Friday Done List March 13

I spent two days this week with family. Then two hours on the phone with family business. Not my best work week. No, I don't know what was my best work week. Perhaps it's still in my future.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor 

• Have nearly finished a revision of my Pedal Pusher post for an essay submission. 
• Worked on revising a book chapter into a short story. Definitely an interesting experience. Because a short story is a short story and a book chapter is a book chapter. We're talking two different animals.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Mainly I've just been continuing to take part in BlueSky's 30-Day Women Writer Challenge in which you post a book you've read by a woman writer, no particular order, no commentary. Got a lot of attention for posting an old book by Joyce Carol Oates. No new followers.
• Though I'm also close to being done with a Reading History post for a book publishing next month. I think I worked on that earlier this week. But who knows?

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Get this--an agent who posted her Manuscript Wish List to BlueSky's MSWL event isn't accepting submissions until next month. She's just screwing with us.

The Reading History Project: "Pedal Pusher" by Mary Boone. Watch Out for Women on Bikes!

Pedal Pusher: How One Woman's Bicycle Adventure Helped Change the World  by Mary Boone with illustrations by Lisa Anchin is a great subject for Women's History Month. For a couple of reasons.

Women on Bikes Were a Big Deal in the Late Nineteenth Century

First off, Pedal Pusher is described as a picture book biography, though it only deals with one period in Annie Cohen Kopchovsky's life. Kopchovsky was the first women to ride a bicycle around the world in 1894-95. Nowadays, this seems like a kind of meaningless stunt. And it may have been a stunt then, too. But bicycling was part of a cultural change for women, giving them more ability to get around and leading to changes in how they dressed, which was far more than just fashion. Kopchovsky represents all that.

I wonder, too, if she represents nineteenth century public relations and self-promotion. Kopchovsky seems to have been very adept at raising money for the trip by signing pictures and giving lectures as she traveled. Boone raises the question of whether or not Kopchovsky was one hundred percent accurate/truthful in her talks. Was she creating an Annie Cohen Kopchovsky for public consumption/sale?  

Which leads me to wonder about another aspect of the Annie Cohen Kopchovsky story. She was a Latvian Jewish immigrant at a time "when prejudice against Jewish people was widespread," as Boone tells readers. Soon after she began her trip, she temporarily changed her name to Londonderry in exchange for a donation from the Londonderry Spring Water Company. She appears as Annie Londonderry in the newspaper quotes Boone provides at the end of the book.

Would public interest have been as great in Kopchovsky if she had used her own name?

Pedal Pusher is a great introduction to its subject. But I want more! I want a movie! I want a Netflix limited series! 

Oh, But There is More

I bought a copy of Pedal Pusher, because I'm interested in the era involved and still have young people around who might read it. But what brought the book to my attention last October was an opinion piece author Mary Boone wrote for The Seattle Times. (I may have stumbled upon it on BlueSky.)

In it, Boone describes how during last year's Women's History Month, the Tacoma Children's Museum invited her to lead two story times about Pedal Pusher. She ran the first program at its downtown location, but the second was going to be held at the museum's site on Joint Base Lewis-McChord. A Federal site. And that one was cancelled four days before the event.

Boone was told "it violated the administration's executive order restricting so-called "radical" Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across federal institutions." 

Hmm. Could that be Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History she's talking about, since that specifically includes federal sites? The one covered here at Original Content back at the beginning of February? 

I have questions.

• If the story hour was cancelled because of Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, is there a claim here that the book isn't true? Annie Cohen Kopchovsky wasn't the first woman to ride a bicycle around the world? I'm not touching the sanity issue. I don't even know what it means in the context of the executive order.
• Otherwise, what was "radical" about the book? It was about a woman? It was about a Jew? It was about a Jewish woman who did something successfully? 
• Or I could phrase that a different way: It wasn't about a man? It wasn't about a Christian? It wasn't about a Christian man who did something successfully?

The Power of One Voice

I have a long history of obsessing on the wrong point in a story, and I am probably about to do that right now. In her article about the cancellation of her appearance Boone writes, "Someone complained when they saw my story time being promoted."  "... museum staff later suggested the event might have gone forward if it hadn't been advertised." 

This program was cancelled because one person heard about it and complained? Now, on the one hand, that's a very positive thing, isn't it? It suggests that any one of us can complain and have an impact. We can get the ball rolling to take attention away from books we object to.

But doesn't it also suggest that any one of us can have an impact by speaking out in support of and bringing attention to books we appreciate? Which is what I'm trying to do here.

One voice can make a difference. Imagine the kind of difference many voices could make.

Pardon me while I leave to spread the word about Pedal Pusher on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads. 

Friday Done List March 6

Life got ahead of work this week, meaning I was tied up most of Monday and today and feeling a certain amount of frustration about that. And that, folks, is why a done list has such value. When I collect my thoughts about what I actually did this week, I see that I accomplished more than I felt I had. 

