Friday Done List July 24

 No done list this week, because I spent today following the Washington Rochambeau Revolutionary Route through Connecticut. Will some of this become material? 

Friday Done List July 17

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

• Those five Seeking Time essays I mentioned at this time last week are ready to go. I start publishing on Monday.
• I worked on revising the Black AF post into an essay to submit to Books Are Our Superpower. I would have submitted it, but BAOS has been giving me problems uploading images recently, so I have to work that out.
• I have a sixth Seeking Time essay nearly ready to post week after next.
• Will the day spent walking result in a nature essay of some kind some day? Can I justify that as work for that reason?

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

• Finally did a This American Woman Post. I finished reading the book a few weeks ago.

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

• I finished the BlueSky pitch event on Monday. I got a little attention for my effort. In my experience, BlueSky pitch events are far less eventful than the ones on Xitter were. They probably aren't worth the time involved, which may explain why so few people take part in them. 

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

• I did a little note taking on this in relation to setting and the setting of one particular scene. Firming up the setting would be very helpful.
• Also, on the way home from Monday's walk, while someone else was driving, I read some more of a book about the historical issue the 19th century novel turns on.
• The 19th century novel I'm still reading is surprisingly good.

Getting Serious About Humor: Where Comic Writing Comes From

I am a fan of Zarna Garg's on-line videos and the clips of her stand-up I've seen. So, I jumped at the chance to buy her memoir, This American Woman, when the e-book edition was on sale. (I like ebooks, because I'm a minimalist and control the number of things around me. I like them even more when they're cheap.) I was talking about it all the time I was reading it.

Interesting point: I often force a family member to watch Garg's videos, some of which include her family, because everyone wants to share funny stuff, right? For the most part, he just does not get them. I find this fascinating, because I believe Garg's work is incongruity humor, my favorite kind. She describes herself as "America's first Indian immigrant mom comedian" and does a lot of Indian culture clashing with American culture humor, which often ends up being commentary. She grew up in India, moving here in her late teens. She definitely gets America. 

Oh, and she also has some feminist stuff going on, describing what life was like for a girl in India, even a girl from a family with money. The family with money part ended rather abruptly when she was fourteen and her mother died. She was the youngest child, and her father wanted her to accept an arranged marriage. Our Zarna would have none of that, which meant pretty much living on the street for a year and a half. She continued to go to school during the day, while hustling her friends for places to stay at night. She ended up going back home to her father. What saved her from marriage was the paperwork coming through that enabled her to move to the United States to live with her sister and brother-in-law.

So that's an interesting backstory for anybody, but particularly a comedian.

I'm always fearful of giving away too much of another writer's story, particularly a personal story. So I will just offer up some of the fascinating stuff about how Garg got into comedy. She grew up in a business family. Her father was a businessman. Her brother was. After graduating from law school in this country, she married a man going to graduate school in business. She got permission to audit his courses. She wanted to do his homework, though he said no, because, it seems, he liked doing homework, too.

Her big interest, after she finished up her years as a New York City mom, was business. She wanted to start a business and made a few attempts.

They didn't go well.

And then someone suggested she try comedy. Which she treated like a business. She went about becoming a comedian in a very business-like manner. And it worked for her. It seems to be not only a business, but a family business.

If you read her book, watch her videos, read what she says about herself and her life on-line, you'll see how much this woman works.

• Of course, there is the stand-up appearances. 
• But she has also written an award-winning screenplay. Read the book. She'll explain why awards for screenplays are important. She's made me rethink submitting short-story manuscripts for awards.
• She won a Webby in 2025 after seven years of making videos.
• She does a podcast with her family. 
• She's an actress.
• She's all over the place. There's an article about her in The New Yorker! I read the New Yorker! How did I miss that?

I don't know that I would say that there is a lot in This American Woman about humor as a subject. But if you read this book, you can see how Garg's life experience is woven into her comedy persona. At the same time, you can see how that comedy persona is not necessarily the real Zarna Garg.

And that has something to say about where comic writing comes from. 

