I paid $4.95 at 10 last night to watch The Artist on pay per view. (That's the silent film about the affair between two actors on opposite sides of the talkies divide that won the best picture Oscar this year). At around 11, as I was trying to catch my breath, so full of admiration was I, Maisy hopped up and started barking at the curtain. I knew this meant she had seen a mouse. The new house has a mouse issue. It's a regular Tom and Jerry situation. In my little office there, I found a pile of dog food neatly piled beneath a corner of a bookcase, not twelve inches from my chair. I opened the door to the porch one night and a mouse ran away from the front door. That is a bold mouse. I mean, yes, he ran away, but he was obviously planning on coming through the front door.
All right - I did't actually see the mouse that interrupted The Artist or I might not have survived to write about it here. It was more a psychological attack, as far as it went. But since it was late and I couldn't risk being physically attacked by the mouse, as the mother of school-aged children, I fled to bed with a plan to get the DVD from Netflix or something eventually. I am sure you will be cheered to know that this frightening tale has a happy ending. When I turned the TV on this AM, incredibly, The Artist was still on and it at exactly the point in the movie where I had retreated to my bedroom. LOVED it. What fetching stars! What beautiful photography! The cars! A terrier! We were late for Shack's guitar lesson but he and I were transfixed. See it if you can.
Notes from Twitter
I figured out yesterday how to do a "hastag" topic on Twitter. My proposal was for "#cutofftitles"
E.g., "The Davinci Cod, The Sound and the Fur, The Good Ear, Papa's Got a Bra" You get the idea. In doesn't seem to have caught on - the theory is anybody can jump in on these topics. I am still hoping for a few more contributors so if you have a good cut off title, please share. Bon weekend!
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
What Happened to Saturday Night?
I got wondering about that as I sat down here (after dinner on Saturday) with nothing better to tell than that I have been reading Paradise Lost aloud to myself in stolen moments all weekend and that I am looking forward to another hit of Milton at bedtime. That would be 10 PM. If I make it that far. Also, Milton will be my only company...
Ooo la la!
I wonder what my 23-year-old self would make of my current existence?
I got a little consolation from Yeats. (Better and better isn't it?) Not for me these days those "dying generations at their song." I'm off for "monuments of unaging intellect": e.g. Milton.
Really, it could be worse.
Yeats tonight also helped a little with my continuing literary rejections. See: "Against Unworthy Praise."
It starts like this:
O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Even Yeats wanted applause! He felt shabby about it and manages in this poem to talk himself around. Luckily for him, and the English-reading world, he had a muse who got booed offstage and didn't apparently care.
[...] what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.
You tell 'em Bill!
Not that I think of literary agents who have had said "no thanks" to me as dolts and knaves. (Well, maybe the ones who include helpful tips on how to write in their canned responses). I'll leave that to the judgment of future generations.
Wink wink.
Ooo la la!
I wonder what my 23-year-old self would make of my current existence?
I got a little consolation from Yeats. (Better and better isn't it?) Not for me these days those "dying generations at their song." I'm off for "monuments of unaging intellect": e.g. Milton.
Really, it could be worse.
Yeats tonight also helped a little with my continuing literary rejections. See: "Against Unworthy Praise."
It starts like this:
O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Even Yeats wanted applause! He felt shabby about it and manages in this poem to talk himself around. Luckily for him, and the English-reading world, he had a muse who got booed offstage and didn't apparently care.
[...] what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.
You tell 'em Bill!
Not that I think of literary agents who have had said "no thanks" to me as dolts and knaves. (Well, maybe the ones who include helpful tips on how to write in their canned responses). I'll leave that to the judgment of future generations.
Wink wink.
Friday, June 08, 2012
Sore Backs, Sunrise, Sunset
We have dragged the washer and dryer (the ones that sat in the barn of the Last House for twelve years) up three flights of stairs here at the new house, plugged them in (this was harder than it sounds since a new standard in dryer plugs came into being during these 12 years); we have just fetched the Understudy's new mattress and box spring from the lowest-end of big box stores (tied to the top of the van, natch) and hauled them up the same three flights. And that is that. No more. Next time I move it is going to be feet first and in a box that someone else is carrying.
In other news, we attended two graduations this week. Shack finished fifth grade and elementary school (yes, there is a ceremony for that these days). The Understudy finished eighth grade and will be starting high school next year. Cue ceremony. This is a once in a lifetime congruence in our little family, with both kids moving on to the next level at school. Sigh. They will be participating in a neighborhood production of Fiddler on the Roof next week. Everytime I hear "Sunrise, Sunset" I burst into tears.