Not that much actual writing, though.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor 

• Started something totally new and flash-like in my journal. 
• Have nearly finished a blog post that will then become an essay submission.
• Made a short story submission. Interesting story here: I saw on BlueSky yesterday that a journal I'd heard of and been following had opened for a brief period, which it does at the beginning of every month. Hmm, I thought. I must check this out. So I checked it out...at my marketing spreadsheet where I keep track of publications I like and want to submit to. I had done some reading of this particular journal, liked what I'd seen, and even had identified a short story I wanted to submit to it. The marketing spreadsheet is working! May not result in publications, but, otherwise, it's working. 

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Published a blog post last weekend. It was about an ADHD book, a subject that interests me, written by a long-time Facebook friend, giving me an opportunity to support another writer. 
• Promoted that blog post on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads.
• Continued taking part in BlueSky's 30-Day Women Writer Challenge in which you post a book you've read by a woman writer, no particular order, no commentary. 
• Attended a Zoom author presentation. The author involved is Dana Stabenow. It was an excellent conversation between Stabenow and a librarian very knowledgeable about mysteries, which is what Stabenow writes. It left me discouraged, not because Stabenow is far more successful than I am. That kind of thing truly doesn't bother. I write for the sake of the writing, grabbing what publication I can. What bothered me is that Stabenow is able to do so much more than I can, successful or not. Oh, well. Move on.

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Made one of the three book submissions I planned to make this week. One of the submissions I decided not to do. The third one I'll get to next week. This submission, along with the short story submission I made, means I've already met my goal of two submissions a month for March. On average, I've done more than two a month so far this year.

A Lesson On Finding Lost Things That We Can All Use

I dabble in reading fiction that includes ADHD characters, so I got a copy of D.L. Green's CJ Baker Mover and Shaker: The Mystery of the Missing Book. (Debra is a Facebook friend from way back.) This is an early reader from Capstone Publishing, an educational publisher, so it is instructive fiction, so to speak.

The book includes a four-step process for finding lost things, and IT WORKS! I used it last night to find my box of straight pins. I only had to go to the second step. Sadly, I didn't think to do this until the pins were lost for two hours, and by then, it was time to go to bed.

I was pretty amazed, nonetheless.

Capstone published four CJ Baker books last year, all written by Debra, all coming out at the same time. They may each have some kind of coping lesson.

Because I don't read a great deal of fiction that's written to overtly teach something, I can't address how well that is done here. But the basic, very short story is complete, and the program for finding lost objects being taught makes sense in the context of the story.

And the program works. Assuming I can remember to use it.

Friday Done List February 27

So, we had a blizzard last weekend. Lost power for 90 minutes. That led to a heat problem for a little while. I had to shovel snow a couple of times. Had a decent workweek in spite of all that.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor 

• New essay, The Reading History Project: The "Our" in "Our Shared History" was published at Books Are Our Superpower.
• Worked a bit on revising a chapter into a short story.
• Cleaned some files while the power was out and determined that I had some work that was not going anywhere and threw it away. This is a good thing.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Promoted The "Our" in "Our Shared History" on Facebook and BlueSky
• Wrote a Story Behind the Story post for the above essay and published it here on Original Content.
• Wrote a new Reading History Project post.
• Wrote still another blog post. 
• Promoted all the blog posts. 
• Continued taking part in BlueSky's 30-Day Women Writer Challenge in which you post a book you've read by a woman writer, no particular order, no commentary. I did one of these soon after I joined BlueSky. It was fun and gathered me a few followers. This has led to me breaking 400 followers on BlueSky. In case you're wondering, I've been on BlueSky for something like 15 months and just broke 400 followers, which is maybe a third or less of what I had on Twitter. 
• Signed up to attend a Zoom author presentation next week. The author involved is Dana Stabenow, who I've never heard of. But she's promoting a mystery set in the nineteenth century, and I can watch her without changing my clothes or leaving my house, so I'm in.

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Yesterday the Manuscript Wish List people ran an event on BlueSky that involved agents posting material they're looking for. I have the names of three agents I'll be submitting to next week.

Goal 4. Begin Some Writing on the 19th Century Novel Idea

• Worked thirty minutes on this.

Using My Blog as a Writing Journal is Probably Not a Good Idea

Winter forest bathing?

Yesterday I threw out an idea here about starting to use this blog as a writers' journal, a place to work on preliminary writing and drafts.

"...if you go back to the early days of lit blogging," I said, "writers sometimes did use blogs as journals. Even writing journals for experimenting with writing." 

It seemed like an artie bloggie thing to do, to say nothing of being time and energy efficient.

"It would be a multiplier," I said, "one action that meets two goals."

I've Thought Better of That 

Then I remembered that many literary journals consider material used in blogs as "published" and will not consider it for publication themselves. The Medium platform accepts previously published work. In fact, it appears that some people there publish the same things on Medium publications and their private Substacks.

So, there's no issue with me starting something here, revising it, and submitting it to a Medium publication. I could even just submit this post you're reading right now as is. (UPDATE: 3/10/26. This appears to be the case at Medium overall. Individual publications may have different guidelines, however. And they may change their guidelines, as is the case here, if you scroll down far enough. Another version is a best bet.) 

