Morning walk

The alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. instead of 5:40, and I rolled over out of habit, then found I actually felt like getting up. Pum came to the bedside in the dark, her ritual morning greeting, and I felt the strong, tight curl of her tail on my wrist as she padded away again, back to her bed.

Dressed and hair wrestled down, the kit and pup kibbled, I pulled on a sweater coat and light gloves, and we were off.

Penelope is a good girl on walks, and today was so quiet I had time to notice the tall oak to the southeast was not lit from below, as it usually is on autumn and winter mornings. Against the fathomless teal just outside the bare halo of sunrise, its bent branch and filigree were achingly lovely. I had time to muse - is that quiet sound, of minimal sand on damp asphalt under my soft shoe, is that a crunch, or something gentler? I had the time to muse, but did not find the word.

Just last night, talking with mom about her puppy and my now older baby girl, I'd said how funny it is: dogs' communication is most chancy not in the dark, but at twilight and dawn - when light is there, but they can't quite see the cues dogs signal each other with. This morning, we passed a shepherd going our way briefly, but across the street, and though she clearly saw the other dog, Penelope had no response at all. No pulling, "Mom, I want to go see the other dog - and thereby make friends with its person."

Dark, still, when we got home, Pum had her sniffs and her business done, and I had all my shoulder and back muscles intact. Seven years old now, she's powerful and big enough, this still is important.


***


One week from today, it will be the first anniversary of my best friend's - my sister's - death. Someone who loved her hard has gone to a place the rest of us who love her can't join him, and it is heartbreaking. Two of us - two of the three who made up our little Musketeers - cling to each other, and count ourselves blessed we ever had her. We are angry still, and yet able to laugh at the ways she haunts us.

Mostly by sending Def Leppard songs at incongruous - or entirely TOO congruous - moments. She remains an inveterate smartass. And she remains with us.

I will mark her passing in a couple of ways, across the miles with our third sister, and alone - and in figuring out exactly how to dress for Hallowe'en. She always LOVED Hallowe'en, and if dressing up is memorial to her now, it is a joyous celebration.


***


The dark season has begun, and that means not just winter's advent. It means not just cooling and sweatering and cozying and contemplating. It means BOO, it's Hallowe'n. It means grappling and reckoning with her loss. Trips to the cemetery, and always, always down memory lane.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Plenty of folks are willing to treat fetuses as precious citizens, but seem to regard the bodies that nurture them as embarrassing slums.

If you don’t understand how female bodies work, you might end up believing some really harmful things about women.

Virginia

Ralph Northam didn't get my vote in the primaries, because I found his past appreciation for Dominion Virginia Power's finances problematic, but I voted for him for Governor. In January of 2017, when he appeared and marched with us at the Women's March, I was impressed, and more on board with him than before. He is a former Republican, and the voices deriding him as a present Republican, given that party's increasing lockstep behind the racist-in-chief, are perhaps hard to hear, but not 100% off base.

He has to go. Why he refuses to is bewildering in a painful way.

I don't want to bog down in a long post about all this, because frankly, the personal impact of Virginia politics right now is a fresh bruise. It's painful to live here these days.

When, in 2008, Virginia went presidentially blue for the first time, I didn't quite believe it. When we went Obama for the second time, I began to feel used to it. To tentatively own that I finally didn't live in a backward, reactionary state. And then we did it again, in 2016. There was still Dave Brat to contend with (I signed the petition to get Abigail Spanberger on the ballot at that march mentioned above), but I finally felt like Virginia was breaking away from the all too recent past of White Flight and reactionary thinking I had grown up surrounded by.

In 1982, when I entered high school, it was the Reagan years. Helped by a punk rocker in the house, who was having none of it, and the fact that I was the child of a scientist and the taunts on the schoolyard, "YOUR DADDY CAN'T BELIEVE IN GOD, HE'S A SCIENTIST!" I came to a different sort of politics than have been common here for most of my life. (My daddy, as he told me all his life to take away the sting those kids gave me, was a scientist precisely because he had such awe in the workings of a universe he believed to have been brought to us BY that God those kids underestimated so cruelly. Not an Intelligent Design guy by any means, dad's enthrallment in workings of all sorts was a major part of his faith in anything; and he did have religious faith.)

So I was extremely aware, in 1982 at the age of 14, and have been ever since, of the fact that my preppie high school was the product of White Flight, and the entitlement I saw all around me was not earned. I didn't know the phrase white privilege, but it was instantly recognizable once it appeared.

(W)e lay claim to a wisdom that people just a few years ago lacked, and accuse the recent past of deep ignorance.

I've been loath to actually look at old yearbooks this past week or so. Sure, the only thing that HAS brought me to look at them in about thirty years was the death of my best friend of 38 years, but even then my glances were pretty cursory. But now, the *apathy* of memory, thanks to a life of much greater richness after my K-12 years, has become an *agony*. From having no interest in looking back at the snobs I went to school with, I now have real fear of looking back at the well to do white kids I went to school with. Heck, the school itself.

I went to school with kids who absolutely would have donned blackface, as quickly as the Key Club (so enthusiastically) donned cheerleader outfits at every opportunity. Crappiest drag show ever. There were guys who drank, plenty who probably went on to become frat guys who sexually assaulted drunk girls, entitled asses who think they're nice guys and entitled asses who care not one bit about being good, decent, or anything else tolerable to the human race at large. They weren't my crowd (obviously), they weren't the whole of the student body, but they were crowd enough and then some.

Think I hated my school because it was so preppy? I hated my school because it embarrassed me. It embarrassed me then, and no less so now. They went with naming the place for a Massive Resistance spearhead instead of Edgar Allen Poe; this exposes the taste level - and "judgment" - of decision-makers in our community at that time.

So there doesn't even need to be blackface in my yearbook. The very name of the school said aplenty, and without a doubt some of us knew and despised what that name said. He himself was deplorable then, and I deplored him most especially on the occasion my best friend (a model student often trotted out to meet important people) was obliged to shake his hand, and I was introduced too, looking every bit as unimpressed as I was unimpressive to principal and politician alike, I'm sure.


The link above ...

The link above. I offer it without much comment, and not even necessarily endorsement, though it would be soothing for someone like me right now. There *is* a spectrum of ugliness, but for me as a privileged, relatively well-to-do white woman Of a Certain Age ... growing up where I did ... it is beyond my scope to say "this is right."

Oh, how I wish it could be knowably right, though. That would ease my liberal guilt.



Based on what I clipped for the quote highlighted, the real resonance for me is this: the sentiment accords powerfully with my general rantings about The Dirty, Stupid Past. By this, I'd love to absolve myself of all my own privileged complicity. There are stories I have debated recounting in public for years now - and, when I think about how I have aired out the most sensitive things on this blog, it's extremely plain that some of what I have held back owes to the same privilege Northam and Herring have had. So I should open that up, unpack that.

