Some Annotated Reading April 24

 Now, look, I read a great deal more than I share here. Political stuff. Things about old murders. Bits and pieces about history. I carefully curate what I post here, leaning toward items that are literary or humorous and, most importantly, don't make me look like a maniac.

First off, remember that I read a book, and blogged about it. I'm taking credit for that.

Love in the Time of Collapse by Amy DeBellis was the first thing I've read at Identity Theory. I stumbled upon DeBellis on Xitter and will be checking out some more of her writing in the future, as well as some of the places she's published. This first piece is microfiction, and, I think, well done.

Humor

What Does Your Book Organization System Say About You? by Lisa Cowan at The Belladonna Comedy. My organization system isn't mentioned here. I use an intricate combination of chronological order and genre. And, yet, I have still lost books, one for a couple of years before it turned up, just about where I expected it to be.

Quiz: Things My Accountant Said to Me During Tax Season or Things I Said to My Toddler During Potty Training by Kate Brennan at Frazzled. This kind of humor is more difficult to write than it appears, because you have to maintain the original concept all the way through. 

Your Passive Aggressive Home Inspection by Adam Dietz at Slackjaw. I like hermit crab formats. Also, I've been house hunting for 5 years. The last three, we've only been pretending to look, but, still, 5 damn years.

My Annual Earth Day Observance

It's Earth Day, people. Though I have been keeping an eye on my pollinator garden, I have not been keeping up on what's happening environmentally during the month of April, which is something I have done in the past.

However, Earth Day provides me with a good opportunity to mention Saving the Planet & Stuff, a rare eco-comedy. I still don't see much in the way of books for YAs and adults that have environmental threads or are set in a world where the environment plays a significant role that are not about climate change or a disaster brought about by climate change. Though I haven't been looking recently.

Oh, so many things to read about.

Now that I'm obsessing about how older adults are portrayed in books, I will mention that while my editor at G.P. Putnam and I were working on Saving the Planet, she said she'd never seen older adults portrayed as they are here. By which I believe she meant committed, in control, business owners, etc. etc. and not aging hippies. Though Nora and Walt are that, too.

In Which A Woman Of A Certain Age Gets Her Own Story Arc

I learned recently that there are readers out in the world, rather vocal readers, who object to humor created around older characters being placed in what are for them, nontraditional situations. I was very aware that older characters in children's books are often portrayed as frail, ill, and dying. Grandparents and dogs in children's books probably die in equal numbers. But I was a little stunned when I read so many objections to a piece I wrote placing older male authority figures in a situation in which they are out of their element--a children's playground. 

As a result of that experience, I'm feeling one of my little obsessions coming on, this one about how older characters are treated in books. As luck would have it, I just happened to finish reading a Net Galley arc of Facebook friend Gabi Coatsworth's new novel, A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over. The book's main character isn't older older, but as the mother of college students, she is just older. 

Fiftyish Molly Stevenson has been widowed for a few years during which time she purchased a bookstore. She is dealing with two issues as the novel opens--the bookstore isn't doing that well, and she has friends who are pressuring Molly to start dating. Things get worse with the bookstore when the rent is raised. Things get "worse" with the dating situation when she does, indeed, make efforts to meet men. Both story threads place Molly under pressure. Both threads are resolved in a positive way for her.

A mature woman managing on her own. This may not be an unusual main character for a novel these days. In fact, Book Riot has a list from 2019 called 50 Must-Read Fiction Books Featuring Older Women, who may be managing on their own or not. I've only read a couple of them. Many of those books sound a little on the heavy and downer side, though. A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over is not. It has a cozy aspect to it--the bookstore, a coffee shop, trips to an art gallery, friends gathering here and there, and what might be called a destination Christmas. This will be relaxation reading for many people, a very good thing, indeed. 

"A Beginner's Guide" And Women's Fiction. 

I was interested in reading A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over, in part, because I'd seen it described as women's fiction. I have an unsold manuscript that at one point I was submitting as women's fiction. Reading A Beginner's Guide gave me an opportunity to think some more about this.

According to the Women's Fiction Writers Association, women's fiction has as its driving force the "protagonist's journey toward a more fulfilled self." Does a more fulfilled self mean a self that ends up with a romantic partner? Not necessarily. More than one source I found stated that romances have narrative arcs that are totally about a couple's journey toward each other and include a happy ending.

(Here's an aside that requires its own paragraph: I was invited to a romance writers' luncheon around the time The Bridges of Madison County was all over the place. I was told by someone there that some romance writers had an issue with that book being described as a romance, because it didn't have a happy ending. Happy endings are a big component of traditional romance writing.)

At any rate, my superficial research suggests that A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over is, indeed, women's fiction, since the romantic element doesn't encompass the whole story, which is certainly about Molly's journey to a more fulfilled self.  On the other hand, I was probably correct to switch to describing my own manuscript, Good Women, as an upmarket comedy when submitting it. Not that it has done any good to date.

By the way, in What is Women's Fiction?, again at Book Riot, Kendra Winchester points out that there is no comparable genre to "women's fiction" called "men's fiction." That's something to think about. 

I'm Off Until At Least The Weekend

It's spring break for at least one of the New England states this week, and I will have houseguests tomorrow through Friday. 

I have a couple of other things in mind for you for next week, though.

I Guess I Have Joined The Ranks Of Controversial Humor Writers Part II

Hert Niks on Unsplash

Who? What? When? Where? and Why? are the classic questions writers deal with. For me, the most important is why? The eternal why? In this case, why did What We All Want to Say to That One Out-of-Touch Grandfather at the Playground,  a light-hearted consideration of male authority figures out of their element in a kid-centered situation (an example of using incongruity in humor, by the way), incite the heated response I described yesterday? 