But most of the other places I submit to, no. I am not confident that even just working on something here and refining it elsewhere would be acceptable in those cases.

Why, Yes, I Am Obsessing About This

Nonetheless, I won't be working here on the winter forest bathing essay idea I came up with after posting about the subject on Facebook yesterday. Posting on Facebook is also considered publishing by some publications, by the way. 

This situation inspired a writing idea, but I won't say anything about it. I've got to go write it down in my private writer's journal, the one you don't see.

The Story Behind the Story: A Second Version That Refines a Concept

The Reading History Project: The "Our" in "Our Shared History" was published at Books Are Our Superpower on Monday. This was a combination and revision of two of my Original Content Reading History Project posts--"Thinking About History" by Sarah Maza and What I'll Be Reading in 2026. I wanted this essay to be an introduction to The Reading History Project and to cover Thinking About History, as well as a couple of other books while I was at it.

I did this type of rewrite regularly last year. I started with a blog post about a book I'd read for The Heritage Month Project and then did a second draft to create a newish essay to submit to BAOS. What I found was that the second draft often ended up being at least somewhat different and sometimes having a much different focus.

A Different Focus Tightens Up My Reading Plan for the Year

That was definitely the case with The Reading History Project: The "Our" in "Our Shared History."  While I do raise the question of "who is the "our" in "our shared history" in the blog post, I don't focus on exploring the "our" in "our shared history" with my reading until I get to the revision. That will most definitely change my thinking about what I read this year and how I write about it. 

In the original blog posts, I also write about reading as "activism." But in the revised essay, I write about advocacy, instead. Activism, to me, seems sort of vague. But advocating for the groups I read about is much more specific and will have an impact on my thinking and writing.

So What's Happening Here?

Using the same material or research in different ways is a traditional method of working for writers. You do a fictional treatment, you do an essay, you do an adult book, you do a children's book, all with the same basic idea or research. 

For my material to evolve the way it does between blog and essays means someone can read both versions and come away with something different. I'm good with that.

On the other hand, I feel as if I'm using the blog to publish first drafts. When I first realized this was happening last year, I was somewhat uncomfortable because, as I said, I felt as if I was publishing first drafts. 

However, if you go back to the early days of lit blogging, writers sometimes did use blogs as journals. Even writing journals for experimenting with writing. 

Now I'm wondering if I can do even more of that here. It would provide me with original content for the blog, but also material that could be used elsewhere. It would be a multiplier, one action that meets two goals. 

I will play with that idea.

The Reading History Project: "Destiny of the Republic" by Candice Millard

 I am writing today about Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard even though I haven't read it. What I did do was watch Death by Lightening the Netflix limited series based upon it. The series is marvelous.

Both book and series deal with the assassination of President James Garfield, who is just a name to most of us, because he was shot a few months after his inauguration, lingering on for a while thereafter. In Death by Lightening Garfield is portrayed as an incredibly decent man. Charles Guiteau, his killer, is tragically unbalanced. Chester A. Arthur turns up, which was a surprise because I didn't know he was Garfield's vice-president. Here he is shown as realizing he's a pretty lousy character, but a lousy character with a shred of human decency.

Death by Lightening was well-reviewed when it was released.  I don't know how well it did as far as attracting viewers is concerned. The fact that we know how the story ends could have discouraged some people. I must admit I've never seen Titanic, because, well, everyone knows the ship sinks.

This story, as good as it is, might be just that, a good historical story. But the TV series does link its ending to something bigger than a tragic tale. Garfield has an interest in dealing with the patronage system used in his day but dies long before he can do so. After Chester A. Arthur becomes president, he does do something about it. 

Destiny of the Republic is also very well-reviewed. I've read it may cover more about Chester A. Arthur, with whom I am now a bit obsessed, and it may include more of the political repercussions of Garfield's death.

I suspect reading it is somewhere in my future.

Friday Done List February 20

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor 

• Finished an essay on the Reading History Project.
• Submitted the essay on the Reading History Project. 
• Did a very little work on a scifi short story.
• Took what was one of the two worst Zoom writing workshops I've ever encountered. The last writing prompt for it gave me an idea I'm liking though.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Taking part in BlueSky's 30-Day Women Writer Challenge in which you post a book you've read by a woman writer, no particular order, no commentary. I did one of these soon after I joined BlueSky. It was fun and gathered me a few followers.
• Started updating a section of my website.
• Am now considering just redoing the entire website.
• Renewed my SCBWI membership even though I do no children's writing now. I do still have some children's book manuscript, one of which I submitted to an agent last month.

Goal 4. Begin Some Writing on the 19th Century Novel Idea

• Did some scene work. 

Friday Done List February 13

I am trying a new daily organizational plan to deal with my body falling apart, as bodies do, and it's worked great these first few days. I feel as if I've worked more, though not much new writing, and my desk is the cleanest it's been in ... maybe a year? Also ended up unexpectedly organizing a shelf. 