But that first link ... I'll lean OUT for a moment, lean back, not go all in. Not make anything about myself which absolutely is not. Not come up with any judgments.


I'm as fraught as the history of my state, these days. And ashamed as I was during the Reagan years, going to Beautiful Suburban White Flight High. So very ashamed, and frustrated.



Edited to add ...
Then I remembered our production of West Side Story, which I do think was in 1984. Teen after teen in brownface. Ugh.


THE CLICK BEYOND - good coverage of multiple aspects of this morass, for your analysis.

Was I ... ?

My gods, was I writing as recently as November? Surely I was a liar, surely I picked up the manuscript and put it down again as quickly as I enthused about writing. Impossible to invoke any sense-memory of writing, happening so close in time as November.



Happy new year. So I'm late: I still do wish anyone left reading here, or who accidentally stumbles in, a good 2019.

This blog has been Crickets-ville for a long time now. This isn't so much because life is so terrible as it is just *life*. Since some point in December (when someone I love very much went back on anti-depressants), things have been going well. Work is good, the house is not falling down, I am regularly paying bills. I even got together with friends recently. Progress.

Of course, I have also already attended the funeral of someone I loved (more than she could possibly have realized) this year. Family gathered, warmed, dissipated. Ebb and flow.

Life.

It's got a lot of death in it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a lot of creation in it of late, and the tragic part of that is I don't even stop to care.

Is it possible I was writing less than three months ago ... ?



Is it possible I will write again?

I'm feelin' it!

2018 has not been a prolific year for me with writing. The blog has been a bit weirder, I know; and any activity I've indulged on Twitter's #AmWriting has been sporadic, if not an outright lie (in attempts to convince myself).

Lots of this owes to the facts of life - well, and death. But yesterday, there was some good news. This past weekend, there was The Conference - and, though I had hardly thought about it and wasn't even sure I was up for it, it was kind to me (even beyond seeing my WONDERFUL writing friends in the most glorious community you could ask for), and ... I feel like writing again. Maybe not the WIP, at least for a minute. Maybe time to take another look at that ghost story I've been trying to find the MDQ for for, literally, years. Maybe take a piece of The Ax and the Vase, and develop that ... Basina, or Lanthechilde (who was cut out of Ax entirely, actually). Maybe something altogether new.

It'll let me know.

In the meantime: we have spotted the sun a couple times of late, locally. It is not humid. The heat is finally letting go. Tomorrow is Friday (and pay day). One of my oldest friends, apparently is not dying. (This is was not a given, two weeks ago.) My mom's still in a bit of a state, but I am planning ways for the two of us to have a good time together. I've got some ideas.

Today is a blessing.

May yours be even moreso.

Take the Con 17

Two weeks ago, I was in Savannah for work. On Thursday, the 12th, I was home before midnight with nearly a thousand miles on my car ... and Saturday the 14th kicked off the annual James River Writers conference.

In the past, I've often done postmorten posts about how inspired I was and re-energized as a writer, after the conference. Well, or just gushed in real time about how amazing the events are. In the fifteen years of JRW's excellence, I've attended for fourteen of the annual conferences. (Thanks again, Mojourner!) I've watched friends chair the event itself, and met countless others. It's always inspiring.

But this year, I was so focused for so long on the meeting immediately preceding the Conference, I spared no time to get excited about it. (I was actually excited about the meeting - there was toy shopping.) For a while there, I also wasn't sure I'd be able to go to the Conference this year at all, and studiously tamped down any thinking about it.

Not only did I coordinate the meeting in Savannah, but I presented there. Speaking up in class, as it were, has never scared me - but speaking before the class was nerve-wracking. And once my nerves got bored, I finished off okay, and it was okay. I handed out little dart boards with my picture on them to people to whom it is generally my job to give bad news. I got to know a lot of people I work with constantly, but rarely or never have seen before. Feedback has been that the meeting was good. Travel was too (no flying!). I spent Friday in a dim drizzle with my mom, coming down off the big event, and NOT really thinking about or getting ready for the next one.

Coming into the Conference without expectations can be a good thing. I've long since put The Ax and the Vase to bed, and the WIP isn't even advanced enough to have announced to me what its TITLE is, so meeting with agents was off my list (and, in any case, I'm ever more persuaded by Janet Reid's objection to conference pitches - and, in any case, it's rarely the case participating agents even "do my genre" as it were).

The rub is, it's also been a long time since I spent time writing.

So I attended the "so you think you're an impostor - no you're not" session ... and, of course, came away feeling all validated but still knowing for sure I am an impostor.

And I spent $72 at the JRW Bookstore before 8:30 a.m. on day one.

And I talked to my new friend Sarah a lot, a writer who is eighteen years old and better organized (and more motivated) than I am, at damn near fifty.

And I spend time with my good writing friends, and Leila Gaskin said she would read some scenes for me and look to the knotty problem of whether I need all my characters ... and, if so (oh, I so need my characters!!!!), how to balance them ...

... and I finished the weekend more excited about the fact that the Festival of India had coincided with our event than about the Conference.



It was when I began drafting my email to Leila, and my very first writing partner, The Elfin One, and choosing scenes to share toward that question of characters and balance ...

... that it finally happened.

My ass was in the chair, and I sent off the scenes dutifully - and, writing to TEO in particular about writing ... I wrote.



"Also, I'm a Writer."

Commentated

In the past month, comments here have dried up entirely. It doesn't seem to me the content has changed, so I muse about the possibility that summer has led to less traffic.

Unfortunately, it is hard to tell. My traffic stats have for the best part of a year now shown massive bot traffic, from the U.S. It used to be when my "viewership" was up, I'd see Russia all over my posts. Anymore, though, it's domestic traffic, curiously enough all Mac. I'd indulge vanity and think I had a geek stalker but the levels indicate bot, not human.

There are still days Russia dominates the fake traffic around here, and we've always got Asia. But the major point here is that my actual readership appears to be gone.

And just when things have been getting so exciting with the WIP, too.

The point of THIS wallowingly self-indulgent post is this: what content is worth commenting on? Right now, is it better just to leave the blog fallow, wait out vacation season, and not worry that nobody's around much anymore? Or are all of you lurking and yawning ... ?

I have an idea for a good post. But it's possible I may be wasting my time.

(And yes, I know I need to shill this place on Twitter for stats' sake; it does work. BUT it does not ever result in comments.)

Indirection Misdirection

"Say WHUT now?"
(Image: Wikipedia)

One of the things about office life that has always confounded me is the absolute refusal and/or inability of many, many people to take a direct route.