Some thoughts.

The Nastiest Comments

The nastiest comments came from people who were registered with Medium under assumed names and had not published anything there. I have no idea what to make of that. Were they regular Frazzled readers? Were they parents or regular humor readers? Do they use that language with their kids? With their grandfathers?

Romanticizing Grandfathers

I also received comments that were not nasty from nice people who had nice things to say about their own grandfather experiences, which somehow seemed to keep them from finding any humor in what I had written. The whole concept of grandfathers may be very warm and fuzzy for some people, something they want to embrace and can't see anything funny about. The feeling seems to be that we shouldn't be laughing about situations involving a grandfather character. We should enjoy grandfathers in some other way.

Understanding Humor

When I saw the first insult comment, by which I mean the one about me being a bigoted, anti-male feminist who should mind my **** business, I thought, Okay. I don't want readers to see this comment and leave with that being the last thing they think about. So I will use this opportunity to show that I know something about what I am doing and that I have even been recognized for it in the past. After thanking him for calling me an anti-male feminist, I said, "However, "What We All Want To Say..." is not a feminist piece but an example of hyperbole--exaggeration that is not meant to be taken seriously. Hyperbole is often used in humor writing, and I've been known for it throughout my career. "Gauthier demonstrates a real talent here for humorous hyperbole..." BOOKLIST."

More and more of these comments kept coming. In response to one of them, I said, "This isn't a memoir..." But before long I just started saying, "Thank you for your comment." Because if people are so irate they are moved to tell a writer she is an ass, it's pretty unlikely they will appreciate being told they don't understand what they're reading. Perhaps it is also arrogant to try to tell them. And since I've already been accused of being superior, let's not go any further down that road.

Some Kind Of Ageism

As I mentioned in my last post, the subject of ageism came up several times in the comments I received. Which is a laugh, what with me being older than mud, myself. This blog is over twenty years old. Does anyone think I started it when I was twelve? But I believe there is, indeed, some kind of ageism at work here. However, it's not on my part.

One of the more thoughtful, less antagonistic comments I received advised me to punch up, implying that I was punching down in this humor piece. I had to think about that, because, yes, I do not want to ever punch down, meaning direct humor at the powerless. But after a couple of hours, I suddenly thought, Hey, how is humor relating to grandfathers punching down? Why are grandfathers powerless? The grandfather characters I created were not ill or physically unfit. One had been in upper management. One had been in the military. Why was this a powerless group that needed special consideration? 

The only reason I can come up with is the grandfathers' age. Were readers perceiving grandfathers as weak and inappropriate topics for humor merely because they were...old-er...old-ish...old?

Which I believe is ageist. I'm not ageist! You're ageist!

It never occurred to me that fit, healthy men my age would be perceived as lesser because of how old they were and thus require special consideration when writing about them. When I realized two days ago that this might be what was happening, I was livid. How freaking patronizing! Yesterday morning I was depressed about men having to accept this unnecessary protection from strangers who think they've grown weak and inferior with time. 

But the depression only lasted for about forty minutes. I don't stay down on the mat long. 

Maybe This Thing You Wrote Just Wasn't Funny, Gail

All writers need to accept the possibility that something they wrote wasn't good, after all. I can live with that and have for many years. I have lived with thoughtful critiques of things like my pacing and how I develop conflict. Now I will live with obscenities from people who feel a need to use them and name call when they don't get the laugh they were expecting from something I wrote.

I will not claim that I was not shaken by this experience. I ate half a bag of vegan chocolate chips over a twenty-four hour period. Vegan! But like the grandfathers in What We All Want to Say to That One Out-of-Touch Grandfather at the Playground, I am neither powerless nor lesser. In fact, I may have just come up with an idea for a humor piece relating to what happened these last few days.

Thanks, commentors!

I Guess I Have Joined The Ranks Of Controversial Humor Writers Part I

Hert Niks on Unsplash

I have been a published writer for going on twenty-six years. In that time, my work has been critiqued in various ways, as it should be. If you are a writer, you want to be known as a writer. You want to be part of literary discussion. Being part of literary discussion can mean professional reviews, blog reviews, Goodreads reviews, and personal responses from readers. Or it can mean comments on your on-line publishing. I've always found those to be pleasant, until last week when I was told I was a "bigoted anti-male feminist" and that I should mind my "**** business." And that was just getting started.

By the way, I am of the philosophy that everything is a writer's business, so that last bit wasn't as great an insult as the person who left it hoped it would be. Sorry. Also, the commentor used the asterisks. So he wasn't that offensive.

The Kind Of Less Than Stellar Criticism I Used To Get 

My first publications were books that were reviewed in professional journals. Now professional book reviewers tend to consider structural type things. On the occasions when they were pointing out negatives, they might say things like:

• "Readers may find the ending abrupt and learn more about Ethan Allen than they want to know..." Booklist
• "...the office politics at times slow the pace..."  Publishers' Weekly
• "There is little cohesive development or central conflict in this short novel;" "The pacing is also somewhat uneven, with some stories losing their comedic effect as they drag on for several chapters." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. Ouch!

I also had a reviewer call one of my books a one-joke story, and someone said of another that my main character was no Junie B. Jones, which is a big blow in children's books.

Regarding responses from readers, I once had a very civil exchange with a man who felt I shouldn't have used "goddamn" two or three times in a book in which Ethan Allen, who was a legend in his own lifetime for his use of profanity, figures prominently. We agreed to disagree.

Goodreads often gets mentioned for having unpleasant reviewers. I don't have any big complaints. Because I used to write children's books, I often saw reviews at Goodreads that were obviously from kids. My favorite is a short one from over ten years ago that begins with "I just read this book Happy Kid by Gail Gauthier but it wasn't very good." It ends with "I would not recommend this book to anybody, ever." Come on! That's adorable!

