right now, and mysteries have been really hard for me to sell, so I have to pass"

The book is set in a small Connecticut town and not an English village, but I get her point.

My point is that her message illustrates that manuscripts can be rejected for all kinds of reasons having nothing to do with the manuscript itself. Writers hear that over and over again at workshops and read it in articles and blog posts. But it's rare, in my experience, for agents to explain the reasoning behind their thinking when they reject something.

It's rare, and it's very gratifying.


Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Time Management Tuesday: Everything You Do Speaks to Everything You Didn't Do

This is one of those flash essays that begins with something that seems totally unrelated to the topic but is in reality a hooky lead-in to what the writer wants to address. You have been warned.

I spent two-and-a-half days of Thanksgiving weekend on a sewing retreat. In my laundry/sewing room. In my basement. By myself, though I found out yesterday that someone I know would have come sewed with me, if I'd thought to ask her. I hadn't done a sewing retreat since 2022. This time I was making shopping bags out of blue jeans and cloth Christmas bags out of remnants of Christmas material from years gone by, as well as some new fabric. I also mended Donkey.


This is what I believe is called unnecessary creation, which I read about in an essay by Todd Henry in a book called Manage Your Day-to-Day. Unnecessary creation involves creative activity engaged in by people who work in some other creative area. An example would be a writer who normally writes regularly who spends some time doing some sewing, a different type of creativity. The theory is that involvement in some other kind of creativity will spur your regular, daily creativity.

I have found this to be the case, particularly while playing with journals and reading during vacations. Or binge cooking. Something else happened with this sewing retreat, though.

But Unnecessary Creation Takes So Much Time!

My sewing retreat was a terrific experience. However, by Sunday I was dwelling on something I once read..."Everything you do speaks to everything you didn't do." There were other things, at least one of them being work-related, that I didn't do that weekend, and by midafternoon Sunday they were beginning to hang over me like death and taxes. I got a couple of them done that evening, but still I was very aware that there had been an opportunity cost for my weekend.

You can read about opportunity cost in an interview with Dan Ariely, also in Manage Your Day-to-Day. (Ariely's work, by the way, is the inspiration for the TV show The Irrational.) When you spend time on Activity 1, you no longer have the opportunity to use it on Activity 2. While I was spending time in my basement creating shopping bags out of old blue jeans, I couldn't spend that time on something else. 

What I Really Want to Write About is My Holiday Hell Projects

What this all is leading to is the Advent/Holiday Hell Projects I've been doing since 2021. You know, the project that involves me starting a different piece of short-form writing every day between December 1 and December 25. The idea being that these were all starts I could pick up and run with the next year.

This year I've been revisiting the starts from earlier years. Anything I like I do some more work on and move to the 2024 file. There have been quite a number of them. I only just started looking at the 2022 starts.

While I did finish, submit, and publish 8 of the 31 pieces from 2021, I did nothing with the other 23. Some of them I think were good and I could have gone somewhere with them. At least 1 I might have tried submitting somewhere as is. Instead, I forgot about them. I did even less with the starts from 2022 and 2023.

Why?

I can tell you why. During those years...years...I was working on an adult novel, 143 Canterbury Road. I was working on it even though I hadn't been able to sell a novel since before 2008, and I've never sold an adult novel. 

I was desperate to finish that book, though, and paid a very high opportunity opportunity cost for it. The time it took me to write that book I couldn't spend on short-form work, even though the last few years short-form work is the only writing I've been able to publish. 

In a lecture last week, author Steve Almond said, "You write about what you can't get rid of by other means." That was certainly the case with 143 Canterbury Road. The setting and some secondary characters were torn from the headlines of my life and writing about them was a sort of therapy. 

But therapy isn't free. My therapy had a hefty opportunity cost, because it kept me from other kinds of writing that I would almost certainly have been more successful with.

I'm out of therapy now, and 2025 is another year.


Saturday, December 14, 2024

I Almost Missed Shirley Jackson's Birthday

Shirley Jackson walked up this street. And down.
I learned on BlueSky that today is Shirley Jackson's birthday. In years past, I learned it was her birthday on Twitter. I need to put her birthday in my bullet journal along with family members'. I don't want to forget her day.

To observe this event, here is a list of just a few of my Shirley Jackson posts from over the years. 

I Could Get Inside One Of Shirley Jackson's Homes

Hill House...Book And Series

Happy Birthday, Shirley

My Personal Shirley Jackson Photo Album

Where's Shirley?

Oh, My Gosh! Oh, My Gosh! I'm So Glad I Saw This!

Motherhood

Friday, December 13, 2024

Friday Done List

 Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • I did six starts for my daily Holiday Hel...I mean Advent...project. 
  • I got a rejection today, but resubmitted.
  • I attended a very good author lecture/talk given by Steven Almond through the Office Campus Writer's Workshop. Stimulated ideas and now I also have little slips of paper around here somewhere with things I want to look up. Also, he talked about The Great Gatsby, which I keep hearing about. I have to read it again. I swear I read it long ago. I wasn't brought up in a barn, after all, as my mother would say.

Goal 2. Submit Book Length Work to Agents

  • I submitted a middle grade manuscript to an agent I learned about through SCBWI.

  •  I got the rejection for that today.
Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

  • One blog post this week.
  • Promoted that blog post.
  • I've been taking part in a book challenge on BlueSky, which has attracted a few new followers for  me.

