Some Annotated Reading September 7

Finished The Guncle by Steven Rowley More to come on this.

Read all of The New One by Mike Birbiglia Also watched one of his Netflix stand-up specials. More to come on this.

The Mustache by Robert Cormier. This was part of a group of short stories listed as epiphanies, and the only one of them I've read so far. Turns out, I recognized it. I'd read it before. Here is my personal Robert Cormier story. Many years ago, I stumbled upon a website list of well-known Franco-Americans. Cormier was listed as something like "Our leading Franco-American writer." Shortly thereafter he died, and I thought, "The position of leading Franco-American writer is open!" I don't know who got it, but it wasn't me.

Hana Sushi by Anita Lo I liked this a lot. I just realized that it's about eating, something I like to write about. I read this as part of researching Smokelong Quarterly.

Kaleidescope by Lizzie Lawson  This is a supernatural story that feels normal. I think its flash format serves it well. It's complete. I don't want more.

Pin Me Pink by Lizzie Lawson  I cannot recall how I found Lizzie Lawson or thought I should read her work, but this is another piece I think works well as flash. Also, there's an incongruity here that I like that has nothing to do with it being flash.

Likely Ways I Might Appear In A True-Crime Documentary by Sara K. Runnels  Part of my New Yorker humor reading. I liked this even though I don't watch true-crime documentaries. That is an issue when you're writing humor. Will everyone get the humor or just the circle of people who know what I'm writing about? Oh, no! Sara K. Runnels has published a lot of humor and essays that I now feel compelled to read! I have to add her page to my reading list. Soon I will have so many reading links on my iPad, to say nothing of my ebooks, that I won't be able to lift it!

Yesterday afternoon I read a number of articles on Tay-Sachs Disease among French Canadians for the writing project I'm not supposed to be working on. I was falling asleep and this reading revived me, which is very odd because my understanding of the workings of DNA is extremely shallow and limited. 

Time Management Tuesday: It's Temporal Landmark Time Again

As my loyal followers know, I am very fond of temporal landmarks, distinct calendar events that stand out for us in some way and give us a feeling that we can begin something new. Holidays are temporal landmarks. Birthdays, seasons, months. We often will begin new diets or exercise programs after New Year's Day or after a holiday. November has become a temporal landmark for many writers, who use National Novel Writing Month, which occurs then, to jumpstart new books. Many writer/teachers use vacations as temporal landmarks, a time when they write. 

Last spring I wrote about trying to use a Swedish event, Gokotta, that occurs between what are two temporal landmarks, at least for them, Ascension Day and midsommer. Gokotta involves getting up early with the birds to experience nature. My plan was to get up early for that period and instead of experiencing nature, work. 

No, that didn't work for me at all. It lasted two or three days. I can't even recall what time I was getting up then or a single thing I did.

But that was then and this is now, right? I think that's a Zen saying.

Maybe Our Biggest Temporal Landmark

Waiting at bus stop, first day of school

Back in 2016, I wrote about an article in which an author argued that September had become the new New Year. Most people, it claimed, saw September, the end of the summer vacation period, as a better time for beginning new endeavors. I suggested that that might be because, at least in the U.S., we are very connected to the school year, after spending 12-to-16 years in schools, ourselves, and possibly raising another generation who will spend another 12-to-16 years doing the same thing.

Quite honestly, I hated it when my kids got to the morning torture period of their education, when they had to be up at the buttcrack of dawn to catch a bus that drove up the street before many adults living here left for work. Getting up with them was a horror show for me, and I continued to do it, right up until they graduated, even though they were old enough and capable enough to get themselves up and out of the house themselves. I felt they shouldn't have to do something I wouldn't do.

Parents dread having their kids leave for college, but they get over it in about 48 hours because once the kids are out of the house, the parents can almost certainly sleep later. Even if they have jobs, they probably don't have to get up as early for those as high school kids do for school.

Unless they're teachers, of course. Then they're slaves to the academic schedule and calendar for their entire working lives. As a graduate of a school of education, I know for a fact that no one warns you about that. 

Working With A New September Landmark

Over the years since my emancipation from the academic calendar I have loved sleeping in. Which often involved, for me, reading in bed, dozing, waking up again, looking out the window or at the ceiling, and wondering when I was going to get up. And over the years, this sleeping in lasted longer and longer.

I was losing one-and-a-half-to-two hours a day compared to when I had teenagers in the house. I definitely could feel the loss in terms of getting things done, either things related to work or to life. On days when eight o'clock came and even went and I was just dragging myself out of bed, I often felt that that day was pretty much over. I should just think about what I was going to do the next day.

Why, yes, that is what's known as the what-the-hell effect. 