The Kind Of Less Than Stellar Criticism I Got Last Week

I have been writing humor and essays for various publications on the Medium platform for close to four years. Readers are extremely important at Medium. You get paid by the number of people who read your work and the amount of time they spend reading it. Readers also provide any critiques writers will receive in the form of either claps (applause) or comments. I've had thirty-one pieces of one sort or another published there in one place or another. When I've received comments, they've either been positive or engagement--as in discussing more ideas that could have been added to the piece or things that had happened to the reader that were similar to what I'd written about. We would have a nice little back and forth about it. 

So imagine how unprepared I was two days after What We All Want to Say to the Grandfathers at the Playground* was published at Frazzled to see the comment about my being a bigoted anti-male feminist and minding my **** business. I'm hesitant to do direct quotes here, by the way, because I just don't know how to attribute them. Feel free to go read the comments yourself. Enjoy.  (*Original title mentioned in earlier blog posts. It has been changed, as you will see. Read on!) 

Now keep in mind, Frazzled specializes in parenting humor. I've always liked it, because it does a good job of sticking to its theme while publishing very funny material. I've submitted a lot of work there, because I wrote situational humor for and about children for many years and am on my second generation of children in my family. The parent-child world is a milieu I enjoy and have experience with. 

Also keep in mind that I have written and published elsewhere at Medium a humor piece called The Best Moments For A Sex Scene During A Thriller. It was illustrated with a picture of two very scantily dressed people making out on a beach. Nobody had a problem with it. I also wrote Your Guide To Finding The Perfect Church in which I suggested making your decision on the basis of the quality of the coffee hours offered. No one was bothered by that, either.

No, they came out with pitchforks and torches for a list humor piece about grandpas at the playground.

How Bad Did It Get? 

   

So far, I've been told:

• I sound like an ass. 
• I was being a jerk.
• More about me being anti-male. And also ageist.
• A suggestion that I may not have had good relations with my grandfathers, father, or any man.
• A question about whether I got out on the wrong side of the bed the day I wrote that piece. 
• I may have been called a sanctimonious shit sack, but I'm not sure. I had a little trouble figuring out who that person was talking about. But I'm betting it was me!
• I sound whiny.
• More on the ageist business.
• I have no empathy and am potentially cruel. That guy was actually kind of nice.
• I have a superior attitude and probably not that much to be superior about. This one was pretty civil, and the second part is sadly all too true.
• I was insulting old white men, and I could only do that because they are the only nonprotected demographic left. It took me a while to get my jaw up off the floor after I saw that.
• It's been over a week and a half now, and someone just called me a boobie!
• I will continue with updates if any more come in.

Now please don't think this was the only kind of comments I got. There were people who liked the piece. There were people who clapped for it. There were people who clapped for some of my responses to comments. I had some lovely exchanges with people that I won't go into in the interests of time.

But many of the comments I was seeing were markedly different from anything I'd seen before. In fact, they were different enough that the very supportive Frazzled editor contacted me to say he was sorry about them and to offer to let me tweak the title to see if that would help readers recognize the humor  and take some heat off me. (Which is why it now does, indeed, have a different title.)  And he said yes, these comments were unusual.

So what was going on?

Since I am philosophically opposed to lengthy blog posts, which this one already is, I've done some editing and am  publishing my take on that question separately.

Friday Done List April 12

Well, this was an interesting week, what with a solar eclipse and some interesting responses to my most recent publication. 

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, And Humor

• I had a new humor piece published at Frazzled. 
• I did some marketing of said piece.
• I wrote some careful responses to readers who left ugly, even vulgar comments about said piece. Though I did kind of like being called an anti-male feminist. 
• I wrote more than a page on the short story! 

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents

• Made another submission!

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Three blog posts counting this one.
• Promoting two of those blog posts.
• Promoting the new humor piece
• Reading an arc of another author's book.

Some Annotated Reading April 11

A book finished--Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes. I read this because it was described as science fiction with humor, and, of course, I have an unsold science fiction with humor manuscript, because I have all kinds of unsold manuscripts. Chilling Effect is another good example of humor supporting story. I had a little trouble getting into it, because it seemed a little formulaic light scifi/adventure/romance, except with a female Cuban main character. Well, it turns out I like formulaic light scifi/adventure/romance, and I liked this female Cuban main character. This is the first of a trilogy, and I'll read at least the next one, if I don't get distracted by other things. I read an ebook edition of Chilling Effect on my iPad, and at about the halfway point, I started looking up the main character's Spanish asides, which were almost always cursing. If I read the other books as ebooks, I'll start looking up the Spanish from the beginning. I have books on cursing in French, which I would now like to look at again. So much to read, so little time.

To Keep My Brother Alive, I Will Fly 7,500 Miles by Dipika Mikherjee at The Los Angeles Review of Books. I read this moving piece, because the author was the leader at a workshop I took last week and liked.

I had a good solar eclipse experience on Monday (who didn't?) even though we only got 90 something percent sun coverage and the six-year-old and I were both disappointed that it didn't get darker in the yard where we were grazing on a table full of snacks. The temp dropped, though, which was interesting. Anyway, that was part of what led me to read Watching the Eclipse From the Highest Mountain in Vermont by Nick Paumgarten at The New Yorker. The other part of the reason I read it is that while I don't ski and haven't been on Mt. Mansfield, I do go to Stowe every year for our personal retreat week. I found this piece so lovely with just the kind of tone I like that I'll probably not read any more eclipse memoirs. I will probably continue to look at pictures, though. 

