Peg Herring's Blog, page 37
September 8, 2010
How Much Is Enough?
George Michael isn't the first to say it, although he said it really well. But the "How much" I'm thinking of is for writers promoting books. How do you know when you've done enough? You can go in twenty different directions, work days, weeks, and months on promotion, and get nothing.
I have a current project that is like that. I've done everything I can think of, and it has gone nowhere. Another project, one I did years ago and pretty much forgot, reaps regular rewards without any exertion of energy on my part. One is not better than the other. Somewhere along the line, one picked up steam and became self-perpetuating, and the other is having a hard time making a start.
I don't get it, but that's the way it is.
I have a current project that is like that. I've done everything I can think of, and it has gone nowhere. Another project, one I did years ago and pretty much forgot, reaps regular rewards without any exertion of energy on my part. One is not better than the other. Somewhere along the line, one picked up steam and became self-perpetuating, and the other is having a hard time making a start.
I don't get it, but that's the way it is.
September 7, 2010
Shedding Stuff
It's hard to do, harder for some than others. We see shows on TV like "Hoarders" and think, "Glad I'm not like them." But maybe we are.
I spoke with a woman yesterday who has two storage facilities full of stuff, a room in her son's house is stacked to the ceiling, and her own house consists of pathways banked by stuff. She and her husband are building a pole barn to hold more stuff.
Another friend complains that her husband can't stop buying stuff. His passion is old machinery, so they have a dozen ancient tractors, a few bulldozers, an array of farm equipment, and a host of smaller pieces. None of them work, which doesn't matter, because the husband is not a farmer anyway. He just likes owning stuff.
My mother was a great one for stuff. An elementary teacher, she saved things for arts and crafts: empty plastic bowls, used compacts, egg crates, et cetera. When she retired and no longer needed the items, they remained in her basement, gathering dust, getting damp, and taking up space. After her death, it all went into the trash.
So why do people keep stuff they don't need? Theories abound. The fear that we might need it at some point in the future. The fact that many of us have extra space, so there isn't a great need to downsize possessions. The belief that someone, hopefully our children, will be thrilled to inherit our junk when we're gone.
People hire people to come in and help them get rid of junk. TV shows are formed around clutter and getting rid of it. Magazines suggest weird stunts like swap meets where people get together and trade junk. And garage sales, where we actaully pay money for other people's junk. How about simply garnering the self-discipline to look at what you own and sort it into three categories: essentials that you keep, decent stuff that you give to charity, and junk that you jettison, hopefully in an environmentally responsible way. Is that so hard?
I spoke with a woman yesterday who has two storage facilities full of stuff, a room in her son's house is stacked to the ceiling, and her own house consists of pathways banked by stuff. She and her husband are building a pole barn to hold more stuff.
Another friend complains that her husband can't stop buying stuff. His passion is old machinery, so they have a dozen ancient tractors, a few bulldozers, an array of farm equipment, and a host of smaller pieces. None of them work, which doesn't matter, because the husband is not a farmer anyway. He just likes owning stuff.
My mother was a great one for stuff. An elementary teacher, she saved things for arts and crafts: empty plastic bowls, used compacts, egg crates, et cetera. When she retired and no longer needed the items, they remained in her basement, gathering dust, getting damp, and taking up space. After her death, it all went into the trash.
So why do people keep stuff they don't need? Theories abound. The fear that we might need it at some point in the future. The fact that many of us have extra space, so there isn't a great need to downsize possessions. The belief that someone, hopefully our children, will be thrilled to inherit our junk when we're gone.
People hire people to come in and help them get rid of junk. TV shows are formed around clutter and getting rid of it. Magazines suggest weird stunts like swap meets where people get together and trade junk. And garage sales, where we actaully pay money for other people's junk. How about simply garnering the self-discipline to look at what you own and sort it into three categories: essentials that you keep, decent stuff that you give to charity, and junk that you jettison, hopefully in an environmentally responsible way. Is that so hard?
September 3, 2010
Five Minutes of Your Time
It always turns into a lot more. A quick note from a librarian: "Can you send us infor on your historical costume?" No sweat, I think. But suddenly half an hour is gone. And I could add....NO! Time to move on.
It's true that things expand to fit the time allotted for them, but it's also true that things just expand. Nothing happens as quickly as I think it will when I sit down in this chair.
So here's my theory. Time is bendable, and the Internet has bent it double. Therefore it takes twice the time you expected to get anything done. That's it!
Or it could be all Facebook's fault. Silly videos! Well, maybe one more.
It's true that things expand to fit the time allotted for them, but it's also true that things just expand. Nothing happens as quickly as I think it will when I sit down in this chair.
