Friday Done List

The big thing I'm done with is travel and celebrating. Yes, vacationing always provides me with some creative ideas, but they get buried under the work involved to get ready to go somewhere and clean up afterward and the work piling up at home.

Don't you just love First World Problems? I know I do. They're the best possible kind.

I did manage to squeeze a little work in over the last few weeks. Oh! And you know what else! I met my Goodreads reading goal for the year. 

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I had another humor piece published last week, though you'd never know it here, because I didn't get around to doing a post about it. Next week.
• I dug around in old emails and discovered I'd received a rejection I didn't know about a while back.
• Got another rejection a few days ago.
• Started revising that last rejection, because the next place I want to submit to wants fewer words.
• Continued work on an eating-ish memoir piece, which is actually a revision of something I wrote twenty years ago. It's going to have a twist now.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to agents. (Has turned into submitting any book length work to anyone.)

• I spent a few days making a synopsis for a book I haven't submitted anywhere in years so I could submit it to an agent open to SCBWI writers during the month of September.
• Made the above submission. Yes! I am calling this doing two things. 

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Added a number of newly published pieces to the website earlier this summer, which I may or may not have mentioned.
• Added another newly published piece to the website today, so that we're not dealing with so many changes at once. Also updated my bio and took out some dead links.
• Read a couple of things that have inspired me to get Time Management Tuesday going again, at least for the next month or so.
• Wrote next Tuesday's Time Management Tuesday post.

Some Annotated Reading October 3

I have just finished a week of birthday observances, all for the same person. Me. That, on top of the two weeks of vacation less than a month ago has left me reeling over all the minor life and work details I need to address. Overwhelmed.

I did keep reading though. I can always keep reading.

Books

I finished a couple more nineteenth century historical mysteries, both in the same series, which is going down hill as series often do.

I've read some more of Best Travel Writing of 2018. That book is so long.

Short Form

Emily is the Quintessential Privileged White American Girl by Martine Nyx in Cinemania. I started watching this show after it had been out for a season or so for the French with English subtitles. I'd already finished Dix Pour Cent (there is no comparison) and hadn't discovered Lupin. Yes, you do have to wonder, What is the attraction with this show? Even if you don't hate it, as many people do, what is there, really, to even hold your attention?

When Good Artists Do Bad Things by Citizen Reader at Books Are Our Superpower. I don’t know that there is ever going to be a way of dealing with the issue of good artists being bad people.

An Impresario of the Landscape by Stephen Heyman at Lapham's Quarterly. This is an introduction to Louis Bromfield, whose home, Malabar Farm, I visited on vacation. It focuses mainly on him as a conservationist. I have so many thoughts about this guy.

This is Why So Many Bars, Restaurants and Coffee Shops Look the Same Across the World by Charlie Brown at Rooted.  It's because social media has flattened taste. I wonder if other types of media do it, too. But the whole concept of "flattening taste" was new to me. 

Humor

Blurbs Beyond Books by Adam Bertocci at Points in Case. This is a fantastic piece for those of us who really dislike blurbs.

I Thought I Would Have Accomplished A Lot More Today And Also By The Time I Was Thirty-five by Alex Baia at The New Yorker. This is hysterical. I started laughing out loud when I got to "Shit. I'm actually forty-one." And then I felt guilty for having laughed at this suffering narrator. And then I laughed some more.

Humor and pain I’m So Lucky I’m an Adult So I Can Do Whatever I Want by Lisa Hides at Frazzled.

"What About the Cat?" Feedback From an Online Writing Workshop by Helen Raica-Klotz at Brevity Blog.  How funny you find this will be determined by how many writers' workshops/critique groups you've been part of.

Friday Done List

It took the better part of three days to get my mind settled after vacation. I need a Friday Done List to make me feel I didn't spend most of the week recovering.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I returned home to find a short story rejection. But the publication offered me a discount on a subscription! I had already subscribed for a couple of months. I like the material there, but it's just so difficult to find time to read everything I want to read.
• Worked on a humor piece I started before I left town.
• Submitted said humor piece. This particular publication uses an AI for initial copyediting, and I've already heard from it with a complaint about my using the wrong font on a subheading that no other publication has ever objected to. I've already dealt with it. Whoops. Now the AI wants me to cut 70 words. Yes, humor should be short. But it is a freaking AI telling me this.
• When I'm traveling, I email myself ideas that I then have to enter into my digital writer's journal. I believe I've finished that. 

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Did two blog posts, including this one.
• Promoted the first blog post.

Some Annotated Reading September 19

Why, yes, I am back from a two-week vacation and overwhelmed by the seemingly thousands of minute details of my daily personal and work life. But I've done some reading!

Books

Art History 101 by John Finlay. This was a Christmas gift from a family member. Masses of interesting stuff that I can't really recall now.

A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Murder by Dianne Freeman. This is part of one of those romance/historical mystery series. The romance here is less intense than some series, but the mystery is strong, particularly in this one.

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple. Maria Semple is the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, which I enjoyed, though I couldn't tell you now where Bernadette went or who was looking for her. Today Will Be Different is another missing person story, also a good read. It was more of what I think of as an experience book, meaning you enjoy the experience of reading it and don't worry a lot about what is happening. Though what is happening here is more clear cut than I recall Bernadette being.

Short Form

I read a number of the essays in Best American Travel Writing 2018, edited by Cheryl Strayed. I have so many more left to read. Travel writing is not just those things we used to see in the travel section of the Sunday paper. Back when the Sunday paper had a travel section. Back when we read the Sunday paper.

In related news, I read Women's Travel Writing by Patricia M. E. Lorcin at World History Sources. What was interesting here was the idea of using travel writing to teach history.

I Love Little Free Libraries, But Do They Really Benefit the Community? by Kathleen Curtin Do at Books Are Our Superpower. This is an excellent essay, beginning with the personal and moving on to the greater world, which is my understanding of what a good personal essay should do. 

Exclusive: Doug Emhoff Makes a Pre-debate Pitstop at my Boyfriend's Philadelphia Record Store by Amanda Marcotte at Salon. What I like about this is the idea of politicians having interests. Almost any interests.

