Criminals, Thieves, and Robbers

I have recently been invited to join a book club in my home town and was pleased to receive the invitation. I respect and like the members of this group. I did have some trepidation about accepting since I don’t often have time to do all the reading I would like. And If I were obligated to have read a book in its entirety each month to speak intelligently about it, I would feel guilty about being unprepared for the critique and discussion about the assigned book.

It has been two months now since my induction into this group and I consider myself a complete failure so far. The first author who was chosen is a writer of thrillers, not my most favorite genre. I tried. However I found him to write in such a fashion that I never became interested in any of his characters. So how can I read a book about people for whom I don’t give a hoot? I voiced my opinion and sat silently listening to those who did enjoy the book. Sigh!

This month the chosen book is The Wizard of Lies the Madoff story. Again, I felt like I would be in above my head. I know nothing about stocks and bonds, converting convertible bonds into common stock, mergers, accuisitions, tax-write-off, etc., etc., etc. Never mind, I told myself, I will read this book to find out why Madoff became the criminal, thief, and robber that he is. You see, I am interested in people and what makes them become who they are. Is it some thing in their environment, in their upbringing, some experience they may have had, or what? Why did Bernie Madoff become the Bernie Madoff who destroyed hundreds of people’s lives and who now rots in prison? This will be interesting, I said to myself.

Wrong again! Sadly, it disappointed me. It was written more like a historical treatise about his family background, not unusual or pathologic, and then the steps he took in his career that led him to the ponzi scheme that we know as the mother of all ponzi schemes.

The book failed me in showing me Bernie Madoff as a person, someone who not only thinks and plots, but someone who also loves and hates and plays and feels. The book fails to do that and I shall attend the next book club meeting once again without having finished reading it.

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Surprised by an Unexpected Reader

My dog sitter moved out of town and I panicked. Visions of being trapped into caring for my seven-year-old Golden Retriever around the clock 24/7 indefinately made me feel anxious, despite the unconditional love he emits to which I am addicted. I needed to get a dog sitter right away, having already committed to a weekend away in August and another overnight in September. In trying to get a referral, I found out that none of my friends own a dog. It reminded me of that saying I heard some time ago: “Happiness is when your youngest daughter gets married and your dog dies.”

Well, I don’t feel that way about either my daughters or my dog. I needed a dog sitter.! I got some cards from the desk of my veterinarian who did not know the caliber of their work. And then I got a referral from a neighbor who has cats. Still no dog referral. However my neighbor said she knew of someone who did this kind of work and perhaps I might like to call her.

“Yes! Yes!” I shouted. Ten minutes later my neighbor called back and in an apologetic voice told me the referral was for a lady who was not really very sophisticated, that she had a sort of limited background and now made a living cleaning houses … and taking care of pets. “However, she is kind, loyal, honest, and straigh-forward,” my neighbor said.

In my book, those are the most important qualities. I intervied this lady. She entered with a shy smile, wearing a simple house dress, and looked like a fish out of water. During our interview, she showed me that she liked my dog, who didn’t leave her side. I liked her, too and asked her for references. She whips out her iPhone for their telephone numbers. I don’t even have an iPhone. I like her and tell her I’ll call her … after I check her references.

Before leaving she says, “Oh, by the way, I borrowed your book, Becoming Alice, from a friend and liked it very much.

After I regained control of my jaw, which had dropped a considerable amount in surprise, I said, “I’m so glad.”

This compliment from a person who is not supposed to be sophisticated and who I am almost positive doesn’t know a thing about Jews, has just read a book about a child in the holocaust, a book that she borrowed and probably couldn’t afford to buy. I am honored!

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Being a Writer in the 21st Century

In Becoming Alice you found out that Ilse became Alice in the 20th Century, not only in name, but also as an American person. Fast forward just a bit. Well no, fast forward a long way in years all the way into the 21st Century. That same Alice who was such a fish out of water and struggled to fit into the American landscape, is now trying to catch up to the technological demands of the 21st Century.

Yesterday I spend most of the morning trying to replace an ink cartridge in my printer. I’ve done those replacements before. No big deal, I thought. The trouble arose out of the fact that I purchased a new printer that not only prints, but is a fax machine, telephone, and has internet access capabilities. I haven’t checked whether it also will brush my teeth in the morning. I only wanted a printer. Period. Nothing else. There is no such animal on the market.

Never mind, I’ll just use the printer and send off those first ten pages of my new work to someone whose judgement I trust and who would give me an honest critique. I purchased a double cartridge, not wanting to be bothered so often. God, but they are expensive. I digested the price. Writing is really important to me and proceeded to install it.

I lifted the top from the printer and the ink cartridge carrier came into full view. Piece of cake, I thought. I removed the old one and installed the new one. The printer/fax/telephone/computer told me it didn’t recognize any of the red, blue, yellow, and black cartidges. I hadn’t even touched the color inks.

I’m not without any technological knowledge altogether, so I turned the printer/fax/telephone/computer off and unplugged it from the socket. Replugged it, turned it on, and the same message came up. I went to the handbook. There is no information about “how to replace an ink cartidge.”