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Time Management Tuesday: A Holiday Hell Project for Writers

In December, 2021, I went deep into something I called the Advent Project. I like the concept of Advent, because I like temporal landmarks, and Advent, being a roughly month-long season in the Christian liturgical calendar, is very much a temporal landmark. However, not everyone knows what Advent and the liturgical calendar are. Many Christians don't know what the liturgical calendar is. It occurred to me that calling it the Holiday Hell Project instead would not just be better communication in terms of people understanding it, but better communication in terms of what is actually happening here. We're talking about a project during Holiday Hell.

My legions of followers know that I have whined and complained about surviving December for years. And years. But that 2021 Holiday Hell Project kind of turned my life around. At least in December. I described how it came about back in February, 2022. That's not a story to brag about. But I was happy with how things turned out.

How Did Things Turn Out, Gail?

Well, what happened was that I accepted that I wasn't a writer who could write a lot during the month of December. It's all I can do to juggle writing and personal life during regular times of the year. Holiday Hell...I won't say it's beyond me. But it kind of is. And I am aware that I have it easy. Years ago, it wasn't unheard of for me to have a contractual deadline for a completed book draft in January, which meant some under-the-knife work in December. Yeah, that doesn't happen, anymore. Plus, I do not have to generate income in December. We're talking a privileged person here, and still I struggle to get to December 26.

So, in 2021, I accepted that I wasn't someone who could write a lot during December, but I could write some. The writing I did was short starts of flash and humor. And my goal was to do one every day. I found material in old writing journals. Some may have come from working files, things I'd started and revised during December, 2021.

  • In 2021 I started 31 pieces. Eight of them were later completed and published. One has been completed and submitted.

That was a major success for me. I actually looked forward to 2022.

Things didn't go as well in 2022.

  • I had only 15 starts. One was recently finished and submitted, though I must admit that I'd forgotten that I did anything with it in 2022 and started over again.
Last year, 2023, was a mixed bag, though I was excited about how things turned out
  • I had 31 starts, but some of them were extremely brief with just a list of writing prompt questions to work on with them at a later time. One of them did become a traditional short story, though, and has been subbed a few times. It's out right now, in fact.

Are You Doing This Again, Gail? Because It Doesn't Look as If You Kept Up with This Very Well


Well, here's the thing. In December of 2022 and again in 2023, we had a family member waiting to have medical tests and/or waiting for results of medical tests. All resolved itself well, very well. But it's called Holiday Hell for a reason, folks. Even this year the cat just started two meds. 

But as Holiday Hells go, this year's is pretty copacetic, as a man I worked for when I was a teenager used to say. I am enjoying my Holiday Hell project this year.

In fact, I'm going through the starts from earlier years, seeing if there's anything I want to continue with. And by golly, there is. I haven't finished looking at the 2021 starts, and I've already moved six to this year. And there's a couple more I've got my eye on. Then there are the 2022 and 2024 starts to look at. And my writer's journal. And my filing cabinet. I suspect I won't even get to that, though.

I'm hopeful that what I'm doing this month will make it possible for me to hit the ground running in 2025 and bring a bunch of these starts to completion. Then start submitting them.

For me the Holiday Hell Project takes a lot of the work burden off December and leaves me feeling very positive about the upcoming new year. It's all good.

Except for that title, of course.


Friday, December 06, 2024

Friday Done List

I spent Thanksgiving weekend on a sewing retreat. In my laundry/sewing room. In my cellar. It was an example of unnecessary creativity, and I enjoyed it a great deal. But it did take a toll on the rest of my week, and it may become a blog post at some point.

Otherwise:

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • Received two rejections on humor pieces.
  • Resubmitted one of the rejected pieces, and it was published
  • Submitted a third humor piece.
  • I've been working on my annual Advent Writing Project, and it's been going well. It will become a blog post!
  • I'm working on reorganizing my short-form To Be Read iPad list. That's going marvelously. I am excited. It will become a blog post!

Goal 2. Submit Book Length Work to Agents

  • I learned of a new-to-me agent this morning. I'll be submitting one of my middle grade manuscripts to her next week. 

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

  • I did two blog posts this week, three counting this one.
  • Promoted the first two blog posts.
  • Promoted the new humor piece that published the beginning of the week.
  • Have been ever so slowly working on my personal BlueSky literary salon. Yes! If I live long enough, my BlueSky experience will be a blog post!


Thursday, December 05, 2024

Some Annotated Reading December 5

 It looks as if I've read a lot since I last did this, doesn't it?

Books

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore got a lot of attention when published. This story of a woman who jumps to a different year of her life each New Year's Eve is very readable. But I couldn't wrap my head around what she knew and when. Sure, it wasn't necessary to know why it was happening. But there were other logistics I couldn't make out. The book reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife. Also, I wrote a short story similar to this years ago. No idea where it is. Margarita Montimore has a new book coming out in February. I'm interested and just registered to win a copy at Goodreads.

I'm not at all sure why Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw ended up on my TBR list, since I'm not a major fan of fantasy. But if I am going to like fantasy, it's usually going to be in a contemporary, realistic setting, which is what we have here. This was a terrific story about Greta Helsing who is a twenty-first century human medical doctor treating London's supernatural beings, beings the other humans in the city don't know about. Good writing, terrific characters, and the fantasy elements made more sense to me than fantasy elements usually do. It is the beginning of a trilogy, and I am almost certainly going to read at least the next book.