Keeping Up With the Joneses by Andrew Jazprose Hill at Counter Arts. James Earl Jones' father was an actor, too! Very interesting early life.

Did I mention the NaNoWriMo series of messes before I went on vacation? In case I didn't, here you go.  NaNoWriMo 2024 AI Controversy Explained by Klein Felt at The Direct.

Two Shakespeareans Take Stock at The Millions Well, to be truthful, I like Judi Dench, who is one of the two Shakespeareans here, not Shakespeare.

Humor

Coming back from vacation is a temporal landmark, a time to start anew. Assuming you aren't overwhelmed with stuff to get back to. Nonetheless, I am trying to establish both a daily yoga practice and daily Medium reading. 

I'm the Parent of the Class Troublemaker. How About a Play Date? by Caroline Horwitz at Frazzled. Hey, troublemakers need play dates, too.

Cuckqueans and Cackles: Scrabble With James Joyce by Walter Browne at MuddyUm. I don't even like James Joyce or Scrabble, and I enjoyed this. 

The Eco-Green Yoga Mat Guide To Navigating Our Sliding Scale Payment System by Jordan de Padova at Slackjaw. I like yoga and meditation humor. 

Labor Day Appears To Be The Ultimate Temporal Landmark

People are going nuts on my Facebook page about today being the last day of summer. Last week a seven-year-old relative told me he and his family were going to the beach this weekend, "the last weekend of summer." 

Talk about a temporal landmark! A temporal landmark being, of course, a calendar event that marks the passage of time and suggests an opportunity for a fresh start. Summer, as the little person in my family pointed out, is over, and it's time to start something new. Fall. The school year. Professional activities that had been on hold, because the temporal landmark of the beginning of summer triggers a time to do a lot less. At least for Americans.

I managed to have four humor pieces published this summer, one of which was selected for Medium's boosted program and did quite well for me. But, otherwise, the summer was difficult professionally. For many years that would have been because we had a sick, elderly relative. This year it was because everyone was well. A couple of us celebrated a birthday for a week. We hosted two family gatherings, which required a few days of preparation each. We had houseguests twice. We're heading off for a multi-week trip, which for us means a multi-week prep period. 

Zen tells me to appreciate those four publications, two of which were completely written this summer, and let go of my attachment to all the ideas I've had and couldn't follow through with because of fun and games. 

To be fair, during my vacation prep time I've been collecting work reading to do while I'm away and planning which writing projects I'll continue with first when I'm back at my laptop. In Gail World, that counts as writing, too.

But not as much writing as I hope to do in October. See you later.
 

The Weekend Writer: How Many Publishing Worlds Are You Familiar With?

 A few weeks ago, I saw an article on Medium that I will never find again, because of the hundreds of thousands of things published there. I think the writer was a woman, so for convenience's sake I will refer to her as she. The writer was distressed because she had to wait two days to hear back from editors when she submitted to publications on the Medium platform. She had a schedule to maintain! What was wrong with these people? It is a problem! I think she may have also expected these editors to automatically accept her work, but I may be mistaken.

All her commenters agreed with her.

I sat there in front of my laptop, stunned. 

I often see articles on Medium about writing on Medium and what is wrong with Medium and why the writers are thinking of leaving Medium or why the writers are leaving Medium. You don't have to read these things for very long to realize that most of these people have never written anything for publication before they started publishing on Medium. Because Medium is a self-publishing platform, anyone can publish there immediately, without meeting any objective writing standards, without having any expertise in subjects they write about. (Medium does require a certain format for published articles and really prefers that writers not steal the images they use for illustrations. Does anyone else think that seems reasonable? That's not a high bar, folks.)

Is Medium The Real Writing World?

When I read these kinds of things on Medium, I think those writers have no idea what's going on in the real writing world. But why isn't Medium real? Many of the writers publishing there appear to have never published anywhere else. The site encourages community, so many Medium people are reading there, following other writers, and supporting each other with applause and comments. If they can achieve what they want to achieve there, they may never go out to traditional publications for anything at all. They are in a world. What's not real about it?

Back in 2010, there was talk on the Internet about there being two publishing worlds. One was centered in New York and involved publishing as a means of generating income for writers. The other was centered around MFA programs and involved publishing as a means of supporting academic positions--a variation on publish-or-perish. If someone were writing on this subject today, I believe self-publishing would be a third publishing world and perhaps self-publishing on-line at platforms like Medium and Substack a fourth. 

The Publishing World That Is Not Medium

A couple of days ago, Jane Friedman published a piece by Amy L. Bernstein (who, by the way, is on Substack)  called Publishing Advice from a Serial Submitter to Literary Magazines. This is a description of the traditional writing and publishing world I'm familiar with, the publishing world where you are not automatically published. "Indeed," Bernstein says, "the 1% acceptance rule is fairly consistent, whether you're submitting short fiction or a novel."

Even though I wasn't aware that only 1% of submissions are accepted by literary magazines, my expectations of an acceptance are not high. And, no, I never expect to hear back from a traditional editor in two days. But the publishing world Bernstein is talking about is one that I am at least familiar with. I stick with it, because I understand that, as she says, "If you don't play, you can't win."

But I know about the traditional publishing world, because I've been writing, submitting, and sometimes being published for a long time. Most of the people coming up writing in Medium world have not. Will they ever know anything else besides sending off whatever they write with an expectation of it being published, as is, immediately? 

Does it matter if they don't?

Some Annotated Reading August 29

Books

A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman is the beginning of what for me is a new nineteenth century mystery with couple detectives series. There must be a term for these books, but I don't know it. Lady's Guide has a decent mystery, though I thought the ending was just a little bit abrupt, and there is little of the cliched mannerisms that many of these books have--the rolling of eyes, the carrying on about the scent coming in from outdoors, the arguing between the future lovers. I'm now reading book two.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry. This author was recommended for her dialogue by a workshop leader a few months ago. Her dialogue is great. And this particular book is good for a reader like me who isn't into traditional romance and whose knowledge of it is primarily from movies, because a family member is a fan. Book Lovers has a metafiction thing going on, with the main character recognizing the cliches of the romance genre and assigning roles to the people around her. She, herself, is the evil city woman girlfriend in romances. Loved that. In spite of this, there was a lot of romance stuff going on that romance readers should like. I particularly liked how much the main character loved New York City, because the city is usually bad and country good in these kinds of stories. Henry is a good author to know about.

