It Is Never Too Late

I’m going to book a tennis lesson on my serve. That might seem ridiculous to anyone who knows how long I’ve played tennis, and who knows how old I am. I have played tennis most of my adult life. I’m not going to tell you how old I am. Most of my friends are still trying to figure that out by trying to put together a few hints that slipped out by mistake somewhere along the way. In any case, I have played tennis long enough to know how to make all the moves, but somehow I still can’t pull off a serve that has any power behind it. I guess I could support my decision to take a tennis lesson by pointing out that even the most successful tennis players of the world have coaches that point out to them certain ways of doing things, ways they may be totally unaware of, to improve their games. So, on that basis, I think I’m okay to take a lesson. Perhaps I’m not putting my shoulders into the right position, or not throwing the ball high enough, or following through the right way. We’ll see.

Now, as to taking that lesson at my age … that is another story. I am reminded of the fact that there have been some very successful people who started their careers at an age much beyond mine. One for example is Grandma Moses, the renowned American painter. She didn’t paint her first picture until she was seventy-six. She wasn’t discovered until she was seventy-eight, and she became internationally famous at the age of eighty. Luckily she lived until she was one hundred and one before she died so that we could behind a large portfolio.

Another remarkable story is the one about Harry Bernstein. He wrote an extremely successful memoir about his early life in England entitled “The Invisible Wall.” He was ninety-six years old. And in the first page of his book he tells his readers that he is “delighted to hear that Target has chosen my book … as its book club pick.” Wonderful! So, I don’t think I’ll apologize for taking a lesson on my serve right now. Perhaps someone will write about me having written Becoming Alice at my age.

You see, I think it is never too late to do what you think you must do. What I must do is get back to writing my next book, which is well on its way now.

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What About Regrets

Having pondered the subject of guilt in an earlier blog, I am now thinking about its second cousin, the subject of regret. My parents had many regrets in their adult life, the main one being that they didn’t leave Europe at an early age and thus avoid the horror of the Second World War. But there were others, many of them being the decisions they made in either spending or managing their money. No matter how problematic my father’s relationship was with my brother, he never regretted anything he said or did in my poor brother’s regard. Remember, he was the one member of my family who never, never was able to say, “I’m sorry” except on one occasion.

My mother had many regrets, the most painful one for her was that she felt she was not close to her mother. And after my grandmother was killed, she was haunted by the fact that she never told her mother that she loved her. It’s mistakes like that which are the most lethal ones with which to live.

The other most painful regrets have to do with money. I heard my dad say, “I should have invested in that apartment house.” Of course his friend, who did take a chance on it, made a small fortune. Moreover, Dad didn’t learn from his mistake. He never was able to risk a dime on anything that wasn’t a hundred percent insured, solid investment. He had many regrets in his life.

Fast forward to my own regrets. I must be chip off the old block because I don’t really have any regrets regarding my interpersonal relationships. However, my husband and I both regretted not putting our house on the market a couple of years earlier when the market was hot. Our house is rented now and the regrets have diminished.

Moreover, recently there has been some talk about the fact that we may be going into an inflationary period in our economy, and owning a house may just end up being the best hedge against inflation that we could possibly have. So all this makes me wonder if we should really spend a whole lot of time kicking ourselves over regrets, when there isn’t much we can do to reverse things, and maybe, just maybe, our decisions may end up being the best ones we could have made in the first place.

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How to Succeed at Book Faires

Yesterday the little town in which I live had its first book faire. Well, it wasn’t strictly a book faire because the OjaiBookFest allowed renters of table space to sell goods such as decorated gords, crafts, pamphlets, and what-nots as well. However, as one of the booksellers (of Becoming Alice, A Memoir,) I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The first good thing that happened was that it didn’t rain despite the fact that it had been in the forcast for a week. Actully that is only partially true since the rain started at about two o’clock sending us booksellers into a frenzy to save our books from becoming soggy piles of wet paper ready for the recycler.That left me about three to three and a half hours to mind my table at the faire. In that period of time I sold a lot of books, but even better, I had a great time.

There is a method for being a bookseller at a faire. First of all the seller must be on his/her feet. So often when I looked around at the others, I found them sitting down, chatting with one another, having coffee and a snack and completely ignoring anyone that might be passing the table. The trick is to make eye contact with the passerby … not the person who’s selling something next to you. Once the passerby has stopped, smile at him/her. That’s the first invitation to maybe say something, like “Do you want to know what this book is about?” They may smile back, shake their head, and move on. That’s okay. Or, they may approach your table. That’s when you pick up your book and say, “You can find out what this book is about if you read this short synopsis on the back cover.”

If you’re lucky they’ll say, “Wow.” Then you can add whatever else you want. In my case I say, “It is a true story.” Now your passeby is engaged and will either ask more questions or make a remark like, “Oh, I’m from Portland.” Or, they might say, “I was in the war … I was with the occupation forces … we did this and that and this and that.” That’s the kind of engagement that ends up in a sale.

