Done List April 3

It's Easter Week. Whatever time I haven't been baking and cleaning, I've been angsting about not being able to write. In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman says sometimes we have to accept we can't do everything.

Next week I will begin again.

Time Management Tuesday: Recalling "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" Brings Back the Good Old Days

Recently--Sunday, in fact--author Ryan T. Pozzi suggested on BlueSky that people read Chapter 13 of Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I have that book! And it was Sunday, when I feel as if I should be able to go off on deep tangents with my reading. (I often go off on tangents with my reading, they're just not deep as a general rule.) And Chapter 13 isn't that long. So, I did, indeed, read it.

Back in 2021, I did a seven-part arc on Four Thousand Weeks, a blog-while-you-read thing. I found the book to be much more about time philosophy than time management, and Chapter 13 is very representative of that. Burkeman seems more concerned with how we should live than he is with finding ways for us to manage our time so we can live as we want to live. That is not a criticism. We're just talking two different ways of thinking about and talking about time. 

For those of us who are intent on trying to manage our time so we can live as we want to, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals doesn't seem to have a lot to offer. However, rereading Chapter 13 led me to skim my Four Thousand Weeks blog posts. I was reminded of some philosophical points I want to try to keep in mind.

Chapter 13 Cosmic Insignificance Therapy

Chapter 13 deals with the idea that individually we're not all that important in the grand scheme of things. And this is good for us. We can lower the bar and use our time to enjoy the small moments of life, knowing that we are not expected to struggle to use our lives to accomplish something big and profound. Enjoy your time in your pollinator garden, Gail, without worrying that it doesn't attract much in the way of bees, which is what you're supposed to be doing with it. It's okay to admire the spring ephemerals you planted, even though you know they don't do much except please you.

This knowledge can be a relief, as Burkeman says, though, personally, I've known people who would take a we're-not-that-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things philosophy to mean that there's no reason for them to make an effort with, say, environmentalism or voting. One person doesn't make a difference, after all. I feel this attitude carries a bit of risk. 

But it's good for me, since it's pollinator garden time!

We Pay for What We Do with Hours of Our Lives

In another portion of the book, Burkeman writes that when we become distracted with something like social media, we pay for the time we spend on the distraction with hours of our lives, the hours we could have been using to do something we value more. He didn't elaborate on this point, but it was meaningful to me, because it was similar to something I'd read about minimalism. When you buy something, you really pay for it with the hours of your life it took to make the money you exchanged for it. 

I'd forgotten about Burkeman's view of social media, though I have been applying something like it, nonetheless, to my on-line reading in general. Do I need to read any more about the man formerly known as Prince Andrew? Do I need to read about this week's best memes? If I could stop doing that, wouldn't I have more time for reading the New Yorker and all the links to journal articles I keep saving? It's a possibility, at least. 

Procrastination is a Solution to a Problem

Time management writers usually deal with procrastination as a problem to be solved. Burkeman has a fascinating spin on it. He sees procrastination as a solution to a problem we may not even know we have. The real problem is that the work we're doing is hard. Or it's boring. Or we know it's going to get us nowhere. We may not even be aware that we're trying to escape it when we rush off to Facebook or BlueSky, where we can find something easy and interesting to do and quickly. We just think we're procrastinating. 

Figuring out what problem we're trying to escape and trying to deal with it might be a better use of time than heading to social media. Maybe it could make some kind of change in our lives.

I Need to Do More with Time Management 

I haven't been reading or writing much about time management the last few years, because I've seen so many people on-line writing about the subject who clearly have no background to be doing so. They've just read a book or even some on-line material about it. Which sounds a lot like me. I'd rather not be that person.

But while I haven't been reading or writing about time management, my ability to manage my own time has been spiraling. Going over my Four Thousand Weeks blog posts brought back the days when I was hungry for ways to get things done and sometimes even finding a few. I'm going to go back to some time management writing because it makes me feel good, which I think Oliver Burkeman would appreciate.

One thing I've done to manage time recently is revise blog posts for essays that I could submit to publications on the Medium platform. As luck would have it, one of the first essays I wrote in this way was We Are All Going to Die, In Case You Weren't Feeling Enough Time Pressure, which was published back in 2022. It's a review of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. 

The Story Behind the Story: Paying Attention to Structure

On Tuesday Books Are Our Superpower published my essay A DEI Story Time Violation: What can we talk about and where can we talk about it? This is a revision of my blog post The Reading History Project: "Pedal Pusher" by Mary Boone. Watch Out for Women on Bikes!

When writing here about revising blog posts for essays to submit elsewhere, I've often said my second drafts end up having a somewhat different focus than the original blog post did. That is definitely the case here. The second draft focuses much more strongly on the DEI violation aspect of this story than on the book Pedal Pusher, itself.

The way the essays were structured had a big impact on the change in focus.

Structure Makes a Difference in Focus

Original Content Essay. The original post was laid out with a first paragraph stating that Pedal Pusher was a good subject for a Women's History Month for a couple of reasons. "...a couple of reasons" suggested that there was going to be two things discussed. 

Then I discussed the book, itself, which deals with a woman from the past and why she is significant. A subheading leads into the second reason the book was a good subject, the fact that a story time related to it had been canceled because of a claim that it violated an executive order dealing with DEI. 

The essay then ends with what might be called a "call to action," the suggestion that we can all speak out in support of books and bring attention to them.

This first essay was a gathering of my material--what the book is about, the DEI issue, the call to action.

Books Are Our Superpower Essay. This essay is significantly different. I dropped the call-to-action section at the end altogether. Instead, I "bookended" the Pedal Pusher book material with the story of what happened with the story time being cancelled because of the DEI violation complaint and included a couple more details about it.