Short Stories

The Books of Losing You by Junot Diaz at The New Yorker. My first time reading Junot Diaz. I got the New Yorker subscription to read their on-line humor. That doesn't interest me much. It's exposing me to a wider variety of fiction writers, though. So huzzah for that.

The Closer You Were, The Less You Knew by Annie Dawid at Sequesterum. Right now Sequesterum may be my favorite literary journal. You have to subscribe to read entire short stories, but you can do so for just a few months, which seems very outside the box to me. Sometimes I find literary journals...difficult...beyond me. The things I've read at Sequesterum are sophisticated stories I can understand. The Closer You Were, The Less You Knew deals with a family experiencing tragedy on 9/11/2001. But they've been experiencing tragedy for decades, even generations. It was something I never thought of before. Tragedy is all over extended families, even if it's not tragedy on a 9/11 magnitude. In this story, it comes on top of everything else.

Short Form

A Fishing Book From 1594 is Still One of the Most Sought-After by Nature Lovers by Lance R. Fletcher in A Boy and His Dog: Outdoor Americana As a general rule, I prefer reading about very old pieces of literature rather than reading the pieces of literature themselves. 

A Life of Neurodivergence: What We Thought About Paris Hilton Was All Wrong at LinkedIn? Not sure who wrote this or how I got to something at LinkedIn. It turns out that Paris Hilton has ADHD and writes about it in her 2023 memoir. We deal with ADHD in our family. I read about that.

How I Shifted From Pure Writing To Documenting Instead by Brendan Charles at The Writing Cooperative. Charles explains that he became more successful on Medium when he stopped writing "how to" articles and began writing "how I" articles. I think this relates to something I've seen going on on Medium all the time I've been there. Many people write and publish articles on things they don't actually know much about. In terms of writing about writing, I agree with Charles that most things I see on the subject on Medium have been done before. The articles appear to be researched, not the work of experienced writers discussing a craft they have experience with and knowledge of. In fact, I can recall reading a "how to/how I" Medium article once by someone who explained how many minutes he spent on-line researching a subject and then how many minutes he spent writing the article. The impression left was that his readers could do that with their writing, too. But writing about something you don't truly know about doesn't make for compelling reading.

Humor

I Miss the Good Old Days When You Could Go to a Website and Read It by Alex Baia at Slackjaw  What's funny about this is that the 'good old days' aren't all that old. Except for the readers who think they are.

I'm a Regular Guy Who's Sick of Being Villainized for My Secret Second Family by Caroline Horwitz in Frazzled. We're not supposed to feel a guy with a second family is being victimized. And guess what? We don't! 

The Weekend Writer: Some Virtual Writing Workshop Opportunities

You know how much I enjoy attending writing workshops by way of Zoom. Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio has announced its fall adult writing workshops, and, yes, you can attend them virtually. 

Why, yes, I have been to Thurber House. 

Why, yes, I have written about going to Thurber House.

Why, yes, I do have a Pinterest board about Thurber House.

Some Annotated Reading August 22

 Books

I read Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927, because I'm going to be visiting his home this fall. I have many thoughts about this book, which I may put into an essay. I will say that this thing leans heavily into telling instead of showing. Very, very heavily.

Short Stories

Chablis by Donald Barthelme in The New Yorker. I think this is the first thing by Donald Barthelme that I've read. I found it enjoyable, but I can't say I got it. I'm reading a book about art history, and I'm wondering now how necessary it is to get things.

My Poet Laureate Project

I keep forgetting that I'm reading poetry by all the poet laureates. Or, as they were called in the early days, consultants in poetry. I tried reading a few things by Robert Lowell, Consultant in Poetry in 1947 to 1948. I know he's a big-name writer. I didn't have a lot of time this past week, and his poems I sampled did not quickly grab me. I do admire Skunk Hour a bit, because it includes the name "L.L. Bean." 

Short Form Reading

The Radical Woman Behind Good-night Moon by  Anna Holmes in The New Yorker. I love reading about Margaret Wise Brown. Love it. So much great stuff in this article, which you won't be able to read, because it requires a subscription. Like the short story above

Nor will you be able to read Wendy Wasserstein's The Baby Who Arrived Too Soon, because it's also in The New Yorker. Published in 2000. Now, of course I know Wendy Wasserstein's name, because I don't live in a cave. But I've never seen any of her plays or, I believe, read anything she wrote. I don't love reading preemie stories, the way I love reading Margaret Wise Brown stories, but it's difficult for me to pass by one, especially if it appears to have a happy ending, which Wendy's does. I call her Wendy, because I, too, am a preemie mom. We sort of have a club. So I read Wendy's wonderful story, then I headed out to Google to see how things are going with her and Lucy. And I found that Wendy died in 2006. And you know what? I knew that. I read about it when it happened, because I don't live in a cave. But I didn't know we were both preemie moms then. Now I do.

Here's something you should be able to read: Helga Estby's Long, Long Walk Was Almost Lost to History by Shawn Vestal in The Spokesman Review. I stumbled upon Helga Estby's name, because I'm into the nineteenth century, particularly the 1890s. Also women.

I've heard of flaneurs before, but they came up again in that art history book I mentioned earlier. That led me to reading A Flaneur's Guide to Walking with Intention by Caleigh Alleyne in EnRoute. It's an interview with Erika Wilson who wrote a book about walking in the flaneurish way. I walk. I expect to be walking an extra amount next month. 

The Trad Wife Is a Myth--Historically, She Never Existed by Maria Cassano at The Virago. This confirms everything I think about this subject. 

Time Management Tuesday: Go Ahead And Shift Your Focus. You Can Do That. Also, I Wrote Some Introverted Humor.

 You Are an Introverted Parent was published last week at Frazzled. The piece was selected for  Medium's boosted program, which means I got additional marketing there and reached a higher audience. I am happy with the results in readership.