On a lighter note, school, the learning part of it at least, has basically been over for a week. Today, the Understudy and her class took a bus to an amusement park two hours away. She returned home at 7:30 PM sun burnt and cranky. Shack and his classmates had a picnic and then swam the afternoon away at the local indoor swimming pool. My favorite moment of the day came when I picked him up from the elementary school, for the last time ever.
Me: How was swimming?
Shack: It was great! I invented a new game, "handcuffed swimming,"
Sometimes I wish he would never change.
If you have kids and haven't cried about it lately, here's one for you.
Bon weekend.
In other news, we attended two graduations this week. Shack finished fifth grade and elementary school (yes, there is a ceremony for that these days). The Understudy finished eighth grade and will be starting high school next year. Cue ceremony. This is a once in a lifetime congruence in our little family, with both kids moving on to the next level at school. Sigh. They will be participating in a neighborhood production of Fiddler on the Roof next week. Everytime I hear "Sunrise, Sunset" I burst into tears.
On a lighter note, school, the learning part of it at least, has basically been over for a week. Today, the Understudy and her class took a bus to an amusement park two hours away. She returned home at 7:30 PM sun burnt and cranky. Shack and his classmates had a picnic and then swam the afternoon away at the local indoor swimming pool. My favorite moment of the day came when I picked him up from the elementary school, for the last time ever.
Me: How was swimming?
Shack: It was great! I invented a new game, "handcuffed swimming,"
Sometimes I wish he would never change.
If you have kids and haven't cried about it lately, here's one for you.
Bon weekend.
Sunday, June 03, 2012
Twittering Away
Whew. Well I am glad I got that (see the last post) off my chest. The world seems not to have noticed, as usual. Hardly surprising, given this weenie little platform I'm on but, in the immortal worlds of Jessie J., around here, we just want to make the world dance. Well. Whatever.
I have made a few happy discoveries on Twitter, as previously noted, and this being a lazy sort of Sunday (more furniture moving in store tomorrow, never fear) I wanted to share a few Twitter riches.
One of the guys I follow - a Vermonter whom I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting - introduced me to a the "#terriblesequels" space on Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:
Tapeworms of Dune
To Stuff a Mockingbird
I contributed (or attempted to contribute - I am not sure if they showed up):
The Child Support Order of J. Alfred Prufrock, Megabus from Byzantium and
The Son of the Bridges of Madison County (I didn't like that book - that's the joke). If you don't like one that I also tried, Abbott and Costello at the Bridges of Madison County, Mothra v. The Bridges of Madison County and on like that for awhile. It was fun.
Another funny thread got going this morning. It was called #bloombergmovietitles and my Twitter friend suggested "The Wizard of No More than 16 Ozs" which I thought was pretty funny. There was other good stuff to. Unfortunately I am learning the hard way that some tweets are ephemeral. The thread is now, apparently, gone. I found this while searching for it though, "Mayor Bloomberg will be the first man to go down in history in favor of smaller cup sizes."
So, the internet isn't all bad after all. Hope you all had a nice weekend.
I have made a few happy discoveries on Twitter, as previously noted, and this being a lazy sort of Sunday (more furniture moving in store tomorrow, never fear) I wanted to share a few Twitter riches.
One of the guys I follow - a Vermonter whom I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting - introduced me to a the "#terriblesequels" space on Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:
Tapeworms of Dune
To Stuff a Mockingbird
I contributed (or attempted to contribute - I am not sure if they showed up):
The Child Support Order of J. Alfred Prufrock, Megabus from Byzantium and
The Son of the Bridges of Madison County (I didn't like that book - that's the joke). If you don't like one that I also tried, Abbott and Costello at the Bridges of Madison County, Mothra v. The Bridges of Madison County and on like that for awhile. It was fun.
Another funny thread got going this morning. It was called #bloombergmovietitles and my Twitter friend suggested "The Wizard of No More than 16 Ozs" which I thought was pretty funny. There was other good stuff to. Unfortunately I am learning the hard way that some tweets are ephemeral. The thread is now, apparently, gone. I found this while searching for it though, "Mayor Bloomberg will be the first man to go down in history in favor of smaller cup sizes."
So, the internet isn't all bad after all. Hope you all had a nice weekend.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Philistines on Their Platforms
In my college Latin class I was once called on to translate a phrase which I rendered (literally) as, "The names of the stupid we see written on the walls." Better understood and less literal as, "stupid people advertise."