This morning, I received an email which was sent to me, a few other admins, and a few people I wasn't familiar with. It was in regard to an expense for "John Doe" - how should this be processed?

To the first email, I responded with, essentially, "Good luck/not mine" and went on about my day. To the second email about it (a complaint that nobody ever notes their location when setting things up), I took six seconds of my day and looked up John Doe. Turns out, JD is an employee in IT at our location, corporate headquarters. Admins copied on the initial inquiry? Did not include the admin for IT. Maybe one of the other folks is in that department.

But the point is, this is a person IN OUR BUILDING. This is a person, clearly, with functioning email and possibly even a telephone of some sort. Maybe they even use our instant messaging function! (I took *four* seconds and checked. He does. And users' telephone numbers are imbedded in IM; all you have to do to call them is type their name in and hit the green phone icon.)

I've been a secretary for thirty-plus years now. It's in my nature to shorten routes as much as possible. It's ABSOLUTELY part of my job to be a guide for others to do that too - I make it my business, and it is my bread and butter, to know to-whom-to-go-for-what. Playing Julie McCoy Your Cruise Director is an important function I fill, and I enjoy it most of the time. I especially enjoy assisting my own team when they need to find where they need to go.

So perhaps I am uncharitable for being confused. Perhaps I miss some important part of another person's process when I field their questions. It is possible I'm uncharitable when I think to myself it's just another a LMGTFY moment.

I was about to link that acronym, but you can look it up if you do not know it. It may cause you to blush, or it may give you a smile. (My intent would be the latter, of course, dear readers.)

So my second response, to the second email, was to look up John Doe, screenshot his deets, and cut-and-paste them into an email reply, asking, "Have you tried to contact him?"



It is not for nothing, ladies and germs, I often say I am passive-aggressive for a living. The key to doing it right is to perform the passive-aggression for all the world as if you could not imagine all the world is not smarter than yourself - as if surely there must be some *reason* NOT to take a direct route - while pointing out the direct route.

It's the opposite of the old "My locker door is stuck." "Oh, did you jiggle it?" scenario - where everyone in school in succession asks - and usually tries - to jiggle the catch. Instead of trying at all, when confronted with something we don't know, we just ask someone we think does know.



Let it be said: with basically a *generation* of experience in my job, I don't hate it that people think I am so good that they come to me with All the Questions. It reinforces how good they think I am, when I get 'em there. It reinforces my own confidence, too.

More often than not, my own kids tend to come at me with things that are easy for me, but which are not inherently obvious. There may BE a direct route, but it was not marked. Like the guy who called me this week asking how to extract a receipt from our travel tool. (You can't; our travel agency emails receipts, and email is not where they're used to looking, so they don't. Easy question, maybe - but only if you know that.)

The thing about going to people you know instead of asking the person whose expense is at issue is - this is SOP for every office in every industry I've ever worked in. There is a worship of PROCESS in play, that overrides even the most basic intellect, no matter who walks in the door of an office building. Because process itself can be so confounding, people self-confound, and forget how to get from point A to point B almost prophylactically. Because there are so many things that work indirectly, people don't even look at anything directly anymore - they just ask the admin.

A friend of mine and I often laugh about the years we spent in a department together, before the big changes of 2008. We were in a regulated industry, and we were used to PROCESS (and even prossa-SEEZ, but that's another rant for another day). She and I still get a grin out of That One Guy we worked with.

That One Guy called me one day - he worked at the suburban location, I was downtown, literally in the executive suite. "Diane, what's the process for me to get a box?"

The idea of walking into the copy room and removing a few reams out of a paper box and taking that box was inconceivable.



We are so hemmed in we call the admin downtown to help us find the special requisition form or online widget just to get a box.

But there is more to it than that. PROCESS is one part of the issue, but hierarchy also plays in: people sometimes do not take a direct route because the relevant personage is significantly higher in an org chart than they are.

Direct routes aren't always practical or career-enhancing.

This is where being Just a Secretary is oddly helpful; we're off to one side on the org chart: but we can pretty much knock on any door we like. I will go direct to most any executive any time, and am both allowed and justified to do so.

Is there a problem with one of our drivers somewhere out in the field? Is the Transportation Manager not available? Diane Major goes to the Vice President of Operations, and nobody ever blinks. Is my boss (a Senior Vice President) in a meeting? I can open his door and pop my head in, when even directors and management will hesitate, even when they have urgent issues. I'm not into pestering the CEO, but my boss's boss? He likes me, and I can get in front of him easy as pie when need arises.

So I *understand*. I get why we have lost the thread and become a web. I don't even condemn this, not in itself. PROCESS develops because one too many nits went off and did something unexpected, and they did it with a purchasing card, or the company name on their vehicle, or they just did it wrong. PROCESS isn't a bad thing; and even hierarchy has its place ...



But I still don't get the John Doe question.

"Well, Dang."

It's become clear to me with age that I'm one of those people who "won't go to a doctor." The thing is, last time I did go - with labyrinthitis, an illness I know ALL too well - they decided to do tests on me ... and told me I had: labyrinthitis. Go home, take meclizine.

Which was what I knew before I took the DIZZYING step of leaving my home, exposing strangers to the virus, my mom insisting on across town to drive me and make me go (and exposing her - and by extension my ailing stepfather), and experiencing a few hours of matchless torture for the privilege of being told what I knew already.

And that test cost me $285.



So, this past Wednesday, when I felt a sore throat coming on, I turned into one of those treat-it-yourself morons. I spent a day at work, possibly quite contagious, downing NSAIDs and thinking I was beating this thing.

Yeah. I know. Just be glad you aren't one of my cube farm mates, I guess. I suck.


I took my laptop home that night just in case, so I could work from home, and not infect anyone.

Thursday wasn't great. I did work, though. You can get good electronic housekeeping done with a puddy and a pup for company.

Friday, though - no way. The fever that had begun the day before was 101.6. I don't know when I've had a fever to speak of; it's been long enough I was actually in incomprehension, looking at the thermometer.



See, my mom raised us skeptical. She wasn't one to easily believe her kids were sick - we were NOT going to get away with malingering - and so, to this day, I often tend to disbelieve it when I am sick. Which is funny, because at heart I am an underachiever, often enamored of the idea of not being at work, home wrapped up in a blanket.

One of my bosses and I once had a conversation about the phenomenon of not being able to malinger; in his case, the superstructure for this was Catholic Guilt. In mine, Mom Guilt.

She's good, no doubt.

So for me to be out of work for two days is almost intolerable; I feel like I'm stealing.

Which is why this weekend - when it got so much worse - was not exactly relaxing. I think Friday may have been the worst of it, but Saturday wasn't the world's most breathtaking improvement. Yesterday - well, yesterday I made myself clean the dang house.