 

Friday Done List July 10

This is another week when I really need a Done List. The boundary between personal life and work life has been very weak. But I managed a few things.

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

• I have worked on five Seeking Time essays for a Medium publishing project. This includes finding illustrations as well as writing and getting the material started on Medium. These will be published one a day directly to Medium without submitting to publications. We will see how that goes.
• I've worked on two blog posts that could become essays for submission.
• I was approved by NetGalley as a reader for Aristocracy American Style by Nancy Isenberg, which I have started reading. 
• Some reading of recently published flash fiction.
• Promoted a previously published essay on both Facebook and BlueSky

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

• Published one blog post and promoted it.
• Started taking part in a BlueSky pitch. I don't think it looks as if it will be as ... robust? active?...as the pitches on Xitter were, but I'm pitching an adult book and this gives me an opportunity to brand myself as an adult writer.

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

• Taking part in that BlueSky pitch for one of my adult books. A multiplier! An action that addresses two goals!

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

• I'm reading a 19th century novel that one of my characters in my potential 19th century novel could have read.

The Reading History Project: The Authors Guild's "Essential Reading for America 250"

Gail Reading

There's an incredible amount of reading material available on American history. The Authors Guild has put together a list of nonfiction and fiction by century, that it thinks is Essential Reading for America 250. In case you need a little help getting started. 

Gail's Thoughts About Just Some of the Books:

Uncle Tom's Cabin. God forgive me, when I was young, I thought this sounded boring and never got over that. The write-ups here have me rethinking this.

Leaves of Grass. I am not a big poetry reader, but I have been interested in trying a little Walt Whitman.

Little Women. Not sure how I feel about Little Women as essential reading, since I used to be a big fan of Louisa May Alcott but am not anymore.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Somewhere I have an article I haven't read on the significance of this book. So maybe I should just read the book and forget about the article?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Maybe I should read this again.

How the Other Half Lives. I've been hearing about Jacob Riis for years. Yes, maybe I should read this.

The House of Mirth. I read The Age of Innocence years ago and survived it. I like reading about Wharton, so maybe I should give this a go.

The Great Gatsby. This title keeps coming up over and over again. I know I should reread it. Maybe if it's essential reading for America 250, I can get around to it.

Giant. Read So Big and, again, survived it. And wasn't this a movie with Elizabeth Taylor? Another book that I could take a shot at.

Charlotte's Web. No. Just no. 

Mrs. Bridge. "A gutting depiction of a "quintessentially" American marriage in the heartland?" Or anywhere? Anyone who has been married as long as I have can probably skip this. And wasn't it a movie with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman? They went to Europe or something?

To Kill a Mockingbird. Have read it a couple of times, once as an early teen, once decades later. Good both times. You should read it. I don't think it's about racial injustice, myself. I think it's about daddy worship.

Kindred. I've read one book by Octavia Butler. I've often thought I should read another. 

There, There. I've read this! Gave it 4 stars at Goodreads.

A Protest History of the United States. I already had this in mind for a possible read this year.

Any other thoughts on the Guild's suggestions?

Friday Done List July 3

While I am well aware the world isn't waiting with bated breath for my done lists, they are very helpful for me. In fact, after around 5 weeks of aiding a family member, two weekends of my own upper-respiratory illness, a houseguest for three nights, prepping for a John the Baptist Day gathering for 17 people, and a 48-hour trip that involved visiting a couple of historical sites, two woods walks and a quick visit to a dam, as well as a stop at a garden and arboretum, I am having trouble wrapping my head around what I want to be doing. 

A done list should help a great deal with that.