Oh, look. I read some nonfiction. Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes, Ph.D. is about managing time, but not for the sake of getting more done. Holmes is interested in managing time for the sake of being happier. That is a very legitimate take on time, it's just not the one we dwell on here.  Though I'm splitting hairs a bit here, since any effective management of time ought to make us happier, don't you think? Holmes is knowledgeable about her subject. She isn't somebody who's read some articles on-line or a few self-help books. Meaning she's not me. She describes research she's done and how it supports her arguments. The main thing I took from this book is that if you have the means to be able to pay people to do things for you (and I assume a big chunk of the population does not), you're not really paying to have something done for you. You are paying for time, because you now have the time you would have spent doing some task available to you. I'm obsessed with that concept. In fact, I've been thinking about it all day, because this morning the service I'm paying to plow my driveway this winter was here. I'm very aware of what that meant for this day.

Short Form

 Help Wanted: Pre-Emptive Griever by Casey Mulligan Walsh in Hippocampus Magazine This is good, but also, wow.

A Small One Thrown Back to the Waters by Kate Horsley in Fictive Dream. I am not crazy about mermaid stories. You know, like fantasy. But is this a mermaid story? Hmm.

'We Are All At the Mercy of the Cowbell Sketch' by Devon Ivie in Vulture. I have no idea how I stumbled upon this thing. I don't even like the Cowbell Sketch. It's another thing I've been obsessed with recently. It was discussed at Thanksgiving.

Harper Collins AI Licensing Deal at Authors Guild. I'm sure you've all heard about what HarperCollins is doing regarding to AI, because it's a big deal in my world, so it must be a big deal in yours, too. When I first read about it, I wondered, What's in this for HarperCollins? Read this article, and you will know.

The Operator by Michael Specter in The New Yorker. An eleven-year-old article about Dr. Oz. No comment. I just read this stuff.

Food

Kelly Jaggers on cooking for one, etc. etc. by Michael LaCorte at Salon. I'm sorry. That was a long title. I was attracted to this, because I am very into small batch cooking. In fact, I just found an article I started to write on the subject and forgot about.

Why Immigration Was the Best Thing to Happen to Food by Charlie Brown in Rooted. Historically, immigration has had a big impact on a number of things. 

I've Been Intermittently Fasting for 10 Years: Here's What I Learned by Dim Nikov in Tastyble. Here's what I learned--the difference between cravings and hunger and how we came to fall into a three-meal-a-day eating schedule.

Humor

How Losing a Ton of Tennis Matches Helped 'Daily Show' Correspondent Michael Kosta Go Pro as a Comedian by Kevin Nguyen at GQ Sports. This isn't really humor. It's humor adjacent. I am a big fan of Michael Kosta's Daily Show work. It took a while to warm up to him, but I definitely have. I like the not-so-dumb jock persona.

It's Me, Your Friendly Mindfulness App Telling You It's Time to Meditate by Mary Heitcamp in Slackjaw. I'd been thinking about paying for a meditation app, but now I'm not.

This is Your Dentist Reminding Everyone that the Scraping You Hear is Totally Normal by Henry Loe in The Haven. I love going to the dentist.

13 World Famous Inventions Inspired by O. Henry's Christmas Story 'The Gift of the Magi' by Mayur Cahan in The Haven.  I've always had a soft spot for The Gift of the Magi. And Die Hard.

Anthony Bourdain Visits the American Girl Cafe by Heidi Lux in The Belladonna Comedy. I've never read anything by Anthony Bourdain, and I still thought this was terrific.

We Are The Nine Muses, And We're All Exactly Sixteen Years Old by Amanda Lehr in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. This addresses the Cormac McCarthy thing at Vanity Fair. Do you have to know about that to get it? I can't tell, because I do know about it.




Tuesday, December 03, 2024

My Twelfth Publication Of The Year, Which Means...A Story Behind the Story!

 I managed to have a twelfth piece of writing, this one humor, accepted at a publication on the Medium platform. Mountain Lake Resort Timeshares: You'll Wait All Year to Come Back was published in The Haven. I hoped I'd manage to get twelve in this year, which would be averaging one publication a month. It was not a goal, however, because I believe goals should only involve things we can control, and I can't control editors. Or just about anybody, for that matter. What I could control was continuing to write and submit.

I began writing Mountain Lake Resort Timeshares last January, even taking pictures for the illustration then. As more hordes of rabid fans know, I go away every January for a week for a sort of reading retreat. With frolicking in the snow. Unless there is no snow, then there is just frolicking outside in the bleak midwinter.

Our retreat spot is wonderful. People love it there. And they say so in guest books in our timeshare unit. Guest books that go back decades. I cannot exaggerate the beautiful things people say about that spot. Really, really beautiful things. 

Beautiful things are wasted on me, so I wrote Mountain Lake Resort Timeshares: You'll Wait All Year to Come Back.



Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing--Not A Process but a Lifestyle for the Few, Not the Many

I am finishing my slow writing arc today. There's a sense of accomplishment for you, even though what I've learned these past few weeks suggests that slow writing, assuming it exists as a process at all, probably has nothing to do with time management and productivity and everything to do with lifestyle and privilege. Oh, well.

To recount:

Week 1  Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

Week 2  Week Two Of Slow Writing Trying to pin down what slow writing is.