Then this year's September temporal landmark came and had a big impact on one of our young family members who had moved up to an older kid school and now had to get up at six to catch a six-forty-five bus. And I thought, I should get up with him. Yes. Yes, yes, I can do that.

So I got up with him Thursday and Friday last week. Then the three-day weekend came, so I took that off from getting up early, because he was. And I got up with him this morning.

Three mornings! Supposedly you only have to do something for six weeks before it becomes a habit. I only have five+ weeks to go.

When I say I'm getting up with this kid, I'm speaking metaphorically. He lives in another house in another state with parents who get up with him.

What Am I Doing With This Time?

Right now my plan is to do random crap in my early morning hours. I have a lot of random crap to do in my life. So far, I've worked a lot on weeding e-mail in-baskets. Went over a credit card statement. Printed out some things that needed (and still need) to be filed. The first day I did some yoga. This morning I replied to two personal e-mails, which is a big deal because I went so long without replying to a friend's email this summer (two months) that she e-mailed me again to see if I was okay. I wrote a big chunk of this blog post. I stumbled upon an old blog post that I'm going to repost this week.

I think the random crap plan may help me stick with this new schedule, because I like doing those kinds of things, if they aren't keeping me from doing more significant work. All the random crap I do first thing in the morning is random crap I won't be doing during prime working time, whenever that is. I also think wanting to support a young family member will help the new schedule stick. Even though I'm not actually doing a single thing for him. 

Also, I'm taking weekends and school holidays off, so that should help. Can't wait for Columbus Day weekend!

Bringing Connecticut Writers To The Public

Two local not necessarily literary events included/will include local authors in examples of thinking outside the box for book promotion. They are also examples of reaching readers who don't necessarily find their books through the traditional bookstore and library route.

Book At A Porchfest

One group of porchfest musicians

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a porchfest in Wethersfield, Connecticut. What is a porchfest, you may ask? I certainly did.  A porchfest is an annual event involving musicians performing on porches. They began in Ithaca, New York in 2007 and are now held across the U.S. and Canada. I've heard of a couple more in the last couple of weeks, before which time, I'd never heard of one at all.

The porchfest we attended was along a main street and the musicians were set up in front of stores and restaurants, creating a porchlike atmosphere, and performing at different times. Big variety of types of music. This porchfest also had businesses and artisans set up in the street, which had been closed to foot traffic. 

P. Jo Anne Burgh

Among the people with booths was author P. Jo Anne Burgh, author of State v. Claus and the upcoming Becoming Mrs. Claus. She had a great set-up and exhibited calm in a situation in which I rarely am. 

An interesting part of the Jo Anne/Porchfest/Gail story: She posted at a Connecticut Authors Facebook group we both belong to that she would be at Porchfest Wethersfield. I didn't know her, and I hadn't heard of this porchfest thing, though I live maybe 20 to 30 minutes away from where it was being held. I googled Porchfest Wethersfield and decided I wanted to go. I met Jo Anne, bought her book, had a great morning, have been talking about porchfests with family members ever since.

My point being, this is an example of social media marketing working. I don't know that it works as well or as often as the publishing world hoped when it latched onto it. I don't know that it works in big ways very often. Book titles going viral are probably pretty rare, and I don't know that viral Internet attention for a book necessarily leads to big sales. But I do believe it works in small ways like this.

An Author Stage At An Arts & Crafts Show

Next weekend, the River Bend Bookshop in Glastonbury, Connecticut is holding its Author Stage, which it has been doing for at least a couple of years, at the Glastonbury Arts' On The Green Arts & Crafts Show, which has been happening for a while, too. This features both adult and children's authors over multiple genres. 

A lot of authors over 2 days

Once again, I found out about this in interesting ways. Facebook friend (one I've actually met in the flesh) Stacy DeKeyser will be appearing and has posted about it on Facebook. I'm also on the River Bend Bookshop email list and have been notified that way. To be honest, I'm usually 6 to 8 weeks late reading the local weekly paper that would probably carry information on this. 

Give some thought to how information is spread these days and how you can hook yourself up with groups to make sure you get the kind of information you want. Being members of the "right groups" doesn't mean what it used to mean. Now it means getting access to their information.

 

Friday Done List For September 1

 

Goal 2. Work On Adult Essays, Short Stories, And Humor.

• I submitted the humor piece that was rejected last Friday to a publication that is a definite reach for me. They have a long turnaround time for getting back with acceptances/rejection. So I won't have to do anything with that piece for a while!
• Then I found a new for me publication at Medium that had the potential to get more attention for things published there. I had to request permission to be added as a writer, then I submitted the second piece that was rejected last week. They accepted it and...nobody is reading it!
• Did some essay and humor reading. 
• Watched a couple of videos on publishing at Medium and got the names of some more publications I'm interested in looking into.