Long story short: It took me two and a half more hours to notice that in installing the new black cartridge the other three colors popped out of their place by 1/16th of an inch. I needed to reinstall all four colors to make the @#$%&* work. Sigh!

Being a writer in the 21st Century is not for sissies!

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Old Friends

I’ve finally found a little chunk of time to get back to my blogging. My writing time has been going to a fictional story that is bouncing around in my head. Perhaps I should say it has gone into rewriting the first ten pages two or three times. Each time I think it gets better. The down side is that I’m not getting on with it. Now I’ve come to believe that I should write the entire story down to its very end and then come back for my rewrites, however many they may be.

Then a couple of other events interfered with my gettting to this blog. One was attending a graduation in Texas and the other was a visit from an old friend for several days. I just hope I live long enough to finish writing my story.

Now, back to the visit from my old friend which was wonderful. We have known one another for —– years: too many to admit to. Shall we just say that we essentially grew up together. Our parents were best friends. The remarkable thing is that we were very different from one another as children. She was a happy, outgoing kid while I was shy, introverted and troubled. Somehow, we got along great.

Fast forward many many years. I moved away from my home town. She remained. Marriage and children followed. Careers followed. Happy events and unhappy events followed. Our lives took different paths. But somehow our friendship remained … strong.

My friend came to visit a short while ago and we found out that we are no longer so different from one another. We have, and have had, some of the same problems. We have dealt, and are dealing with them, in similar ways. We have some of the same interests: travel, reading books, going to the theater and concerts, movies, understanding world events and politics. The list goes on. The few days she was here just flew by and I can’t wait for our next visit.

Some childhood friends grow so different from one another over the years that they can hardly find a few words to exchange. How lucky I am that is not the case with my old friend.

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Understanding Blogs

I thought I was doing pretty well understanding the internet and deciding just exactly where I’d fit in and how to use it in general. I did the Facebook and Twitter thing and discovered that it wasn’t really how I like to communicate with people, especially people who I don’t even know. Then I was invited to be friends with people who wanted to sell me something, or teach me something, or were looking to me to fulfill some other type of need of theirs … which shall remain nameless.

So even though I am still participating in social media, sort of from the sidelines, I spent more of my time writing a blog. Why? Well, I like writing, especially about things that happen in everyday life that arouse some emotion in me. Politics make me angry. Seeing a good movie or play makes me want to tell my friends. Animals bring out the “Awww” factor in me and I like to share those stories. Then there are interesting people. Yes, I am fascinated my them and play with trying to figure them out.

But now I’ve hit a brick wall again. It’s not that I don’t get enough hits. I am getting more and more hits all the time. But They are coming from companies who want to sell me real estate, insurance, or used cars. And there are a zillion people who want to teach me something like editing, or publishing, or marketing books.

So, I’ve decided to write this blog as an experiment to see who is going to read it. If you are one of my subscribed readers, please ignore this. If not, let me know why you’ve read this blog!

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Another Dimention in Becoming Alice

Just as I was thinking that Becoming Alice was slowly making its way into oblivion, I received an email from an unknown sender. I am always hesitant to open emails from parties that I don’t know. I learned that early on when many of them were strictly advertisements and come-ons for products I had no interest in. Others were sexual. Give me a break! So, naturally I either delete those emails or report them as scam. Even then I don’t think AOL does anything to keep them from coming.

Back to the latest email I received from an unknown sender. I don’t know why but for some reason I opened it and it was adressed to me by name. It was from a woman who bought Becoming Alice from me at the Los Aangeles Times Book Festival a couple of years ago. She wondered if I remembered her. She was the lady who had with her a handicapped son in a wheelchair. Of course, I did not remember her. I talked to a zillion people that day. She stated that the reason she emailed me was that she was moved by my account of the old butcher in my story who was forced to sell his store to my parents in order to stay home and help his wife care for their mentally retarded son.

She wanted to know more about why he made that decision and not any other kind, such as institutionalization. She wondered what responsibility society has in caring for such handicapped people. She wondered if she should listen to what her friends were advising her to do. And she wondered how his situation finally turned out.

I could not answer that question but I was able to share with her my own experience with couples who have had to deal with this problem, each making a different decision for themselves. My husband had a severely retarded brother who was cared for by their parents until his mother was ninety-two, at which time she herself needed elder care. Another couple gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby and placed him directly from the hospital into an institution. Each of them made different decisions for themselves which they thought were right. My advice to her was to do whatever she thought was right for her.

In the end it is she who will have to be responsible for that decision, not society or her friends. Her last email to me was to thank me for my advice; she said it made her feel better about her decision to keep her son at home.

I never expected Becoming Alice to be useful to someone in this particular way, but I couldn’t have been more pleased.

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The World of Machines

I’m all over the map going in all directions and getting nothing done. This time being “all over the map” is literal since I’ve just spent ten days in New York, the Netherlands, and Holland. That is one of the reasons why I haven’t posted anything here on WordPress. I was busy getting together clothes, sundries, toiletries, medications, reading material (for those long plane rides,) and paper to work on my next writing project. You’d think I was going to be spending time with a Stone Age tribe in the Amazon. Didn’t it ever occur to me that I could buy any one of those items in all of the above-mentioned destinations?