So here's my theory. Time is bendable, and the Internet has bent it double. Therefore it takes twice the time you expected to get anything done. That's it!
Or it could be all Facebook's fault. Silly videos! Well, maybe one more.
September 2, 2010
Stress and Good Stress
We all whine about stress, and we certainly have enough of it. It contributes to all sorts of health conditions, which is enough to add stress to the stress you already have: What if all this worrying about stress is causing too much stress?
I think we should step back every once in a while and consider that life is all about stress. Primitive humans must have had stress, because they did not know when the next natural disaster would hit or how such things occurred. They must have worried about being unprepared, which led to all that sacrificing firstborn sons and whatever. Stressful to give up a child, but appeasing the gods seemed like the best stress reliever at the time. We, on the other hand, are warned about most natural disasters well in advance, so we can start worrying early on and avoid the last minute rush.
People in history certainly had stress. The fact that your job performance could get you disemboweled has to lend a certain edge to the morning commute as you ride a donkey to the local castle.
Stress occurs on two levels. First is the stress of having work to accomplish. Knowing you have a deadline, knowing there are multiple steps to master, knowing there will be obstacles. A healthy, functioning person can handle that type of stress. It might make him tired or cranky or frustrated, but it doesn't send him to a rubber room.
It is the things that we cannot change that stress us most. Tasks we don't feel capable of mastering, forces we cannot control, things we cannot fix.
For me, writing and publishing create good stress. I like the challenge, even when it is really challenging. Setbacks might make me sad or mad, but they don't diminish my overall determination. That's good stress, and it actually counters some of the other stresses life throws at a person. Weird, but there it is.
I think we should step back every once in a while and consider that life is all about stress. Primitive humans must have had stress, because they did not know when the next natural disaster would hit or how such things occurred. They must have worried about being unprepared, which led to all that sacrificing firstborn sons and whatever. Stressful to give up a child, but appeasing the gods seemed like the best stress reliever at the time. We, on the other hand, are warned about most natural disasters well in advance, so we can start worrying early on and avoid the last minute rush.
People in history certainly had stress. The fact that your job performance could get you disemboweled has to lend a certain edge to the morning commute as you ride a donkey to the local castle.
Stress occurs on two levels. First is the stress of having work to accomplish. Knowing you have a deadline, knowing there are multiple steps to master, knowing there will be obstacles. A healthy, functioning person can handle that type of stress. It might make him tired or cranky or frustrated, but it doesn't send him to a rubber room.
It is the things that we cannot change that stress us most. Tasks we don't feel capable of mastering, forces we cannot control, things we cannot fix.
For me, writing and publishing create good stress. I like the challenge, even when it is really challenging. Setbacks might make me sad or mad, but they don't diminish my overall determination. That's good stress, and it actually counters some of the other stresses life throws at a person. Weird, but there it is.
September 1, 2010
Stumbling Along Together
Creating a career in writing is a little like walking through a thick, dark forest at one a.m. on a cloudy night. Your feet find the right path for a while sometimes, but you bounce into tree trunks, get scraped by branches, trip over rocks, and often end up back where you started because you didn't know where you were going.
Let's examine my allegory. Tree trunks might symbolize rejections, that hard thump we get when someone with power over our future says, "Not for us." We reel backward a few steps. We get angry. "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" we shriek. "Is it bad? Is it not marketable? Is it too much like (or unlike) the latest bestseller?" Then the pain sets in. Ow! That hurt. The tree trunk is unmarred, unreactive.
Then there are the branches that reach out into the path. They don't stop us, but we have to either duck them, go around them, or let them scrape off some hide as we pass. Nasty comments from readers and reviewers. Agents who are too busy to answer our emails or help us plan our careers. Friends who ask why our books aren't on the bestseller lists and why Oprah has never let our names cross her lips.
Rocks that rise up from below and wait to trip us are the things that slow us down: should we write the next chapter or answer those emails that promise better promotion? Being asked to judge a writing contest contributes to a writer's renown, but is the time it's going to take worth losing all those hours? And it's only lunch with a friend! What can a few hours off hurt?
And then there's the aimless wandering. We think we know where we need to go, but so often the paths split, circle back on themselves, or dead end. We spend so much time going the wrong way, and it simply can't be avoided because it's so darned dark out here!
Some of us make it. We don't know how, really, but persistence is a big part of it. One eye is watering from that branch that slapped us in the face, and it took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we reach our goal.
And what do we do? We plunge back into the woods, in the dark, unsure how far ahead that next stopping place is. After all, it's only four a.m. now. There's bound to be a sunrise somewhere up ahead.