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

• At least two of the five blog posts I've done since mid-May should become essays I'll be submitting or publishing somewhere else.
• I did write and submit an essay that was published at Books Are Our Superpower.
• I submitted three pieces of flash fiction to a site that accepted up to three pieces per submission. They were all rejected within days. Such efficiency!
• I created something called a junk journal that has cleaned up my desk and may have organized my life some.
• I did a lot on my Market Research Spreadsheet that I'm using to keep track of journals I've checked out, whether I'm interested in submitting to them or not. Knowing you shouldn't be submitting to a publication is useful information. The spreadsheet has a place for planning and for keeping track of submissions. And rejections, too, of course. 
• I requested a just published history galley from NetGalley. They rejected me. So I requested a different book today! Also, I looked at my NetGalley profile. The information about where I share material about my reading had disappeared. Fixing that might improve my chances for being selected as a gallery reader.
• I finished revising a chapter of one of my unpublished books into a short story and just submitted that.
• I've started a couple of essays for a series I'm planning to publish directly to Medium without submitting to publications. More about that another time.

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

• I'm in the early stages of planning a big website and work revision. I've looked around at some writer websites as research.

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

• I have a page long list of agents in my junk journal that I am slowly going through to see if any are appropriate for me to submit my adult books to. So far, not many. 

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

• I started reading a book dealing with a historical element relating to my novel idea. The book is not very good.
• This past week's historical visits on our mini-vaca were all about the 19th century novel idea.

The Reading History Project: "Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed History of America" by Michael Harriot

In Thinking About History Sara Maza writes that "The skills and temperaments of good research historians are very similar to those of successful journalists: curiosity, ingenuity, patience, and doggedness. And like journalists, good historians know how to put a story together and make it understandable to a wide range of readers." The similarities between historians and journalists may explain why Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed History of America by journalist Michael Harriot is so good.

This marvelous book is more than an account of traditional American history from a Black perspective, which is what I expected when I bought it. It covers a lot of material I didn't know about. Additionally, Harriot's position is that the history of America is the history of racism, a premise I haven't read about before. He does a good job of supporting his argument.

For instance, his contention is that Africans made the plantation system work not just with their labor but with their knowledge. In the Carolinas, Africans had the knowledge and ability to grow rice, what Harriot calls "America's first edible cash crop." He writes of the ineptitude of the original British settlers at Jamestown, saying the colony was saved because of the arrival of slaves. 

In case you haven't heard anything like this before and are wondering if this guy is really talking about whitewashing or just doesn't know history, culinary historian Michael Twitty writes of Africans being brought to America to grow rice in The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. In The Story of America: Essays on Origins historian Jill Lepore says of Jamestown, "They brought the wrong kind of settlers: idle and indolent English gentlemen, who spent their time bowling in the streets." Harriot is also not the first to have written that Lincoln was primarily interested in preserving the Union, not freeing the slaves and that Franklin Roosevelt did nothing for Blacks. He's not the only writer who doesn't have a lot of positive things to say about Woodrow Wilson, either. 

So, yes, Harriot has read some history. 

I appreciated Harriot's covering the history of political parties in this country, something I've never been clear on, and describing how the Federalist and Democrat-Republicans evolved into the parties we know now. And how racial attitudes passed back and forth between them.

He also makes clear the incredible openness of the violent racism during the Jim Crow era. I missed learning much about the Jim Crow period in my schooling, and I've taken a few history courses in my day. That's something to consider when talking about the teaching of "our history." How much of "our," meaning everyone in the country's, history are we exposed to?

But don't think that Black AF History is just the heaping on of one grim event after another. Though, it kind of is. It is also entertaining. Harriot brings in some memoirish elements to introduce sections, describing his family. Uncle Rob, who appears a few times to take over the narrative, is a standout. "Racist Baby" also appears a number of times, interacting with Harriot's narrative voice so Harriot can provide the little one with some info that his racist parents most certainly will not. 

Harriot's enthusiasm for Black historical figures who have been lost to the general public is, well, touching or heart-warming, not terms I would expect to use regarding a history book. He particularly embraces Black women from the past. I swear I had heard of Ida B. Wells. I just hadn't heard enough.

To wrap this up, I will say that Black AF History is a great combination of content and presentation.