Humor

Things That Shook Me More Than That Earthquake by Aarushi at The Belladonna Comedy I liked this. Plus I admire anyone who can write this quickly about a current event. I think I've heard of a workshop coming up somewhere on doing that. Hmm.

Please Remember You Can Talk to Me, Your Mom, About Anything, Anytime, in These Specific Ways by Lily Hirsch at Frazzled.  Evidently, I just really like this writer, because I keep linking to her work. Also, we have a four-year-old family member who tried to get her brother away from me on Easter Sunday so she could tell him about some trouble she got into without me hearing her, because she already knows I'm a hardass. She's not telling me about anything, anytime, in any specific way. And, you know, I can live with that.

Another Story Behind The Story

I had a new humor piece published yesterday at Frazzled. As with many of my humor pieces, What We All Want To Say to the Grandfathers at the Playground has a backstory.

Tom Barrett on Unsplash

Last year I spent a couple of afternoons alone at a popular town playground with a kindergartener who had a half day of school. Great times, great times. On one of those visits I witnessed an older man yelling at a child who did not appear to be his family member. The old guy moved off, and I saw a woman holding a little boy in a Spiderman costume who was sobbing. Okay, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the kid just happened to have a sad thought at the same moment a stranger was shouting. Nonetheless, I stuck to my kid like a leech the rest of the time we were there, prepared to take care of that guy if he came near my boy. 

Then the guy actually spoke to me! As we were discussing leaving, I told my little guy that I had cupcakes in the car. (Because I did! Honest to God, I had cupcakes in the car!)  Lo and behold, the guy and his child companion were walking along beside us, he heard me, and said, "Yeah, good luck with that." I am ashamed to say that I just laughed and hauled our butts out of there. I should have said something like, "I don't need luck, sir. I have cupcakes. You should try it. Also, I don't yell at other people's kids unless they're about to run into the street, but that's just me." 

Yes, cupcakes do appear in this humor piece.

This whole thing happened close to a year ago. I have been enraged ever since. I like to think of myself as being too zenny to hold a grudge, but...maybe.

I finally started putting together things to say to guys like him as a humor piece, because I wanted to have something I could submit while I was feeling down about the short story I've been working on for months and not finishing. So that worked, anyway.

Friday Done List April 5

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, And Humor

• Received a rejection on a humor piece. I kid you not, I've submitted so many times to that place that the editor and I are on a first-name basis. I may have mentioned that before. 
• Resubmitted the humor piece. It was accepted and will be published next week.
• Attended a workshop/presentation on travel writing, because I'm traveling this fall. The workshop was quite decent, but now I have so much travel reading I should be doing.
• Worked on that short story. It seems as if I'm so close to being done.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents

• Made one submission.
• Made a note to myself to check out a literary agency that I thought only represented children's work, but I was wrong.

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Four blog posts counting this one.
• Marketed one of those posts on Facebook. Will also market it on Twitter and Goodreads.
• Reading two arcs in hopes of being able to support the writers. These are digital arcs, and they aren't great for reading on a treadmill or stationary bike. I can't increase the size of the text.
• One of those arcs could end up being a reading arc for Time Management Tuesday here at the blog.

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

• Did a little bit on a third draft of a first chapter.

Some Annotated Reading April 4

This is two weeks worth of reading, because I was a lazy blogger last week.

The Poet Laureate Project 

I read some Robert Penn Warren, who was both our third poetry consultant (the precursor to the poet laureate position) and, a couple of decades later, our first poet laureate. I read his novel, All the King's Men, when I was a teenager and felt I'd done some grown-up reading. I wasn't even aware he was a poet until a couple of weeks ago. And he is a poet I find accessible. I particularly like Tell Me a Story and True Love.  

The Francophonie Project

I managed to finish reading Menuet by Guy de Maupassant. It is about a man who meets an elderly dance instructor and his elderly wife, a dancer. Or it may be about something deeper regarding the narrator. Reading this raised a lot of questions for me about how we judge short stories now and how short stories from the past relate to that. Which is interesting, because what reading this in French and English was supposed to do was improve my French. Francophonie Month is over now, so I can put this book back on my To Be Read Shelf, where it has been for years.

Some Serious Cultural Reading

The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife by Sophie Elmhirst at The New Yorker. This was enlightening. The woman who was the main focus of this article was interested in the trad wife lifestyle, because she was into nostalgia. If that's the attraction for others, too, then that makes some sense. I, personally, think nostalgia of most--nah, of all--kinds is dangerous, but, again, nostalgia would provide an explanation for what's going on here. What I still don't understand is why women who choose to live this way want to tell the world about it. My guess is that they are hoping to monetize a blog or attract a big following so they can sell them a book. But that isn't exactly what we think of as trad wife behavior, is it? And why did they choose the trad wife lifestyle to try to make money off from? Why did they think people would "buy" that? Yes, I know some of them were right. But, still, where did this come from?

Humor

We Are Unable To Offer You A Place At Yale Because Your Essay Read Like The Closing Narration Of A Teen Rom-Com by Amelia Tait at McSweeney's. I still feel a need to read things with childlit/YA connections.

When a Recipe Says It's "Quick and Easy" by Jiji Lee and Patrick Clair at McSweeney's. I wish I'd thought of this.

Listen, Cat: I'm Not the Out-of-Control Infant You Once Knew by Nick Gregory at Points in Case. We have a cat. We have a preschooler in the family. 

Suggestions For Rebooting The Marvel Cinematic Universe From Farmer, Essayist, And Poet Wendell Berry by Jeff King at McSweeney's. Here's what you have to understand about Wendell Berry and me--Years ago, I was a member of a reading group in which there was another member who was humorless, narrow-minded, judgmental, and unpleasant. (No, I am not talking about myself.) She was a huge Wendell Berry fan and suggested we read one of his books. As a result, I know Wendell Berry's name.  But reading him? I just can't.