To be fair, being sick in a dirty house is the PITS. But it's a bit more of that mom thing. I wanted to be comfortable - but I also was insisting to my body, "I am better."

Well. Ish.

The cough still hurt a lot, though the fever was gone. I had energy enough to clean. "See!?" Clothes were laid out for today at work (oh yes I did go).

And then before bed I had to admit - that cough had blood in it. Old blood at one time, bright and fresh new blood at another.

Neither of these bears good implications, and I am not a complete ass. Though I did go to the office. Which ... actually may be completely assy. Fever or no, the likelihood where blood in the cough is concerned is "infection" (likely bacterial), and that means that, five days on, fever or no, I could be contagious.

Sigh.

I actually did feel remarkably good this morning. Which is odd, as I've had insomnia unlike anything I've experienced since my twenties for two nights running (and no nap yesterday, because housecleaning!).

I also called the doc.

One prescription later (seriously, I can take the cough; do just give me an antibiotic so I'm not Typhoid Mary over here), I can at least put to rest the Complete Ass of a Coworker concerns, and get on with things.

Thank goodness it didn't cost me $285.

Now to wait for the bill.

Now Who's the One Percent?

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.
--Gotthold Lessing

So now we're looking at the defunding of the NEA, and killing off Big Bird. Again. I began my recurring donations to PBS about two minutes post-election-results, y'all.

Sales of George Orwell's 1984 shot up TEN THOUSAND PERCENT this week, thanks to Kellyanne Conway.


Ya know. Because facts are relative .... to your position of power.


I suspect that "getting people to read more" has not been any part of the GOP's radical agenda.



What the current Powers What Be's seem to have forgotten is that they have no mandate. When ONE PERCENT* of the entire population of the United States comes out on Day One to remind them of our power, it is the people who carry the mandate, and the power.

We do still have power, you know.

Let's exercise it thoughtfully and consistently - before we are forced to exercise it with cudgels.





*"(T)he low estimate for turnout on Jan. 21 was 3.2 million, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut and University of Denver--leaving aside the demonstrations on every other continent, including, thanks to an expedition tour, Antarctica." Current US population: 3.23 million.

January 20

Back in December, my brother and I were on the phone, and he asked me whether I was going to take off work on January 20. I thought about it, but really right now the place for me to be is here. There have been some protests locally - and, indeed, I am not so far from DC I could not have trekked up there to join the Women's March - but my job, I hope, has nothing to do with politics. I LOVE my job. And today, it kept me ... well, to use a political term ... occupied.

There's nothing to protest, with my work. When I was a public servant, really - probably even LESS. It might have meant more still than it does here, to man my post, to soldier on.

So, to take off today would only have been taking a day off, and I would not have been with any of my friends, DOING something in the world. Napping with Gossamer behind my knees while Pum snoozes and snores beside us on the floor is not the world's most efficacious piece of activism.

And so I worked.

I worked a LOT, in fact. It was a highly productive day. I reviewed my team's expenses, tweaked only a very few notes, signed off they were ready for approval. I got one of my dreaded piles of notices out, shipped a package for my boss, rescheduled one item, added another, generally spent the day kicking asparagus and taking names.

When, around 12:30, I heard the sound of the national anthem coming from a nearby office, I knew what it was, and just put in my earbuds for a while. RuPaul, of course, and a few of the Drag Racers.

By accident, the new sweater I chose to wear today with my poo-kickin' boots and comfortable, flattering pants happens to be perfect, primary, royal blue. All entendres intended, sure. I decided it is Hillary Blue. Bless her, I was late to be With Her, but my loyalty's confirmed.



So much of today's productivity came early on in the day. It seemed a VERY long work day, and that even knowing I would leave by 3:00 or 3:30 to make a supply run.

Emotionally, I have been neutral - numb, probably. But gratitude is something more than an emotion.

I immersed myself in my blessings today - one of the greatest being my living.

I love my job.



How did you spend Inauguration Day?

Delta'd

It's one of those "I was/wasn't supposed to be there" moments - like the time my uncle missed the massacre at the Dome of the Rock by hours because of a flight delay, or the eighty-year-old couple who never might have met but for one tripping in the park and the other coming to their aid ...

Originally, I had an American flight, on Sunday.

But American canceled on me, and booked me on the next-best option - which left the gate before I cleared security.

Dang.

They wanted to book me on the next flight, but that would not get me where I needed to be until 11:45 or something the next day! Horrors!

So I resolved to drive - 800+ miles, but I like a nighttime drive, and I'd be in control. Aces.

Along the way out of security, I sat down and called my mom to let her know what was up, then called my boss. "Use your best judgment" he said, but discouraged driving. I booked a 5:30 a.m. on Delta, it'd get me there HOURS before the American flight would! Yay!

And so, I went home to sleep just a few hours. The house fresh and clean so I could come home and not have that to think about, I didn't even sleep in my bed. Pulled up the couch, closed my eyes till 3:00 a.m.

I'd had a BAD night's sleep Saturday, and this was even worse, of course. For some reason, before the first planned trip out, I'd had butterflies constantly - not typical for me, for travel. I don't get *nervous* usually. Just sick.

I didn't wake up until 3:23 a.m. Ugh. Not the worst thing, honestly; my city's airport is much smiled-at for calling itself "international". It's not what you'd call the most challenging to travel through.

Still, I wasted no time. Brush teeth, braid hair, pull on clean shirt, get out. I was back and got a great parking spot before 4:00 a.m. easy.

I did decide to check in, so I could check my suitcase.

It was at this point, heading toward my gate, I realized: I'd left my phone charging at home. Clever girl. Our airport being what it is, I could have gone and gotten it, and I knew that, but ... sometimes, you just have to minimize your stress. How much do I need that phone, really? Not all that desperately. So home it would stay.

Gate. Sit. Relax.

After a while, they told us there was some sort of computer issue - worldwide. Hm. Oh.

... and there it began, fella babies.

I'll be honest, the flight out to Atlanta airport - my first leg - seems such a long time ago, I have no memory of how long it was delayed. Significantly, let's leave it there. But we got to Atlanta.

This was not, and did not feel like, a coup. Atlanta was every bit the cluster-festivity we expected it to be, and more. Everything you could dream of.

Initially, we did go to the assigned gate for the next flight out. Nobody imagined that would be the end of it, and it wasn't. Flight canceled of course, and then it was on ... to The Line.

The Line stretched down one of Atlanta airport's impossibly huge concourses. The Line was so extreme, all afternoon people walking by it offered condolences, were incredulous they'd have to be in it, recorded us on their phones, photographed us. I've seen news stories on airline outages before, and I can tell you, having my sweaty ass broadcast internationally was NOT on my list of things I was pleased to put up with that day.