The quip was made by some Roman wit who was, of course, talking about the graffiti of his day (not the artsy/protest Banksy stuff but the "Lucius Septimus was here" type). I have forgotten my Latin words but I not the idea, and it has been recurring to me often lately as I consider the uses now being made of social media and the internet by the tumbling and roiling publishing industry.
Even if you have not been making a special study of what's going on with publishing, as I have recently had to do, no one who reads could avoid some sense of how it's all different now. What you may not have realized is that it goes beyond the shake-up of e-books. Those seem to everybody - at least everybody not invested in the old model - to be a great development. Beyond e-books, however, there are many different models for self-publishing - print on demand, hybrid deals where a literary agency and a writer team up and share the risks and rewards and other schemes for publishing that are popping up like mushrooms.
I think all of this is really great for the writing and the reading public. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and all of that. There is, however, at least one appalling consequence: the requirement that writers will build and maintain "a platform" from which they will promote their "brand" at every opportunity.
Like so much marketing, you may not even have realized that it is being done to you, but it is and it seems that all writers, even the best known, are being required to develop a commoditized version of themselves for the internet. It's like a command has gone forth, one especially hard on all those who can publish a book on their own but who who are also left to market it alone: leave no social network un-infiltrated.
I am not talking here about the connections that people have been making for years now based on common interests, or about those with an honest penchant for twittering or blogging. You know who you are - you write because you have something to say or someone you want to talk to and you don't expect to get paid. I am also not talking about websites created for fans who want a place to to read more about a book or to contact its writer or even order something. That's simply good service and a natural outgrowth of the admiration of readers. I am talking about calculated, venal, self-promotion, that turns the almost every kind of contact made possible by the internet into one with an agenda that's more tawdry than secret.
Full Disclosure
Of course I have been considering all this because I have a manuscript on offer. I sent it around to 15 or 20 agents this spring and got "no thanks" or silence from all of them. I would have preferred a different result, of course, but I was prepared for a lot of rejection and it was useful by way of education. I am going to revise, then I'll send it out for another round. If it doesn't get picked up by an agent and go the way of a traditional book, I will self-publish it one day. (More on that below). It was also useful because it was in this process that I learned about what's happening in the publishing business today - including this notion of "platform."
Babe in the woods that I was, the first mention I heard of it was in this video of an interview by a literary agent with a best-selling author and "lifecoach" about the author's great and successful platform building. (Don't watch it now - it's long, but I hope you will watch it later and let me know what you thought). The agent, who has a nice website and made a lot of sense generally (or so I thought at the time), urged hopeful authors to emulate the lifecoach by building up as large an internet following as possible. I recognized the author as a tacky huckster but the agent was clearly bright and it sounded like good advice. So, (and this feels like a confession) I went out immediately and started a twitter account - the beginning of my own platform.(This little blog hardly counts for what are probably obvious reasons). (Also, full disclosure - this agent subsequently rejected my book).
After two months on Twitter, my platform is no more than a spar from a broken oar and I won't be making any directed efforts to build it up. There is good in Twitter. It has been fun to follow some of my favorite writers, (Neil Gaiman is a good Twitterer) and other interesting or amusing people. The sad part is all the grasping for attention that underlies so much of what goes on there. The followers I have picked up are a few friends and a handful of voracious platform builders. One of my followers (whom I dutifully followed) tweets again and again about his "five-star reviews" on Amazon for his self-published e-memoir. (Of course, I wouldn't touch that with a barge pole, which gives you an idea of how effective this kind of marketing effort is). My heart went out to him recently though, when he admitted that promoting his book had turned out to be more work than writing it had been. Poor thing.
When authors were vetted and cared for by agents and publishing houses in those pre-internet days, a writer could maintain a gentlemanly distance from the smear of commerce. No more. Even the famous seem expected to pitch in and sell books. For the self-published, their every public internet move is often calculated to promote themselves and their products. They are like awful guests at a cocktail party pursuing the rest of us with their business cards, slipping them into pockets and comment boxes ("here's a link to my YA mystery thriller") at every opportunity.
I get it that book publishing has ever been a commercial enterprise and someone has always had to shill for books if anyone (including the writer) was going to make a living. I can practically hear the agents and editors, "It's a marketplace. I have a mortgage to pay. If you don't like that you can go sit on your pile of unsold books under your tree and read The Atlantic.
But a platform is a crass sort of place to occupy at best and a soul destroying one at worst. When I read about a writer talking about herself as a "brand," and being celebrated for it, I feel like we must be nearing the end of days. (I found these links via Twitter BTW).