You Are an Introverted Parent is my seventh published piece of writing this year, equaling last year's publications and one less than the year before. I've published 35 pieces of various types of writing on Medium since I got with the program. That was about 4 years ago. Does 35 published pieces of work in 4 years seem like a lot to you? It seems like a lot to me. I'm afraid it seems like a great deal to my Facebook friends who have to endure all my announcements there whenever I publish something new.

How Much Time Does It Take To Write These Things, Anyway?

Here's the thing. A woman who started writing at Medium in January of this year sometimes publishes 20 articles a month there at various publications. Additionally, she started her own publication. She sometimes publishes several times a week or even more than once a day. Yes, when you're writing at that kind of speed, quality is going to be very up and down. I don't read everything she writes.

Nonetheless, from things I've read at Medium, the way to collect  followers--people who are Medium members and are interested in your work--is to publish as she is publishing, by which I mean a lot. She's not the only writer there who publishes several times a week and more. The writer I'm talking about has gathered 2.7 thousand followers in eight months. I've gathered 470 in four years. 

Almost every time I've published something on Medium, I've attracted a few new followers. When I get boosted, I attract more than a few. So, yes, publishing is how you build readership there. If you're thinking in terms of time management in that particular situation, you need to manage your time so you can do that.

Shift Your Focus To Short Form Work, Gail

Now, over the last four years I was working on a book, so that took a lot of time that I wasn't using for other kinds of writing. I've also wasted a lot of time querying agents about my book-length work. Both those things are over for now, and I will be focusing my time specifically on short-form work. So, yes, I will be writing more of it. That's what time management will be about for me for the immediate future.

Not short-form work just for Medium, though. I have two short stories out for consideration at other places right now. I'm working on something I'm going to submit elsewhere, too. I'm not a rapid writer, anyway. I came up with the idea for You Are an Introverted Parent, came up with an angle/voice for it, wrote it, and submitted it in just under a week. That is the speed of light for me. Between that more methodical, orderly, and obsessed with detail mindset (someone else said that about me) and submitting some work to other places, I'm never going to be publishing even weekly at Medium, forget about doing any more than that.

Writing differently than other people who publish there is no reason not to publish there, too.

Shifting Your Writing Focus Is Still Using Your Time For Writing

I frequently...by which I mean often...see people posting on Xitter in absolute despair because they can't find an agent or publisher for their book-length manuscript. They are considering quitting writing, because at this point in time they can't publish one particular type of writing. It's as if they don't even consider any other kind of writing. The book is all. The book is the dream, and if they can't achieve their dream, they're done.

They don't think about shifting their focus.

Some Annotated Reading August 8

Lots going on the week before last, including house guests. Last week was recovery. If you've ever read about introverts needing recovery, believe it. I was overwhelmed just from little things I needed to do to get work and life back on track. Too overwhelmed to do an annotated reading post, which appears to be one of the few things I do here these days.

Books

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West. I don't know how I found out about this, but it's terrific. I've read a number of books of essays by young women who are say, comedy people, and the essays are very memoirish things. From this book, it appears West is more of a witty social commentator. Her essays, even if they are personal essays, do what I believe personal essays are supposed to do...they move from the personal to the greater world. The meaning of "the witches are coming" title...wow. Lots of good stuff in this book. I'll be looking for more of her work. 

The Lemon by S. E. Boyd. I'm sure I came upon this one because it won this year's Thurber Prize. I had a little trouble getting into it, which was probably due to the point-of-view switches. They're always an issue for me. And I found the ending...not all that ending-like. But I suspect this book is more of a satire about celebrity than it is a story, and it was an enjoyable read between the beginning and the ending. 

About Humor

"One of the main inventors of the form": Bob Newhart's stand-up comedy mind unbuttoned" (I hate it when titles have no caps) by Melanie McFarland at Salon. McFarland quotes Marc Maron: "Newhart was part of a shift from rapid fire punchlines to methodical, contemplative comedy." This reminded me of my high school English teacher who said he didn't care for Bob Hope, because he just stood on a stage and told jokes. Probably the most significant thing I took away from my year with him.

Eating

An Ode To The Saltine Cracker by John DeVore at Medium. 1st. I don't actually know what good food writing is, but I enjoyed this very much. I don't eat saltines anymore, because I don't eat wheat, but one gluten free company makes something it calls "table crackers" that serves the purpose for me. This article left me feeling that perhaps crackers don't exist for soup, but that soup exists for crackers. 2nd. I just noticed that this article wasn't published at a Medium publication but directly by the author. Nonetheless, it did very well according to the number of claps and comments, which can be difficult to do without the help of a publication. Well, this author has nearly 140,000 followers. So he doesn't need a publication.  

Kamala Harris is reclaiming what it means to be a "woman in the kitchen" by Marin Scotten at Salon. I found this very interesting, because Harris has been in what you'd think would be a high-profile position for nearly four years and evidently has talked about cooking quite a bit. I am not a foodie by any means. Eating is more my interest, and while I had pretentions for cooking as an art years ago, I cook to sustain life now. Still, I do a little reading about cooking. In four years, the only thing I'd heard about Kamala Harris cooking was the story about her explaining how to cook a turkey while she was waiting for an interview to start. What's that about? Was the press not interested before the last two weeks, even though there are videos of her talking about cooking? Was I reading the wrong stuff? 

Humor

J.D. Vance's Least Favorite Movies and TV Shows by Caroline Horwitz at MuddyUm. I like repetition in humor, and I enjoyed the cat repetition here. 

I'd Like to Present an Argument Against Funeral Karaoke by Graham Techler at Points in Case. A very good example of incongruity humor.

After Playing Magic the Gathering with You, a Child, I Have Concluded That My Life is a Lie and I Probably Have Dementia by Dave Goldstein at Frazzled. Love the way the game leads the speaker to his life conclusions. Also, I've lived through Magic the Gathering and am now immersed in Pokemon. I'm going to point out that at Chez Gauthier those collectible card games are perceived as a guy thing. It's not that I, a woman, am intellectually too weak to play them. It's that I won't. 

More Humor For You

Priscilla du PreezCA on Unsplash

The humor piece I mentioned in my Friday Done post was published Friday night. Thank You for Reading Scripture During Our Church Service This Sunday was published at MuddyUm. MuddyUm is a new publication for me on the Medium platform.