No, of course, this isn't going to last.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I Was an '80s Tradwife was published last weekend.
• Submitted the yogurt essay.
• How Much Would My Spiritual Ancestors Have Spent to Save Some Yogurt (the yogurt essay) was published at Tastyble. I spent some time editing this piece, because Tastyble does real editing of their submissions, unlike almost any publication I've dealt with on Medium. One editor, in particular, is very impressive, and I greatly appreciate her work.  
• Finished a The History Reader post and published it here at Original Content.
• Began revising the first two History Reader posts to create an essay to submit.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Promoted I Was an '80s Tradwife on Facebook and BlueSky
• Promoted How Much Would My Spiritual Ancestors Have Spent to Save Some Yogurt on Facebook and Bluesky
• Promoted The History Reader post on BlueSky. Skipped Facebook, because I've been promoting a lot of work there recently and getting little response. I don't get much response on BlueSky, either, but I don't know those people. 
• Updated the Goodreads blog with a post from Original Content.

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Submitted The Mummy Hunters to an agent I heard about through SCBWI.

Goal 4. Begin Some Writing on the 19th Century Novel Idea

• Well, no writing. But I did organize some notes.

The Reading History Project: "Thinking About History" by Sarah Maza

I wanted to start my reading history project with some reading about history, which is exactly what Thinking About History by Sarah Maza is. In my history journal (something I will write about here at some point) I describe the book as being about how historians do history, how it has been done in the past, and how the doing of history has changed. (What can we expect from a journal entry?) Maza also covers different types of historians, something that is a relatively recent development. 

I think I may be referring to this book off-and-on this year in relation to other books I read, but for now I'll touch on some of what Maza says about the "history of history," because I think it could help make sense of some of the present-day controversy over how we view history and what we consider to be appropriate history.

Saying Good-bye to the Good Old Days of Nineteenth Century History

I like the nineteenth century, myself. I see it as a period when a great deal was happening in various fields and a period when knowledge was appreciated. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was a period when the world was getting ready to transition into the twentieth century. Things were going to change!

Or maybe not.

According to Maza, in the nineteenth century practitioners of many fields of study were interested in professionalizing, and history was no different. Historians wanted their work to be considered scientific like the other academic fields. Maza says, "...scholars assumed that a scientifically examined source could yield only one meaning..."  That kind of uniformity is easy to understand because from the end of the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century history departments "were extremely homogeneous workplaces peopled by white male Protestant scholars from upper-class backgrounds." They tended to value the same kind of history--political and military, for instance, and focused on great men who, coincidently, were frequently white, Protestant males like them.  

But in the second half of the twentieth century, the academic world opened up as women entered colleges in greater numbers and the GI Bill brought nearly 8 million men from different backgrounds to campuses in its first twelve years. Some of these new people became historians who were interested in a broader range of topics: labor history, women's history, gay and lesbian history, and environmental history, for instance. You name the subject, it has a past that can be studied. 

In this period, "the history of things" also became important. Food ... clothing ... the natural environment... I am particularly interested in "things," and will direct your attention to Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash by Susan Strasser, which I liked. (Social history. That's another whole subject Maza addresses.) 

As long as we're on the subject of the history of things, I'll also mention The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers by Tom Standage. 

These two examples illustrate that we are no longer talking "the history of leaders, political elites, and state-related activities," which is how Maza says nineteenth and even early twentieth century historians thought of their field. 

You Can't Go Back to the Past, Folks

But "the history of leaders, political elites, and state-related activities" may be how some people in the present do want to think of history. Over the last couple of years, we've been hearing talk of manifest destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, concepts from the nineteenth century. There's also been talk of the present administration turning to eighteenth and nineteenth century laws to support its actions. Last year's Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History raised the question of just what truth and sanity American history should be restored to. Should we be turning to the nineteenth century for that, also, and looking, again, for the history of leaders, political elites, and state-related activities?

Oh, please, no.

While there are concerns right now about groups who had been lost to history being lost again if  present-day lawmakers are able to impose restrictions on public historical sites and schools, I think there's a limit to how far they'll be able to get with that. The reason? History without those groups is boring.

That's right, "the history of leaders, political elites, and state-related activities" is boring. All the time I was studying history in college, I was hearing about how boring it was from people who didn't care for it. "Memorizing dates" was how it was viewed. To some extent the boring argument is true. What makes it boring is not the dates but that there's a limit to how much interest anyone can maintain in the leaders and political elites who had little to do with our ancestors' lives. We only care about the history of royal figures if there's sex and weird stuff involved. Would anyone care about Queen Victoria if she wasn't portrayed as having a love interest with whom she had a great many children? I think not.

Over the last half century, the past has become far more about how everyone lived than what a few people did. There's a circular aspect to history now, in my humble opinion. We see history now as the impact of individuals on events and the impact of events on individuals. All individuals. Many of these individuals are unknown to most of us because of their ethnicity, employment, gender, religion, and more, and thus they are very, very not boring.