Throughout our tenure on The Line, most of us made friends, chatted, smilingly rolled our eyes. We were a bit concerned about how fast The Line moved - because, in fact, it actually did. Not as reassuring as it might seem; we fully expected the end of The Line to be someone telling us we were up a certain excremental creek, thank you for playing, we're fresh out of paddles. (One suspects Delta might well have run out of paddles merely in the hopes nobody would turn them on any Deltoid fannies.)

It took about an hour and fifteen minutes or so to clear The Line. Throughout this time, I had my laptop on top of my carryon, kicking the latter along the way when we moved, typing on the former when we didn't. I emailed my boss, my mom, the hotel for our meeting this week, and a certain sports team, 67 of whose tickets I had for safekeeping on my person. "Can the tickets be reprinted?" Yes, for $5 each, but they'd cap that at $40. Whew. Hotel event coordinator was overwhelmingly lovely - she changed our lunch date to "what would you like waiting for you in your room?" and I may or may not have admitted a liking for hard cider.

The Line moved across a wet patch on the floor. My carryon is not wheeled. Ew.

Throughout the day, I reminded myself of two important things: unlike a friend of my family, who's been a part of our lives all of my own, I am not losing a foot today. And I don't work for Delta today.

As baselines for "how bad is  your day?" these things might seem almost extreme for comparison, but remembering our family friend honestly did keep me from turning into a freaking, stress-riding shrew. I prayed for her and meant it. I took NSAIDs for my headache and knew, whatever came, my problems would end - maybe even within just hours.

We came to the end of The Line around 2:30 I think. Maybe. One loses all sense of time, even dates, in an aiport, and that is of course very intentional. Can't have people aware of what's going on about them.

I got to the gate for the 3:32 flight before I really looked at the new boarding pass.

It was for August 9.

I was pretty out of it, but Monday, I was reasonably certain, was in fact August 8.

Two more compatriots from The Line appear. I ask them if they saw the date on their HOORAY, YOU REACHED THE END OF THE LINE release slips. They crumple when the realize our mutual mistake.

There is no going back to The Line and cutting it.

We turn to the nearest gate agent, and wait.

The problem being shared, so too is the solution. A 7:28 p.m. out of gate such-and-such.

We find gate such-and-such and settle in. It is a nice gate. Small, quiet, clean.

It is, naturally, too good to last.

There are three gate changes as the afternoon wears on. Atlanta is, by the way, the largest airport in the world. You need to catch a train to get from one concourse to another. You can, if you are especially sleep-deprived and castaway by Delta airlines (hometown carrier for ATL), miss the right concourse and have to get back ON the train again. These are things that can happen.

At last, I ended up at gate A1. I kept thinking about steak sauce, what it has that Worcestershire sauce doesn't, and that family friend. This gate is large, but crowded, ugly-lit, dirty - and low on seating. By this point in the day, my tailbone is hurting in any case. Air travel is hard on a fat lady's tailbone. Sitting too straight, sitting not straight enough. It's all very trying. Sitting on the ground is no better. I finally capitulate and try to lie down.

In that magical carryon - un-wheeled, as I have mentioned - what I have not mentioned is its very weighty contents. Apart from the laptop, it holds a presentation projector. Tiny, to be sure, but still. I'm hucking *equipment* all over G-d's creation, hung off my shoulder. It also holds my tablet computer.

Battery life still kicking, but sinking, on the laptop, I decide at last to fire up the Galaxy tab. It has updates. I let it update.

This takes roughly sixteen months, and renders everything on the tablet unusable. No email. No KINDLE. I poke at it listlessly less than half an hour, and finally just turn the thing off. I haven't so much as fiddled with it since. Some stress we tend to invite in. I was not feeling hospitable for tech issue frustrations, so. Shut it down.

The gate is moved again, but this time only across the way, to A2.

Right about here, for whatever reason, I indulge in that most heedless rashness: belief that this next flight is Going to Happen. It is from the chairs here, waiting, I say the most coherent prayer for our family friend. It is here I watch the most luminously beautiful lot of students, traveling together, laughing and finding their own flight has been canceled. They thread their way away, and the sun seems to be dipping slightly.

On the plane. It is a miracle.

I email my boss. My hotel. My mom.

And we sit at the gate an hour and a half. Some ticketing issue with a lady and her young son. They get on the plane very late in the game. They get off again. I can't pretend that my feelings at this point were completely charitable; whatever this lady needed to get to, or away from - she kept hundreds of others waiting, as if we hadn't all done enough of that by this time.

But wait. More waiting. Lady and son are long gone off the plane again, and it transpires; our weight paperwork is not right.

I don't know what time the plane pulled away - between time zone shifts and delays, I know it was well past the final delayed takeoff time for our flight. But we lifted away from the tarmac, and flew at long last.

I cannot tell you how good the beds are at the event property where my meeting was held.

I also still cannot tell you how Stella Artois cider tastes. (I most often drink Virginia cider.) There were two Stellas in my fridge; but no bottle opener. And none to be had with room service.

Just as well.



The thing about these massive airline outages is that they are genuine crises for too many passengers. As for me - I was on time for the meeting, it went well. I didn't get to the "rehearsal" session, I didn't get to tour the hotel nor the city, and I didn't get to test that projector I'd been hauling around - which turned out to be not bright enough for the room. So it goes.

But for some, computer outages like this lead to real-world consequences that matter. I'm inevitably reminded of Douglas Adams' character Trillian, who hitches a ride and gets the adventure of her life. But who, in another scenario, misses the flight as it were. This Trillian meets a group of aliens who've lost their brain. Literally - the master mission module for their spaceship is lost in space, and they have no memories, no mission, nothing to do ... but to settle on a distant planet(/oid) and monitor Earth.

I felt a bit like that Monday. After an initial surge of "I want to quit and go home" frustration, I fell into the day and went where it took me. Call that a buffeting - it might have been - or me being flexible - if I was, it was more from exhaustion than Zen-like philosophical limberness ... whatever it was, at some point relatively early on, I abdicated action and succumbed to passivity. There can be ease in that, and I needed all the ease I could get on Monday.

My time card runs from about 3:30 a.m. Eastern time to 11:30 p.m. for Monday. Yes, I am paid hourly. So two hours on Sunday for the aborted American enterprise. Twenty more Monday. Unlike most folks, I will be paid for this debacle. Whatever Delta chooses to do may not be super relevant to me, in time. A $200 voucher for future use - with Delta - is not as attractive as one might like. But they have their own problems.

And, as in politics, so goes travel. We have little choice - Delta will live on.

Creative Not-writing

Most creative and/or artistic types express their limber right brains in ways other than being writers, painters, musicians, sculptors and so on.