Because the essay began and ended with the DEI complaint, it became particularly important. We remember what we read in the beginning of a section of writing and at the end. The ending of the BAOS essay, therefore, connecting back to the beginning, made the DEI complaint memorable.

Learn to Take Advantage of Structure

Structure helps readers comprehend and remember what they read, so it's valuable for us as readers. That makes it valuable for us as writers, as well. It's worthwhile to spend some time studying structure and paying attention to the structure of essays and blog posts you read.

For instance, paragraphs, which might be described as the building blocks of essays, are sections of writing, just as essays are. They're just shorter. That makes the beginning and endings of paragraphs important. The first sentence is usually a topic sentence, and the last sentence is usually a conclusion of some sort. Every paragraph thus gives readers two points--a beginning and an ending--with material they are likely to recall. 

On more than one occasion, I've noticed writing on the Medium platform that doesn't use paragraphs at all. The pieces are lists of sentences. They're not a true listicle, which is an actual format. They're just a list of sentences that appear to be either undeveloped thoughts or connected thoughts that weren't placed in paragraph form.

A list of sentences is difficult for readers to follow, because:

• It's choppy.
• Unless the first sentence in the list is an obvious topic sentence, it's hard for readers to identify one. They have to work out what all these sentences are supposed to be about themselves. 
• Again, readers remember the beginning and ending of a section of writing, including paragraphs. When your format uses multiple paragraphs, your readers have multiple opportunities to recall the important material you have put at the beginning and ending of those multiple paragraphs. In a piece of writing that is just a list of sentences, only the first and last sentence in the list act as that important spot that readers are likely to remember. 

Notice how I used the beginning and ending of this essay. In the first section I introduced the idea that structure can make an impact on the focus of an essay. In the second section, I showed how structure changed the focus of the second essay I wrote about Pedal Pusher. In the third section, I reinforced the importance of paying attention to the beginning and ending sections of writing while structuring essays. I gave readers multiple opportunities to absorb the points I wanted to make.

My hope is that I've structured this essay in such a way as to make readers appreciate the importance of understanding structure and paying attention to it when writing.

Friday Done List March 27

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

• An essay was published earlier this week. 
• Received a rejection yesterday. "While we are saying no this time, we want you to know that we particularly enjoyed your work and would love to see more from you in the future." Sure. That's what they say to all the girls. Nonetheless, I've got something in mind to submit to them.
• Nearly finished a short story.  It's been so long since I've finished anything that just nearly finishing something brings tears to my eyes.
• Have finished an essay for Original Content to publish tomorrow.

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

• Promoted everything I needed to promote.

 

Friday Done List March 20

Oh, my gosh. Another week of family stuff. Next week should be better, except I'm going shopping. And walking. And then I think it's Easter.

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

• Rejection! On Sunday! There is no safe place!
• Submission!
• Just wrote my sisters an email that I'm calling a first draft of a humor piece.

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

• I fished 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. Because if there's one thing I can do, it's stick to low-risk, low-labor activity. I did finally break 400 followers because of this challenge. Perhaps I should find another.
• Published my most recent Reading Project post. Promoted it at one place. More next week!

The Reading History Project: "The Westerners: Myth-Making and Belonging on the American Frontier" by Megan Kate Nelson

The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier by Megan Kate Nelson will be published March 31. I read a digital ARC provided by NetGalley.

This is a book that definitely addresses the "our" in "our shared history," my reading subject for this year.

Nelson begins in her prologue with an account of Frederick Jackson Turner's reading of The Significance of the Frontier in American History at a meeting of the American Historical Association in 1893. Turner argued that "...American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West." Nelson says that before Turner, most historians believed that Europe had the greatest impact on what America became. Turner's contention that America became America because of the "colonization of the Great West" by white people from the East was a shift in thinking for professional historians.

To give you some idea of how big a deal Turner and his theory of the American frontier became, I recall hearing at least something about it in high school. I've had a copy of The Significance of the Frontier in American History floating around my office for a year now. 

While it was new thinking in 1893 as far as professional history was concerned, Nelson says popular perception of the "Great West" supported Turner. Novels featured Indian fighters saving white families, painters romanticized Western landscapes, and government policies encouraged people in the East to go West. Turner was preaching to a choir that already believed a mythic frontier story involving white Americans moving West and bringing civilization with them.    

Some of Nelson's content moves on to the beginning of the twentieth century, but it is primarily laid out chronologically from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to that American Historical Association meeting in 1893 at which Frederick Jackson Turner read his paper. Along that timeline are what might be called a collection of microhistories, in this case the stories of people who lived in the West, people who didn't reflect the frontier myth. (Except for the one person who actually promoted it.) All these people are what we would consider today as minor historical figures, the most recognizable being Sacajawea. But they are also people who had some significance at the time they lived or were even well known then. Others wrote about them, or they left writing themselves. In her epilogue, Nelson describes what happened to them after death, a sad afterlife for people who didn't fit the Western myth narrative but were part of the West, nonetheless. 

My first thought while reading The Westerners was that I was ignorant of a great deal that happened in the western part of this country in the nineteenth century. That was probably Nelson's intention, and, if so, she was very successful in educating this reader. I was going to give some examples of the depth of what I didn't know but decided I didn't want to get into that.

My second thought was how different regional history must be for elementary school students in different parts of the country from what I was exposed to growing up in rural New England. At least, it should be different. 

In the very readable The Westerners Megan Kate Nelson replaces the myth of the Great West with a reality that is just as empowering, because it includes so many more people. It's a reality based on our shared history.

You can hear her speaking about the frontier myth at her publisher's website.

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.