History is a pandora's box and the lid has been opened. It's going to be very difficult for anyone to shut it again. Especially if we all keep reading.

  

The Story Behind the Story: Tradwife Lifestyle Parody

Odile on Unsplash

My first humor publication of 2026 is I Was an '80s Tradwife. Thank you to Muddy-um for the  acceptance. 

I started submitting this piece last October. Putting aside the whole humor-is-subjective business, I think there are a few reasons why it took a while for this piece to find a home.

• It may seem essay-like, and some humor sites don't publish essays. Even though I didn't submit it to any publications that openly state they don't publish essays, that still could have been a factor.
• Tradwives may be a timely subject that is no longer timely. I read a couple of articles late last year (after I'd written I Was an '80s Tradwife) indicating that some readers find the tradwife lifestyle unsustainable. Others associate it with a level of affluence not available to all. Editors may not be interested in this subject anymore.
• I Was an '80s Tradwife could be perceived as housewife or domestic humor, which may be of limited interest to some editors. Only Shirley Jackson and Erma Bombeck managed any level of success with that kind of humor, and it's been a minute since they've been writing. 

This was a piece I enjoyed working on and am glad to see it published.

Friday Done List February 6

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Finished writing the first Reading History post
• Finished reading first book for Reading History project
• Received two rejections, one of which was, well, painful. But the most important writing skill is sucking it up and moving on. So I sucked it up and moved on.
• Resubmitted one of the rejections.
• Finished the yogurt essay.
• Spent time on the yogurt essay images. It is very, very close to submission ready.
• I really wanted to take another writing workshop this week, but I had to accept that I just didn't have time.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Published the first Reading History post.
• Promoted the above post.

 

The Reading History Project: What I'll Be Reading in 2026

Reading history is an interest of mine. It probably got started before I was reading much, when I was watching TV Westerns with my father and then gladiator movies that played late in the afternoon on one of the three TV stations we had access to in rural Vermont. Actual reading history started as a teenager, when I read my fair share of historical romance but also these enormous tomes on royal figures from centuries back and family stories that covered generations. 

A pivotal moment in reading history for me came in my freshman year of college when my History of Western Civilization professor told us why his license plate said "Bodo."  All his students were expected to know this. Bodo was a ninth century peasant living in St.-Germain-des-Prés. (That is all I know about St.-Germain-des-Prés. Bodo lived there.) He gets an entire chapter in Medieval People by Eileen Power, which I still own.

Gauthiers: Like Bodo but different

Bodo is all I remember from that class. What I got from the professor's license plate story was that history is not just about the great and mighty of this world. It is also about people who might have been my ancestors. People who were not at all great or mighty. Not even close.  

America's 250th Anniversary and Executive Order 14253

The United States is approaching its 250th anniversary, a good reason to focus on reading history this year. But another good reason might be the little historical brouhaha that came up last year after President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. Please read it yourself, but some highlights:

"It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing."

That paragraph ends with "Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn—not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history."  

"Ideological indoctrination" is a very loaded expression, and after reading the whole executive order, one might wonder who is trying to ideologically indoctrinate whom and with what ideology. Also, who is the "our" in "our shared history?"

Last year there were concerns about the present administration whitewashing history or reshaping it. The concerns continue, though they now have to compete with all the other concerns that have turned up since last March when Trump signed 14253.

Keep in mind that whatever is going on historically as far as the U.S. government is concerned, this particular order 14253 deals only with Federal sites. (History in schools is impacted by another, earlier executive order.) For now, at least, publishers, booksellers, and private museums are not touched.

That puts those of us who read history in a position, maybe not of power, but of advocacy. We can still read any work of history that we want to. We can support any type of historian we want to support, either by buying their books or spreading word of them. 

By reading as much history as we can, we create the possibility that we, and other history readers like us, will retain it no matter what else happens to it. By educating ourselves, we act. 

The Reading History Project

My reading history this year:

• Will be somewhat random. I want to enjoy this, and I have a lot of different histories on my TBR iPad.
• Will probably lean toward the nineteenth century, since that's a favorite period for me right now. Sorry Revolutionary Era!
• Will probably lean toward groups who were not in positions of great power. Remember my Bodo story. I have what is known as a cognitive bias. I tend to read things that play to my interests. I don't believe I've read a great dead white man bio since Fawn M. Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, originally published in 1974. It was controversial at the time, because it was the first popular biography of Jefferson to address his relationship with Sally Hemings, a woman he owned. DNA would later prove Brodie right. 

Some upcoming books:

Thinking About History by Sarah Maza. I'm nearly done with this. An unusual book in that it is exactly what I was looking for.

Speaking of whitewashing, as we were recently, I've just started reading Black AF History: The Un-whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot. 

The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier by Megan Kate Nelson will be published in April. I have a galley from NetGalley,  will be reading it this spring, and writing about it closer to publication.

That's the plan, folks. And don't I love a plan!