I read the other day that John Milton made a total of ten pounds for the publication of Paradise Lost. How many pounds would it have taken to get him to write his name on the walls or to go out on a marketing platform?
See you around the Internet. I promise not to try to sell you anything. Well, not to try very hard at least.
The quip was made by some Roman wit who was, of course, talking about the graffiti of his day (not the artsy/protest Banksy stuff but the "Lucius Septimus was here" type). I have forgotten my Latin words but I not the idea, and it has been recurring to me often lately as I consider the uses now being made of social media and the internet by the tumbling and roiling publishing industry.
Even if you have not been making a special study of what's going on with publishing, as I have recently had to do, no one who reads could avoid some sense of how it's all different now. What you may not have realized is that it goes beyond the shake-up of e-books. Those seem to everybody - at least everybody not invested in the old model - to be a great development. Beyond e-books, however, there are many different models for self-publishing - print on demand, hybrid deals where a literary agency and a writer team up and share the risks and rewards and other schemes for publishing that are popping up like mushrooms.
I think all of this is really great for the writing and the reading public. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and all of that. There is, however, at least one appalling consequence: the requirement that writers will build and maintain "a platform" from which they will promote their "brand" at every opportunity.
Like so much marketing, you may not even have realized that it is being done to you, but it is and it seems that all writers, even the best known, are being required to develop a commoditized version of themselves for the internet. It's like a command has gone forth, one especially hard on all those who can publish a book on their own but who who are also left to market it alone: leave no social network un-infiltrated.
I am not talking here about the connections that people have been making for years now based on common interests, or about those with an honest penchant for twittering or blogging. You know who you are - you write because you have something to say or someone you want to talk to and you don't expect to get paid. I am also not talking about websites created for fans who want a place to to read more about a book or to contact its writer or even order something. That's simply good service and a natural outgrowth of the admiration of readers. I am talking about calculated, venal, self-promotion, that turns the almost every kind of contact made possible by the internet into one with an agenda that's more tawdry than secret.
Full Disclosure
Of course I have been considering all this because I have a manuscript on offer. I sent it around to 15 or 20 agents this spring and got "no thanks" or silence from all of them. I would have preferred a different result, of course, but I was prepared for a lot of rejection and it was useful by way of education. I am going to revise, then I'll send it out for another round. If it doesn't get picked up by an agent and go the way of a traditional book, I will self-publish it one day. (More on that below). It was also useful because it was in this process that I learned about what's happening in the publishing business today - including this notion of "platform."
Babe in the woods that I was, the first mention I heard of it was in this video of an interview by a literary agent with a best-selling author and "lifecoach" about the author's great and successful platform building. (Don't watch it now - it's long, but I hope you will watch it later and let me know what you thought). The agent, who has a nice website and made a lot of sense generally (or so I thought at the time), urged hopeful authors to emulate the lifecoach by building up as large an internet following as possible. I recognized the author as a tacky huckster but the agent was clearly bright and it sounded like good advice. So, (and this feels like a confession) I went out immediately and started a twitter account - the beginning of my own platform.(This little blog hardly counts for what are probably obvious reasons). (Also, full disclosure - this agent subsequently rejected my book).
After two months on Twitter, my platform is no more than a spar from a broken oar and I won't be making any directed efforts to build it up. There is good in Twitter. It has been fun to follow some of my favorite writers, (Neil Gaiman is a good Twitterer) and other interesting or amusing people. The sad part is all the grasping for attention that underlies so much of what goes on there. The followers I have picked up are a few friends and a handful of voracious platform builders. One of my followers (whom I dutifully followed) tweets again and again about his "five-star reviews" on Amazon for his self-published e-memoir. (Of course, I wouldn't touch that with a barge pole, which gives you an idea of how effective this kind of marketing effort is). My heart went out to him recently though, when he admitted that promoting his book had turned out to be more work than writing it had been. Poor thing.
When authors were vetted and cared for by agents and publishing houses in those pre-internet days, a writer could maintain a gentlemanly distance from the smear of commerce. No more. Even the famous seem expected to pitch in and sell books. For the self-published, their every public internet move is often calculated to promote themselves and their products. They are like awful guests at a cocktail party pursuing the rest of us with their business cards, slipping them into pockets and comment boxes ("here's a link to my YA mystery thriller") at every opportunity.
I get it that book publishing has ever been a commercial enterprise and someone has always had to shill for books if anyone (including the writer) was going to make a living. I can practically hear the agents and editors, "It's a marketplace. I have a mortgage to pay. If you don't like that you can go sit on your pile of unsold books under your tree and read The Atlantic.
