See that subtitle? I wrote that as much for me as for anyone else who writes and then publishes whenever passion strikes. We are creatures of our hearts and thus can’t help it. We’re writers by choice and by training, but that doesn’t mean, when passions overtake, we have any control over where our writing leads. It leads to those places that are so important to us we have to get them out there.

We follow where our passions lead and then we worry. All of us. Even when we think we’re being brave and we write as if we’re brave. And it comes out as if we’re brave.

We worry because something tells us there’s a point where we can go too far and we’ll have lost those readers we most want to reach. But will we? Do we? What if some of them go? What if others stay? What if still more come aboard?

What if we finally figure out how futile it is to try and figure this out when our passions are still with us, still wanting to be read and to be heard and to be seen?

I’m coming at this today because I’m in the throes of passion most fraught these days—political passion. It may be the most controversial; it’s certainly the most contentious. We’ll never all agree about our politics and we tend to take our differences personally.

Toes will get stepped on. Feelings will be hurt. Alliances will be broken, some never to be repaired. The disappointment in us, if our readers disagree, will be palpable. We go in knowing all of that, yet we do it because the moment is here and our passion for our message is far more important. But it makes us nervous, nevertheless.

Because a big part of who we are as writers, the thing that keeps us going, is always, always, always the need to be read and liked.

At my Substack blog, Constant Commoner, where my posts have been about my life in the boonies, my widowhood, and the changes in my life since then, I do it as friend to friend. I can go for months without writing about politics, and when I do, it often comes as a surprise to some who are new to my pages and have only read the softer pieces.

When the activist side of me comes out, often with a roar, it has to be jarring to some. But the truth is, I’m a political animal and have been for all of my long, long adult life. This somewhat cozy side of my writing life is new for me. I’ve been writing political opinions for dozens of years and I can’t stop now. Especially not now, when I see my country so at risk. It’s a matter of working to save it. That, for me, supersedes everything.

If I risk losing readers over it, it’s a risk I’m learning to be willing to take. But it hasn’t happened. Not here. Not in numbers great enough for any kind of concern. If anything, Constant Commoner is growing in ways that, frankly, have astonished me. I won’t go into numbers because I don’t go into numbers, but my growing readership tells me I’m doing the right thing. For now.

I had no idea when I began concentrating again on politics that so many readers would engage and then subscribe. Our passions are high and they’re aligned. I couldn’t be more relieved. But my story is different from yours or anyone else’s, and that’s what I want to address.

The writers who hold their audiences best are the writers who have confidence. With enough confidence, any level of passion will work. Passion builds confidence. It’s a twofer.

Is there a risk? All writing is a risk. Will it be worth it? It’s passion we’re talking about. There are no tangibles. You write with passion because in those moments before you sat down to write you were overwhelmed with feelings. Caution goes out the window. Exhilaration sits down beside you. You’re giddy over what you’re about to write. Words form. It all comes out…

How terrible if you were to stop now to think about how strangers will feel as they read it. It’s not about them, it’s about you. They’ll either come along for the ride or they won’t.

But you, lucky you, have channeled that thing that makes your piece have meaning. It breathes. It glistens. Its name is passion.

I’ve been binge-watching Craft in America on PBS Passport (also available on YouTube) and as much as I’m enjoying the heck out of it, it finally hit me that a big part of my delight at finding this not-so-hidden treasure—and why I can spend so many guilt-free hours watching it—is because I’m in the presence of artists and crafters who are doing what they do for the sheer love of doing it.

The craft is the thing that moves them. If any of them became famous later on it’s not so much that they went after fame, it’s that fame came to them. They were going to create, no matter what.

There are a few famous names you’ll recognize in this series—glass artist Dale Chihuly, furniture maker George Nakashima, and Simon Rodia, the man who built Watts Towers, for example—but the majority of the others are mostly unfamiliar, at least to me. And I’m pretty sure they’re okay with that.

But what a celebration! I get to be there as these crafters talk about their creations, as they show me how they work, as they try to describe what it feels like to enter that space of their own, big or small, and zone out doing that thing they love.

I feel…privileged.

I can’t believe this program has been going on since 2007 and I’ve never seen it. Not once. And I watch a LOT of public television. How could I have missed it? Well, it doesn’t matter, because every episode is available now, including the newest one on miniatures.

Some of the segments focus on community projects, where artists and crafters can sell their goods, often making the difference between poverty and just getting along, and some take place in a garage or a barn or even out in the open, because that’s where the person is, it’s the space they have, and it’s where they want to be.

Much of what I’ve seen on Craft in America is built around community. These craftspeople— sometimes working in craft school settings like Berea or Penland or Cranbrook Academy (See ‘Community’ program below) but more often in simpler settings— feed off of each other, gaining inspiration and thriving in ways they might never have done on their own.

Many of these people are either self-taught or are a part of families or groups that have been working at their craft for generations.

In one segment someone said of them: “They’re not teachers, they’re people who do something well.”

A group of Appalachian women quilters scoff at the idea that they’re artists. They’ve learned from their mothers and their grandmothers, using cast off clothing and ordinary threads and needles. They make quilts to put on their beds. How could that be art?

The townswomen of Gees Bend, descendants of slaves, create their own brand of quilts out of what began as necessity, using the materials at hand, only to discover that outsiders find them to be modern and sophisticated and desirable.

In the episode below, on traditions, the focus is on the beginnings—showing how crafters have either adapted new ways of doing the old, or have kept to the old ways, down to the last detail.

The video below, called ‘Storytellers”, blends art and stories about our beliefs, about our history, about our wants and needs. This is where we come in. The history of human life on Earth revolves around stories. We learn about each other by the stories we tell, and storytelling can take many forms—words, music, art—all of them melding to give us a better understanding of our own humanity.

I may be the only one in America who had never seen this series until I just happened upon it one day while I was wandering around my PBS Passport page. But if you’re like me and you haven’t seen any of it—or even if you have— YouTube offers the complete programs, as well as shorter highlights from each of them. It’s an amazing way to spend some happy time.

And look—I got to write about it! I could have gone on and on, but now it’s calling to me again. I’m going to rewatch the episode on Democracy. I’m revving up for next year’s election and I need all the inspiration I can get.

As always, the comment section is open if you want to talk about any of this. Or anything at all. You know how it works. ❤️

***Added because it looks like I’m not the only one who missed this series: Have you seen it? Have you ever heard of it? Is it only us??

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I was sorting through things on the shelves near my desk yesterday and I came across this little note. Judging from the position of the words at the top of the page, I must have meant it as a title with more to come. But this is all there is. Now it’s eating at me. What prompted it? And now that it’s eating at me, what can I say about it? Was I addressing this to me or to everyone else?

I know the answer to that one. It was for me and anyone else who might have squirmed a little as they read it.

Most of the time when we get snooty we know what we’re doing even while we’re doing it. We use bigger words than we need to and we know it’s a bit show-offy but we think it’s also kind of clever. Sometimes we have to look up a pretentious word to make sure we’re using it right, because there’s nothing worse than trying to pull off pretentious and falling flat on our faces. (Well, my face, if this doesn’t apply to you.)

In a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago someone commented that they had to look up a word I’d used. I laughed at first, but I can’t get it out of my mind. I can’t remember the word now, or the post, so I can’t even go back and change it—which I would do in a heartbeat if I thought it needed it. Because the last thing I want to be is lah-di-dah.

Or any of these things WordHippo came up with to describe ‘pretentiousness’:

I started this off as kind of a fun finger-poking but now I’m terrified. I’ve lived in dread of being supercilious. I didn’t even know about ‘toploftiness’, but now I’m going to have to watch out for that one, too.

But here’s the worst part of taking on this tiny bit of research I might never have started if I hadn’t run across those three words I wrote on a note pad long ago and then thought I could get a post out of them:

See that ‘More’ button in the image above? There are four more of them. Four more pages! Hundreds of words to describe ‘pretentiousness’. Which tells me we’ve got a problem. (Well maybe not you, but it feels like a problem to me.)

It could be this is hitting close to home because I’ve been binge-watching “The Gilded Age”, which is the American version of “Downton Abbey”, only far more pretentious. I mean, those people are downright vainglorious! Not to mention hoity-toity. They’re masters at glitziness, ritziness, swankiness, pompousness, and razzle-dazzle.

I find it really odd that I found that little note just when I was binge-watching “The Gilded Age”. As if it was a warning of some kind. Or a bad joke. Or a rap on the shoulder to tell me I’d better watch it…

But I’m getting dizzy from all of it and losing track, so I’ll end this before I get in trouble again. I’m going to try and lean on one-syllable words for a while. A kind of R&R. (I could have said monosyllabic but that smacks of putting on airs. I’m trying to stay away from airs.)