Let's examine my allegory. Tree trunks might symbolize rejections, that hard thump we get when someone with power over our future says, "Not for us." We reel backward a few steps. We get angry. "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" we shriek. "Is it bad? Is it not marketable? Is it too much like (or unlike) the latest bestseller?" Then the pain sets in. Ow! That hurt. The tree trunk is unmarred, unreactive.
Then there are the branches that reach out into the path. They don't stop us, but we have to either duck them, go around them, or let them scrape off some hide as we pass. Nasty comments from readers and reviewers. Agents who are too busy to answer our emails or help us plan our careers. Friends who ask why our books aren't on the bestseller lists and why Oprah has never let our names cross her lips.
Rocks that rise up from below and wait to trip us are the things that slow us down: should we write the next chapter or answer those emails that promise better promotion? Being asked to judge a writing contest contributes to a writer's renown, but is the time it's going to take worth losing all those hours? And it's only lunch with a friend! What can a few hours off hurt?
And then there's the aimless wandering. We think we know where we need to go, but so often the paths split, circle back on themselves, or dead end. We spend so much time going the wrong way, and it simply can't be avoided because it's so darned dark out here!
Some of us make it. We don't know how, really, but persistence is a big part of it. One eye is watering from that branch that slapped us in the face, and it took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we reach our goal.
And what do we do? We plunge back into the woods, in the dark, unsure how far ahead that next stopping place is. After all, it's only four a.m. now. There's bound to be a sunrise somewhere up ahead.
August 31, 2010
Book Shopping
There are big arguments about Kindle versus real books and indie bookstores versus chains versus Amazon. All I know is that when I get near a lot of books, I want some of them. Okay, a lot of them.
Yesterday a friend and I hit a bookstore where the manager (who knows real customers when she sees them) engaged us in conversation. Soon we were trading authors and titles. There's nothing like, "Have you read..." for lovers of reading.
I bought. My friend bought. The manager added a couple of titles to her TBR list. And everyone got happier, despite life's buffets.
Bookstores, online lists, fliers in the library, even Amazon's "People who read this also liked..." offer possibilities for reading, and it's like picking flowers in a huge garden. You can't pick them all. You don't know which are the perfect ones for you, but standing in the midst of it all, you don't care. It's just fun to have all those choices, all those possibilities for satisfaction.
Yesterday a friend and I hit a bookstore where the manager (who knows real customers when she sees them) engaged us in conversation. Soon we were trading authors and titles. There's nothing like, "Have you read..." for lovers of reading.
I bought. My friend bought. The manager added a couple of titles to her TBR list. And everyone got happier, despite life's buffets.
Bookstores, online lists, fliers in the library, even Amazon's "People who read this also liked..." offer possibilities for reading, and it's like picking flowers in a huge garden. You can't pick them all. You don't know which are the perfect ones for you, but standing in the midst of it all, you don't care. It's just fun to have all those choices, all those possibilities for satisfaction.
August 30, 2010
Bad, Bad Books
Since taking up this writing thing, I am asked about once a year to judge contests. I'm in that process now, and it causes me to wonder, "Who in the world published these people?"
We keep hearing about the gazillions of submissions agents and publishers receive each week, and I don't doubt that. The computer has made it easy to put down a collection of words and call it a novel. But oh. my. goodness. I can't have any sympathy for professionals who can't separate the chaff I'm being forced to read from anything even close to wheat. And yet, somebody published that chaff.
Ridiculous plots. Characters so stereotypical as to be funny, but not meant to be. Gratuitous scenes of sex and violence so childish I could almost hear the author say to him/herself, "Now what else can I do to this character to stretch out the book?" Bad guys so over the top that they should have Snidely Whiplash mustaches they can stroke while they deliver their lines.
If the competition for publishing space is so fierce, then why is so much bad writing being published?
We keep hearing about the gazillions of submissions agents and publishers receive each week, and I don't doubt that. The computer has made it easy to put down a collection of words and call it a novel. But oh. my. goodness. I can't have any sympathy for professionals who can't separate the chaff I'm being forced to read from anything even close to wheat. And yet, somebody published that chaff.
Ridiculous plots. Characters so stereotypical as to be funny, but not meant to be. Gratuitous scenes of sex and violence so childish I could almost hear the author say to him/herself, "Now what else can I do to this character to stretch out the book?" Bad guys so over the top that they should have Snidely Whiplash mustaches they can stroke while they deliver their lines.
If the competition for publishing space is so fierce, then why is so much bad writing being published?