The Story Behind the Story: More Than a Revision

I have been making an effort to reuse blog material in other ways--primarily revising blog posts about books for essays appropriate to submit to a Medium publication. Usually this involves the essay becoming a more sophisticated version or being developed around a different angle. But I recently wrote about Make Believe by Mac Barnett in two very different ways, once here at Original Content and then at Books Are Our Superpower. 

Here at OC, I wrote about hyperbole and what it had to do with the Make Believe blow-up last month. This was part of a recurring feature here on humor writing.

At BAOS, I did more of what I'd call a reader response. This was inspired as I was reading the book when I found that while I couldn't get into the outrage it caused, I also couldn't embrace it the way reviewers and many of the posters I saw on BlueSky were. I found Make Believe to be neither as bad nor as good as others did.

In both cases, I thought I had something new to say about Make Believe, things I hadn't seen before. 

Jane Yolen's On-line Journal: An Appreciation

Jess Bailey on Unsplash

Recently I noticed that I hadn't seen anything from Jane Yolen on Facebook in quite some time. Long enough to realize that that wasn't a good thing. So I wasn't surprised when her family announced that she died yesterday. The news made People Magazine, because she was, is, and will continue to be Jane Yolen, but the Locus obituary is much better.

Once upon a time, Jane Yolen kept an on-line journal. It hasn't been available for a while now, so you'll have to take my word for it that it once existed. At the end of July, 2004 I first wrote here about it. 

"I've noticed that Jane Yolen has started an on-line journal. It doesn't seem to be a traditional blog, but a traditional journal maintained on-line. I admire what she's doing, but I don't know if I'll be reading it much because...she does too much work. Her work habits are far better than mine, and I don't want to keep reminding myself.

On the other hand, maybe this is just what I need."

In just a couple of days, I was hooked.

"I believe I owe this surge of creativity and ambition to my personal writing coach, Jane Yolen. Though we have never met--though she, actually, has never even heard of me--her online journal with its descriptions of her superhuman work habits shames my "inner Jane" and makes her work harder.

Hey, Jane, there hasn't been an update in a couple of days. I'm going to crash and burn here if I don't hear from you soon."

 By September, I was obsessed. 

"My many, many, many fans know that I am somewhat obsessed with Jane Yolen's On-line Journal, mainly because Jane is a maniac for work and I, well, I'm not. I hoped that reading Jane's journal of her work life would inspire me to make a greater effort. If anything, it's made things worse. The time I should be spending working, I'm spending reading about Jane working."

I sometimes called her my "writing coach." I sometimes called her my "spiritual advisor." I sometimes called myself her "stalker." In 2005 I was worried about her husband's health. Over time, I was more than a little freaked out that in addition to, say, knocking off a few poems, receiving some rejections,  and meeting with her agent on the same day and having multiple books published in a year, she was able to have people over to eat or meet them at restaurants or go shopping and she was able to maintain a second home in another freaking country.

My obsession continued until the beginning of April, 2007. 

"I haven't been reading Jane Yolen's journal the way I used to. In the past, I found her impressive work ethic and output inspiring. Now reading about what she's doing just makes me feel like a layabout. A lazy, disorganized, self-centered, kept woman."

And then I went on for a couple of paragraphs about what I'd just read at Jane's journal about editing. 

Gail and Jane in the Real World

I did meet her briefly in the carbon-based world a few times.

 Soon after my first book was published in 1996, she gave a talk at the University of Connecticut, and I asked her a question about how she had managed writing when she had young children. She said she had two things going for her. 1. Her husband was a professor and was available to take on parenting tasks more frequently than other fathers might be. 2. She'd started publishing before she had children and thus thought of herself as a writer before she thought of herself as a mother.  She wasn't saying she put work first but that she didn't have to create a writer mindset or identity after she had created a mother mindset or identity. It was natural for her to fit her kids into her already established work life instead of having to fit work into an already established mother life. Believe me, I totally understood what she was saying. Being a mother while being a writer or being a writer while being a mother is still not natural for me. I got started in the wrong order.