Goal 4. Submit Adult Books To Agents

• Received a rejection from an agent on Good Women. She said she hoped I'd submit something else to her soon. I am that as a win, even though she rejected something from me back in 2017 and said something similar. But that was a win then, too, right? Because obviously she's not saying that to everybody.
• Found a few agent names to look into when I'm ready to submit 143 Canterbury Road.

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Attended a Porchfest, because a writer on Facebook said she'd be there. Met her, bought her book, did a couple of Facebook posts supporting her. Hmm. Maybe a blog post about that next week?
• Promoted the new publication at Facebook.
• Did a couple of blog posts, one supporting the publication at Medium, one on my reading, the goal of that being to push me to read more.

The goal of this weekly Done List is to both enhance my self-esteem, as if it needed any more enhancement, and push me to do more. The big thing I need to do more on is work on short fiction and market research for publishing that. I've done nothing with that this year.

Some Annotated Reading

This week I have been reading:

The Guncle by Steven Rowley. More to come on that when I finish.

A Peach by Any Other Name Is Just as Gross: My Terrible Fear of Fruit by Sheila Jackson at Serious Eats I'm continuing to check out Serious Eats as a potential market for my eating essays, and I was delighted to see that this one was written by someone who is not an award-winning food writer. I was also interested in this particular essay because I have a number of family members with fear of food, including fruit.

The Incredible Super Power of Flash by Dinty W. Moore at the Brevity blog. Moore, who is a big name in flash nonfiction writing, covers compression in this post, which I had heard of but forgotten about, and layering, which I hadn't heard of. I am reminded of how much work I need to do.

How-to at Medium: I read a couple of pieces by a guy giving advice on how to do well writing on the Medium platform. They were not very good. Medium is a very different writing world. Years ago, I read that there are two kinds of writers--writers who write to support themselves and publish through the New York City publishing world and writers who write to support their academic careers and publish outside the New York City publishing world. I think an argument can be made now that there is a third kind of writer, who writes and publishes on-line, where content about personal experience is king and craft takes second place. IMHO. I've also been reading up on Medium's boost program. You don't want to know.

Reading for a new project: Though I said earlier this year that I'm through with book-length projects, I'm toying with taking a shot at a mystery set in the late nineteenth century. I've read a bunch over the years. So now I'm reading up on things like attitudes toward French Canadians in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century, the craze for bicycling in the 1890s, and women's corsets. There were cycling corsets back then. Like sports bras but bigger.

Don't Ever Throw Away Your Writing

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--Don't ever throw away your writing, whether it's a full draft or something you just started or something you completed and nobody wanted. You never know when you'll be able to do something new with it. Throw away all your other stuff, but not your writing.

Remember last Friday when I announced I'd had two rejections the same day? Well, it's five days later, and Ellemeno, a new, for me, publication on the Medium platform, has published Their Times and Ours. This is a memoirish piece, not humor. 

Ellemeno is interested in articles that are about writers, not about writing craft. I like that, because absolutely everyone, whether knowledgeable about the subject or not, writes about craft. Whereas what goes on in writers' lives has the potential to be...well, not another rant about whether or not writers should write what they know, at least.

This Writer's Life With Their Times and Ours

According to my excellent filing/submission system:

• I submitted an earlier version of Their Times and Ours to someone in 2015, about a half a year after I visited The Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. (I love traveling in the Midwest.) At that point, it only dealt with James Thurber...and me. 
• A year later, it was still about James Thurber and me when I submitted it somewhere again.
• Between 2016 and 2019, I took a nature writing workshop and met the man I describe in the essay, which is how Charles Dickens came into the picture. (I feel it goes without saying that the man was not Charles Dickens.) I added the workshop guy and Dickens to broaden the essay. 
• Between 2019 and 2023, the pandemic came to visit, and I added a sentence about that, both to bring the essay up to date and to deal with the issue of change, which has a big part in the essay.

Two Reasons To Hold On To Your Writing

Two things happened with Their Times and Ours over the years:

• I kept finding and adding new material
• I found new places to submit it

Of course, I must also add that being able to rework old projects and hunt for new markets for them involves...time. Yes, a totally different subject.

Friday Done List For August 26

 

Long Story Short:

Goal 2 Work On Adult Short Stories, Essays, Humor: Two rejections in one day! By the time I went to bed last night, I had a plan for submitting one of these pieces, and this morning I have a plan for submitting the other one. Because that is the job.

Some Annotated Reading

Because I am concentrating on short-form writing, I need to be looking for places that publish the same. The reading involved is time consuming, and I sometimes feel I should just sit down and do nothing but read for a month or two. 