American Expat in France: Probably Don't Do This by Kat Garcia in The Belladonna Comedy. What I particularly liked about this is that while it appears to be a list, it is really a story.

Ten Reasons to Run That You, a Parent Who Hates Running, Can Give Your Kid Who Also Hates Running by Lily Hirsch at Frazzled. The title is a little long and awkward, but that's part of the joke, and it really does tell you exactly what this funny piece is about. 

Gaaaaiiiiil. You've Got Some Reeeeading To Do.

Net Galley just approved me to read two arcs I requested. And I'm reading a book from Hoopla that I'll lose after 21 days, so I need to finish it up. Because it's worth finishing. I should just drop everything and read for a while, don't you think?

One Net Galley arc is for A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over. I'm going to read this in support of the author, Gabi Coatsworth, who is a Facebook friend and fellow Connecticut writer. Also, this is described as a woman's book, and I have a manuscript that I haven't found a home for and that I sometimes describe as a woman's book. I'm thinking this is a little research.

The other Net Galley arc is for Lit by Jeff Karp. I heard about this book through the author's publicist, who sent me an e-mail. I thought the book sounded like something that could become a read for Time Management Tuesday. The website talks about tapping into high energy brain states. I could use some tapping into high energy brain states here. There may also be an ADHD connection, and we have an ADHD connection in our family. ADHD is a draw for me now. Thus, I've got a couple of reasons to be interested in this.

I now have to do some reading for a workshop I'm registered for. So, you know, #amreading, as they say on X. And maybe elsewhere.

This Week Might Be Different

We have people here painting. This morning I was up, showered, and dressed by 7:20 in order to be ready before they got here. This will go on for at least two more days, maybe three.

With these kinds of hours, I may write another book this week.

Friday Done List March 29

I didn't blog this week, so I feel as if I didn't do anything at all. Give that some thought.

I could have done a reading post yesterday, because I've done a bit of reading. But I had 30 minutes to spare last night, couldn't do it in that time, and threw in the towel.

Okay. What I did do:

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, And Humor

• Still working on that short story I keep talking about. Liking it, for what that's worth.
• Received a rejection, the second one I've received on that particular piece of flash fiction this month. But that means nothing, right?
• I finished a humor piece.
• I submitted the humor piece.
• So far this year I've been meeting my objective of submitting something every month.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents

• Yeah, I did nothing on that this week. Though I might have received a rejection. It's a blur.
• Relating to book-length work: I stumbled upon an X pitch event one day this week and took part. I pitched two other manuscripts.
• I took a workshop on creating endings for books. Not the greatest event I've been part of.

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Well, in terms of community building, I did share a friend's Facebook post relating to an event she's taking part in next week, and I requested a book from Net Galley that the author's publicist contacted me about. So I can pat myself on the back for that, now, can't I?  I could just get a review copy of the book from the publicist, but then I would feel so much pressure to like the book and say so. However, if NetGalley turns me down, and it did at least once in the past, I may.
• No blog posts, so, yikes.

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

• I got an idea for a change in structure while at that workshop I wasn't that fond of. During the question-and-answer period, I worked on that. This may become a blog post next week.

Friday Done List March 22

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, And Humor

• Received two rejections.
• Resubmitted one of the rejected stories.
• Started a humor piece.
• Made some definite progress on the short story I've been working on for months. 
• Signed up for OCWW workshop.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents

• Received an agent rejection.
• Did some minimal research on agents.
• Have at least one more agent lined up to submit to.

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Three blog posts, including this one.
• Marketing blog posts.
• Some promotion on Facebook of a nearby author event.
• Considered joining a state organization, but, no. Didn't do that.

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

• Read some short pieces for research.
• Organized some of my research for this.

Some Annotated Reading March 21

Two weeks-worth of reading here.

I finished reading American Pop by Snowden Wright. As usual, I don't know what made me put this on my reading list. I suspect it was due to a blurb describing it as an "imagined history." (I paid attention to a blurb!) In places, particularly at the beginning, American Pop reads like creative nonfiction, as if the author is writing about a real family who ran a real soda empire and using fictional tools to do it. He refers to other works that are supposed to be about the family and their company. I found this incredibly intriguing. The book is not at all linear (or is it?) with sections about various family members moving back and forth in time and giving away characters' future well in advance of them reaching it, while, I just realized, not treating that future moment itself when it happens. I am an incredibly linear person, and I shouldn't have liked this. But I did. And the real ending of the book has a satisfying surprise.   

Allen Tate is the next of the poets I read in my quest to read all the American poet laureates, though he is from the day when they were called consultants in poetry. I couldn't grasp his work, I'm ashamed to say. He had a lovely voice, though, and you can hear him reciting his poem, Ode to the Confederate Dead. 

I am making an attempt to read a Guy de Maupassant short story, in French and English, in order to observe Francophonie month. It's not going well. I've started reading the English portion first, then the French, and I am recognizing the French better that way. Still can't tell you what the story is about. I also read a de Maupassant story in English, The Necklace. I think I read this in my youth but got it confused with The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. The Necklace is grimmer than I remember The Gift of the Magi being, though.

Substack is Both Great and Terrible for Authors by Jane Friedman at Jane Friedman led me to seek out Substack vs. Medium: A Comparison of Two Popular Publishing Platforms by Si Willmore at Memberful. These articles may become part of a blog post at some point.

I read What Everyone Gets Wrong About Picky Eaters by Betsy Andrews at Saveur, because I write about eating from time to time, so I like to read something about food from time to time. We have a number of family members with the kinds of eating issues Andrews writes about, which is what drew me to her article.