So bye for now. But think on it and let me know how you feel. It is good we can talk like this. I can not say it will last.

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At the last Substack Office Hours1 I asked again for a category specific to Creative Nonfiction. This may be the fourth or fifth time, but this time it got some attention—not from any Substack crewmember so far, but from readers at Office Hours, a few dozen who wanted the very same thing. So I thought I’d talk again about what Creative Nonfiction is, and why, especially in these times, it needs more attention brought.

Here at Writer Everlasting, though I don’t stress it or even mention it often, my focus is on CNF. I’m here for the storytelling. We all have stories to tell, even if they’re not about us, and if we’re not creative what are we then?

This is what I said about it in a piece called “The Art of Creative Nonfiction”, October, 2021:

My own take: Creative Non-fiction appeals to the heart, to emotions, and tells a compelling story designed to make the reader feel something. There’s a passion to it. It’s usually told in First Person and is written in a conversational tone, as if you were talking to a group of friends and not standing at2 a podium delivering a speech.

The word “Creative” tells you that it’s different from ordinary non-fiction. The writer comes through as a personality and isn’t hidden from the essay. No matter what the Creative Nonfiction writer writes, a part of them shines through, and, if they do it well, the reader comes away appreciating the writer as well as the story.

CNF writers understand that no matter what they write they have to be in there. It doesn’t have to be about them, it only has to reflect their personality. Whether it’s activism or humor or reminiscences or first world problems, the reader will know it all comes from the feelings of that particular writer.

And in another piece last March, a Q&A called, “CNF Writers: Who are We Writing For?”, I said this of writers like E. B White, Erma Bombeck, and:

When things get tough for us as a society, historically the ‘easy’ writers have been there to comfort us. When the time is right they give us distracting doses of gentle thoughts to get us through the worst of it.

Or maybe they do it to get themselves through the worst of it.

They’ve always been there but how important are they now?

The responses at both of those pieces were heartening. It told me there is a place for our kind of nonfiction.

I should add, CNF doesn’t have to be syrupy or even sweet. It can just as effectively be direct or even harsh. It’s that word ‘creative’ that connects us. CNF writers don’t report, they tell stories.

But I don’t have to do a sell job on creative writing—it’s not as if it’s not already big in academia and everywhere else. Poets and Writers has a database of schools offering graduate Creative Writing programs and it’s hundreds of entries long.

It seems it’s just Substack that isn’t aware. So can you help me get through to them, please? Can you shout this out to and and anyone else who makes these decisions and ask them to please add a category on Creative Writing? (I would settle for just ‘Writing’.)

That might take care of their stunning omission of poetry, as well.

I mean, they have one for Crypto but not for writing. Seriously…

(Obligatory brown-nosing: I love you guys at Substack, I really, really do. If this sounds like complaining, it’s only because I care. You’ve given me a home here and you know how it is in our homes: something is always ticking us off even though there’s no place like home. It’s like that. Thank you very much. 💕)

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There’s a writing glut and the impact is hitting most of us. We know why it’s here. It’s here because too many people are writing to publish. It’s a veritable smorgasbord out there, and some of the choices are terrific. They’re amazing. But more of them are tepid to gawdawful.

Building a web page is miraculously easy. The simplest can be built in an hour. The more advanced may take a while, and may even require professional help, but the point is, anyone, including wannabe writers, can easy breezy do their thing on the Worldwide Web.

Platforms like Medium, Substack, Blogger, and WordPress let writers move in without resumes or credentials and even help them set up shop. They provide templates and instructions so their pages will look professional right from the start, no matter what kind of flotsam they drop in there as content.

And once they’ve built their own page or have joined someone else’s, they’ve joined the growing club of writers who blog. And blog and blog and blog and blog and blog and blog and blog…

Nobody knows for certain how many bloggers there are out there, but according to Luisa Zhou, an entrepreneurial influencer, there are an estimated 600 million blogs worldwide, with more than two billion blog posts published every year.

Zhou estimates there are nearly 32 million bloggers in America alone. Some 70 million blog posts are published every month on WordPress, and by 2028 the number of bloggers is expected to increase by as much as 40%.

That’s a lot of damn competition.

So, what if we made it so it wasn’t that easy for everyone to publish their writing? What if they had to work at it, had to actually apprentice, had to spend time among writers soaking in the talent and the drive, had to struggle to find the right words, had to keep at it until it was time?

In the days before the internet, when we either had to wait for someone’ s approval before our work saw the light of day or we had to print it and distribute it ourselves, the road ahead was clear—and humbling. We couldn’t just wish we were writers or call ourselves writers. We had to learn how to be writers. Nobody was going to take the time to read what we wrote until we learned to write something they would want to read. Not when there was so much good stuff to read.

But that was then. This is the 21st Century. Doors are open everywhere cable and satellites can reach, and anyone who wants a stage can have a stage. I mean anyone. They can publish anything. And I mean any thing. There are no limits, no boundaries to anything published online today. None.

There’s something to be said for that, and I admit I take full advantage. I regularly publish here and here on Substack and I revel in the freedom to write what I choose whenever I choose. I could push that ‘Continue’ button up at the top right now if I wanted to, and whatever I’d put down here so far would be out there in seconds, available to my subscribers as well as anyone who happened along.

Now multiply me by those millions doing the same thing all over the internet. (Don’t forget to include you.) Now consider where it puts us every time a would-be writer discovers that magic portal and takes up space just because they can. It moves us farther from the top, no matter how rabidly we think we deserve to be up there.

It happens every second of every minute of every hour, and apparently nobody cares. Including us.

In fact, we’ve been known to put on our happy faces and welcome them:

We do this because we remember what it was like and we want to pay it forward. We want to be that generous community welcoming one and all. And, really, if we know the answers, isn’t it mean to keep them to ourselves?

So here we are, fighting for our places in the sun, knowing the chances of getting noticed grow slimmer and slimmer because, with every casual, amateurish push of the ‘Publish’ button, the blogging world grows until we’re now among the multitudes.

Millions of us may deserve to be published, but—I’m just going to say it—it also holds that millions of us don’t.

Are you still with me?

No?

Moving on…

I’m not backing away from giving all the help and comfort I can to anyone who comes to Writer Everlasting for the community and the conversation. But if I haven’t said it before I’ll say it now: I reserve my aid and comfort for the writers who show they mean it by having already worked their way through Writing 101.

I’m all for sharing new methods, new ideas, and any inspiring and encouraging nugget, but I’m not okay with rank wannabes opening up shop before they’ve done the grunt work. Have they spent the requisite hours spitting and polishing? No? Then they shouldn’t be here.

If they haven’t yet learned to write well enough to publish, as of this minute I’m done with encouraging them to publish.

So, wannabes, if you’re reading this—before you tell me how discouraged you’re feeling right now, how embarrassed you are because you see yourself here, let me stop you right there. I’m doing you a favor.

If I can convince you to learn to write before you learn to blog, I’ll be saving you the agony of going nowhere. The kind of writing you want to do is an honored craft. It can be an art. It’s an effort worth doing, and I’m here to tell you your greatest satisfaction is ahead of you if you’ll only get off your ass and master the first steps first.

But before you go, fair warning: If you think you’re already at the publishing stage but you’ve chosen to skip the learning part, we see you.

Every writer who has done the work will notice.

Just so you know.

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Even before I became a ‘real writer’ I knew early on that as much as I enjoyed reading those brave stories about someone’s deeply personal anguish they weren’t going to be my thing.

Reader’s Digest had at least a couple of them every month. The women’s magazines were full of them. Remember “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” in Good Housekeeping magazine? I was a young housewife reading the stories in that column, thinking even then, “Uh uh. Not now it can’t. Nobody likes a tattletale.”

Confessionals were big when I was young. We devoured “True Story” and “True Confessions”, those magazines filled with weepy, florid tales of women gone wrong or having been done wrong, only to see the light and find the courage to go on—to turn their lives around and become a better person for it.

It could be I became a better person, too, just by reading them, because somewhere in the depths of my newly discovered need to write I seem to have vowed never to arrange words into sentences that read like those. EVER.

I’d been writing columns and blogs for decades before I made the decision to even mention my husband’s name. My entry into Huffington Post may in fact have been a first. We’d celebrated our 63rd anniversary and it seemed like a big deal, and I saw that HuffPo was looking for human interest stories, so I wrote one.

Before I’d even submitted the essay about our long, long marriage I made sure Ed was okay with what I’d written. Both of us were private people. The intimacies of our life together were closed to the public—even to family and friends. We didn’t air our dirty laundry. We didn’t even air the clean stuff. Our private lives were nobody else’s business.