But a platform is a crass sort of place to occupy at best and a soul destroying one at worst. When I read about a writer talking about herself as a "brand," and being celebrated for it, I feel like we must be nearing the end of days. (I found these links via Twitter BTW).
I read the other day that John Milton made a total of ten pounds for the publication of Paradise Lost. How many pounds would it have taken to get him to write his name on the walls or to go out on a marketing platform?
See you around the Internet. I promise not to try to sell you anything. Well, not to try very hard at least.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Which Character Would You Be In the WIzard of Oz?
Shackleton's fifth grade class presented it last night. When I found out they were putting it on I told him he ought to be a flying monkey." He said, "Why does everybody say that?"
Actually, he was eventually cast as the coroner. You remember: (sing it in your best Munchkin voice!) "As coroner I must aver I thoroughly examined her, and she's not merely dead, she's really quite sincerely dead."
Shack had curlicue sideburns and wore a hat with a wide brim and a long brown coat. It was too dark in the theater to take pictures - we actually got to use the town theater (which had upholstered chairs and air conditioning, more than making up for the poor photo situation). Here he is having a post-performance creemee:
I think he stole the show, but that's just me, and his teacher, and his former teacher and, like, ten other people talking.
There's actually a web page of memorable quotations from the Wizard of Oz. (Oh, internet, you have anticipated my every musing!). My favorite:
Auntie Em: Now you go feed those hogs before they worry themselves into anemia!
I am afraid there would only be one role for me in the show and you've probably guessed it..
Definitely, Glinda.
That's my motto! (We've got another blog post coming with helpful tips on how to tell good people from bad people in movies and stories, stay tuned!)
How about you? Where would the casting director put you?
Actually, he was eventually cast as the coroner. You remember: (sing it in your best Munchkin voice!) "As coroner I must aver I thoroughly examined her, and she's not merely dead, she's really quite sincerely dead."
Shack had curlicue sideburns and wore a hat with a wide brim and a long brown coat. It was too dark in the theater to take pictures - we actually got to use the town theater (which had upholstered chairs and air conditioning, more than making up for the poor photo situation). Here he is having a post-performance creemee:
I think he stole the show, but that's just me, and his teacher, and his former teacher and, like, ten other people talking.
There's actually a web page of memorable quotations from the Wizard of Oz. (Oh, internet, you have anticipated my every musing!). My favorite:
Auntie Em: Now you go feed those hogs before they worry themselves into anemia!
I am afraid there would only be one role for me in the show and you've probably guessed it..
Definitely, Glinda.
That's my motto! (We've got another blog post coming with helpful tips on how to tell good people from bad people in movies and stories, stay tuned!)
How about you? Where would the casting director put you?
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Hummingbird Hijinks! World's Dullest Wildlife Video Right Here!
Not only dull, but also inept. If you endure it you'll find that it ends when I saw I am only pausing, but don't worry, you didn't miss anything. Maisy appears offstage with her (really annoying) narration.
Sooo, it is a beautiful day here in Vermont. I was administering mildew killers of various sorts to the deck in the early hours and have many other outdoor tasks to do, but I just had to stop and take in all this hummingbird action. It was almost scary. They were practically strafing me. OK, so they weigh as much as a penny but close up they are disconcertingly bee-like.
On that note, I must extract Shack from the basement where he has been playing Skyrim on XBox since it arrived three days ago. I dragged him up long enough to eat a peanut butter sandwich a few minutes ago and he was bouncing off the walls because he had achieved "so much iron." Apparently that's an achievement in Skyrim. It was a little chilling. (Remember what happened to Gollum?)
If you decide to brave the video, keep your eyes open for the clever method I employed to fasten the bird feeder hanger to the deck post.
Bon weekend, tout le monde!
Sooo, it is a beautiful day here in Vermont. I was administering mildew killers of various sorts to the deck in the early hours and have many other outdoor tasks to do, but I just had to stop and take in all this hummingbird action. It was almost scary. They were practically strafing me. OK, so they weigh as much as a penny but close up they are disconcertingly bee-like.
On that note, I must extract Shack from the basement where he has been playing Skyrim on XBox since it arrived three days ago. I dragged him up long enough to eat a peanut butter sandwich a few minutes ago and he was bouncing off the walls because he had achieved "so much iron." Apparently that's an achievement in Skyrim. It was a little chilling. (Remember what happened to Gollum?)
If you decide to brave the video, keep your eyes open for the clever method I employed to fasten the bird feeder hanger to the deck post.
Bon weekend, tout le monde!
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