 

Friday Done List January 30

I spent a lot of time shoveling snow Monday and Tuesday. That's not an excuse. It's a statement of fact.  

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Made a submission. That's 5 submissions for this month.
• Added 2 new publications to the short-form marketing research spreadsheet, one of which I will submit to. 
• Took an excellent essay workshop. It required quite a bit of prep reading, but that included reading the writing prompts for the generative part of the workshop.
• Got some good starts on essays while taking a workshop. 
• Have nearly finished the first post for The Reading History Project. 

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• I did a blog post on my first publication of the year. 
• Promoted that blog post on Facebook and republished it at my Goodreads blog, for my 16 followers there.
• Also updated my reading for 2026 at Goodreads. I'm on target.

The Story Behind the Story: My First Publication of 2026 is...

 "I Educate Myself, Therefore I Act:" My Top 7 Heritage Month Reads in 2025! Published in Books Are Our Superpower. 

Getting this published was important to me, because my Heritage Month reading last year ended up being...ah, well, a little profound, is probably too highfalutin' a way of thinking of it. It was meaningful. I read some good stuff. I read a couple of authors I'd heard of but never read, and they were terrific. I read some authors I'd never heard of, and they were terrific, too. I read a genre I didn't foresee myself reading for this project, and it was terrific, too. I got to read a few books I'd had on my TBR shelf/iPad for a while, and that was was...you guessed it...terrific.

It was also eye-opening. I'm saying "eye-opening," but I could say "humbling." I saw myself as advocating for groups who are not part of mainstream white Anglo-saxon Protestant America by reading these authors from nonmainstream white Anglo-saxon Protestant America and writing about them. But these authors didn't need Gail advocating for them. They were already well-regarded, well-read, even award-winning writers. Who did I think I was?

At least, I ended up being a reader who enjoyed their work and told other readers they could enjoy it, too. A good use of time, and a great reading year.

What Am I Reading This Year?

I was also happy to get this essay published, because it wrapped up last year's reading. It was a conclusion, before getting started on something new.

The something new I'm getting started on is reading history. This year's reading project is, indeed, called Reading History. In fact, on this blizzardy Sunday afternoon, I'm going to go move my history books to a lower shelf so I can get to them easily and spend some time on the first history book I've been reading this year. 

More to come. 

Friday Done List January 23

I believe it's been a while since I've posted food pictures here. This one's  appropriate, because it illustrates what I was doing this afternoon instead of writing. Yup, I was making two kinds of soup and a stuffed gluten free bread with which to sustain life in case we lose power this weekend. While I was putting the second soup into the Instant Pot, I saw a Facebook post from our town indicating that this storm isn't expected to cause widespread power outages here in Connecticut. So I guess I will gain some writing time next week when I don't have to cook what I cooked today.

In better news, I got my first publication of the year today. I will write about that in another post. Maybe on Sunday during the storm, if I do, indeed, have power.

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Made 3 submissions. I've already met my objective for making 2 submissions this month.
• Have resubmitted one of the last two pieces that were rejected in 2025. 
• Updated my short-form marketing research spreadsheet, meaning I've done a little more lit journal reading.  
• Signed up for a writing workshop 
• Worked on the yogurt essay. This involved a little research in old cookbooks in my basement. 
• I had some problems with the submission of a  final Heritage Month essay to submit to Books Are Our Superpower. I think there's some kind of technical problem. And there was! I resubmitted with a new title, and voila!
• Updated my info on NetGalley and requested a book coming out in April that I'd like to use for The History Reader Project.
• My NetGalley request was approved! I have the egalley! 

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did a couple of blog posts that weren't related to this Friday Done List.
• Promoted those blogs.
• Updated my 2026 Goodreads reading challenge. I've read two books!
• I set up a second flat file in my upstairs office. This will make an enormous difference in my life, won't it?

Goal 4. Begin Some Writing on the 19th Century Novel Idea

• Barely. But I have a spot for notes in that extra flat file!

My First 2026 Encounter with History

Today is the birthday of Ethan Allen, the most profane and hardest drinking noise to come out of pre-Revolutionary Connecticut. A legend in his own time, but not in ours.

Yet sometime in the 1990s while researching a book, I went into the late Briggs Carriage Bookstore in Brandon, Vermont, when it was in its first, smaller location, and said, "Do you have The Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen?"  Jeezum Crow! They did! The bookseller went right to the shelf and put his hand on it as if he sold copies of it every day.

This past Saturday I was in Dakin Farm in Ferrisburg, Vermont, a store known primarily for ham, cheese, and pancake mixes, not books. What do I see in its little Vermont book area? You guessed it! The Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen! Since I already have a copy, I didn't buy it, though I did get a book there on the nineteenth century prohibition era in Vermont. As well as a bottle of my favorite Vermont wine. 

Allen's book is what is known as a captivity narrative, which were popular in his time. They usually involved Europeans being held captive by Native Americans. The Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen is about an "American" of European decent being held captive by Europeans. (He was a prisoner of war for around two years during the Revolution.) It's supposed to have been a bestseller when it was published in 1779.