This publication requires authors to include a "kicker," a sort of subject line above the title and subtitle. So that was new and quite easy to learn. Coming up with the subject line is probably more effort than technically creating it.

As usual, this humor piece has a back story. I did, indeed, have to read that passage at church and was quite...taken aback...by having to use the word "fornication" in church. Is it not a four-syllable word for a four-letter word? Ah, yeah, it is. But I got used to it. I'll probably just slip into a conversation one of these days, that's how cool I am with it.

Friday Done List

Interesting story: I did very little work last week (not to be confused with this week), because of family activities. I received three rejections that week, though, so I sort of was working while not doing much.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Week of July 21 Received two rejections, one for a short story and one for a short humor piece. 
• Week of July 28 Resubmitted the humor piece and submitted another short story.
• The site I submitted the humor piece to uses an "Automated Inspector" for initial, pre-acceptance editing. Not easy to deal with and somehow the humor piece was dropped from consideration, and I had to resubmit it and get more comments from the AI. A learning curve that may help me in the future, or may be a waste of time. 
• Week of July 28 Worked on one humor piece and started another.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to Agents (has turned into submitting any book length work to anyone)

• Week of July 21 Received rejection on Good Women
• Week of July 21 Took part in a new Xitter pitch event #smallpitch, pitches to small presses. Made 3 pitches for 2 books, for 6 pitches, overall. Which I count as 6 submissions and rejections. Got some interest from other writers, though, which was gratifying.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Week of July 28 Tried to do an Annotated Reading post, but did a little work on the new humor piece in the morning and went hiking in the afternoon. 

Friday Done List

 Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Some of you may recall a short story I talked about for months and months and months this year. Well, I submitted to a publication.
• I wondered all week what I should write next and finally started something this morning.
• Took a workshop at the Northwestern Summer Writers' Conference. No Passports or Visas Required: Imaginative Travel Writing with Faisal Mohyuddin. Because I'm going to be traveling later this year, I projected onto this project what I wanted to see, which was a travel writing workshop. It was not about travel writing. It was about researching places and working them into writing. I've done this kind of thing before, where I've signed up for something believing it was whatever I wanted it to be. This time, just as with the first time, the experience turned out very well. Excellent workshop and generative, in that I came away with some thoughts for three writing projects.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some blog posts. Still have to promote them.

I'm in a remarkably good mood this evening, even though I know that next week I'll be tied up most days with family fun. But I have a work plan. What little writing time I have will go to tinkering with the project I started this morning. Otherwise, I will spend what other time I can spare reading. Reading is good.

I love a plan.

Some Annotated Reading July 18

Finished Reading a Book!

Mrs. March by Virginia Feito was one of those books I read about, put on my library list, and by the time I got it, no longer recalled why I was interested in it. Usually that is a neat reading experience. This time I am very sorry I didn't read up on Mrs. March again before reading it. I read this as literary fiction about an unpleasant woman who is falling apart. The unnamed setting appears to be 1960s, upper class New York City, a time and group that always depresses me. I ended up skimming some sections and jumping to the end. 

I am sorry now.

After finishing the book, I did some reading about it and...it's a novel of psychological suspense!  I wasn't prepared for that when I started reading. So I missed what, in hindsight, I now believe were several references to Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, a novel of psychological suspense that Mrs. March is reading. And Rebecca is related to Jane Eyre, and I am so mmmm about Jane Eyre. I really regret not being better prepared for this book.

I am not a fan of reading books over again, but at some point in the future, I would like to reread this one. There's also going to be a movie.

An interesting point about Mrs. March, no matter how you read it: I don't see how anybody could find Mrs. March a likable character. And that blows the whole "your protagonist must be likeable" thing right out of the water.

Short Story

Though I have a digital subscription to The New Yorker, I haven't been reading many of the short stories, which is, I'm sure, my loss. I only read So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, which originally appeared in The New Yorker in 2022, because Peter Hoppock did what the Off Campus Writers' Workshop calls a craft element program about it for them. Oh, my gosh. An incredible story by an author I had never heard of but whose work I'll be looking for now. I signed up for Hoppock's program, couldn't attend, but read the material he collected in which Keegan talked about her writing. A great reading/study experience.

An interesting point: as with Mrs. March, the main character in So Late in the Day is not a likable character. 

Other Things

A family member posted a poem on Facebook by Aliza Grace, a writer I'd never heard of, that packed a bit of a punch. So I looked Grace up, by which, of course, I mean I googled her. Holy Smokes! TikTok's Hottest Gen Z Poet Accused of Blatant Plagiarism by Darshita Goyal at The Daily Beast. A number of years ago, I read of something similar happening with books. While this is not the worst thing in the world that can happen, it is disturbing that it appears these people can't be stopped. There is plagiarism and then, yes, there is blatant plagiarism.

The Lion and Me by John Lahr in the New Yorker is one of those older articles (1998) I enjoy reading when I stumble upon them.

Humor

I Quit Murdering People for 7 Days. Here's What Happened by Philip S. Naudus at Jane Austen's Wastebasket. I love the title of this thing. It is soooo close to titles we've all seen. Over and over again.

The Shirley Jackson Awards Announced. And A Dip Into The Archives For My 2008 Trip To Readercon.

Yes, indeed, The Shirley Jackson Awards have been announced. The awards are for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." As a Jane Eyre fan, I'm particularly interested in The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word by Laura Blackwell. The awards were presented at this past weekend's Readercon.

Seeing that reference to Readercon reminded me that I once went to Readercon. Yeah, this was back in 2008, and evidently I went primarily because I needed to get out of the house and this was easy for me to get to. There were also a number of YA authors there that year. 

I had an interesting experience there, and, yes, it doesn't take a lot to interest me. The interesting experience may say a lot more about me than it does about anyone or anything else. I found rereading my blog post abut it so interesting that I decided to republish it.

July 23, 2008 Aren't You Just Dying To Hear My Story? 

The Archives. Get it?