At the editor’s urging, I revised my draft, reluctantly telling far more than showing. I put both of our names in print. I talked about what it was like to be a young married housewife as the feminist movement took hold, about how each of us had to grow into that new and confusing world, and about the permanence of a love that some believed never stood a chance. I added photographs.

It’s the kind of piece I might have been drawn to if someone else had written it. I was thrilled that it had been published. I decided at some point, with nothing outward making me think it, that I wouldn’t be doing anything like that ever again.

But then Ed died, and I was drowning in grief. I was writing a newsletter and people were reading it and maybe even expecting more. I wasn’t sleeping or eating or even thinking straight, but writing was the one constant, and I knew I needed to keep doing it.

I’d been writing about my life without writing about my feelings, but when he died I was nothing but feelings. I could have stopped writing for a while. I could have released my jumbled thoughts into my journal, where nobody but me would ever see them, but I didn’t do that. I decided to put it all out there.

I started with ’A Quick Note to Tell You Where I Am’. I did it to let my readers know Ed was in hospice and I wouldn’t be around for a while. I turned off the comments because I couldn’t deal with sad condolences, and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought I would never write about death or grieving or my sadness or my terror. But I did. I even gave those pieces their own section. I called it ‘Widow’s Walk’.

I think I had to forget all I’d believed about confessionals and grow into the stories about this new and frightening life. I had to let go of the notion that nobody would care. Or that somebody might think those stories were weepy. Or florid.

I had to figure out boundaries. I didn’t want to pander or come off as pathetic or maudlin. I didn’t want to make a career out of my grief. I especially wanted to get the words right.

I gave a lot of thought to how I would handle this massive, unwelcome, too quick change in my life. It would have to be a delicate balancing act, but how? How was I going to do this? I was a new grieving widow—I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t—but my readers weren’t used to this new me. (Neither was I.) I needed to be honest, but I couldn’t make each post a therapy session. I would have hated that. I think my readers would have hated that, too.

I wrote my next post three days after Ed died—six days from the time of “A Quick Note…”. I called it ‘This is Not an Obituary’. If you’ve read it, it might have looked to you as if I’m calmly but sadly reporting what had happened, but every sentence felt as if it had been wrung out of my very soul.

Why did I keep writing those posts, to the point where I’ve given them their own section now? I think because the readers who engaged in the comments let me know they were with me. I was speaking to them and for them and they understood. They could relate. There isn’t a one of us who hasn’t had to grieve, and now we had a chance to open up and talk about it.

I couldn’t have done any of it even five years before. Even though I’d been blogging for some 15 years, I had to get comfortable with writing to readers who, because they’d accepted my invitation to come into my parlor, my salon, had become more like friends. (The HuffPo piece came out in September 2019. I’d had a radical mastectomy two years before, with months of chemo and radiation, and even though I was blogging throughout that whole time, I didn’t write about it. I couldn’t. It was not in me to get that personal.)

I’m writing this now because some of our writers have been wondering how personal their writing should get. Nobody can really answer that question, but if they’re thinking about heading into the personal, I expect they’re giving some thought to how far they’ll go.

I’m comfortable now with how far I’ll go. It’ll have to feel right. For me. I’m an old woman from another era and, like everyone else, I carry a ton of baggage. I’ll talk honestly about some of it, mainly because growing up during World War II and beyond needs to be understood, and who better to talk about it than someone who has lived through it?

I want people to know what it was like to be a girl in the forties and fifties, a young woman in the sixties and seventies, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a burgeoning writer, a witness to the eighties and nineties and to a new and baffling century. I want people to know what it’s like to be old.

But I get to decide where I draw the line. Every writer gets to decide. That’s the beauty of personal writing. It’s our own story. We get to tell it.

Or not.

I write about life at Constant Ccommoner

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This is going to be a bit of a rant—polite, I hope—but I need to get this out. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and, reading Notes lately, I think it needs to be NOW.

Firstly, note that this is in the Creative Writing section. I’m writing this for those of us who are creating what we hope is art, rather than creating content—that word that drains all the life out of what is meant to be a creative endeavor.

If you’re a content writer, go for it. Write content. Go off and sell it and more power to you. You don’t need to justify it. It’s what you do. But here at Writer Everlasting my emphasis is on writing that resonates, that speaks to us, that makes us smile and sigh and cry. We’re happy to get up in the morning ready to get to work, even if the work feels like a struggle and we know we’re going to be pouring sweat.

All good writing is work, even that writing that comes from within us and begs to be let out. On our good days it flows from us in directions we can only follow because whatever force is driving it seems to know best. It creates a rhythm and a flow and we’re carried along, ready for it because this is what we’ve trained for.

We know when we finally see where we’re going we’ll still have to stop and do repairs. Tweak it some. Make it worthy of the destination. Wherever it takes us, we know we’re ultimately in charge and we’re doing it as artists.

Yes, artists. Whether you’re writing memoir or travelogues or confessions or revelations or simply just daily observations, as long as you see it as creative writing, you’re bringing your art to it.

So this is for you. A reminder. You don’t have to take my word for any of this. Your gut will tell you how you feel about it.

And if it feels like a spanking, remember that I do this with love. My heart is with you. I want you to be brave. I want all of us to be brave. Even and especially me.

When you come here, you’re among friends. Nothing you say here will ever be judged or ridiculed. Those who have been here for a while will tell you we’re here for each other. We never want to hurt anyone.

So let’s talk later. But now, read on:

• Don’t ever say you’re creating ‘content’. That’s what other people do. Not you. If you relegate your work to ‘content’ it’ll hobble you. You’ll no longer see it as a part of you, but rather as something someone else wants and expects. You will have given up your creative power before you even start.

• Let your art speak for itself. Don’t use gimmicks. Don’t throw stuff in there just because you saw how well it worked for someone else. Every minute of your piece has to shout the authentic you. No matter what you’re writing, you’re writing it first for you and then for the rest of us lucky enough to be there when the magic happens.

• Your piece should flow from beginning to end without a single bit of advertising getting in the way. We seem to think we’ll draw more readers and subscribers by placing those irritating notices and buttons between paragraphs. We’re begging our readers to stop reading our wonderful words and go off RIGHT NOW to subscribe or look at something else. Or, strangely, to remind them to comment after they’ve finished reading what we’ve just so rudely interrupted. Interrupted for no earthly reason, since we can add a ‘comment’ button at the end, where it definitely belongs.

• If what you’re writing is intense or sublime and wholly from your creative mind, for god’s sake, don’t even think about breaking it up with a block quote or a pull quote, those glaring, highlighted repeats of words your readers can read just as well in the body of your work. The flow is everything! You want them hanging onto your every word, leaving the outside world behind until they’ve come (reluctantly, because they’ll want more) to a most satisfying ending. That’s the goal.

• In-text distractions are anathema to creative writing. You wouldn’t interrupt a poem with buttons or block quotes. A musician wouldn’t interrupt a song with a commercial. An artist wouldn’t throw a bit of advertising into a canvas. I’m just going to say it: if you’re writing creatively, that practice is nuts. And I’ve done it myself.

Okay, so here’s the rest. This is what got me started on this: “What if my writing isn’t enough? What else should I offer to draw and keep subscribers?”

Can you guess how that hits me?

YOU’RE A WRITER. WRITING IS WHAT YOU DO.

I admit I’m partial to writers who write. Still, I have no problem with those who have side jobs like editing or coaching or inspiring. But they didn’t just make those jobs up as they went along—they’ve trained for it. By becoming writers first.

So this is not about any of you.

This is about writers who aren’t secure enough in their writing to trust their own instincts or abilities. They’re always going to think there’s more to writing than just learning to be the best writer they can be. They want to offer gimmicks and prizes and surprises—anything but to settle down to what they’re aiming to be good at—their written words.

If you’re not comfortable with your writing, your readers won’t be, either. If you’ve chosen to be a creative writer, then work at being creative. Your brain is your tool. Your words are your equipment. Life itself is your inspiration. There are lessons to be learned and there are good teachers everywhere. (You may have noticed that some of the very best hang out right here!)

Creative writing is different from business or technical or political writing. Those commercial breaks in the text may work for them but they don’t work for us. We want a dream state. We’re taking our readers outside of themselves. We’re maneuvering and finessing, playing with our words until we’ve built a world our readers want to be in.

Distractions, diversions, and gimmicks are like jackhammers on our quiet mountaintop. The last thing we need when we’re trying to create a scene is a whole lot of outside noise. In this case we have control and we’re not using it. We don’t need clamor, we need rhythm.

So this is where I am today. Have I missed anything? Is this completely off-base? You KNOW I want to hear from you, and I’ll value your every word. Thank you, dear friends, as always, for being here.

I write about life here:

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I won’t go into the sad story of my intermittent internet again. As hard as it is to bear, I’m getting a little bored with talking about it. Except to say the company that services the island has now had to admit it could be another two or three WEEKS before the issues are resolved. (Replace the damn lines! Just do it!)