Published in 1779 and still on shelves. Well done, Colonel Allen.

My The Hero of Ticonderoga was originally called The Narrative of Therese LeClerc, but the marketing people at G. P. Putnam's Sons thought that sounded like a nun's diary. Middle grade readers don't like nuns' diaries?

I plan to focus on reading history this year, so I'm delighted to have had this encounter with a historical narrative without even trying. 

I Don't Think the Retreat Week Bliss Will Be Lasting Much Longer

My yard today. Nice, eh?

Today was my first day back at work after returning from my annual reading and frolicking in the snow retreat. I also worked on trying to create a meditation practice and took a terrific meditation class last Thursday. Coincidentally, Thursday was the day I began to feel chill.

I made a submission today and tried to contact a Medium publication that rejected something I sent them before I left town because it has not responded in any way to a resubmission I made. What's going on there, guys?

The big thing I did today was file my claim as part of the Anthropic case. It was pretty simple for me, less so for a family member filing for a late relative who was a textbook author. Books classified as "education" require a lot more thinking for their claims.

I did some additional reading on the Anthropic case and realized that the court didn't rule against Anthropic on anything. The first part of the case it clearly felt that stealing books to train AI is fair use. The second part of the case involved Anthropic downloading books from pirate sites to use for training AI. I thought the court had ruled against them on that, but I was wrong. Anthropic continued to deny it had done anything wrong and merely settled out of court. All this talk about this settlement being the largest of its kind sounds good, but it diverts attention from the fact that the court case doesn't change much and authors still have no protection from AI companies going forth.

And on a Personal Note 

I have to start cooking again and sometime in the next couple of hours plan meals and make a grocery list so I can go out and restock this house tomorrow. On top of that, we had snow yesterday and last night, and it's four-thirty in the afternoon here and my plow service hasn't shown up yet. Not all is lost. They didn't come until four o'clock after the last storm. 

Still, there's a real possibility that I'll have to spend part of tomorrow cleaning the driveway as well as dealing with groceries. Glad I got some work done today. Though, you may have noticed, it was work that didn't involve new writing. 

I'm still feeling kind of laid back, but I'm not stupid. That can't last much longer.

Friday Done List January 9

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Added a new publication to the marketing spreadsheet. This one I'll consider for a submission later this month.
• Worked on an eating essay. Some baking and picture taking and some actual writing. 
• Finished the last essay I believe I'll be doing on my Heritage Month Project. 
• Submitted the above essay. It was rejected, because I used external links to support my points, and they only accept links to other articles from their publication. My first thought was, How unprofessional! My second thought was, This is how they control publishing essays with links to freak sites. I understand. I removed the links and resubmitted.
• Listened to Hillery Stone's Ted-ish talk on writing essays. She said a number of things about personal essays I already believe, so, of course, I liked the talk. I'd been looking forward to listening to it for a while, and it was well-worth my time. Relatively short, too. 
• Published a link to Mountain Lake Resorts on BlueSky, because it's getting to be that time of year. I'll be taking off soon for my reading and woods walking retreat, and MLR is a humor piece related to that experience.
• Attended a terrific OCWW workshop run by author Joseph Scapellato. A number of takeaways including...do multiple submissions for literary journals! Of course, this means having multiple literary journal markets appropriate to submit to. So, I'll be doing some lit journal reading on my reading and woods walking retreat.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Wrote an unplanned blog post on marketing. This was one of those I'm-blown-away-by-what-I-just-read-and-have-to-write-about-it-things that doesn't happen as often as it used to.

Oh, My Gosh! Do I Even Recognize Social Media Marketing?

According to Watch for These 2026 Social Media Trends by Lacy Phillips at Jane Friedman big things happened in social media while I was working in the kitchen or meditating, doing a little yoga, or going for a walk. It's kind of unrecognizable.

I am of the writing group that needed to be careful about social media use. We're those people who aren't big enough to hire professionals to handle our social media for us, so we have to be careful about how much time we give to it because we're actually working at something else. 

Give this some thought: comic Leanne Morgan is supposed to have got her big break, because she hired some guys to do some social media marketing for her, not because she did it herself. She was writing material and performing.

For the average, more or less, writer, whatever we're doing for social media is never enough. Or, at least, it doesn't stay enough for long. We started with blogs in the '90s, then went on to Facebook, then went on to Twitter then side stepped to BlueSky. By that point, it was obvious that whatever you did wasn't going to be that useful for long, so you needed to think long and hard about what you did next because you knew you couldn't expect much.

I went on to Pinterest instead of Instagram, because I wanted something I could use for archived images and material from Original Content. Instagram appeared to be only for new material. That probably was a mistake. I don't think Pinterest has been that useful for me (though I did do it to collect images of clothes for characters I was writing about), but it's probably too late for Instagram. 

I was able to wrap my head around a few of the things Phillips wrote about in her Friedman article.