Instead, what I've been reading this week includes:

In the Bird Cage: Finding Out What Funny Is by Steve Martin, New Yorker, October 22, 2007. This is an excerpt from Martin's book Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life Very readable. The lesson learned? Martin dated some interesting women when he was young.

The Kid Is Alright: In Defense of Picky Eating by Irina Dumitrescu, Serious Eats Serious Eats publishes personal essays about food. I write personal essays about eating. Also, we have two generations of picky eaters in our family. Serious, serious picky eaters. The lesson learned after poking around Serious Eats? A lot of their essayists are award winning food writers. I must make of that what I will. 

The House With Feet: The Dire Importance of Ruth Stone's Bequest by Bianca Stone in Vida: Women in the Literary Arts. This piece has nothing to do with my market research and everything to do with the fact that I'm developing an obsession with Ruth Stone, just as I have one with Shirley Jackson. It appears that I have not mentioned here that I received The Essential Ruth Stone for Christmas last year and read it this spring.

Pretty Bad Middle Grade Novel--I wouldn't finish this, but I'm skimming now because I bought the thing. I will have more to say about this after I finish. 

Medium--I try to do some reading on Medium each week, sometimes to check out publications I might submit to, sometimes to try to support other writers. I'm hesitant to post Medium links, because it appears that my readers can't read a few piece per month there anymore. But, just in case, this was a pretty good poem.

The Weekend Writer: Hybrid Publishing

First, A Brief Primer On Book Publishing Options

Traditional publishers: They accept manuscripts for publication that meet their standards (whatever they may be), provide authors with an advance against royalties (an advance against the author's take of sales), and provide all the work necessary to publish books. And there's a lot. The author takes no financial risk but receives a small percentage of the cover price of each book, since the traditional publisher needs to make back its investment...and presumably more. Many traditionally published books don't sell enough to cover the authors' advances.

Self-publishing: Authors publish their books themselves, doing...and paying for...all the work necessary to do so. And there's a lot. Over the years, I've read that it's not unusual for self-published writers to pay around $10,000 to publish a book of a quality to compete with traditional books. And then they may sink a lot more money into marketing. The authors are taking all the financial risk but receive all the money their books make. It's not unusual for self-published authors to not make enough money on book sales to cover their investments.

Hybrid publishers: Hybrid publishers are supposed to be somewhere between traditional publishers and self-publishing. They provide some of the work necessary to publish books but authors pay for a portion of it. I'm seeing figures of around $8,000 to $9,000, and while that does include distribution, which self-published writers struggle with, it often doesn't include developmental editing and marketing. Both can cost a lot. Authors are sharing the financial risk with the hybrid publisher but receive a bigger percentage of each book sold than traditionally published authors do.

Looking Further Into Hybrid Publishing

Jane Friedman takes a deep plunge into hybrid publishing with IMHO: A Nuanced Look at Hybrid Publishers at The Hot Sheet.  Read it carefully. Among other things, she talks about the percentage of authors publishing with She Writes Press, a well-known and reputable hybrid, who earn back their investment. I found it sobering.

A few years ago, I attended a women's writers group. A few women had books coming out with a hybrid publisher. A couple of them said they were going that route, because they were older writers and didn't want to spend the years it can take to find a traditional publisher. Yeah, that was sobering, too. 

These days, we think of traditional publishing as being the gold standard. That's where the quality is. But I wonder if a couple from now we won't be thinking in terms of quality, but social class. People with the means to do so, will publish rapidly with self-publishing or hybrid publishing. Poor writes will congregate with the traditional publishers because they don't have to put any money up front with them.

Friday Done List for August 18

Okay, this done list is making me feel, well, calmer, I guess, about getting some work done. My done lists relate to the year's goals and objectives.

Goal 2. Work On Adult Essays, Short Stories, And Humor.

• Did a pretty big revision of the humor piece that was rejected last week.
• Submitted that humor piece elsewhere.
• Picked out an essay that hasn't been worked on since 2017 to revise.
• Did some reading at the site I want to submit the above essay to.
• Created a list of new publications to check out from someone else's X/Twitter post.
• Read one essay at the site I'm considering submitting an eating article to.

Goal 4. Submit Adult Books To Agents

• Submitted Good Women to two agents.
• One of those two agents rejected Good Women the next day.

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding

• Read an article that will become a Weekend Writer post.
• Made an effort to read a lot of short-form work.
• Killed a half an hour looking over the Medium conference offerings, found two I was interested in, and found an article on one of the subjects I was interested in that I could read in less time than I would have had to spend attending a conference talk.
• Saw on Twitter that the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is under way, which led to a new blog post. 

Killed a half an hour going over the offerings for a Medium Day conference, chose two, realized I could find the info one was offering on-line and decided to bag the other one