But the frustrating part of it all was that when I finally did find some time before my departure to get onto my computer, I couldn’t get through to the internet. A hasty call to my computer guy resulted in our needing to do more research to find out if my computer had died, or if the fault of lay in the hands ofTime Warner. They were in no hurry to come out to my house and my plane was leaving.

Never mind, I would have a computer at my disposal on the ship that was taking me on a River Cruise in Holland. Two computers for 130 guests on the boat! When I finally was able to get to one of them the ship was always located in a position out of range of the satellite. I tried to switch gears and pull out my writing pad. As soon as I finished a sentence or two, the Cruise Director would blast an announcement over the loudspeaker about our next port of call, or a waiter would ask me if I wanted to order a drink.

Perhaps you wonder why I didn’t spend any time getting to know my fellow passengers. The answer is that many of them were playing bridge in the back lounge. Good night, they could have done that back home in Iowa. Some of them came in packs of nine or ten people and they remained self-contained the entire time. I shouldn’t neglect to mention the three or four people who spent most of the cruise reading a newspaper or a Kindle. Luckily I brought mine along with me. The only problem was that I finished reading my book and couldn’t download another because there was no wifi connection available.

I thought about using my cell phone to call some of my friends back home, but I hadn’t purchased an international card before I left. All this made me aware of how dependent we have become on the amazing machines we have at our dispoasal. Imagine life without a computer, cell phone, or wifi connection. Yikes!

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Time to Write vs. Time to Promote

My mom had a saying which she used often, especially when she was stressed about not having enough time to two jobs that were of equal importance: “One can’t dance at two weddings on the same afternoon of the same day.”

I sometimes feel like that. My dad told us another story which applies to me as well. He, as a doctor, had a nurse of whom he was very fond. He said she did everything he told her to do efficiently and in a timely manner. But if he made the mistake of telling her to do two things, she became so confused that she didn’t do any one of them correctly.

Right now I fell exactly like his nurse. I spend my time being pulled in two different directions in my literary life, one is to promote my memoir, Becoming Alice and the other is to continue writing my next work which is a fictional story, based on true events.

The bottom line is that I can’t find enough time for me to spend to do either one of them justice, especially the writing aspect. Once I get going on a project, I like to keep going. I don’t like being pulled back and forth. I know I must make a decision soon or I’ll drive myself crazy. I know exactly how dad’s nurse must have felt. I don’t want to get to the point where I won’t be able to do either one of those jobs as well as I think I could.

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Gender Stats in Publishing for 2009-The Gap Exists

It is already January 2011 and I am still cleaning up from left-over bits and pieces of information that I wanted to address from 2010. One of them was an email received from a site that I watch. It is http://www.shewrites.com and I think it is worthwhile to stay tuned.

The email gave us the Gender Stats in Publishing for 2009. Please note:

Amazon Top 100 Editor’s Picks 2009:
77 Men/23 Women

LA Times Favorite Fiction 2009:
16 Neb/9 Women

LA Times Favorite Nonfiction 2009:
19 Men/6 Women

The Ntional Book Awards 2009:
4 Men/o Women

Publishers Weekley Best Books 2009:
10 Men/0 Women

Washington Post Best Books 2009:
69 Men/17 Women

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1948-2009:
40 Men/16 Women

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1950-2009:
44 Men/16 Women

U.S. Poet Laureate 1937-2009:
36 Men/10 Women

I give up! I can’t believe women are so far inferior to men!

Give me a break!

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Stuck in Rewrite

One of the many questions I am asked about Becoming Alice is, “How long did it take you to write your book?” My pat answer is always: three years. Now, that is not true. It didn’t take me three years to write the book. I took me about half that time to write the book and the other half was spent in rewriting it.

Of course, I had the book edited by someone who I trusted to do a good job and many things were picked up which need to be redone, fixed, or eliminated altogether. I was prepared to do that. What I didn’t anticipate was that I became aware of the fact that about a third of the last part of my book didn’t hit the mark as powerfully as I wished. I had to make a decision to either publish a book that I myself knew could be improved, or to rewrite that third all over again. Being the Type A personality that I am, I rewrote that third and had the book published. It is the only way I can operate and I am so glad I did. Becoming Alice has done so much better than I ever dreamed it would.

I have begun a second work. I think it will one day be a good story. My trouble is that I don’t have as much time to write now as I did when I wrote my memoir. So I write about a dozen pages and don’t get back to them right away. When I reread them to get into the swing of the piece, I always find ways to improve it. And then I take the time to rewrite those dozen pages. I haven’t been able to get beyond about twenty pages. I am in a rewrite rut.

My New Year’s resolution is to pick up my new work wherever I left it off and get on with it. I can always take a year or two after it’s completed to rewrite the darn thing. I think there is no way to avoid the rewrite, rewrite, rewrite law for authors.

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