What I Might Be Able to Use from Phillips' Friedman Article:

• Write about yourself, not just your work, across platforms. I find this to be a crap shoot. Maybe you have to post about cooking without wheat a lot to get some attention? On the other hand, it's true that on Facebook my hundreds of friends are usually unmoved when I post about a new publication, but a core group comes out for travel and cooking pictures. Also, I posted an apron question on Facebook yesterday and got some good responses. Posted the same question on BlueSky where aprons evidently don't exist and no one understood what I was talking about. I'm not sure how much time I should be spending on writing about myself across platforms, even though I don't have that many platforms.
• Use keywords instead of hashtags. Aren't keywords hashtags without the hashtag?
• Pinterest is supposed to be coming back somehow. As I said earlier, I'm already on Pinterest, so I added an objective about working with that to my 2026 branding goal. I had been thinking for a while that I should do something there about my Medium publications, anyway. I should at least watch this movie on the subject. It lasts a whole hour!

Time Management Tuesday: Goals and Objectives for 2026

I very much enjoy thinking about what I'm going to do. I like it a lot more than actually doing what I thought about.

First A Word About Using Goals and Objectives with Done Lists

Usually, I introduce my goals and objectives post with a few sentences about the difference between a goal and an objective, a goal being what you're going to do, an objective being a task you do toward completing your goal. Oh, look. I did it again.

What I want to do instead/additionally, is say a bit about the significance of done lists. Done lists are often considered jokes, but they aren't. You aren't creating some kind of scam by writing down what you did to make yourself look good. You are keeping track of what you've done so you can decide what you need to do.

If you keep regular done lists, connecting them to your goals and objectives, you can also ensure that what you are doing has value because you are working on objectives and thus goals.  But it all starts with having goals and objectives in the first place.

Here are my goals and objectives for 2026. 

Goal 1. Write And Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

This was the main focus of my time last year, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

Objectives:

• Work on the starts made during December.
• Also, continue revising the chapter in my adult scifi book into a short story.
• Make two submissions a month. Anything. Anywhere.
• Resubmit the last two pieces that were rejected in 2025. I have places in mind
• Limit my reading of publications on the Medium platform to those I have followed and actually like. I waste a lot of time looking at articles directed to me by Medium that for the most part aren't of interest to me and aren't well written. This will be a timesaver, at the very least.
• Continue adding to the short-form marketing research spreadsheet that I may or may not have written about here before. You know, just because I haven't blogged about something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 
• Take workshops on short-form writing. 
• Work on the yogurt essay, which involves baking. And eating. I like to write about eating.
• Work on one final Heritage Month essay to submit to Books Are Our Superpower.
• Begin The History Reader Project. This will involve reading history, promoting it here, and perhaps revising blog posts for submissions, just as I did with last year's The Heritage Month Project.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

I'm turning this one down a bit, since it didn't do me a lot of good last year.

Objectives:

• Keep the short-form publications features on website updated.
• Attend virtual events for writers.
• Attend local events for local writers.
• Continue supporting local writers on Facebook by sharing their local public events.
• More writing for Original Content that can become the first drafts of submittable work.
• Dip into Original Content archive to update some topics that are still of interest to me.
• Look into whether I should be paying attention to Pinterest again, especially in relation to my publishing about food and children on Medium. I haven't touched my Pinterest account in years.
• There is a one-hour video for me to watch about Pinterest. Yikes.

Goal 3. Submit Book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

Not much activity with this one, either.

Objectives:

• I have two leads on agent submissions for early in the year. They are somewhere on my desk.
• Use info I found in a Medium article to research Manuscript Wish List for agents. 
• In the event I find anyone through MSWL, submit 

Goal 4. Begin Some Writing on the 19th Century Novel Idea

Objectives:

• One of the main chachters in a nineteenth century botanist. Get serious about research in that area in order to define him.
• Get the characters seriously defined.
• Stop collecting research and start reading the research I've already collected.
• Read more historical fiction.

I Have Fewer Goals These Days

I noticed how few goals I've had the last couple of years. Certainly, I have fewer than I did when I first started creating formal goals and objectives thirteen years ago. In part this is due to cutting back on book-length writing and submitting. In part it's probably due to the recapitulation posts. Those make clear that many goals spread me too thin. I get more done when I plan to do less.

Friday Done List January 2

 Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Two rejections at the end of the year! On the upside, I believe that closes the book on 2025, everything I had submitted has either been published or rejected. On the other upside, I have a place in mind to submit both those manuscripts. On still another upside, I was rejected by what I would describe as better places. On the downside, of course, there was the part about being rejected.
• Got started on this year's goals and objectives, which you'll be seeing next Tuesday.
• I'm in the very initial stages of writing a piece on eating. I'm doing the baking I'll be writing about. As a result, I've totally changed the course of what this essay will be.
• Registered for a workshop being held next Thursday.
• I'm trying to line up my work plans for later this month, after I get back from Retreat Week.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did two blog posts this week, one of which I promoted.
• I've got a number of blog posts started, if you call a couple of sentences starting. There may be a little more activity here in the immediate future.