August 27, 2010
It Will Be in the Last Place You Look
Well, of course it will, because then you'll stop looking for it.
We say stuff every day that makes no sense, and nobody even bats an eye. Okay, there's one right there. We use expressions that are archaic, but I wonder if they ever really made sense. Dead as a doornail, for example. Who decided that a doornail is deader than other types of nails?
We tell people to do things as if they can't figure it out for themselves. We scream at baseball players to run after they hit the ball. What else are they paid millions of dollars to do? Is it a choice? Are they thinking, "Should I run or go out for a latte?" Still, thousands of fans are shouting, "Run!" or "Go!" Should we add, "Travel to first base and then turn slightly to the left!"
We exaggerate regularly, but nobody calls us liars. I have a sort of mental scale that I apply to other people's memories. If they say, "We used to..." whatever, I figure it happened twice. When they add a word, "We used to always..." it might have happened three times.
I confess, I am prone to overblown adjectives. Everything is "wonderful" or "amazing". I know better, but then, a lot of other wonderful and amazing people do the same thing.
Conversation is just funny, even when it doesn't mean to be. We have proscribed roles to play, and we say what is expected of us, even when it doesn't make sense. I'm sure you could find the reasons for it in some psychology book, but I bet it will be in the last place you look.
We say stuff every day that makes no sense, and nobody even bats an eye. Okay, there's one right there. We use expressions that are archaic, but I wonder if they ever really made sense. Dead as a doornail, for example. Who decided that a doornail is deader than other types of nails?
We tell people to do things as if they can't figure it out for themselves. We scream at baseball players to run after they hit the ball. What else are they paid millions of dollars to do? Is it a choice? Are they thinking, "Should I run or go out for a latte?" Still, thousands of fans are shouting, "Run!" or "Go!" Should we add, "Travel to first base and then turn slightly to the left!"
We exaggerate regularly, but nobody calls us liars. I have a sort of mental scale that I apply to other people's memories. If they say, "We used to..." whatever, I figure it happened twice. When they add a word, "We used to always..." it might have happened three times.
I confess, I am prone to overblown adjectives. Everything is "wonderful" or "amazing". I know better, but then, a lot of other wonderful and amazing people do the same thing.
Conversation is just funny, even when it doesn't mean to be. We have proscribed roles to play, and we say what is expected of us, even when it doesn't make sense. I'm sure you could find the reasons for it in some psychology book, but I bet it will be in the last place you look.
August 26, 2010
Tragedy! When Your Baby's Gone and You Can't Go On
Okay, I know it's not the right BeeGee words. But my computer is at the place where sick computers go, and it surely feels like a tragedy. I have my trusty laptop, but it seems like I'm working with one hand tied behind my back. Wrong chair, wrong alignment, even the wrong room, which in combination makes it just feel...well, wrong.
I will get used to it. Or I will get my "real" computer back. I just hope the Muse hasn't floated out of all those cords while they sprawl all over my desk, not connected to anything.
I will get used to it. Or I will get my "real" computer back. I just hope the Muse hasn't floated out of all those cords while they sprawl all over my desk, not connected to anything.
August 25, 2010
The Stuff of Life
I get irritated by them: those things I have to do when I would rather be writing. Yesterday it was shopping for home improvement items. In the north woods, where we live, buying large ticket items means a one-hour drive to a town that has stores in it. Yes, I get to eat at the Chinese restaurant (we don't have one of those, either), but it is a wasted day...well, except for the new refrigerator, freezer, bathroom remodeling stuff and five t-shirts I found on sale in a rainbow of colors.
What I mean is, I didn't write a word on my WIP. So it should be chalked up as a wasted work day, right?
Wrong. On the way home, I'm half dozing, half watching the scenery go by (Don't be scared; I was NOT driving.) And suddenly the solution to a plot problem that had been bothering me for a week just appeared in my head. It was exactly like a knot had untied itself and let me go on with my story.
So maybe the stuff of life is there by design. Maybe the brain--at least, my brain--works better when it's on auto-pilot, when the conscious layer is distracted by toilets and energy-saver rebates.
What I mean is, I didn't write a word on my WIP. So it should be chalked up as a wasted work day, right?
Wrong. On the way home, I'm half dozing, half watching the scenery go by (Don't be scared; I was NOT driving.) And suddenly the solution to a plot problem that had been bothering me for a week just appeared in my head. It was exactly like a knot had untied itself and let me go on with my story.
So maybe the stuff of life is there by design. Maybe the brain--at least, my brain--works better when it's on auto-pilot, when the conscious layer is distracted by toilets and energy-saver rebates.