Humor

Alternative Forms Of Meditation For Parents Of Young Children by Bev Potter at Frazzled.  

Quiz: James Joyce's Editor Or Me Commenting On My Child's Homework by Amy Greenlee at Frazzled.  As if I know anything about James Joyce.

Am I Grocery Shopping or Enrolling My Kid In College? by Kate Brennan at Frazzled.

Something I Read That You Can't Without A Subscription

The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker. I started this because John Wilkes Booth! You know I have no interest in Lee Harvey Oswald but something about John Wilkes Booth. I kept reading this piece because it was so good. When I finished it, I realized it was written by Jill Lepore! My favorite historian! I'm reading her history of the U.S., These Truths. I've been reading it for a while, and I'll be reading it for a while, which is fine, because it's so good.

Time Management Tuesday: Beginning Again Again

I haven't been writing about time management much here for a couple of reasons, one being that I'm not doing a good enough job managing time that I should be writing about it. But something happened Sunday that impacted how I spent my time Monday.

I got three rejections Sunday and found a fourth one in my e-mail that I'd either missed or forgotten about, because when the rejections fly fast and furious that can happen. Rejection doesn't bother me the way it does a lot of writers I see on X, who are really broken up about it. Rejection is a big part of a writer's job. If you're being rejected, you're working. Nonetheless, I wasn't ecstatic about the whole thing.

But I leaned on one of my favorite time management techniques, which is arguably not time management at all, probably an indication that I shouldn't be writing about the subject. I'm talking about beginning again. 

Which is what I did yesterday. I began again. I finished revising the portion of the short story I've been working on for months, so I'm now finally ready to continue with it. I started a new humor piece. I registered for a workshop. I checked out a publication to submit one of Sunday's rejections to. I had the best day I've had for a while. And I may have also finished a rough draft of a plan for a September car trip. That was taking forever.

Beginning again. One of my most useful tools for managing life, if not time.

Here is a repub of what may be my first begin again post. I've returned to begin again several times since then. 

November 24, 2020 Managing Chaos By Beginning Again

I was sure I'd written about "begin again" here in the Time Management Tuesday feature. It seemed like just the thing for managing chaos. But search as I would, I couldn't find anything here. So I guess I'm going to have to come up with some new original content.

Okay, if you spend any time reading about meditation, you will see the phrase "begin again." If your mind wanders while you're trying to meditate, no problem. Begin again. If you find that you're no longer in the present moment, that your mind has tiptoed off to your miserable past or your worries of the future, so what? You can begin again.

You're not a bad person because you didn't stay in meditation. You haven't failed. You're just going to begin again. Here is Joseph Goldstein explaining a very positive aspect of beginning again. In less than four minutes, people! How much do I love that? I love it a lot.

Overwhelmed By Chaos? Begin Again

Writers who've become overwhelmed by the chaos of living or at least their own kind of living and find that they are no longer on task with their work can use the same begin again thinking. Beginning to work again is important. But I think the really beneficial aspect of begin again is the lack of judgement. Judging and beating up yourself for work failures:

• Is time consuming. Now you have to spend time ripping into yourself, time you could have spent writing.
  
• Leads to the What-the-Hell Effect. When individuals become distressed about not maintaining goals, they can respond by giving up. We're lousy at what we do, anyway, so what-the-hell?  What's the point of going on with this?
  

Developing a begin again mindset won't keep us from finding ourselves neck deep in chaos. But it could help us get out of it.

Friday Done List March 15

Today I made three lasagnas and three batches of cookie dough, one of which I baked and...Wait. We're supposed to talk about work here.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Finished a draft of an essay!
• Submitted the essay.
• The essay was accepted and published. 
• Very small amount of work on a short story.
• Considered joining a Medium Zoom event. Need to sign up for a OCWW workshop next week.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents 

• Did minimal research on agents for this.

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Four blog posts
• Marketing of blog posts 
• Marketing of essay

I've Written A Doughnut Essay

My second publication of the year, Confessions Of A Doughnut Eater, is what I call an eating essay. My eating essays tend to be memoirish. We could call it a doughnut memoir, inspired by my children who were both burning up our family text one weekend with news about their doughnut excursions. They inspired some of my earliest work and continue to do so. 

Interested in literature? This piece has a couple of references for you. There's one to Jane Eyre, and the title is a shoutout to Thomas de Quincey's 1821 classic Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Everyone loves Thomas de Quincey, right?

March Is Francophonie Month

I first heard of Francophonie Month four years ago, when I celebrated it here at OC for a week. Oh, look! I did a round-up of my 2020 Francophonie posts. 

After 2020 I missed Francophonie Month for the next three years. Obviously, I need to put this in my bullet journal. That thing's getting kind of full.

Photo by Andrea Piarquadio on Pexels

Francophonie Month gives me a good opportunity/excuse to mention Useful French Phrases For Madame Keith's World Languages Class. There. I mentioned it.

I only realized today that we're in the midst of Francophonie Month, and I am grasping for how I can observe it personally. I have a couple of episodes of Monsieur Spade left to watch. I love that show, because it stars a British actor playing an American who speaks French with an American accent. I am an American who barely speaks French with an American accent! You can see the attraction. I still haven't seen the new season of Lupin, because I decided to rewatch the first seasons. I could spend the rest of the month catching up on all that, which should do something for my French, non?

But some French reading? I have French books around here I've never finished.

Lectures Pour La Jeunesse by W.F.H. Whitmarsh. It was published in 1946. I'm guessing I found it in my in-laws' house. It's a tough read for me, and it's hard to get excited about going back to it. I just found two twenty dollar bills in it. They're not old, so I must have put them there. No idea what I was thinking about with that.