I rock a bit of the Ageing Bohemian Authoress style in my wardrobe and home, and I also have this thing where I have to change things every now and then. There is a semi-regular seasonal rotation of my living room and bedroom furniture that just gives me a little pleasure looking at the same things in a different way.

Like my mom, I also have a collection of decorative items and wall art far exceeding space to exhibit it all at any one time. I haven't switched those things around much in the past year or two, but used to shift out a small portion of my dad's pewter collection for colorful dishes and Israeli enamel around the kitchen, or put out different knickknacks in the living room from one mood or season to another. Of course there are Christmas decorations, too.

Finding places to put things is a major recreational and practical habit for any homeowner; often, this comes with the question of "How do I store X, Y, and Z?" but some of us just have fun with what's actually out.

This week (I hope!), I'm having my basement foundation jackhammered to the footing and waterproofing updated in this beautiful 66-year-old home, which I moved into fifteen years ago this month. Step one in this job is MY contribution, which has been to move everything down there away from the walls.

Any homeowner can tell you, any project involving moving every single thing in one room in a house ends up feeling like a massive undertaking. As a pushing-50-year-old woman with multiple back injuries to my discredit, it's also one you have to be careful about. Gossamer has fallen in love with my back for smelling like off-brand Icy/Hot, because the wintergreen drives him mad, and I've certainly been keeping the naproxen sodium business going. Hooray for NSAIDs!

And for subterranean dreams.

Moving everything down there presents the opportunity not only to open up a new line of credit debt in the name of resale value I hope not to realize any time soon, and also to Get Some Things Done.

Washing the walls is job one, once the contractors clear out. Just taking a hose to the whole place. Whether I'll follow that with a paint job I'm not sure. in some ways, being able to see the flemish bonding that goes all the way down under the house proper charms me. And exposed brick is a thing.

I *am* rather tempted to paint the floors with something glossy enough to take a good sweeping.

The clothes lines will probably move, but I haven't decided where. Some things will have to develop as things are shifted back into place.

The major workbench will be dismantled and its true two-by-fours kept for some other wonderful purpose, its massive legs saved likewise. This will free up a massive amount of space down there, and some of the furniture in storage will be put to use AS storage, as well as cleaning up the look of the place.

I don't intend to finish it completely, but I may let paternal grandma's easy chair and maternal grandma's dresser and vanity/desk serve some decorative and practical purpose. I have my eye on the vanity/desk as a spot I could set up my sewing machine, which currently stays stuck behind a filing cabinet, but which could have a living/working function in a safe, cleaned-up full basement.

The extraordinarily well-built shelves at the bottom of the steps, I think may be little gussied up, but cleaned and called for duty to hold some of those miscellaneous decorative items not always in service themselves. If I do anything to prettify this spot, it will be simply to hang a shower curtain to keep things safe from the worst dust.

Mom and I have some of our best conversations, stimulating each other's decorator brains on projects like this. It distracts her for a time, too, from the difficulties of being a constant caregiver, and I hope is some relief from the tension.

If nothing else, spending fifteen or so minutes actually starting that job we agreed upon, of dismantling the largest workbench seems to have provided some frustration working-out. She bashed every board off the top (NO damage; mom and I both get physically sick watching the careless destruction inherent in most "demo days" on HGTV shows) before I could even say I still needed it to stack the shelves on as I deconstructed those!

Along the way with creative projects of any kind come the surprises. The incalculable cache' of Gossamer poops, hidden away when he's been in some kind of mood or other. The ASTONISHING weight of a tiny vanity made out of hard rock maple. The fact that the smaller workbench, laden with firewood and appliance boxes I have saved because I am *that* person ("keep the boxes in case you ever have to move!") ... was missing a leg, and just propped against the wall. For who knows how many decades! The exact size of cave cricket poo.

But in a week or so (I hope! I got the call Friday the county permits had not been completed ...), I will be able to indulge some of these fantasies.

Right after I scrub down the falls and remediate the dust. Shew!



So. What's up with you this summer?

Beginnings ... (?)

It looks like my last post was the 2500th on this blog. Interesting; it was about neverending dying. It was unplanned.

Like so much of life. Unplanned.

One year ago, I allowed myself to contemplate putting The Ax and the Vase away. At the time, I could not face that as a death, but a persistent coma eventually becomes a death for those who are still in the waking life. It hasn't been long since I memorialized that death, not for the first time, but pretty much in that context. I even said, there is a freedom in letting go. I have been seeing the "release" aspect of death a great deal of late.

And so, it is hard. It is hard to contemplate hope instead.

Stripping off the preciousness and poetry: it's hard, and terrifying, to find myself considering self-publishing.

There is an aspect to the idea that feels like death, itself. The dream of traditional publishing, for me, has been a long one - as long as the writing of Ax itself was, and that was ten years or more. In the beginning, there was a powerful challenge and a business to learn, and that appealed to me. In the midst of that education, the idea of learning another way was overwhelming.

I've seen the commitment it takes to be an indie. I've long, too, seen the liberty inherent in being pre-published. For all these years, the technical side of the self-pub path has been aplenty to stymie me and allow me to maintain an almost studied ignorance, focusing on the traditional pub path.

Damn my brain. I find with age, it is more open, not less, to new ideas and new ways of doing things. I'm a Virginian! This is not natural.

But, even my wee and paltry brain is capable of perception. It has not escaped me that the infrastructure and the process of self-pub has been refined and cultivated over the same years indie's reputation has grown, along with its popularity. And my wee and paltry brain occasionally gets the idea it might just be big enough to learn something new.

And my heart and my talent and my uppity-osity kind of think Ax is a good novel. That it should not die.

I'm still very well aware of its disadvantages as a product. But vanity wonders ... could it work in a market unlike traditional publishing? In this, my wee and paltry brain may admittedly be prone to arrogance.

I am by no stretch committed. Too much to learn even to begin. And this time has been a hard time; it is possibly the worst time in the world to take on such an enterprise. But this is perhaps part of the reason I contemplate it.

As for the rest: I blame my wee and paltry brain. And reading. Reading. Reading. Reading. And a friend who is willing to give me the benefit of her experience and expertise, at least as a starting point. I am grateful for Leila Gaskin. As who wouldn't be?

Sigh.

The comments are open. I would love to see others' thoughts.

Dreams're Weird

Does this ever happen to you?

You dream so much, and so oddly - perhaps, or perhaps not waking UP with each fresh Hell as your brain presents them - that it ends up being such a bad night's sleep it feels like you didn't sleep at all?

Image: Wikipedia
By Gut Monk

Stupid brain, going around making up weird stories. Where'd it ever pick up a habit like THAT!?