Week 3 Slow Writing and Privilege

Last week I said the first two items in John Fox's  A Manifesto for Slow Writing  at Book Fox were worth giving some thought. And then I gave some thought to the first. Well, now I'm going to give some thought to the second.

Fox says in Item 2 that slow writing isn't about the completion of a project, it's about "becoming a certain type of person." He goes on, "The writer is successful if they can attune themselves to a certain kind of consciousness. The project-based method for writing is one that will only end in unhappiness. Slow writing is about being, not completing."

First off...it is not about the completion of a project. That is extremely significant for writers who are looking for ways to do just that. Slow writing, Fox is saying, is not for you.

On the other hand, what Fox is talking about is what I have been working toward since 2008 when work went to hell for me. I've grown to love sitting at my desk in front of my laptop for a few hours a day, even though what I do there does not get me the kinds of completion (book publication) I was getting pre-2008. I love researching all kinds of work-related things. Children's publishing is pretty much done with me, and I'm not despairing over that, because I've moved on to other kinds of writing, and I have those to explore and work with. I write, because I'm a writer. I am attuned to that consciousness.

During Week Two, I wrote about Nicole Gulotta who described "slow writing as not so much about reducing your speed as it is about reducing your scope. It's a lifestyle." I most definitely have changed my scope. I work differently now, because I'm doing different work. (Aside--I just noticed that Gulotta has a manifesto at the end of her slow writing piece, which is what Fox calls his article on slow writing. Why do slow writing advocates feel they need manifestos? I hate manifestos.)

But, Gail, Doesn't Living Like That Mean You're Not Generating Much Income?

Indeed, it does. Slow writing, as I realized last week, works best for the privileged writer. I am the poster woman for privilege, if you don't define privilege in terms of Ivy League educations, second homes on Martha's Vineyard, wearing brands other than Lee jeans, and traveling on every continent (How many are there?) but in terms of having someone else provide you with a roof over your head, food on your table, and time. I am that kind of low-level privileged. 

My family has never had to rely on my income, which is a damn good thing, because even when I was making "regular" writing money, it wasn't all that regular. That's why I can spend a great deal of my time reading about and thinking about whether or not slow writing is a process that can help me produce more work instead of, ah, producing more work. That's how privileged I am.

The slow writing lifestyle probably isn't for writers who have to maintain a day job or who juggle with adjunct teaching jobs at several colleges in order to make enough money to live. It's probably not for the writer I read about a few years ago who had to line up grant money so she could afford to take maternity leave from writing for a few months. It's not for the writer I've seen on Medium who describes having to produce nineteen-plus pieces a writing a month to generate the monthly income she needs and how she's going to have to have writing stockpiled so that in the future, if she gets sick again and can't work for two weeks, she has something to submit, publish, and make money on.

I just don't see what I've been able to learn about slow writing helping any of those writers.

For myself, though, I'm going to lean into that slow writing lifestyle. For a few years, I've been doing something in December that is definitely what I'm now thinking of as slow writing. I can only do it, though, because I don't have to generate income next month.

More about that another time. 

End Note: I checked out a preview of The Art of Slow Writing by memoirist and essayist Louise DeSalvo. It appears to combine various writers' experiences with some traditional time management talk about protecting time. I didn't see anything that defined "slow writing" as a distinct process. But I didn't see the word "manifesto," either, so that was promising.


Friday, November 22, 2024

Friday Done List

 Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • Submitted two humor pieces.
  • Submitted a piece of flash fiction to a flashy publication.
  • One of the humor pieces was rejected.
  • I submitted the rejected piece again!
  • Worked on an eating piece. It's about yogurt.
  • Thinking about next month.

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

  • Three blog posts (four counting this one).
  • Some promotion of posts.
  • Joined BlueSky. @gailgauthier.bsky.social
  • Created a new profile, different from Twitter profile, for BlueSky, complete with a new headshot.
  • Have been working on curating new lists of people to follow on BlueSky. 
  • Deleted Twitter account. 
  • Yes, there is a story to tell about all this.
  • Making plans for heritage month posts here at Original Content next year.

Goal 4. 19th Century novel, which is totally just for fun

  • Came up with a way to organize all the link/research I send myself on so many aspects of late 19th century life. This is such a relief.
  • Chipping away at the mess that is my in-basket, organizing the links mentioned above.

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Some Annotated Reading November 21

 Kind of a chaos reading week, folks.                                                                  

Books

I liked The Other Side of Mrs. Wood by Lucy Barker a great deal. Though I don't consider myself a fan of stories about spiritualism, I wanted to read some historical fiction that wasn't a mystery, and this fit the bill. So well done.

Then I had to give up reading a book by a pretty well-known science fiction writer. The second of her books I didn't like. She just does not work for me, and we must agree to move on. 

Short Work

Yes, I was one of those people who read what is being called "that Vanity Fair article about Cormac McCarthy." The situation described is terrible, though it's not clear if the guy writing the article thinks so. I had to skim portions of the thing because of the lengthy asides in which the author intrudes himself into this woman's story. Does Vanity Fair not have editors? Opportunity cost is the value of what you're NOT doing while you're choosing to do something else. What you COULD be doing if you hadn't chosen to do this thing you're doing. I kept thinking about it yesterday while I was reading the Cormac McCarthy article. I'll never get that time back. 

I read a number of flash fiction pieces at Fictive Dream. Here are some I particularly liked.

Rock, Paper, Scissors by Claudia McGill. I liked the frame on this.