So rather than drive myself crazy willing the damn thing to work I’m taking a different route: I’ve resurrected a fairly long unpublished short story and I’m thinking it might make a better novella.

So, fiction writers, tell me if I’ve got this straight:

A novella usually covers a singular timeline or a less complicated sequence of events in a much shorter space than a novel. It’s different from a long short story, in that more happens, but it doesn’t require a novel’s length in order to tell a complete story. It can run between 10,000 and 50,000 words.

Is that right? Have any of you written a novella? I like reading them, maybe more than a short story, because they’re more a tale than a story. I have time to get involved before the whole thing comes to an end, yet I’m not so invested that it takes days to read. They’re perfect for my current attention span, which seems to be getting shorter and shorter these days. (It may be why I don’t want to write a whole novel, either.)

This particular short story has taken on a life of its own and it’s now demanding that I give it some space to grow. I don’t know the word count right now, as it’s still on paper (yes, it’s that old), and I’ve just started transcribing it into LibreWriter (where I can work on it offline). But as short stories go it’s pretty long. I’m beginning to like the idea of turning it into a novella. I just have to make sure that’s what it is.

I’m counting on having fun with it, so when things are dark, internet-wise, you’ll know where I am. And who knows? If it’s going well, I may attempt to serialize it.

This is how it starts. See what you think:

The Flower House

Early on the morning of July 16 old Eli Jansson, on his way home from a full night out, was heard to shout, “Hey!” Thus alerting the residents on Cliff Street, their windows open to the cool night air and most of them still half asleep, that Maisie Kilkonen’s half-house had somehow during the night become covered with flowers.

As the sun rose and the morning progressed, Lilja Jenkins, who lived right across the street from Maisie and had watched the whole thing happen, grew more and more furious at Eli, who, hangover and all, was carrying the story too far. In the end it was as if nobody else would have noticed if he hadn’t come upon the house when he did and yelled, “Hey!”

It became such a thing with him the town for once (except for Lilja) let him have his way, let him go on record, even to the reporter. But Lilja knew exactly how it happened and it irked her no end that she couldn’t tell. Not yet. Not without permission.

The house is the catalyst, but the people become the story, and I still really love them. Except for one. He’s the villain. He’s the reason there are flowers on the house.

I don’t know why it took so long to look at that folder again but now I’m excited. This is a perfect example of life being too busy for these small but hidden wonders that need time and quiet in order to thrive. And then, once discovered, practically beg to be let out.

Maybe my intermittent internet is just the push I need. I can move on to something else for a change and I won’t feel guilty because it’s not me, it’s the Wi-Fi.

So I’ll see how it goes. And I’ll keep you posted. I’ll be around.

Intermittently.

(Let’s see if this will send…)

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I’ve been binge-watching a British series called “Landscape Artist of the Year” on Prime Video. Before this I’ve binge-watched the companion show called '“Portrait Artist of the Year”. I can’t begin to describe the joy I get from watching those artists bring people and scenes to life with so few tools in such a short amount of time.

In “Landscape”, each week eight or nine artists gather at a beautiful place somewhere in the British Isles and spend four hours trying to make art of what they’re seeing in front of them. At the end of the four hours one is chosen to go on to the final, where only one of the seven weekly winners will be chosen to win a 10,000-pound commission to paint a scene to be hung in a famous public place in England.

Most but not all of the chosen artists are professionals. Some are incredibly talented amateurs, and, except for a few so far, I’m in absolute awe of what they all can achieve, given only four hours to complete an entire work.

By the end of the season I’ve usually decided on my own favorites, and often they coincide with the decision of the judges—but not always. We’re all looking for that thing that moves us, and what moves us is what moves us is what moves us.

The thing is, those artists with so much talent it’s bursting out of them and landing gut-smacked right into my innards—dozens of them—go home as losers. They’ve given their all, they’ve put their colossal talents on display, they’ve produced works that are quite literally breathtaking, they’ve thought about what it would be like to win—fingers crossed—and they go home losers.

These shows have been going on for at least 10 years now. That’s a lot of damned fine artists who didn’t win.

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So then, of course, I think about us. We writers. We give it our all, we’ve trained for this, we see ourselves as winners (or we wouldn’t be competing), and so, so often we end up as losers. Someone has beaten us to it, and we’re left behind. We applaud the winners, and often we really mean it, but there’s always that nagging thought—what am I doing wrong? What could I be doing differently? Why wasn’t it ME?

Here’s the thing: I’ve portrayed those non-winning artists as ‘losers’, but I’m betting not a one of them went home and threw away canvases and brushes and turpentine, never to allow themselves to be that vulnerable again. They didn’t. They went on, grateful for the chance, holding that belief, stronger than ever, that they are in fact damn good at what they do.

Were they disappointed? Hell, yeah! Are you kidding? That was a prize to die for!

But back to us: If we didn’t believe we’re damned good at what we do we wouldn’t be doing it. Should the world be opening doors to us? Absolutely. But what if it doesn’t? What if our only fame comes from those few readers who say things like, “I love the way you write”. Or '“You really spoke to me”. Or “I can’t wait to see what else you’ve written”. Can we ever be losers after that?

Only if we think we are.

If your work is admired, even in the slightest, you’ve struck a chord. There are more chords out there, without a doubt. How far or how fast we go, nobody knows, but if writing isn’t a joy for you, even some of the time, it won’t be a joy for your readers, either.

You have to find joy in your work—even that work that pains you as you write. The experience, the process, must be the thing that drives you. The acclaim is the ultimate goal—we need to be perfectly honest—but how do you define ‘acclaim’? How much would be enough? Is there such a thing as too little? If your work speaks to even one other person, will it be worth it to you?

If everything about writing pains you, you need to look for something else to do. Any creation has to be fulfilling or it’s not worth doing. You don’t have to do this. The world wouldn’t end if you stopped. If you’re saying, “I write because I must”, and at the same time you’re saying, “I’m miserable as a writer”, I’m telling you: take a breath and admit there’s some masochism going on here.

Good writing comes from that part of you that is an artist. You’re creating works out of nothing, and that feeling when you’ve finished should be glorious. In the end you’re doing it for you. You have something to prove to yourself and if, after all your hard work, you’re satisfied, to hell with the rest of the world.

But here’s the bottom line: if you do decide to quit, there’s no shame in that, either. Something else is waiting for you. If you have art in your heart, you’ll find it.

I’m anxious to see what the rest of you think about this. Does it seem to you, as it does to me, that a lot of writers are miserable right now? (I’m asking because it’s happened to me at times. Then I have to rethink it—as I have here.)

Tips are welcome, too.

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Two series streamed through several seasons, both to much acclaim, both winning awards, and both as different as night and day. One was about humanity while the other was about inhumanity, a revelation I only came to after a couple of aborted tries. I quit both of them after only a couple of episodes.

I tried again with each of them, mainly because the hype was so stong I couldn’t ignore it. I hung in there and ended up loving them both. Maybe not equally—I’ll give Ted Lasso the edge—yet I’m still astonished that they’ve made such an impression. I dug into each one as if I lived there and whatever happened was happening too close to home.

Neither of those stories came even close to being about where or how I live. I couldn’t in a million years relate to either of them. Ted Lasso’s theme is on football/soccer, a game I have absolutely no interest in. ‘Succession’ follows a family so rich and awful they’re likened to Fox News’s detestable Murdoch family. And you must know by now how I feel about them.

I actually felt guilty and embarrassed in those early days whenever I tried to explain why they were so damned GOOD. I never did explain it well. I can’t do it here, either. All I can say is, the stories are captivating and addicting, and if there’s anyone to blame it’s the writers.

‘Ted Lasso’s’ writing team includes Jason Sudeikis, the show’s inventor, co-producer, and star, along with Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard), Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent), and maybe a dozen others, including several women. Their flashes of brilliance, more prominent than their misses, made that show a number one streaming hit.

‘Succession’ was the brainchild of one man—Jesse Armstrong—and, while he did write the highest number of stories in the series, there were other brilliant writers who contributed to its success. Their combined talents produced a show that shouldn’t have but did keep those of us who loved it enthralled. Never a dull moment, never an obvious turn. The acting was superb, right down to the lowliest bit player. It was, in my mind, perfection.

I should have hated it. I didn’t. I should have been bored with ‘Ted Lasso’. I wasn’t. And I should have shunned both of them, simply for the ridiculous overuse of the ‘F’ word.

In my realm the ‘F’ word was such a no-no, many decades ago I overheard my then-teenage daughter warning her friends not to ever, ever use that word around me. Years later, my adult grandson—her son—would apologize for letting it slip.