Okay, so I'm back in town with weekend junk heaped up all around me and even further behind in life than I was last week. But I always have time to pass on my experiences,  so here's the Readercon story I promised you Saturday:

So, I was attending this panel discussion during which the panelists were all going to discuss this book on different types of fantasy. The moderator immediately announces that the book is just wonderful. "You must have this book," he told us and said it would be offered for sale later and we mustn't leave Readercon without it. Then he asks the panelists to introduce themselves. It sounds as if most of them know the author of the book because they all refer to her by her first name.

The last panelist to speak concludes with, "I must say, this is the most poorly edited book I've read in years. It reads as if it had been edited with spellcheck. Be forewarned" and other things of that nature.

Then the moderator acts as if nothing had happened and goes on. He was well prepared and commented on various aspects of the book after which he asked the panelists to respond. Every single time, this same panelist would say something like, "I wish _____ had covered such-and-such a thing" or "I wish_________ hadn't been so judgmental" or "I wish__________ had covered humor."

She wasn't getting a lot of support from the other panelists, but no one was arguing with her, either. Though I have to admit that there was this one guy who I think was some kind of critic, as in Critic, and I couldn't understand eighty percent of what he was saying. He seemed extremely nice, though, so he might have been arguing with Ms. Negativity, and I just couldn't understand him.

I'm finding this all rather odd and uncomfortable making. I start looking around at other members of the audience to see if others are squirming in their seats. I was sitting in the fourth row from the front, so I couldn't see everybody by any means. Still, no one seemed to be laughing nervously or looking shocked.

Finally, the panelist from Hell starts in about how she wished_________ had covered something or other. A voice comes out from the audience, "It was in the section on ___________, Marie!" And the panelist backed right down.

Marie is not her real name by the way.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, the audience member who finally stood up to her was none other than the author, herself. I know this because I turned to look (figuring that since I didn't know anybody there, it didn't matter if every single one of them thought I was rude, which, yes, was just awful of me), caught a glimpse of her, and saw her and her name tag a couple of hours later out in the hallway.

I found this whole episode rather disturbing. First off, I've never seen a public pounding like this at any of the kidlit events I've attended. Or any of the other literary events I've dropped in on. I know I don't get out much, but still. The second thing that freaks me out about this is that no one else seemed to think anything at all unusual was going on. When I have told this story to acquaintances, they are quite taken aback. Well, except for the people this past weekend who were bored. I've googled this subject and checked other blogs. Lots of references to Readercon, one from a person who attended the same panel, but no one even mentioned this particular situation.

So I wonder if this kind of thing goes on all the time at some types of conferences, and the more experienced Readercon attendees thought nothing of it. Or, perhaps this is the kind of thing that a gentlewoman should pretend she didn't notice, and here I am spilling the unsavory story for the whole world to see.

Another New Humor Publication. And This One Has a Really Interesting Backstory. With a Moral.

The college paper 

Today Jane Austen's Wastebasket published my latest humor piece, Does "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear Support Our Community's Values? Now, I know that I think everything I write has an interesting backstory, and I am always right about that. But this is a particularly good story.

Last month, I started to clean out my writing files, thinking I would get rid of old starts that I'm not interested in anymore to make more room in the filing cabinet for new work. I didn't get far because the first thing I found was my notebook from my college expository writing class. So, of course, I have to look through it. And what do I find but something called "The Subversive Aspects of The Owl And The Pussycat:  Including A Discussion Of Its Influences On Youth, Sexual Mores, And Society As A Whole."

Now this was a redneck kid's attempt to write a parody of an academic paper, something she didn't know a whole lot about even though she was, indeed, a college undergraduate. The piece is also now very dated, claiming the Owl and the Pussycat's guitar was an influence on a generation of folksingers and the dancing on the edge of the sand at the end "inspired a whole flock of C beach movies." But at the time the instructor was kind.

More importantly, I looked at this thing last month and said to myself, "You can do something with this."

What I did was reframe it and bring it up to date. It is no longer a parody of an academic paper but a parody of a book complaint to a librarian. Instead of hitting on folksingers and movies, it hits on religion and gay couples. The only carry overs from the original are the concerns about money and the Owl and the Pussycat being alone together while unmarried. Money and pre-marital sex are timeless.

I didn't get far with my file cleaning, because I found two more manuscripts I think I can rework for a humor piece and an essay. One is from the graduate-level essay writing class I took a long time ago, and I don't know how long ago I wrote the other one. I have the typed manuscript. It's probably from a couple of computers back and saved somewhere if I only knew where to find it.

I promised you a moral. It's a moral for writers. Never throw away work. 

Some Annotated Reading July 11

 Books

I whipped through two Regency romances this week, which shall remain nameless, because except for the sex scenes (especially in the first book), I don't have a lot of good things to say about them. As a teenager, I read Regency romances, mainly Georgette Heyer who may have been pretty much all there was at that point. During college I read them during exam week. As an adult, though, I lost interest in traditional romance, mainly, I think, because the ending of a romance is never in doubt. Not much is at stake in those stories. (This is why in the Bridgerton TV world my favorite series has been Queen Charlotte, the only show with stakes beyond when the main characters will have sex, which is no stakes at all, because we all know they will.) What I do read is historical mysteries that feature a couple as the leads, said couples always, over the course of a series, eventually ending up in bed together. I prefer these books to be set in the nineteenth century. Many of them appear to be well researched and often feature some particular historical event or figure, or the culture of a period is a significant backdrop for the story. 

Yeah, the two books I just read had none of that. The author was recommended by an agent in an article I read, and I was able to easily get a couple of her books. All the characters were incredibly good looking, and in each book there are two characters lusting desperately after one another who are kept apart for far-fetched reasons. It turns out that that is not enough for me. I need a dead body. Maybe a few of them.

Live and learn. Or perhaps I should say, read and learn.

Humor

Dining With Us Tonight? by Neil Offen at Muddyum What makes this funny is not the parodies of pretentious menu items. That's been done before. The humor is in the asides, which are not pretentious. "...grown by local farmers who have never knowingly used chemically enhanced hand sanitizers before digging up their lettuce" "For dessert, our pastry chef has concocted a special panna cotta sorbet tiramisu dulce de leche because we've run out of English words on the menu."