A Friendly Confession by Lori Cramer. I'm not a fan of one-para flash, but I did enjoy this one.

The Goalless Draw by Gerard McKeown. There's something going on under the story for this narrator.

Then I read some microfiction at Centaur:

Mushrooms by Kathryn Kulpa. This is like a whole novel in a paragraph!

Manual for an Indian Novice in a Small Indian Town by Isabel Zambrano. It sounds as if somebody really needs this manual. 

Food

I meant for this be a food reading week, because I'm already baking for Thanksgiving, but then I stumbled upon the flash and micro opportunities and only managed to read one food piece and that explains why this is a chaos reading week.

The "Bake Off" Guide to loaf cakes: Secrets from a pastry professional by Michael LaCorte at Salon. This is one of the best food articles I can recall in terms of the pastry professional having secrets a standard cook might really be able to use. I do have a question here if we're talking about loaf "breads" like banana bread (mentioned toward the end) or something else. I never liked loaf breads in the past, but became a fan the last few years, which was what attracted me to this article. The word "loaf."

Humor

Welcome to Bluesky, but Maybe Take it Down a Notch?  by Miriam Jayraratna and Kathryn Baecht. Why, yes, I did jump ship to BlueSky, which could be a blog post one day. While I am getting benefit from the place, it's not as terrific as it's made out to be. But there doesn't appear to be any AI involved, which was the straw that broke the camel's back for me at Xitter.

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Heritage Months In General And Native American History Month In Particular

There have been times over the years when I have made an attempt to observe some heritage months as a way of trying to offer my feeble support to various groups. And then there were times when I'd forget about it, because I don't always stay as on task as I'd like to. Recently I learned that we're halfway through Native American Heritage Month. I'm behind on this, and all I can do is pass on this reading list of adult books for Native American Heritage Month from Flyleaf Books

Now I recognize that "celebrating" heritage months has a virtue signaling aspect to it. Look at me! I'm doing good by supporting marginalized writers and people! Oops! I just snapped my arm patting myself on the back!

At the same time, though, when times are...strange, shall we say...publicizing the work of groups whose work didn't always get much attention in the past is something positive we can do. It doesn't involve name calling or ranting, which I've never seen doing anything for anybody. 

Additionally, heritage months are a sort of temporal landmark. They are set-aside times, during which  we can focus on one kind of reading we may not have had opportunities to do in the past, simply because there are so many books out there.

So next year I'm going to have an objective under my community building goal to observe a number of heritage months. It's already in my bullet journal for next year. I'm already collecting titles. I will not be restricting myself to history but any kind of writing connected to the heritage month involved. One year I read this great zombie story for Black History Month. I cannot deny myself that sort of thing.

Also, Francophonie Month is not a heritage month in this country, but, damn it, this is Gail Gauthier's blog, and we are observing it here. Comprenez-vous?


Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing and Privilege

Here we are on Week 3 of my slow writing arc.

Remember Week 1  Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

And Week 2  Week Two Of Slow Writing? That really should have had a more descriptive title, since it deals with trying to pin down what slow writing is. But Zen tells me not to dwell on the past.

So we are moving  on to Week 3, where we admit that slow writing is going to be problematic for some people, particularly those who need to generate income. To do so, I'm going to refer you to A Manifesto for Slow Writing  by John Fox at BookFox

I want to put out there that I have trouble with manifestos. They are way too doctrinaire for my tastes. It's not that I'm such a nonconforming rebel. But I can't even tolerate 90 percent of writing prompts I see, because eh, I don't want to write about that stuff. So, sure enough, I can't fall into step with some of this particular manifesto. But the first two items are definitely worth some thought. Only one of which I will address today. Because, as I said las t week, I practice slow writing here by writing about small aspects of a whole, rather than force feeding everything into one long piece, overwhelming for both you and me.

Those Who Don't Have the Option of Actively Resisting

Fox says in his manifesto, "Resist the commercial pressure to pump out manuscripts at breakneck speed." He then goes on to discuss Marilynne Robinson who went twenty years between publishing two well-known books. I'm not sure that that's a good model, because most writers at some point accept that they aren't Marilynne Robinson. Fox ends this part with "Everything in the writing industry pushes the writer forward at a quicker and quicker pace, and this machinery must be actively resisted." Manifesto indeed!

This is a cry-to-arms that can only be answered by those writers who can resist because they are privileged enough either to be making decent money from their work or to not need income from it.  All the other writers are dependent on the machinery to make whatever they can. Self-published writers, who aren't dependent on the writing industry, are in an even worse spot as far as being able to choose slow writing is concerned.

Self-published Book Writers and Slow Writing

A few decades ago, it wasn't unusual to read about self-published writers who were trying to pump out short novels multiple times a year. They did this because, without access to the book distribution avenues traditionally published authors had, they couldn't sell very many copies of any particular title. Many of them also weren't paying for editing, design, or professional cover illustration, the lack of which could have hampered sales as well. Since they couldn't sell many copies of any one particular title, they tried to have multiple titles available. Sales for each book multiplied by the number of books=trying to get a decent income.

I don't read about that much anymore, since the self-publishing world learned that in order to compete with traditionally published books, self-published writers would have to seek out and pay for editors, design people, illustrators, and even marketing...all the things traditionally published writers got automatically through their traditional publishers. You could say that having to do that slowed these writers down. But it was the administrative work of publishing that did it, not "slow writing."