I’ve even written about how much I’ve hated that word. So it makes no sense that my two favorite series apparently couldn’t have survived without that word. But get this:

I’m okay with it.

I still can’t say that word and I probably never will, but it’s such a thing now it’s deliberately and delightfully written into even the best of scripts. I give up. I give in.

Would Roy Kent have been as endearing without that word? I’m just going to say it: probably not.

Could ‘Succession’ have had such an impact if the word had been banned from the set, for even the lowliest character? I think so. The ubiquitous overuse added nothing and, in my mind, took away from the dialogue. If it had shown up about 80% less, it might have had more of an impact.

But again, I let it slide. I got used to it. My head didn’t threaten to explode every time I heard it—though I did hear it. Every single time.

Now it appears, after all these years, I’ve come out of the darkness and into the light. I’ve accepted the overuse of a single word, hated, not because it’s grammatically incorrect—my usual quibble—but because it’s such a painfully banal, overused, cliched word.

I’ve learned to live with it, all thanks to two amazing and unforgettable series I should never have liked, should never have watched—but, thanks to those wonderful potty-mouthed writers, I did.

So bring it on. I know you’re dying to. 😉 But let's also talk about that writing!

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The discussion these days about the use of Artificial Intelligence (an oxymoron if I ever saw one) is all over the place. It’s all over the place because nobody really knows what to make of it.

I want to look at it from the standpoint of a creative writer. If there are technical uses for AI, and it appears there are, will it stay there where it belongs, or will it eventually slosh over into our spaces? Is it useful to creative writers in any capacity? Are we missing something by not using it? Will it take the place of all of us? Will it turn on us as it becomes more ‘human’?

Are we really ‘writers’ if we use it to write for us?

I want to believe it’s much ado about nothing. I’m that old school writer who believes writing is a human art and a natural skill and any tools we use can never replace our own heads and hearts and hands.

We are what we write. We write what we are. I may be wrong here, and maybe it shows, but I’m wary of gimmicks when it comes to our kind of writing. I’m a purist, or maybe a Luddite, but I want to know a real writer wrote what I’m reading.

I see products like Grammarly, for example, as a kind of gimmick. I would encourage new writers to stay away from aids like that, mainly because it’s too easy to rely on them, to assume they’re all they’ll need. I’m all for spell checks, but anything else is a needless crutch. (Feel free to talk me down. I’ve never used Grammarly, but everything I read about it, including laments from writers who use it, tells me it’s too strict, it makes mistakes, and it discourages creativity.)

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Writers learn best, I think, by reading and studying what works. But sometimes we find, as we’re reading, that a very good writer has thrown out all the rules and they’re doing what we’ve been told not to do. And it’s working.

‘What works’ for some writers defies all notions of proper usage and then we study their methods. How do they do it? It’s not because those writers don’t know better, it’s because their artistic side says ‘screw it, I like this way better’.

They get away with it because they’re good at it and they’re good at it because they’ve been working at it for so long they’re not afraid to plow new paths, where no writer has gone before.

But not everyone can get away with it.

It takes practice to become a successful maverick, so I’d also tell new writers not to get too frisky with the misuse of grammar and punctuation when they’re starting out. (I know. Thanks for nothing. Right?)

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But I’m going off the track here. All I’m trying to say is I get it that it’s easier to take the safe way, and I worry that something like Grammarly will lead to AI, the appeal of which will be that it’s ‘safe’.

So back to AI. I worry whenever I see non-technical writers getting all giddy about the ‘help’ they can get from AI. What kind of help, I ask. What can AI do for you that you can’t do for yourself?

When it comes to aids, you don’t have to go far. If you don’t know how to use a word or a phrase, Google will help you find the answer. It’s all there. I promise. I use it all the time. Grammar, punctuation, it’s all there. A dictionary? It’s as easy as dictionary.com. When you get there, there’s a thesaurus tab. It’s huge! There’s even a Grammar Coach tab. It’s all there. Dictionary.com

So what can AI do that isn’t already out there? The only thing I can think of is that AI can actually write things for you. If that’s what you’re looking for—a ghostwriter—go away now. Just leave. You’re in the wrong, wrong, wrong place and I’ll never let you forget it.

We’re writers here. We write. We don’t go looking for someone or something else to do our writing for us. We do it because it’s in us and it’s what we do.

WE WRITE.

But this is me talking. Now I want to hear from you. Did I get it all wrong? What am I missing? Give me a single thing AI can do as well or better. Show me that one thing writers across the ages have been waiting for. The thing that will release us from our exhaustion, our angst, our need to get it right in ways that satisfy us.

I worry that too many will take the easy way out and let robots do the work for them. If we felt lost in the crowd before, I hate to think what those crowds will look like when robots take over and we have to question everything we see in print.

If the mediocrity of AI is recognizable at first, how long before it gets so good at imitating we won’t be able to tell the difference? Where does that leave the rest of us?

What will happen to the sublime?

So many questions. I hope you’ll take a minute to weigh in. I can’t be the only one who’s been stewing about this. Comments are open, as always.

ADDED: I can’t believe I left out the WGA strike in Hollywood. The strike is what got me thinking about this in the first place! The concerns those union members have about AI are all too real. All signs lead to complete productions, from script-writing to videography to musical scores, being handled by artificial intelligence. This article in Vanity Fair spells it all out.

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I do this from time to time, and I recommend it for all writers with stories they’ve written long ago. Pull them out. Share them. Don’t leave them in the dark when it’s sunlight they need.

You’re not letting your readers down by not producing new stuff for them all the time. You’re giving them a gift. If you love it, release it. Let it breathe again!

My grandmother, Lydia–my mother’s mother–had two babies out of wedlock before my mother and her three siblings were born.  I didn’t find this out until they were all long gone.  I’ll never know if my own mother knew this and kept it secret, or if she was as clueless about it as I was. My sister-cousins knew nothing, either. (There are three of us, born of Lydia’s three daughters, and we’re more like sisters than cousins.) We found ourselves mourning babies we didn’t even know existed. We cried for our grandmother and loved her even more.

My Finnish grandmother was loving and funny and wise.  She taught us Finnish songs and made silly jokes and told us stories in her broken English–but never about herself.  If we asked, her stock answer was, “Oh, nobody cares about those olden times.”  We did care; she wouldn’t budge.

I learned about her babies some time in the mid-80s, when I spent a week alone in Michigan’s Copper Country—the place where generations of Finnish relatives, including my grandparents, my mother, and me, had been born—researching a book I’d received a grant for and was working on (but never finished, in case you’re wondering). It was about the 1913 copper mines strike, a prolonged, often bloody event that had been written about often, but not in novelized form and not about specific families. The men and women in my own family had been directly involved, and it seemed I was at a stage in my writing life where I might be able to do justice to their stories. Turns out I couldn’t, and except for a few chapters I’ve kept, it’s been abandoned.

But there I was, in the early 1980s, in those same locations, using part of my grant money to spend some time there researching at Michigan Tech’s archives and talking to the few people I found who still remembered those events of 1913. At dinner one night, my great-aunt, one of only two living relatives left up there, moved away from the mine strikes and dropped the bomb about the babies my grandmother had lost.  It was out before she could stop it and she thought she had said enough, but I reminded her that anything she told me then was beyond hurting anyone.

Women in those days had miscarriages all the time, but these babies lived beyond infancy. They had names.  They had the same father, a man who was not my grandfather.

I prodded, and my great-aunt finally told the story: My grandmother was young and unmarried and had been raising her two babies while living with her parents. They lived in a small town with more than its share of small-town gossips.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her, keeping and loving not one but two illegitimate children, and then losing them both to a scourge my great-aunt only remembered as “awful diarrhea”.   She didn’t remember the children, but my great-uncle told her he had played with them often and was heartbroken when they died, one after the other.

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I went to the county courthouse to look for their records and, in spite of the efforts of a kindly clerk, only found one.  The father’s name was right there but nobody I talked to knew who he was.

The cemetery where my great-aunt thought they might have been buried is old and grown over, with only a handful of headstones still standing. The burial records had been lost in a fire a half-century before I began looking.  Their markers would have been made of wood and were long gone, if they ever existed.

When my week was up, I left the Copper Country and still the mystery haunted me. I drove the 600 miles back home alone, and along the way a poem wrote itself:

Looking for Lydia’s Babies

There were six of them, not four, and I was told this
in the year she would have been one hundred.

The teller gave the news in muffled blasts
Wrought from years of keeping this thing quiet.

The two who came before the ones we thought were first
Were shadow babies born before their mother wore a ring.

They lived beyond the infant stage; the teller knew their names
But how they lived and when they died she could not say.
She only knew that they were mourned.

A boy and girl, but who came first? Only Hugo had a life
According to the courthouse records.
He even had a father.