After Twenty Years I Have Decided to Wear My Good Underwear by Anne Kyzmir at The Belladonna Comedy. I have so much good underwear.

Iconic Movies Reimagined In A World That Embraces Incontinence by Tobi Pledger also at The Belladonna Comedy. No, enjoying this piece does not say something distasteful about me. Even though I liked it the same week I liked that underwear thing.

Friday Done List

 Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Have nearly completed a draft of a new humor piece.
  
• Have read some other Medium authors.
• Found another old piece in the files that I have plans for.
• Signed up for a Northwestern Zoom workshop on travel writing.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to Agents

• This goal has turned into just submitting any book length work. I submitted a middle grade novel to an agent opening this month for SCBWI members. It hadn't gone out for a couple of years, so I had to revise the letter. Additionally, the form for this submission makes more of comp titles than many agents do, so I had to spend some time coming up with one. Flavia de Luce!

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Two blog posts, including this one.
• Promoted the first post.

Some Annotated Reading July 4

I spent my Fourth of July reading on my deck. First time in years I could give a whole day to reading, starting out there first thing in the morning still in my favorite nightgown. Didn't get through as much as
I thought I would, but a good reading day, and reading week, nonetheless. 

Books

While I liked Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin, I'm hard put to describe it, myself. An anxious and depressed young woman struggles to find a reason to keep living when there is so much misery around her? With some dark laughs? (There are some.)  The publisher does a better job with the description: "...a morbidly anxious young woman stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church and soon finds herself obsessed with her predecessor's mysterious death." Gilda's anxiety is intense. 

This week I finished reading How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis. I think an argument could be made that this book isn't really, or at least just, about keeping house. I may feature this in a Time Management Tuesday post. I read an ebook edition I got through my library, and I was on a waiting list for it for a year. I'm ordering a copy for a family member.

Today I finished These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. I love historian Jill Lepore, and this book is fantastic. I did spend a few years reading it, though, because my go-to reading is fiction. I read this in the car when someone else was driving and while waiting in doctors' offices. This was worth every minute of my life that I spent on it.

Poetry 

I was doing some research for a new humor piece when I came upon February by Margaret Atwood. Liked it much better than I remember liking her poetry in college. But this is from a book published long after I was in college, so maybe she was doing different kinds of poetry by then. And maybe she's doing still different kinds now.

Because I read that Margaret Atwood poem, I remembered my poet laureate project and looked up the next poet laureate to check out. I'm up to number 5, Karl Shapiro, who was still referred to as a consultant in poetry. Among his poems that I liked were Buick (Yes, it's a poem about a car.) and Ballade of the Second-Best Bed, which should be assigned to every high school kid having to read Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet, because it gives Shakespeare a little more interest than I remember him having when I had to read those things.  

Short Reading

The Time I Stole Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York and Couldn't Stop Reading It by Elwin Cotman at Lit Hub. I was drawn to this because I'd just found my copy of Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York, and I could stop reading it.

Quince Mince Pie | Owl and the Pussycat  at InLiterature. Yes, I've been doing some reading about The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear, and here is an attempt at a pie made from "mince and slices of quince."

Excerpts from The Space Between by Herb Harris at Craft. This is an editors' choice selection from a memoir excerpt and essay contest. I believe there are others, but this is the only one I've read. Definitely enjoyed it. 

Humor

Frazzled has started accepting humorous essays. Oops...I Neglected to Bring My Son to Preschool Art Night by Brad Snyder is a good one. It has a bit of a memoirish thing going. 

Friday Done List June 28

 Okay. We're talking a better work week here.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• A new humor piece was published on Tuesday. 
  
• Promoted said humor piece.
• Started another humor piece.
• Have some other ideas for short writing.
• Started cleaning old files where I found a couple of things that were supposed to be humor--of sorts--back in the day, and might evolve into more humor now.

Goal 2. Submit 143 Canterbury Road to Agents

• I am done with the agent search for 143 and happy to have it behind me. Unless something drops into my lap, of course. I'll submit again in that case.
• I made two submissions for another project, Good Women. I am also through submitting that, unless something drops into my lap.
• One of the agents rejected it in just 24 hours. That makes me feel she must not have a lot to do, if she can get respond that quickly.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• I did four blog posts this week.
• I promoted some of those blog posts.

Goal 4. Nineteenth Century Novel, Which is Just for Fun

• Organized some research links I've been emailing myself on this.

Some Annotated Reading June 27

While I didn't do much writing last month, I did do a bit of reading. Including:

Four Books!

• My cousin Nooch mentioned author Jess Walter in a comment a while back, so last month I read his The Financial Lives of the Poets, a book about a man's marriage and life falling apart. Walter has a dark, deadpan sense of humor that I enjoyed very much. 
• The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older. This is my favorite kind of scifi, a blend of science fiction and mystery. The world of the book I totally understood, which is not something that always happens for me with science fiction. The two main characters reminded me of Holmes and Watson, except that they are both women and the Watson character here is a great deal smarter than the original. They also have a romantic history. There's a second book I hope to read at some point.
• I finished reading The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories by Roch Carrier. In an earlier post, I speculated that these were children's stories, with a child narrator and often a moral point of some kind. I wouldn't say that anymore. I'd like to do more reading about les contes, the kinds of stories Carrier is known for writing, but I'm not finding much in my quick hunt for material. 
• Finally, I read a thriller that shall remain nameless. It plodded along and was extremely improbable. Yet I read nearly every word.