French Stories, A Dual-Language Book. Edited by Wallace Fowlie. I have some hope of getting through a couple of these stories. Well, one, anyway. They include English translations.

Lire 12 Extraits de Romans de la Rentree. No idea where this came from or even what it is.

At any rate, I have the means to observe Francophonie Month. I just have to do it.

Friday Done List March 8

I missed nearly two days of work this week in order to go to a museum and hiking. On the other hand, I saw some great stuff. 

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, And Humor

• Started a new eating essay. Did I finish it? No, I did not.
• Worked on the longer and longer short story. Did I finish it? No, I did not.
• Did listen to an hour program about short stories.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road To Agents.

• Watched a workshop presentation on agents that indicates that I'm doing everything right with submissions.
• And, yet, I received three rejections this week. What does it all mean?

Goal 3. Community building/General Marketing/Branding

• Four blog posts counting this one. 

Some Annotated Reading March 8

I probably found Julija Sukys' (I apologize for my inability to deal with accent marks here) site through a Facebook essay group. I'd saved a link to her on my iPad, so I really don't know for sure. She says on the page I linked to that one of the writing forms that interests her is "life-writing (letters, diaries, and all kinds of archival materials)." I had never seen or heard the expression "life-writing" before, but I love it now. There is so much I could be exploring at her website. 

Someone on X was talking about My Last Duchess by Robert Browning this week, which led me to reread it. There's a little more subtle part I'd had trouble with years ago that worked for me this time. I thought this might be a narrative poem, but I've seen it called a dramatic monologue on-line.

Reading My Last Duchess reminded me that I meant to read writing by all the United States' poet laureates this year and never got past the first one. I can still do it! But not this week.

What I did read this week was some flash fiction. Candied Lemon by Grace Kennedy at Fractured Lit grabbed me with all the food mentioned in the beginning. I am not quite sure about the ending. 

New Yorker humor you probably can't read without a subscription:

• Scenes From My Open-ish Marriage by John Kenney. It's probably just as well if you can't read this, because while I thought it was very funny this used to be a blog for childlit people and Scenes From My Open-ish Marriage is not childlit-ish.
• I liked that John Kenney New Yorker piece so much that I found this article about him and read it. This is why it took me four years to write my last book and not eighteen months like it took him to write his first one. You can bet any amount of money that John Kenney's not spending any time looking up and reading articles about me.
• What Blurbs Really Mean by Dana Maier and Gila Pfeffer. I've said many times here at OC that as a reader I distrust and dislike book blurbs. So, yeah, I ate this thing up. They did not go anywhere near far enough.

There's Still Good Stuff On The Radio

Keeping it Brief: A Celebration of Short Stories on Connecticut Public Radio's Colin McEnroe Show aired yesterday afternoon but is available on-line now. I loved that it was broken into individual interviews instead of an hour-long panel or free-for-all discussion. I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't have a 60-minute attention span.

Some high points for Gail:

With Rebecca Makkai, Colin (here in Connecticut he's known as Colin) talked about why people may choose not to read short stories and why they should. Here are a couple of my own thoughts on why short stories may not go over with some readers.

• It takes as much energy for readers to invest in characters and acclimate to a world for a short story as it does for a book. And then the short story is over. You get more for your effort if you're reading a book. To be truthful, I got this theory from my cousin.
• Epiphanies--characters experiencing some kind of realization that changes them somehow--are a big deal in short stories. This particular reader finds that epiphanies are often so interior to the character that I don't understand them, which undermines my enjoyment of the story. 

With Amy Bloom the talk veered more to technique. She said how a short story begins is important. You only have about two paragraphs to hook the reader. 1. This seems hugely helpful. 2. I should have kown this.

The last section of the program was a discussion of a New Yorker short story, How I Became A Vet by Rivka Galchen. This was fascinating for me, because, though I have had a digital subscription to The New Yorker since last year, I never read the short stories. I don't even read that much of the humor. I like wading through years of articles. To get the whole Keeping it Brief experience, I dropped everything this afternoon and read How I Became A Vet. It's an absolutely lovely story, though I found the ending a bit epiphany-ish and didn't understand it. I think it has broken me into reading New Yorker short stories, though.

So I had an excellent radio experience that was work-related enough that I don't feel very guilty about not really working.

I Don't Mind Rejection. It's Submitting That's The Problem.

So I've been spending the first two months of the year submitting an adult manuscript to literary agents. This gives me an excellent excuse (or at least an excuse) to mention The Trick To Writing Stellar Book Submission Letters published less than a year ago at Greener Pastures Magazine. 

Today's agent research experience also sent me off a few minutes ago to start another humor piece about literary agents. That sounds terrific, except what I meant to write about today was doughnuts.

Friday Done List March 1

 

Well, I'm feeling some improvement this week.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, And Humor

• Far away from finishing a draft of a short piece this week. But I have started work on the short story! I had some serious thoughts about it recently that made it possible to get started again.
• I'll be "watching" the workshop I signed up for tomorrow, because I couldn't take it live yesterday. That's the beauty of the Off Campus Writers Workshop. They send you a recording of the workshop that you can use for one week. So you can sign up for workshops you know you can't attend. Which is what I did.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to Agents

• Two submissions.

Goal 3. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Finally finished updating the short-form writing links on my website. That took a long time to get to.
• Three Original Content posts, including this one. 
• Do some blog promoting this weekend. I'm doing so much this weekend.

Some Annotated Reading February 29

I managed to finish another book this week, On Earth as It is On Television by Emily Jane. Terrific book, and I now have a thought about humor in fiction. Which I may have had before, but, if so, this book really illustrates it. Humor must support story. Perhaps it is another element of fiction.