But Esther, loyal Esther, kept her secrets
While her mother held us close and whispered hope
And never told us that two more had come before.

Their mother could have passed this chunk of history on.
We begged for hints of just what kind of girl she was.
And all she did was sing another song.

Maybe all we wanted was for her to laugh, to sing,
To check our fears
And rock us on her ample lap.

Maybe even, summers, when we helped her bake and scrub
She opened doors that we ignored
Or didn’t want to see beyond.

But later we were modern women, guilty of our own transgressions,
Reeling with our own confessions.
Open to the story of those babies.

And still our grandma could not speak of children left behind
In unmarked graves asleep beneath their quilts of creeping myrtle,
Waiting for their kin to call their names.

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I got my taxes done yesterday. I usually do them myself online, with Ed doing back-up on paper, but I wasn’t sure how this widow thing works when it comes to the IRS (and I didn’t think I wanted to do them without Ed), so I went to a woman recommended by at least three family members.

The yard sign outside said, “Cookies are here!” and I knew I must be in the right place. Taxes and cookies! Brilliant!

Her office is in her Knotty pine breezeway, decorated with school photos of her kids, and right away I felt at ease. In fact, it was kind of fun. I’m getting back more than I thought I would and get this: I paid the State of Michigan $15 and they’re sending me $24 back!

But about those cookies: Her Girl Scout daughter isn’t fooling around. There must have been a dozen cartons of cookies stacked right inside the door (so you can’t miss them going in or out) and I’m a sucker for Samoas, so I got that one and was looking for something else when my new tax friend suggested the Lemon-Ups.

She didn’t tell me they could change my life.

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As a writer I look for signs everywhere. I need constant validation, and I’m not alone in that. It comes with the territory. It’s what happens when our only real tools are our fingers and our brains. We can’t blame mistakes on the equipment, can we? The equipment—pens, pencils, pads, typewriters, computers—are all peripheral to the real workhorse: the mighty brain. None of it could happen without it.

If I think about that for too long I can scare the bejeesus out of me, and then I have to go looking for inspiration. It could come from Brainy Quotes or books or magazines or blogs (umm…) or podcasts or memes or signs on desks. It could even come from breathtaking vistas and clouds in the sky. Who knew it could come from cookies, too?

Inspiration is all around us, if only we open our eyes. We wander around in a fog sometimes and…

No, scratch that. I have no business giving you advice. I’m taking inspiration from a cookie.

(Confession: I ate them. Had them with my coffee. We’ll see what happens.)

Update: Those cookies worked! I was over at Constant Commoner looking at drafts I could turn into posts and I found one with just notes, so I finished it right after I left here, and now it’s published!

I was inspired! Check it out!

Constant Commoner

Music as an Emotion. The Gut-Hitting Kind

So this happened today: As I was scrolling, I don’t even remember where, I found a clip I couldn’t get past: a street musician was dancing in a beautiful courtyard, playing a black violin…

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3 years ago · Ramona Grigg

You could buy me that coffee

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I love libraries. Libraries and I go way back. In the days before TV the library was my main form of entertainment—after movies, of course. My love of books was and is an obsession, thanks in large part to libraries. My parents weren’t big readers. We didn’t keep a lot of books in our house, though I had my own bookcase in my bedroom, and it was filled with books like these:

My dad didn’t read much and probably wouldn’t have thought about going to libraries on his own, but his daughter, his only child at the time (my two brothers came along much later), couldn’t get enough of books. He tried to keep me satisfied by buying a book every two weeks, on payday—books like the above, which I’d choose from the list inside the covers, but even that couldn’t keep me satisfied.

He realized at some point that those big buildings holding thousands of free books were the answer to his prayers.

The McGregor (above) in Highland Park, a small city within the boundaries of Detroit, was gorgeous. Even at such a young age (10 or 11) I felt privileged to be there. Terrazzo floors, marble columns, carved oak, leaded windows and doors, full-sized paintings on the walls—and books. So many books.

While my dad sat at a table reading newspapers I wandered from stack to stack, from floor to floor, reveling in the looks of those books, the smells, the thought that every one of them could be mine for the borrowing. I often chose books that were far beyond my reading capacity, based solely on covers or first sentences or even heft. I loved books.

And I love libraries. There are beautiful libraries and then there are cozy libraries, and I believe they should be one or the other.

The Children's Sections should be way cool, with chairs and tables to sit at and rugs to roll around on and murals and hanging things with lots of color to stimulate the senses and make the notion of reading so much fun those kids can't stand it and can’t wait to come back.

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But I'm writing this today because I’m staying at my daughter's house for the winter, and I went to her local library yesterday. She lives in a suburb downriver from Detroit, so I'm sure their tax base is doing okay, and from the outside this library looked okay, too. So it wasn't for lack of money. But from the minute I walked in the door the vibe that hit me was 'we're doing this because we have to, not because we want to'.

There are books on shelves, along with videotapes and DVDs and CDs, and they all had signs above them, so you knew what was supposed to be there, but there are no available tables and chairs, no comfortable seating, no murals, no artwork on the walls, no sign that this was a place to just hang around.

The tables and benches are in closed-off rooms, but you had to make appointments to go in there. (I’m guessing to keep out the homeless and the riffraff, none of which I’ve ever seen around here.)

I saw two public computers, both at stand-up stations.

I knew I was in the children's section because a sign said so and there are children's books in there, but I couldn't tell you where it began or where it ended because there was nothing childlike about it. Nothing magical or inviting. Nothing that would make a child or even an adult want to be there. Or ever want to go back.

I've never before been in a library like it, and I walked around it for way too long, waiting to be drawn in, waiting for that old feeling—and it just wasn't there. It made me appreciate almost every other library I've ever been in, thankful for an imaginative staff who knew there had to be magic there, because reading is magical.

So let’s talk about libraries today. I’ll leave you with this photo of the Kansas City Public Library parking garage facade. I absolutely love this and applaud the group who came up with the idea. The story is linked in the caption.

A big THANKS to those who have donated!

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I’ve been obsessing over my lack of creativity for days now, trying like crazy to blame it on someone or some thing. So far my list of culprits includes being in bad need of a haircut, wrinkle and joint terror, grief, lactose intolerance, Lexapro, Twitter, jealousy, and the fact that I haven’t talked face to face with a creative writer—or anyone creative—in ages.

I’ve been trying to deal with this on my own, but I’m getting nowhere. That’s where you’re going to have to come in. I’m counting on you to get me through this.  We may never have met but we’re almost always on the same wavelength. I know we are. You can probably relate to at least five of the eight things I’ve listed here. Maybe even more, though you don’t have to go into specific detail, unless you’re feeling the need.

Totally understandable.

I know some of you are feeling perplexed, too, and I promise I’ll help you with your problems right after we’ve settled with mine. It’s not that I think I have priority, it’s just… I thought of it first.

So here’s what’s happening, not in any particular order:

• I got a great idea for an ongoing column I know I could pull off in near-dazzling fashion, but I haven’t approached anyone with it because I’m still in the ‘first love’ stages and I don’t want my heart broken if someone else finds it wanting. I’m working on drafts, but my heart isn’t into it like it should be because chances are it will never see the light of a single payday. And I’m tired of always donating my work.

• I retweeted an article by Thom Hartmann on Ronald Reagan yesterday, adding a thought of my own, and so far it has over a million and a half views, more than 12K retweets, and 900 comments. I’ve also gained almost a thousand new followers. I should be happy, right? And I am, in a way, because the article needed to be written and the attention means people are reading it, but it’s not my article, it’s Thom’s. Whenever I post an article of mine, it goes nowhere. I mean nowhere, except to those few loyal followers who have my back just as I have theirs. We’re a tiny group. I mean tiny, considering I now have 7K followers on Twitter and I would think some of them would at least take a peek at what I’m doing these days.

• Someone I know got a gig I would have loved to have. She deserves it, and I didn’t go after it like she did. In fact, I didn’t go after it at all. But they should have known.

• I’ve been making Boston Coolers (Vernors Ginger Ale and vanilla ice cream) and they’re sublime as hell but so hard on my insides. My insides see milk products as poison and I keep forgetting to buy Lactaid chews.

• And, let’s see…Lexapro. My NP prescribed them for me as the possible solution to the ditzy thrashing-around known locally as Widow’s Brain. I haven’t taken them yet. I’ve read that they and other anti-depressants tend to lay any attempt at creativity flat, along with most feelings about anything, and nobody knows better than me how hard it is to keep creativity upright.

• So, yes…feelings. I want to feel things. I just want them to be in some kind of sensible order. I feel like a toddler with too many toys. A million different things popping up, all of them fascinating and seductive, and I don’t know which one to go to first. I keep grabbing at them but don’t stop long enough to find any of them satisfying. It’s no problem for a toddler, but it is for someone who made a promise to a bunch of people that she would keep publishing, no matter what, and some of them are even paying her to do it.