Short Writing

• Author Cass Sunstein Unlocks What It Takes to Be as Big as the Beatles  A terrific interview with the author of a new book, How to Become Famous, which also sounds as if it could be terrific.
• The Moral Judgements of Henry David Thoreau by Kathryn Schulz at The New Yorker. This is nearly ten years old, and I read it nearly a month ago, so I can't tell you how I came to do that. I've had a very up and down reading experience with Thoreau. I've mentioned him many times over the years here at Original Content, and he gets a line in my most recent humor piece. He is, in short, one of many, many authors I enjoy reading about more than I enjoy reading. Schulz sounds as if she has mixed feelings about him, too. While I was reading what she had to say about Walden, I recalled reading that book and thinking at many points that he had to be joking. Probably not.
• Book Recommendations Based on Your Favorite TV Shows by Kailey Hansen at Buzzfeed. I like this concept, and saw a couple of books I may try. And one I've read.
• Ursula K. Leguin's Home Will Become A Writers Residency by Hillel Italie at AP. I love authors' homes. And I have a bit of a thing for Ursula K. Leguin.
• The Baby in the Corner by Anne Moul at The Delmara Review/The Talbot Fry. I am not a big fan of painful memoir, but this is almost more philosophical than painful. After having just skimmed it again, I wonder if it was, indeed, what the author was going for and not just Gail's perception.
• How Chicago Inspires Writers: Abby Geni and the Lakeshore at The Chicago Review of Books. I read this, because Abby Geni was the leader of a workshop I took recently at the Off Campus Writers' Workshop. It inspired me to think of whether or not Connecticut has inspired me. And I believe it has, but I may save those thoughts for an essay some day. But I will say, it involves Puritans.

Humor

•  I'd Like to Discuss My Child Specifically While You're Trying to Address a Group of People by Caroline Horwitz at Frazzled. Sometimes you'll hear talk about humor needing to be true. While I think you can make too much of that, this piece is definitely a case of truth in humor. That first situation Horwitz uses? I was in a room full of people while something just like that was going on. As God is my witness, I wasn't the mother doing the talking.
• Things I Grew Up With That Seem Weird....Today by Patrick Metzger at MuddyUm This is a very funny spin on those old fart articles about how things were different when I was young. What makes it work is the total lack of nostalgia. "...drunk driving was popular and largely ignored." This writer deserves the 6,000+ claps he got for this piece just for calling Hawkeye Pierce a sanctimonious alcoholic.

A New Humor Publication. With A Bear.

June has been a rough month for me as far as work is concerned. I spent a week celebrating a birthday with a family member. Then there were a number of days of preparation for John the Baptist Day. Then there was some this, and there was some that. 

But I did have a humor piece accepted for publication. Things I Don't Want to Hear from My Hiking Group was published this morning at Greener Pastures Magazine.

This piece as an interesting backstory. But, then, I think everything I write has an interesting backstory. But this one really does!

1. It began when I would do "Things You Don't Want to Hear on the Trail" posts on Facebook after my husband and I had been hiking.

2. Greener Pastures suggested I make some changes in the original submission, including coming up with a different title. (A truly excellent idea. I'll spare you why. Take my word for it.) Between the time I first submitted the bit and the time I revised it, my husband and I came upon our first bear while hiking. The thing was actually coming toward us on the trail. That is why there is now a bear joke in this piece. Originally there was no bear reference. 

3. My husband worked on the first draft with me, since our exchanges on the trail inspired it. At one point he was looking at what I had and said, "How about X?" "No, no," I said. "Y would be funnier." 

I then told him that we sounded like Ava and Deborah on Hacks. Which led to a discussion of which of us was Ava and which was Deborah. To be clear, at my house I am Deborah. If Deborah spent most of her life in sweatpants.

"We Talk French Here." A John the Baptist Day Post.

Today is the real John the Baptist Day, a holiday in Canada celebrating francophone language and culture. (It's observed in other French countries as well.) I say it is the real John the Baptist Day, because our family, which has only been observing it for five or six years, did so on Saturday, not the real day, with a cookout. 

Mes pauvres galettes

Part of our celebration of French culture was the Galettes a la Melasse Moelleuses a L'Ancienne I made. From a French recipe. Which I did not translate, except for the occasional word. Like moelleuses, which means "soft." I threw away all but three of those cookies yesterday. I have no idea how they tasted, because I have a gluten free batch for me. Next year I want a bonfire. I've heard that's a very John the Baptist Day thing to do, and we could try making s'mores for dessert. That whole scenario might go over better. 

John the Baptist Day was quite an event in nineteenth century Montreal. Not so much the south of New England today or maybe anywhere else in the U.S. How little interest is there in this holiday? There's Not Going To Be A St. John The Baptist Day Parade This Year, Eli is among my very least read pieces on the Medium platform. People on bed rest won't read this thing.

Some John the B Day Reading

As part of my personal John the Baptist Day observance, I've been reading The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories by Roch Carrier, a French Canadian writer. Carrier is a prolific author, including work for children. I haven't finished this book yet, but these stories may be children's stories (a child narrator, certainly), similar to the Soup books by Robert Newton Peck. Both portray child life in the past, though my superficial reading about the authors suggests Carrier's writing may be more authentic. (Excusez-moi while I pause to say I've always had major issues with the claims that Peck's nonSoup book, A Day No Pigs Would Die, is autobiographical or even semi-autobiographical, because of the Shakers-in-Vermont element. In short, they weren't.)

An encyclopedia.com article says (and I've seen this elsewhere) that Carrier is best known for writing le conte, or very short stories, which is what the stories in the collection I'm reading are. When I first saw this, I thought, Quoi? Are we talking French Canadian flash fiction? The encyclopedia.com article says of his work, "In a few hundred words a grotesque situation is exploited, a miniature moral is drawn, and an ironic commentary on human foibles is neatly and forcefully made." I would add that there are also sometimes some minor fantasy elements. Flash fiction? Northern magical realism?

The miniature moral aspect of some of these stories is my least favorite part. However, I'm liking the way the stories are set in a French-speaking world in an unspecified past. I'm not interested in anything like nostalgia, but the issue of the parents' concerns over English being taught and what the Anglais who runs Eatons will think make these things pop for me. 

The story The Hockey Sweater is supposed to be a huge deal in both French- and English-speaking Canada. I may have to read it again. So far What Language Do Bears Speak?, which I quote in my post title, is my favorite. 

Since I'm focusing my own writing on short work now, reading these short stories and reading about le conte has been, and will continue to be, thought-provoking. I like to think it could have some impact on my work.

UPDATE: When I promoted this post on X, I saw how beloved the short story The Hockey Sweater (there is also a picture book version) is and how well-known Roch Carrier is in Canada. So I decided I should try to figure out how to pronounce his name. I stumbled upon the man himself speaking, explaining how it's said.