Self-published Short-Form Writers and Slow Writing

Internet platforms like Medium and Substack provide the possibility of generating income for self-published writers of humor, essays, short stories, food writing, travel writing...you name it. They are self-publishing their work right there, though Medium includes publications that act, to some degree depending on which one you're dealing with, as gatekeepers should you want to submit to them. The income generated, though, is small. Sometimes ridiculously small. To date, I've only made fifty-five cents on Dinner at Shirley Farr's House, one of my more sophisticated pieces. (Keep in mind that there is always the possibility that I'll make a few more cents on this somewhere down the line and that if it had been published in most literary journals, I wouldn't have made anything.)

Like the self-published book-length writers in days of old, self-published writers at Medium increase their income by writing a lot. And I mean a lot. There are people there who try to write and publish every day. I know this, because one of the things many people write about is publishing on Medium. One woman wrote an article about the month she published as many stories there as I had in over three years. How-to articles are popular at Medium, especially articles on how to publish on Medium. A particularly interesting one was by a fellow who explained he spent three hours per article, which included Internet research and writing. There have been articles from writers complaining that some editors of publications don't respond the same day they submit. These writers have publishing schedules! 

At Medium you get paid a tiny amount for each reader you attract to a story. You may not have attracted a lot of readers for each piece you published this month, but if you published thirty pieces at a small number of readers per piece, you might be able to get some kind of payday for your effort. Additionally, if you publish a lot, some magic algorithm thing might happen and you could have your work promoted, that could attract followers, if you build up a few thousand followers those people will be seeing your work regularly and if a certain percentage of them read it...income!

Does this kind of rapid writing produce stellar results? Would slowing down maybe enhance things? Let's not go there.

My point, as I did state at the beginning, is that slow writing, which appears to be mainly a lifestyle not a true method of working, is going to be a hard sell for those writers who really need to sell regularly. 



Friday, November 15, 2024

Friday Done List

 Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • Submitted a short story and humor piece, both to nonMedium publications.
  • Worked on a humor piece.
  • Was disappointed that I couldn't find some material I had sent myself to use in another humor piece. I mention this, because I spent some time looking for it this afternoon.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding 

  • Wrote three blog posts. Four counting this one.
  • Promoted a couple of blog posts.
  • Signed up for a social media Zoom workshop I knew I couldn't attend, but the organization is supposed to provide a recording for a month. Yeah, that hasn't appeared. I am missing Off Campus Writers' Workshop, which is stellar with its Zoom administration.
  • Having to cool my heals over that social media workshop is disappointing, because I'm considering joining either BlueSky or Instagram. I'm not in a hurry to leave Twitter, but it has changed dramatically since the election, filled with people angsting over the election or angsting over the number of people leaving Twitter and should they leave, too. The ratio of literary messaging to noise is way down. The place may not be a good use of time now.


Thursday, November 14, 2024

Some Annotated Reading November 14

 Books

I did finish one book that will remain nameless, because I had to skim the second half to get through it. It
was just so slow. Normally I wouldn't mention it here, but I liked the book's concept very much. It was an adult book about a former child detective who is being drawn into an adult case. We had her child scooby as adults there...a sibling...characters that would have appeared in a child detective book but grown up now. Perhaps that's why it was so slow. So much went into developing that aspect of the book that the mystery plot, which is what moves a story along, took second place. We might be talking a story in which the elements are not in balance. 

Short Form

Heavy Snow Han Kang in The New Yorker You can't read this without a subscription, but if you can get hold of the magazine it's in (Nov. 10), it is quite an experience. Truly we're talking a something-happened-to-somebody situation, which was L. Rust Hills' definition of story. Assuming anyone remembers him. He wrote a good book about writing, though good luck trying to find much about it or him.

The Countess of Warwick: A Society Cyclist by Sheila Hanlon at Sheila Hanlon/Historian/Women's Cycling Yes, I am still reading about women cycling in the nineteenth century.

DNA Analysis Upends Long-held Assumptions About Pompeii Victims' Final Moments by Ashley Strickland at CNN Was I a really morbid kid, because I liked reading about Pompeii? Yeah, I think I was.

Humor

Sure, I Voted For Someone Whose Policies Might Kill You, But Now's The Time To Put Aside Our Differences by Lisa Borders at McSweeney's. "I personally think it's awesome that my house in Central Massachusetts might be waterfront property sooner rather than later." 

How To Write A Book That Nicole Kidman Will Turn Into A Limited Series by Tom Smyth at McSweeney's. Hey, I liked The Perfect Couple. Kidman played a writer who we actually see working. A lot.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

2024 Malka Penn Awards Announced

The University of Connecticut's Malka Penn Awards for 2024 have been announced. The award "honors outstanding children's books that explore important human rights issues." This year there are two winners, five honor books, and a special recognition title.

One of the positive things I think awards do is bring books to readers' attention that they might not otherwise have heard of. In this case, one of the honor books particularly interests me.

The Bodyguard Unit: Edith Garrud, Women's Suffrage, and Jujitsu by Clement Xavier, Lisa Lugrin, and Albertine Ralenti speaks to a number of my interests--women's history, early twentieth century history, and martial arts. I'll be looking for it.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Time Management Tuesday: Week Two Of Slow Writing

So here we are with Week 2 of my November Time Management Tuesday slow writing arc in which I, once again, ask, Can we be more productive by slowing down?