And here’s the newest thing: I’m having extensive dental work done. Thousands of dollars of dental work, which means no extended winter vacation for me this year. Probably no vacation at all.

It needed to be done long before COVID but I kept putting it off. Then, when the dental offices began opening for business again, I was dealing with illnesses, both Ed’s and mine, and again it took a back seat.

Then Ed died and almost a year passed before I could even think about how uncomfortable I was, thanks to that mess in my mouth. Not to mention the expense, since I have no dental insurance. But I’m at my daughter’s house in the big city and my niece told me about the ‘best dentist ever’, so I bit the bullet and went for an evaluation.

And today, as I write this, my bottom jaw, numbed in at least 10 places with Novocain, feels like the size of a watermelon. Gauze is taking up space where teeth used to be. I can’t eat or drink for a few hours—not that I could, even if I wanted to—so if it sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself, I think I have good reason.

But it’ll pass.

In the meantime, it looks like this is as creative as I’m going to get, at least for this week. I could surprise myself, and if I do, you’ll be the first to know.

So if you feel like commenting, if you feel like telling me your own troubles in order to make me feel better, I’m listening. Just know I may need to take a nap later.

Tips are always welcome

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I watched "The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse" a few nights ago and while it was beautifully animated, I couldn’t believe I found it—boring.
Yes, boring! I'm usually a sucker for sweet stories with children and animals but this was one big bear hug, way too reminiscent of the Pooh stories, but without any reliable story or personal charm.

(Spoiler alert: don't continue if you're planning on watching it.)

After about the first quarter, as beautiful as it was, I felt manipulated and increasingly irritated. The characters appear from nowhere with no background and no real reason for being there. The animals talk, of course, but mainly in platitudes. There are no clues to what has happened before this all began. Not ever.

A child is 'lost' but lost from whom? From where? How did he get that far into the wilderness? How is he surviving in the snow with no food or adequate clothing? He doesn't know his name or where he came from, just that he wants a 'home'. And of course, before it’s over, they all discover what 'home' really means in that cliched way we've seen dozens of times before. But in the end there's still no food, no shelter, no way they could survive in the snow for long.

I so wanted to like this and was in the mood for it, but a series of beautiful animations without a real story just wasn’t enough.

But here's the thing: I think it would work as a picture book. Just not a movie. We have expectations from a movie that we don't have from a picture book. We can immerse ourselves in a picture book, we can turn the pages at our own pace, we can suspend our disbelief and go along, and if there is no real end, no solution, the journey is often enough.

I don't know how to explain it, but it's happened to me before. I felt that way reading 'The Little Prince', then watching the movie. I’ve loved that book for what feels like generations, but I was totally turned off by the cinematic version. It became someone else’s vision of a beloved story and I saw it as a complete, failed intrusion on a story that wasn’t without its mysteries but was full of emotion. No animator, no filmmaker could capture those words on paper. They were meant to mean something different to each of us. The camera doesn’t allow that.

Some things are better left to their original conceptions. Not everything needs to be changed into something it was never meant to be. We still haven’t learned that.

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Oh, wait… Update: Well, I’ll be… I found this in Marginalian, Maria Popova’s magnificent website. It speaks to why The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse works as a picture book. She makes the connection between Winnie the Pooh and The Little Prince, just as I did on my own. (It seems I’m on to something, though Maria, of course, explains it much better than I ever could.)

And now…an Update on the Update: I started this post days ago, but on the strength of Popova’s essay, I ordered the book. It arrived yesterday (1/5/23).

I’m going to try to describe how it felt to read it, but keep in mind I only just read it last night and anything I say here may just be the thoughts of someone newly, madly in love.

I fell in love, first, with the author, Charlie Mackesy, and I blame him for whatever comes next.

He had me at “Hello”:

Hello. You started at the beginning, which is impressive. I usually start in the middle, and never read introductions. It’s surprising that I’ve made a book because I’m not good at reading them. The truth is, I need pictures. They are the islands, places to get to in a sea of words.

This book is for everyone, whether you are eighty or eight—I feel like I’m both sometimes. I’d like it to be one you can dip into anywhere, any time. Start in the middle, if you like. Scribble on it, crease the corners, and leave it well thumbed.

I just wanted to know him, you know? And even though I had watched the movie only days before, I couldn’t wait to get into the book.

I wasn’t disappointed. Not for a single minute. It was, to use one of Charlie’s favorite words, lovely.

On the page, it transformed into something only slightly familiar, but in my own mind’s eye, something clearer and deeper. There is far less story in the book, yet it makes far more sense. I see the characters in the book, and I know them because I helped to make them up.

I went on a journey—a quest—and came to a place totally unexpected but incredibly lovely. It didn’t start out that way, just as it didn’t in the book. In the movie I was looking for something that wasn’t there. I found it in the pages of a hardcover.

And all because a writer who didn’t think he could do it…

…did.

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Hi friends, a short one this time, but I really wanted to share this with you. I found it at Atlas Obscura, one of my favorite websites for the unusual and enchanting. This piece by Anika Burgess was written in December 2017, but I’m just now seeing it. I’m so glad I did!

The thought, the text, the letters, the paintings—all just grabbed me, heartwise. I felt lifted for hours afterward. I hope it does the same for you.

If you’re busy with holiday stuff, feeling rushed and panicked, take a break. Right here. Right now.

I’ll see you soon. 💝

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J.R.R. Tolkien Is Our Favorite Father Christmas - Atlas Obscura

Hi friends, I wanted to say ‘hello’ but I was hoping I could do it without hacking my brains out.

I guess not.

I’ve been sick with some sort of respiratory thing and it’s not going away—coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose, going through every form of sanitizer known to man in order to keep anyone else in the household from having to share my Kleenex.

I closed up the island home a couple of weeks ago and I’m in the dreaded city now, where germs appear in colossal swarms and nobody is safe. The NP who tested me for COVID the other day said my immune system was probably not prepared for the onslaught, given I live in the north woods where these germs apparently have to fight for survival.

So, no COVID. That’s good. I cling to that as my head pounds from another bout of wracking cough. The kind of cough that, in movies, signals the imminent death of the one the script writers have decided we must love with all our hearts.

I’ve managed to do Wordle every day, and I’ve had a few things to say on Twitter and Facebook, but otherwise I haven’t written much. My concentration is off the charts, on a level with a two-year-old—flitting, exploring, keeping, discarding, flitting, exploring…

But I’m here now because of this tweet by the writer, Laurell K. Hamilton:

"I called myself a writer before I’d sold anything. Now 40 published books & numerous short stories later I still call myself a writer. First you tell the universe what you are, then you go prove it." / Twitter

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OMG. That last line! That STUCK! The heavens have opened!

I know! Tissue box in hand, I had to come and share this with you today. I can’t be the only one who had it all wrong and floundered for years because I thought I had to prove myself as a writer before I admitted it to myself, and long before I could ever announce it to the world.

What a shortcut! Of course. This must be what separates the successful writers from the rest of us. That unerring, unswerving confidence that they’ve found their calling and it’s full steam ahead, never looking backward or sideways, never caring what the world might think. Just doing it because it’s what they do.

We build so much mystery into writing because we grow up thinking reading is magic. It transports us, it transforms us, it builds exotic worlds for us, it keeps us whole and keeps us safe. Reading can do all of those things.

And so can writing.

That’s big.

As readers our only obligation is to comprehend. As writers our responsibility is to build. To create. To make something out of nothing, using only our brains, our imagination, our ability to seek out and examine and put into words something good enough for readers to want to read.

It’s like holding a brick in your hand and envisioning a building. Only a fool would look down at that brick and think “I can do this!” But with enough work, enough dedication, the odds are at least among the possible. More possible than if the brick stays just a brick.

So I’m awake now. Let’s talk about this. Have you known this all along, or is it a revelation for you, too? I mean, many of us say we knew we would be writers, or writing is a calling, or we write because we must. But how many of us told the universe first and then went and did it?

That’s not to say there are never any doubts or hesitations. No, that’s not it. Writers like Laurell Hamilton persevere because they never doubt themselves. Even when things get rough and they’re doubting the journey, the path, the story line, the execution, they never doubt themselves. They know they can get through it, and they do.

I have never been there. I don’t know what that feels like, and I doubt I ever will. But some of you are still pliable, still open to that wisdom, and if this reaches even one of you, I’ll get back into my sickbed a semi-happy woman.

It’s on you now.

Stay well.