Flora Mancuniensis: The study of botany in 19th-century Manchester by Julie Ramwell is a terrific piece of historical writing. It appears at a publication on the Medium platform called Special Collections from The University of Manchester in England. This is an example of the neat things that can be done at Medium. 

I did some reading of time travel short stories:

• The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester in Fantasy & Science Fiction, October, 1958 pg. 118. I heard this would be funny, and it probably would have been much funnier if I had more of a science background. This was clever, though, with good narrative drive and some clever time travel stuff.
• The Clock That Went Backwards by Edward Page Mitchell.  Scroll down. Yeah, not an exciting read. This is believed to be the first instance of a device being used for time travel. So now I can say I've read that.
• The Man Who Walked Home by James Tiptree Jr. in Clarkesworld. This is both a time travel and post-apocalypse story, two sub-genres that I'm not fond of. But for some reason I found this pretty riveting, and it leads me to want to learn more about the author, a woman writing under a man's name.
• And I did! The Most Prescient Science Fiction Author You Aren't Reading by Kay Steiger in Vox.

New Yorker humor you won't be able to read: Why People Who E-mailed You Aren't E-mailing You Back, By Week  by Hallie Cantor

A Childlit Connection To Oppenheimer?

I saw Oppenheimer Saturday night. Perhaps if I'd been in a theater and couldn't keep going onto my iPad to check out the historical figures in the movie and dwell on the unhappy women in Oppenheimer's life, I would have been able to follow it. 

Once the movie got to Los Alamos, I was reminded of The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages. It's a very well-regarded middle grade novel from 2006 about a girl going to Los Alamos to live with her father who is working there on the Manhattan Project. 

Were librarians all over the country doing Oppenheimer themed displays last year? I know it's probably not appropriate to do a library display linking books for middle grade students to an R-rated movie, but I can't be the only person who thought of it. Or maybe I can. 

Friday Done List February 23

A week of just treading water. In fact, I wanted to go to a museum today to see an exhibit that's ending soon and gave it up out of guilt. I found out I have a free day tomorrow, though. Of course, I'm going walking.

Goal 1. Adult short stories, essays, and humor

• Can't give up on that short story, can't move forward. Didn't write a word. Have been doing research, though. Research for a short story. 
• I'm really getting into reading related to that short story, though. 

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to agents

• Got two rejections last weekend.
• Made two submissions.
• Spent a lot of time reading about agents.
• Registered for an agent workshop.

Goal 3. Community Building/Branding/General Marketing

• Wrote 4 blog posts.
• Promoted some of them on X.
• Reposted one of the blog posts at Goodreads, where I also rated a book.
• Did some more updating on the website. Could have done more on that.

Some Annotated Reading Feb. 22

Another week, another book finished. Reading, not writing or selling. How To Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann was an intriguing read for me, because it followed last week's book, The Manor House Governess, which was a modern spin on Jane Eyre. How To Be Eaten isn't a modern spin on our Jane, but on fairy tales. How bizarre is it that connection? The connection being "modern spins," in case I didn't make myself clear. (Which happens.) These fairy tales all have women main characters who feel guilty for what happened to them or are made to feel guilty. Included in the book is a section treating a Bachelor-type program as an unhappy fairy tale. I have never seen a minute of one of those shows, but I was kind of riveted to that portion of the book. And, wow, the Rumpelstiltskin section was pretty impressive.

Speaking of books I've read recently, I read The Jane Austen Society a couple of weeks ago. And guess what I stumbled upon this week?  A Jane Austen Lent.

Time Travel Science Fiction Stories Recommendations at Fit 2B Read is not reading but a terrific video about reading. Yes, I am researching time travel fiction and would really like to do it with short stories. Though I'm thinking of rereading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is taking a risk because I liked it when I was a teenager, and sometimes rereads don't go that well for me.

The Chronic Argonauts by H.G. Wells, recommended in the video above. Mehhh. It seemed more of a Lottery by Shirley Jackson type story. And masses and masses of description. It's been a long time since I've read H.G. Wells, and I can't say I have much desire to read more now. 

A humor piece you probably can't read at The New Yorker--A Timeline of Articles About Amelia Earhart Throughout History by Sarah Hutto. The vaccination headline was my favorite.

Also humor-related--I've been watching The Daily Show for the past year. (No, never before then. Yes, it's a mystery.) Dulce Sloan is a correspondent, and I am a fan. So, of course, I read We're Not Stupid or Racist, an interview with Sloan at Salon. This woman has thoughts! And a book coming out.

Why I Didn't Work Monday, And Why Snow Tubing Isn't To Blame For My Lame Work Week

We had snow a week ago yesterday, and it's still here. Now, I'm in the south of New England, not Florida. Snow is not incapacitating here. But it isn't as common as it used to be, what with climate change and all. Last year, I didn't use my snow tube at all. And when snow does come, it usually doesn't last long. For example, hours after we left for our retreat week on a Saturday in January, our town was hit with a big snowfall. By the time we got home the next Saturday, our yard looked like spring.

Not so with this last storm, which came, as I said, a week ago yesterday. I spent a big chunk of time shoveling the day it arrived and rushed out to go snowshoeing the next morning, because you have to strike while the snow is here. This past Monday, it was still here, and I had guests over for snow tubing. 

                                             

Seriously, kids have so little experience with snow that they think you're supposed to play in it with balls.

I've been thinking that my feeling this week of not making progress with work is due to the fact that I took what was essentially a snow day Monday and now think the week is nearly over. All is lost. But in reality, it's because I have spent weeks working on a short story in a genre I know nothing about. That's a beginner's mistake.