Learning to Fly

The First Love and I were talking about how hard it is to find someone, and it brought to mind Douglas Adams' lessons on how to fly ...

All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.

(The link, by the way, is eminently worth the click for the brief but full text.)

It's all very funny, of course, but there is an extremely bittersweet and painful truth in it: you can't get what you want most by concentrating on it to the exclusion of all else; and yet, distracting yourself from what you want most is almost impossible.

Almost impossible.

But that means ... it's still possible.

That Day

Twelve years on, this is the day of the year I can't seem to control my anger. Hallmark emailed me about how I should handle this holiday, and I wanted to scream and rant. Deletion just is not enough.

Through the year, I can manage to get through every one of the thousands upon thousands of times I am told by my television, mail, and so on that I am a non-person because I do not belong to A FAMILY (I have family, yes; but the degree to which our politics and pop culture presumes all people are - or are supposed to be - members of a nuclear family is impossible to really "feel" for those who actually do; for those of us who do not, it is an inescapable imposition upon us that we don't belong to the world if we don't belong to one). But come May and Mother's Day, this day begins to bob up on the horizon. And there is no way around it.

Father's Day acknowledges NOTHING about those of us whose fathers are no longer with us. Never mind those whose fathers don't occupy that nuclear-familial role. What that must feel like I can't even imagine, but it's awful to contemplate.

I only know that the only thing I've been able to feel for this day, myself, for a dozen years is impotent anger. Impotent, not in the face of my father, but in the face of my CULTURE, which parades ugly shirts and power tools and stupid stereotypes at me for weeks on end, and cannot apparently conceive of death.

It is exhausting - the parade, and my own anger. I know the latter is a bag of rocks I collected for myself and it does nothing. But I let it live on, because I am not perfect and I don't want to be, and I have very little anger and hatred in my life. This ... Well, this doesn't actually hurt anyone. It is not aimed inward, it's not aimed at anyone. Only the faceless monolith of the idiotic and money-driven tone of the world I have chosen to stick with in life. Hallmark needs to bite it hard enough to break a tooth. But there's no ill wished on actual humans (or teeth).



On my dad's last Father's Day, I made sweet rolls and brought them to my parents' house. We ate out on their brick lanai in the back yard, then lay in the grass, lolled in the hammock, talked to each other in the iron patio furniture. My rolls weren't as good as grandma's - the sugar didn't completely caramelize with the butter. But they tasted good. My dad told me long ago, my bread was really good. It was good enough, that day.


That day is over.

This one ... isn't.

The Thing About Reading

… specifically, the thing about reading multiple works by one author – is that, unless they’re exceptionally good, you learn their go-to strategies. If you’re smart and/or fortunate, you begin to feel your own. It’s not always repetition of words per se, but this is certainly a matter of the linguistic patterns on which we depend.

I have some suspicion that my tendency toward overwrought clauses and loquatiousness comes from some fear of simplistic repetitiveness (and very definitely from a family full of Impressive Speakers – for good or ill), but I also have decreasing illusions about the patterns I do have. Some readers go bananas dealing with my parentheticals or dash interruptions … I pretend to try to keep ellipses to a minimum, but know all too well I use them more than most writers ever would.

An acquaintance online once identified my “voice” unerringly by dint of recognizing my tendency to overuse the word “just.” Ever since, I’ve been overly aware of its presence whenever I type it; yet it’s hardly alone in calling me out. I have an extreme problem with “actually” which, even aware of the problem, I have not reformed. Adverbs generally, one of those tools of our language so many publishing professionals would love to see banned and which therefore I defend and adore like the contrarian I am, are a pretty easy identifier. Too many writers use them in pointless ways; and none of us needs the padding. Yet they are a limber and lively part of our tongue, and it would be a great pity to kill them off wholesale thanks to those who use them poorly.

Ahem.

There’s one writer whose mass of termonological tics render every character’s voice identical, no matter their setting, mood, education, or demographics. The tics transcend character voice and insert an all too literal authorial voice which, because it spans dialogue, exposition, action, and all elemenets of novel upon novel upon novel upon novel, is distracting; unwelcome. It’s cumbersome and even maddening. Yet, because I’m a stubborn ass, I won’t put down a given novel – but will edit it in pen.

This is justified both by the fact that some works are re-run reads for me, and I want to be able to read one, ever, without having to mentally correct it all over again, tiny mental rants bursting forth over and over on every page spread. Oh, and by my smug-assed presumption that (hopefully …) it makes ME a better writer.

Learning from someone else’s mistakes.


I’m not as prescriptivist as I once was, and indeed have come to love the quivering weirdness of the written word, as it synthesizes the spoken, or thought, or comveys a story in simple ways, or dresses up in beautiful words and parades around making a magnificent spectacle of itself. If it does this by breaking rules, or breaking what people THINK are rules, all the better.

Still.

If it does this encumbered: writing sucks. If it’s shackled to an author’s own preconceptions or prejudices, ignorance (writing creatively, without research, is wonderfully valid, but writing in wilful blindness is not; see also, the geological unlikelihood of William Golding’s island for Lord of the Flies, on which we are nonetheless stranded and harrowed and broken down … versus any tale populated by lazily caricatured Mary Sues, none of which I will name for charity’s and safety’s sake) … it’s going to enchain an audience, rather than enfold and transport them.

And so it is, having just finished a cycle of reruns I will not repeat for years yet, I choose to finally spew a bit about the patterns____ repetitions thrust through my suffering wee and paltry little brain of late:

• Beginning. Every. Other. Sentence. With the word AND. It’s not a rule I give a crud about, but please quit flogging me with *unneccesary* and’s, and interminable riffs of this.
• Peppering single sentences with and, and, and; and and—and and. Paragraph-long sentences formed with these.
• “And then,”
• “Of course”
• “Suddenly” and "Immediately"
  (If there is any better way to slow the pace than constant repetition of these two descriptors: I don't want to learn it.)
• “Utterly”
• “Now”
• “That”
• “Which”
• “In sum”
• "Slowly”
  (Even I, adverbial defender that I am, can hardly identify an instance in the entire literary world where this is honestly a necessary descriptor; and, even if it’s important to specify, there are so many more interesting words than this one.)
• Stating the rules of the world even as deep as the END of a novel, by which point we really know these rules, authorial voice, we really really do and would beg you to stop explaining.
• Doing this even in the briefest of unnecessary clauses. You’re treating your audience like idiots. Seriously, stop it.
• Describing characters’ extreme attractiveness at every possible moment of a scene. Extra bonus points OFF if you insist upon detailing every point of an ensemble in doing this. Every time.
• All the characters are attractive. Even the extras. EVERYONE is attractive, and beauty equals goodness – even if the goodness is merely angst-ridden, terminally melodramatic evil. Hooray for pretty!
• Describing by fancy maker, pattern of drapery/upholstery fabric, age and theme of bric-a-brac, country-of-origin of rugs, ostentatiously tasteful paint color, and at all times most-expensive-possible materials comprising every possible corner of a room in which one single scene should take place in five minutes, but which I have to read about for six pages, because – these characters are conspicuously well off, get it? THIS IS WORLD-BUILDING, GET IT? (This author, not incidentally, happens to be obscenely wealthy, and I could give a hang less how they choose to (clearly) decorate their own personal home. Get on with it. This is not story.)
• Describing by artist or composer, and with exhaustive critical opinion, every overwrought piece of music with which the author has mentally scored, scene by scene, every single instant of a novel. I don’t give an aching damn what you were listening to while you wrote this, and once you’ve done this eighteen times in a single novel, I know you are just showing off how much you think you know about music, and it’s just as boring as when that one guy does it in a bar so he can prove how he is too good to hang out in bars and is really a wildly overeducated, intelligent, super sensitive snob I knew I didn’t liike in the first place and now find completely insufferable in the second place.
• Constant. Racist. Descriptions. CONSTANT. If anyone appears anywhere in any of these works, who is not whiter than a sheet of modern copy paper, they are: dumb, superstitious, and *strictly* present as accessories to the white people’s stories.
• No, seriously.
• The actual, explicit worship of the very words “white” or “pale” are impossible to ignore. And this is not a 19th century novelist whose attitudes can be glossed over. I mean, this writer makes The Ax and the Vase look progressive, and Ax doesn’t even contain diversity.

Oh my, that felt good – if unseemly.

I may even be able to read one of these books ever again.



Just not within the next decade … or two. Actually. ()—and and and and. BOOP!


(Please feel free to initiate drinking games making fun of MY myriad tics and pretentions. All I ask is you comment and tell me about them, so we can all have fun. Cheers!)

Effective Professional Communication: The Approach

To all the people who have to make endless calls, trying to get on executives’ calendars – look, I get it. We all have our scripts to follow. Mine is “time is at an extreme premium” when you call me – and that is not a joke. Yours is “I’d just like to get a few minutes with him to introduce him to our company and what we can do for yours.” You have to do this over and over again with the same unresponsive people, and if you think I don’t know that, you underestimate my ability to recognize your phone number on my caller ID. I know exactly when you call, I know you do it on a repeating schedule. I GET it.

Most of you recognize that I am The Gatekeeper, and you behave accordingly, attempting to schmooze me (pointless) or tell me “He said he’d meet with us” (it worked ONE time, when I was new, and man do I have those guys’ numbers – and they will never, ever get in with my boss, ever) or actually behaving with friendly professionalism (the only viable approach). I entertain these varying gambits with exactly the responses they deserve, always professional, but pretty much hermetically sealed against the jerks who try to get one over on me, and impervious to anything but friendly professionalism. The ones who recognize, we’ve all got our scripts to follow: that, basically, we’re all in this together.

Make it unpleasant for me, and I will return the favor by making “progress” outright impossible for you.

So don’t refuse to speak with me when, instead of asking you “would you like to go to voice mail?” I say “Is there anything I may do for you?”

Don’t fail to realize that, if you want calendar time, I’m the person to ask for it; not my boss.

Don’t try to bypass me by snubbing me with a “Just put me in voicemail” and then leaving a message for my boss which (a) starts out with about twenty seconds of egregiously badly recorded music and (b) then segues into “I am so and so and I am FIGHTING to get a meeting with you.”

It turns out that the music was the Fighting Illini fight song – actually a commendable-ish piece of personalization, not that it actually changes the calendar any – and the “fighting” message was an allusion to that. So, okay, so he didn’t intend to make me look bad.

But this guy has been calling for a long time now, and my boss and I both recognize the number when it comes in now, and he’s never tried to talk with me, never left a message, and – cute as the personalization is – it doesn’t TELL US ANYTHING.

If he’d ever once actually attempted to speak with me like a all-growed-up professional, he could have introduced his company and himself, he could have gotten some information to me (and, that way, possibly to my boss – or, perhaps, even someone else more relevant to his needs), he might conceivably have made some sort of progress. Instead, what we have is enough weeks of calls from the same number that my boss and I both know a number is endlessly pinging us – and nothing else. No skin off of us, but it doesn’t make a GOOD first impression. And zero net effect for our fighting friend.

Who, to be honest, isn’t fighting all that hard, and who is strategizing his battle not. at. all.



It’s impossible not to be brought to mind of querying and trying to get an agent.

We all have our scripts to follow, and whether I personalize or not goes by the wayside if I make a lot of noise, without ever conveying the least bit of information ABOUT MY NOVEL. Or even that it is a novel. Or why I think it’s relevant to Agent X, Y, or Z. Or even make it clear that what I am attempting to do is to query something.


I called myself The Gatekeeper above, and would imagine most of my readers who are writers or agents (they do crop up!) would agree, the gatekeeper analogy in querying/publishing does nobody any favors.

But querying is a professional communication, we all agree on that. And to conduct professional communication in the way my fighting foe above has done would be unthinkable.

(Even now, I suspect Janet Reid, Jessica Faust, and hundreds of other agents are/would have to disagree – they probably do get EXACTLY this approach, from geniuses who’ve found the office number, and wish to treat agents to their honeyed words directly, bypassing slush with their pristine and special snowflakes. We’ve heard about it, and there are countless agency sites exhorting that authors NOT call them directly for a reason.)

It is for ME, and for all my wise and wonderful authorial readers, this would be unthinkable. Of course.

It seems so basic to me – yet I have worked in a fairly stereotypical office setting or another for nearly thirty years. Not all authors do, nor could stand to. And so baseline assumptions for effective professional communications are not there. And, given the creative nature of our product, we may think a creative approach is best in getting it out there.

That can work. But even the most unexpected innovations in getting our work out there, in the successful cases, still maintains essential professional respect. It doesn’t involve stalking agents to find out their alma mater and subjecting their voicemail to extreme lo-fi (do the kids know what low-fidelity means anymore, by the way … ?) fight songs. It involves getting attention without demanding it personally and invasively. Maybe by canny support in service of self-published work that stands the test of marketing success and the expectation of future revenue etc. Maybe in the unique voice of an unexpected character, translated into a simple, ordinary query. Maybe in a hundred ways I can’t think of because I am stodgy and dowdy and doing things the old way.

Not by calling incessantly for weeks, with no message.

Not by FIGHTING for time un-earned, while providing no reason it should be given.

Today *Would* Be the Day ...

... to find a bunch of agent interviews, blogs, and agency site exhortations saying "DON'T GIVE UP!"

Hm.