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Ask any celebrity if they have regrets and 99.9% of them will say no. Some of them are people who should be waking up every morning regretting everything they’ve done since puberty, but ask them that question and it’s as if you were asking them if the moon is made of Gorgonzola. No hesitation. No dramatic stroking of the chin. No searching the ceiling for answers. Nope. Just no.

They do it, we all know, not because they’re regret-free but because saying no is easier than having to categorize every foible, flaw, or folly in order to satisfy complete strangers asking dumb questions.

But here I am, a non-celebrity, asking that same question of myself. Why? Because I just read an old interview with David Brown, in which he seemed to be regretting a whole lot of things he had done or not done, but when he was asked specifically if he had any regrets, he said, “I don’t think in those terms. I think most creative people don’t think about their failures. They think the public is wrong.”

Okay, he retracted that a bit, probably regretting he’d answered so fast, probably remembering his answer would be in print for posterity. Because when the interviewer asked Brown if he thought that, he said, “Probably not as much as most people. Actually, I usually think the public is right, that the public knows.”

There. Done. No regrets.

But since I’m feeling creative at least some of the time, it got me to thinking about my own answers if I were ever to become famous enough to be asked. (First regret coming to mind: I regret that I never became famous.)

I took a little time with this, knowing you would want the truth, and while I was taking my time, I realized that most of my regrets include things I’ve never had control over.

• I regret not having been born beautiful, rich, tall, smart, clever, or wise.

• I regret not having been born in a tropical paradise.

• I regret having been born in the 1930s when being born in the 1980s would make me so much younger now.

• I regret not having a voice made in heaven.

• I regret my two left feet.

• I regret I have but one life to live.

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Now for the things I did have control over:

• I regret I never learned to swim. It looks like fun.

• I regret letting my love for sugar and fat overcome my need for kale or arugula any other healthy food that looks, smells, and tastes awful. (But only a little.)

• I regret I ever sat through “Sideways” and “Lost in Translation”. (I regret that you hate me right now for being honest.)

• I regret I never got a passport and traveled overseas so when my friends talk about their travels I could say, “Oh, I went there in, let’s see, was it three years ago? Ten years ago? I don’t know. But did you see that thing at the place, and did you try the….?”

• I sincerely regret that time I . . .

But enough about me. The interview with David Brown came from a book called, Creativity: Conversations with 28 Who Excel. It was published long, long ago, way back in 1993, but you’ll find some great interviews with creative creatures like Gloria Steinem, Morgan Freeman, Tony Bennett, Elmore Leonard, Ntozake Shange, Al Hershfeld, and a host of others from stage, screen, the arts, and business.

It’s a grand mix put together, it turns out, by an ad agency.

DMB&B, an advertising agency in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, did a series of talks with 28 creative people from all fields, all genres, to take a look at what makes creative people tick. That question about regrets came up a few times. None of the interviewees wanted to admit to having any. (Oh. I see. It jinxes things. And it hurts to admit it, besides. I regret I didn’t get that until right now.)

But Tony Bennett’s answer was by far the most creative: After a Pavarotti concert, Bennett said he regretted not running up on the stage to look into the great tenor’s throat to see how he did that. It made me think of yet another regret: I regret I didn’t keep up my singing lessons so that at some time in the future I might have made an album with The Great Tony Bennett.

I regret that a lot.

(Published at Medium first, in slightly different form.)

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So since I’m having a hard time creating anything new right now, I’ve been hauling out some of my old stuff, hoping to revive it and actually do something with it. This is a chapter from a manuscript I still hope to turn into an honest-to-goodness book. The working title is ‘Writing While Old’, but that could change and probably will.

I started this book as a light-hearted, humorous guide for old people whose families are bugging them to write down their life histories, but, after some workshopping, I realized there are old people who still yearn to be published writers, not just chroniclers of family histories. They need a broader focus. Then I realized that much of what I’m promoting on these pages will apply to anyone, not just my peers, the ‘elderly’.

So there’s my dilemma now—how should I go at this? If I insist this book is for old people, I’ve lost a big readership chunk. But if I write it for everybody, chances are it’ll get lost in that vast ‘How to Write Good’ crowd already on the bookshelves.

So it sits. Until I look at it again and see a way I can exploit it! Right here, in my own space! With my own peeps!

Oh, You Mean ‘Writer’. With a Capital W

Chutzpah may get you in the door, but it’s skill that finds you a seat. – Mona

(This sign hung over my desk for years. I came up with it around the time I moved into my office upstairs.)

So here it is. Somewhere around Chapter Four:

But now we’re getting serious. You’re expecting me to come up with some ideas on how to get your writing published, because apparently there were some hints somewhere that we would get to that.

Right.

I’ve been dreading this part—not because I don’t want to talk about writing the kinds of things that will get published. No, I can do that. It’s because here’s where you’re going to need a pep talk and the only way I can think to give you the one you’re going to need is to tell you a personal story.

A story I’ve never told another living soul. Ever.

It was the summer of 1970 and I was 33 years old. I had been writing the odd thing here and there but if Being a Writer was lurking around somewhere in my head it hadn’t revealed itself, at least to the best of my knowledge. (Note: Never use “hadn’t revealed itself, at least to the best of my knowledge” if you can help it. See how it stopped the story dead? Who talks like that? In fact, let’s just chuck that whole sentence and start again.)

It was summer, 1970. My husband and I had taken our three kids up north for a week’s stay at his cousin’s cabin. The cabin was small but there were two bedrooms, a screened sleeping porch, two fold-out sofas and a low open loft wide enough for a half-dozen sleeping bags.

It was a real family affair—seven adults and six kids—all under one roof. In a cabin with one bathroom. For a week.

One day, while the men were out fishing, we women took the kids into town for ice cream. There was a magazine rack near the drug store soda fountain and once we got the kids settled, we went to look for magazines to take back to the cabin. I spotted it instantly—a magazine called “Writer’s Digest”.

I was stunned. I never knew an entire magazine for writers even existed, yet here it was, on a drug store rack in a tiny town in the Upper Peninsula, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, as if any minute now a writer would just happen by and find it and buy it and take it home.

Unless. . .

. . .Unless it meant that any ordinary person could buy it and read it and enter into the secret world of writing and maybe even learn how to become a writer.

I had to have it. I knew I had to have it, but I couldn’t let the others in on my secret. I had only just at that very moment decided in my heart of hearts that I was going to become a writer. A writer. I was excited and embarrassed (who did I think I was?) and oh, I was terrified! I grabbed a Ladies Home Companion and jammed the offending magazine inside. I hung back until the others had paid for their things and headed outside and then I slipped the Writer’s Digest out of the Ladies Home Companion just long enough to pay for them both.

On the ride home I kept trying to glance at the writer’s magazine without taking it out of the LHC, but I was riding in the back with a bunch of sugar-shocked kids who, even if they’d had a spot of their own, wouldn’t have been inclined to stay in it.

Back at the cabin there wasn’t a place I could find where there wasn’t a warm body. I could spend a few minutes in the bathroom (the only bathroom, I’ll remind you again) but no longer, not with that crowd. It was the longest week of my life, but even without thoroughly reading that magazine, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind: Something radical just happened and my life was never going to be the same.

(No, I didn’t become rich and famous—as you might have noticed. But I did become a writer.)

Maybe you’ve had the same feeling—a weird stomach-flutter when suddenly you get it that writing and Being a Writer are two different things. Well, welcome to the club, but do me a favor: When someone asks you why you write, please, please don’t say, “Because I must.” Sleeping is a must, eating is a must, bowel movements are a must—but writing? You could go your whole life without actually writing and you would still survive. You write because you want to—maybe because you desperately want to—but not because you must.

So now that that’s out of the way, we’ll go on. (I’ve just taken a lot of the pressure off. You can thank me later.)

Let’s talk about talent and whether writing can be taught. Writing well enough to be understood can indeed be taught. You probably began learning to write coherent sentences in the First grade. But learning to write the kinds of things perfect strangers would actually want to spend time reading takes some real dedication.

Talent is something else again. The first definition of talent is “a special natural ability”. You either have it or you don’t, but even without it you can be a writer. That’s what you need to remember. You cannot buy, steal, or manufacture innate talent, but you can get good enough at your craft to satisfy both your readers and you.

You might not think so now, but I’m here to convince you. You bought this book (You did buy it, right?) because you’re old, or you think you are, and now you’re thinking maybe you could actually write stuff. I’ve been there, though I was much younger than either of us are right now.

When I was much younger, I thought it was now or never. Then, when I was younger, I thought it was now or never. Then, when I was only slightly younger, I thought I should write this book. So I did. One page at a time. Because that’s how it’s done.

And that’s how you’re going to do it, too.

Now turn the page.

I mean it.

Turn the page!

So what do you think? Would you read this book? Why? Why not? Go ahead, I can take it.

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