What is Slow Writing?

Well, there's a question or you.

First off, slow writing can refer to a method of teaching writing to children. I don't teach writing, so I'm not going to comment on this, other than to say this is not what we're talking about.

When looking for slow writing information on-line, you will come across material on how slow writers can speed up. We're not interested in that. 

What we're talking about here is related--somehow--to other slow movements, particularly slow work.

My Favorite Recent Reading on Slow Writing

The best piece I found on slow writing this month comes from Nicole Gulotta's The Art of Slow Writing: Pacing Yourself in the Digital Age. Gulotta describes slow writing as not so much about reducing your speed as it is about reducing your scope. It's a lifestyle. You mindfully integrate your writing life into your personal life, paying attention to how you can work during different stages of your life. I'm probably experiencing confirmation bias, since what she's talking about is very similar to the situational time management I've been writing about here for more than ten years.

Gulotta also mentions Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, which I did an arc on a couple of years ago, connecting his thoughts to writing.

I definitely have a specific writing lifestyle these days, and it probably does relate very much to slow writing. But before I get into that, next week I'm going to cover some slow writing conflicts.

What I Just Did There Was, I Believe, An Example Of Slow Writing And How It Can Benefit Readers


In Nicole Gullotta's piece on slow writing, she talks about it involving life overall, but not specific kinds of writing. 

I'm going to suggest that a specific way of practicing slow writing is to write and present a larger concept piece in smaller segments. By which I mean we don't just break writing something into smaller tasks, then put it altogether and present it, as in a novel or a dissertation. I mean we break something into smaller, complete types of writing that make sense of one aspect of an overall subject and present/publish them.

So today, I am only writing about what Nicole Gulotta has to say in The Art of Slow Writing instead of writing this much and then going on with something that's going to be quite contradictory. I also want to write about privilege in relation to slow writing. I might go on to the connection between blogging and slow writing. Whatever I do, I'll do in separate pieces of writing. 

This slows down the process for me. It makes it less of an ordeal to write, but also makes it possible for me to be much clearer and more thoughtful about everything I write on this subject. I'm not racing to get the equivalent of a magazine cover story written and published today.

But it will also slow down the reading experience, which I think is going to be a good thing, too. Readers will be handling one concept at a time, instead of multiple ones.

Slow writing may have something for everyone.  


Friday, November 08, 2024

Friday Done List

It doesn't seem as if I've done as much this week, yet actually having work submitted and ready to submit seems more significant than weeks when I've done more but didn't do any submissions or have work ready to submit.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • Submitted a short story that had been published at a journal that no longer exists to another journal that publishes reprints.
  • Finished two short pieces
  • Created a photo illustration for the eating piece
  • Submitted the eating piece this morning
  • The humor piece should be ready to go the beginning of next week, after I finish obsessing over it.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

  • Did two blog posts
  • Promoted both of them on Twitter 
  • Did a little research on Instagram
  • Am about to sign up for a SCBWI Zoom workshop on social media
 

Thursday, November 07, 2024

Some Annotated Reading November 7


Books

Well, I've been reading two books but then I had an unexpected opportunity to go to my favorite library with my list and a bag.

Yeah, I was overwhelmed for a moment. But the way to take on a task like this is to just read one book at a time. Though, actually, I'm reading two. That's not counting the two I was reading before, which I own and thus don't have a deadline for finishing them. 

You really have to give some thought to how you're going to approach a situation like this. 



Short Form

Steinbeck mined her research for "The Grapes of Wrath." Then her own Dust Bowl novel was squashed by Iris Jamahl Dunkle at Salon. Dunkle has written a biography of Sanora Babb, the women referred to in the title.

A Spanner of One's Own: Liberation and Mechanics in Maria Ward's "Bicycling for Ladies" 1896 by Sheila Hanlon at Sheila Hanlon/Historian/Women's Cycling I've been feeding an interest in 1890s history, particularly women's history, for many, many months. Why shouldn't you have to hear about it?

John Charrington's Wedding by Edith Nesbit at Project Gutenberg Australia. I'm reading a book about women who pioneered horror and speculative fiction. This is one of the stories and authors referred to. Nicely written, though the ending isn't much of a surprise. It's an older work that has probably been redone in various ways, so seems more familiar than it would have in its own time.

The Tight-knit World of Kamala Harris's Sorority by Jazmine Hughes at The New Yorker. This should still be interesting, if you have a digital subscription and can access it. Though probably not as interesting as it would have been before November 5.

#Girlbosses and the Stupid Idiot Men Who Welcome Them by Jamie Loftus at Paste. Jamie Loftus wrote Raw Dog, which is what led me to look for her shorter work. Her spin makes #girlbosses sound like #tradwives...something that never really existed.

Humor 

Thanks for Stopping to Chat. I'll Just Pretend You're Not Holding a Bag of Shit by Caroline Horwitz at Belladonna Comedy  Anything can be funny. Anything.

Thank You for Coming to My Fred Talk by Steven Ostrowski at The Offing. This is not so much about voice, but attitude. "Or consider this: on some days, there's a one hundred percent chance of rain...and yet...it doesn't rain!" 


Tuesday, November 05, 2024

Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

Another month has begun, this one with a strong temporal landmark attached to it for writers, National Novel Writing Month.  It appears that I started dabbling in NaNoWriMo twenty years ago, though I didn't start dwelling on the subject until 2016. Then I wrote about it quite a bit.