The best kind of engagement comes about when the passersby stop three feet from your table. They hesitate and look at the table and your invitation to read the synopsis doesn’t move them an inch closer to you. That’s when you smile and jokingly say, “You’re welcome to come and look at this book without buying it. It’s free to look … you can put it back down and walk away and I won’t mind at all.”

Of course, you already know that these passersby, who probably were afraid of a sales pitch, bought my book.

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Competition

When I was growing up and playing games with other kids, especially my older brother, my dad would always ask, “Who won?” Since my brother is almost nine years older, the answer was always the same, “He did.” But then I got older and once in a while, probably because my brother was bored with me, I did win a game here and there. It felt great.

Dad’s questions changed over the years. He’d ask what we got on our report cards, comparing my brother’s to mine. Since he was in full-blown adolescence and not interested in performing, I won by default.

Being “better” than the competition, in all my undertakings, definitely was what I strived for. Did that make me a competitive person? You bet! But when I think about it, I believe most people have to be competitive in order to make it in our culture. Is it not important to get better grades than the rest of your classmates? Is it not better to have a better job than the next guy? Does a woman not want to look the best she can, that is, better than those with whom she competes for a man? Does one not want to live in a nicer house than another, drive a better car, be a better cook, tennis player, gardner, etc. etc.? You bet!

Is being competitive a “bad” thing? I think not. Remember when the Russians put a man into space? We Americans couldn’t wait to catch and, guess what?, surpass them. Perhaps that drive led to the discovery of gravity, television, computers, etc. etc.

Not that everything you do should be competitive. How nice it is to just sit down and read a book, take a swim in the ocean, savor the beaty of nature. I must take time to do more or that … and give up trying to improve my backhand.

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Wanting to Be Liked vs. Being Respected

My little granddaughter is twelve years old right now and entering her teenage years. She already has a group of girl friends that mean the world to her. I remember raising my own girls and learning that when in the full bloom of adolescence, their friends meant more to them than their parents.

I got to thinking about the fact that most people want to be liked … throughout their lifetime. But the intensity of that desire seems to change in a bell-shaped curve during a person’s life span.

Think about kids in nursery school who relate to one another in terms of playing with a toy or fighting over the possession of a toy. They ususally want to have things going their way … at all costs without worrying about how the other might feel about them. Forget about being liked.

As the years pass, they begin to start wanting to be both liked and respected. They want their classmates to think of them as “nice” or “smart” or “good athletes” or “good at the trombone,” etc. etc. In adolescence being liked is linked to being “cute,” “beautiful,” “a hunk,” “popular,” and “part of the in-group.” Being respected has not yet become a big deal. The most brilliant kid in the class could be a “nerd.”

Then in adulthood, being respected is as important as being liked. It involves ones success in whatever career they may have, as a breadwinner or homemaker/stay-at-home-mom. One alone is not enough to achieve happiness. The most brilliant, respected doctor who is disliked by his patients isn’t going to get very far. And the “nicest” guy in the neighborhood who can’t keep a job to support his family also has a problem.

Then there is old age. Of course, if you haven’t enough money to retire and take care of yourself, you aren’t in very good shape, no matter how “nice” you are. But if you are are okay financially, you probably don’t give a hoot if people like you or not. Take a look at all the “grumpy old men” out there who are forgiven their behavior because of their age. Or, the “old biddies” who are accepted as they are.

I guess the lesson learned is that if you are lucky enough to make it into old age, it doesn’t really matter if others like you or not. Hope I get there someday!

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Power Struggle

I am in the process of dabbling in this social networking thing. I’m not sure I have the personality to really get out of it all that it is cracked up to be. I’m not looking for any long lost high school friends, or for that matter, college friends. I have lots of current friends with whom I have much more in common. Sometimes I wonder if the girl I was way back then was really me.

Nor do I find it interesting to read about what someone had for breakfast or how much trouble it is to go grocery shopping when they’d rather be writing their novel. That novel, or course, would be the next greatest American novel written.

And … I am really annoyed by the fact that a zillion posts are written by people who are trying to sell me something. But lately I have stumbled upon an interesting discussion, one which asks a writers’ community the question: when can a writer consider himself/herself a success. This question has produced quite a bit of steam. It has pitted one opinion against another, diametrically opposed to one another, and has turned into a classical power struggle between the two sides, each claiming to be right.

One writer claims his sales of 500,000 books has given him the right to consider himself successful while another wrote, “I consider myself successful each time someone other than a relative or a friend buys my book.”

Now, I know it is true that one must sell thousand of books to be considered by an agent, or editor, or publisher for any kind of contract for his/her work. And I also know you must sell thousands of books in order to make any money. I also understand myself well enough to know that my expectations for Becoming Alice were such that I fall in the category of the writer who feels successful with each sale of his/her book. Luckily I have had many, many days when I have felt successful.

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