I would see her at another event at the University of Massachusetts where I attended a program she was running. She began with an apology, because her husband was ill and she had been distracted when preparing her presentation. Then she proceeded to give what I felt was a fine college-level lecture, because that was what she was capable of when she wasn't at the top of her game.

Maybe sometime in the 2000s, the early teens, I actually shook her hand at some small gathering, again at UConn. I mentioned that we'd run into each other a couple of times over the years, and she looked at me intently and said something like, "I hope I was pleasant," which I thought was just lovely.

I am certain someone took a group picture of us at the end of that event. I know I had it, but I can't find it now or remember exactly when it was taken or why we were all where we were, which would help me to look for it. I am afraid I may have deleted it because I remember thinking it made my ass look big. I suspect Jane didn't give a damn about her ass, which left her with more time for all the things she did give a damn about.

I never read a great deal of Jane's work. It was Jane, herself, who drew me, the fact that she existed. In a nod to Michel de Montaigne, if you press me to say why I was obsessed with Jane Yolen, I can say no more than because she was she, and I, sadly, was only I.

The Reading History Project: History and Politics

In Writing the Trump Years Into History in The New Yorker (May 12), historian Jill Lepore writes about writing history. After calling upon Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men (which I read as a teenager and now want to read again) and her experience writing These Truths: A History of the United States, she discusses the impact she's witnessed of recent executive orders and state laws on what history is taught in classrooms.

Unless you have a New Yorker subscription, you won't be able to read her article. So I'll give you a few high points. Lepore says:

"Make America Great Again" is a four-word argument about American history, and one of the movement's aims has always been to press the teaching and writing of American history into the service of that argument." Trump wishes "...to make American history great again by removing all evidence of anything that ever happened that wasn't so great..."

"In the Trump era, government censorship of American history has been used against not only classroom teachers but also against writers and publishers and librarians and booksellers..."

Gift shops at national parks and National Historic Sites are now supposed to review what they offer for sale for conforming to the "President's preferred account of American history."

Not so great things have happened in America. And everywhere else. Does pretending they didn't happen make it so? Will pretending these things didn't happen make life better now or in the future? 

History vs Politics

I've just started reading Lepore's The Story of America: Essays on Origins. In the Introduction (I read introductions these days) she says she wrote these essays "because I wanted to try to explain how history works, and how it's different from politics." They are both interested in stories about the past, but

"Politics is a story about the relationship between the past and the future; history is a story about the relationships between the past and the present."

"Politics is accountable to opinion; history is accountable to evidence."

But more on The Story of America after I've read beyond the Introduction. 

In the meantime, in Lepore's article Writing the Trump Years Into History she writes about how difficult it is to write historically about the very recent past, because you can't get much perspective on it. And writing a history of our recent past is complicated by what you might call the legal restrictions being placed on history. She brings up the issue of books purchased by Florida public schools, libraries, and universities requiring stickers that indicate the federal name for "Gulf of Mexico" is "Gulf of America," though the term "Gulf of Mexico" first appears in documents from the sixteenth century. 

Does the whole "Gulf of America" thing mean that governments today can change history? Yes, it's only a name, but it's a name that's been in use for four hundred years. 

"...sometimes," Lepore says, "the only thing to do is to fight. And the only way I know how to fight is to write."

Is Reading History a Political Act?

I am going to argue that those of us who don't write can also fight the political takeover of history. We can do it by reading.

No, don't just say "Those executive orders about history are ... " whatever outrageous term comes to mind. Don't just complain. Don't just make jokes about the President sleeping through history class. Jokes aren't doing anything these days.

You know what does do something? Educating ourselves.

Read history. Any history. Any group's history. Just by reading it, you're helping to preserve it. Support the historians you read by buying their work or by asking libraries for it or by reviewing it on-line. Spread your new-found knowledge any way you can.

My somewhat shallow knowledge of history suggests to me that someday we will come out the other side of what's happening now. Groups don't stay in power forever, and the kinds of groups in power now have not held on for long periods in the past. 

We are not powerless. We can retain historical knowledge for the future. Perhaps that is a political act.