Well, poor old NaNoWriMo has been experiencing some troubles the last couple of years. I thought I'd written about them here a few months ago, but, nope. I will explain to the extent that I can:

  1. NaNoWriMo has forums, which I've never been part of for what that's worth. But an issue arose with how forums were being moderated, particularly forums for young writers
  2. NaNoWriMo is taking a position of neutrality on the use of AI in writing. The...discord...around NaNoWriMo's original statement on the subject came up a couple of months ago

I mention all this because it's November and National Novel Writing Month and we all want to keep up on what's going on in the writing world, non? Also, it leads into an article by Shaunta Grimes on slow writing. 

NaNoWriMo Is Fast, But I Am Slow


I mean, I am seriously slow. So you can understand why I was interested when I saw Shaunta Grimes' The Write Brain article, I'm officially done with NaNoWriMo. Lets start a Slow Writing Movement back in September. 

She's creating a program and community called Book-a-Year Project that involves writing a book over a year, instead of a month. Her plan includes creating a writing practice. There will be mentoring letters and daily links to a poem, an essay, and short story to read. There's a monthly book club. And more.

This sounds fantastic, even though I am shifting toward writing short form work instead of novels. What I particularly like about Grimes' plan is that it actually offers things to do, versus talking about taking care of yourself and smelling the flowers. Both of which, I'd like to point out, take time. I was excited as I read about her article

And then I began to feel overwhelmed. This is too much for me. Because, remember, I am truly slow. I get daily Book Riot emails with lists of ebooks on sale, and I can't keep up with those. There's a monthly subscription involved with the Book-a-Year Project, so I hadn't even gotten involved yet and I, a truly slow person, was feeling pressure because I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up on something I was paying for.

But I love the idea of slow writing and have written here before about trying to find ways to do slow work. So I am inspired now to do more research on this. November, I feel, is a perfect time to be thinking about doing something new, because maybe I can have a plan in place for me for the new year.

The new year being a temporal landmark and all.

Just in: I had a perhaps serendipitous thing happen today that could impact my slow work studies. I'll let you know for sure next week.


Friday, November 01, 2024

Friday Done List

 Over all, a good week.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

  • Started two new pieces! One is humor, the other is about yogurt.
  • Registered for a Zoom workshop I knew I couldn't attend, and watched the recording today. This may become a blog post.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents

  • I saw on Xitter that an agent who had rejected two of my books was opening again for submissions. So I submitted a third book to her so she could reject it. I don't believe I've ever submitted my children's manuscripts to her, and I see that she represents that, too, so I might submit those sometime in the future for an entire set of rejections. Even though I had all kinds of material ready to go for this submission, because I've submitted it elsewhere, customizing emails and filling in submission forms take time that could have been used for Goal 1. At some point, I have to come to terms with that. Book submissions are very definitely a low priority now. If short form work takes off for me some time in the future, I may just treat book submissions as a waste of time and stop them.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding


Goal 4. 19th Century Novel, which is totally just for fun

  • About all I do on this is read nineteenth century history and pile up links to articles. For the workshop I watched today, I used the prompts I was sent to write from the point of view of the main character. So I now have some new material for that.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Some Annotated Reading October 31

In the three weeks since my last Annotated Reading post, I started and stopped 3 books (all in one week), read one, and am now reading two. I have a number of interests I want to read about and need to
create some kind of organized plan to do so. During the time I was reading Raw Dog, I focused on reading about food. Because Raw Dog is about hot dogs, which is food.

Food Reading

Falling for Chai--Crafting Comfort in Every Sip by Verde Curated Lifestyle at Tastyble. I am only a tea dabbler, but this article made me want to be more. So I bought some chai tea bags. That's about as much as I can expect of myself.

Ruth Reichl: "The delicious revolution" was a distraction from America's food crisis by Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. I do just enough food reading to have heard of Ruth Reichl. She sounds amazing in this article. In some far away, disorganized way, I will read more about/by her.

"Cooking saved my life more than once": Chef Einat Admony on her culinary memoir "Taste of Love" by Michael La Corte at Salon. This woman gets a lot more out of cooking than I do.

Don't feel like cooking? Caroline Chambers' new cookbook has you covered" by Joy Saha at Salon. This article has inspired discussion at our house and with some guests over the beginning, which discusses why "this generation" doesn't know how to cook. So far, I haven't met anyone who was taught to cook by their mother, though we cook.

Anxious About Baking? This Is a Great Way to Get Started by Dim Nikov at Tastyble. Speaking of learning to cook, this sounds like a good way to get kids started on baking bread.

Mother's Ruin by Tiffany Hawk at The Smart Set. This is about gin, which is no more about food than the tea article I linked to above. It also includes history, which is a good way to grab me. 

Humor Reading

A Victorian Time Traveler Meets Your Puggle  by Rebecca Turkewitz at The Belladonna Comedy. Not sure if this link will work for you, but this is funny.

Real Adult Horror Isn't That Someone is Coming: It's That No One Is Coming by Kate Brennan at MuddyUm. With pictures.

Next Door Reacts to the Rapture by Jay Martel in The New Yorker. You don't have a prayer of reading this. 

Parent-Teacher Conference by Karen Chee in The New Yorker. Nor this.

Fake Pandemic Introvert vs. Real Pandemic Introvert by Dahlia Garrin Ramirez.