A Legacy of Sorts

During a conversation I had recently with a friend, she commented on how much she used to like my newspaper articles. When she asked what I'd been doing since I stopped writing them, I told her that I'd gathered about a year's worth of those essays and had them published in book form. It was, I explained, my way of leaving something more tangible for posterity's sake, something more lasting than a trail of newspaper articles that would eventually get lost in some virtual and dusty archive.

This fits right in with why people write books in the first place: they either have an important story to tell, a lesson to teach, or a vital message to get across. And while a newspaper article can be pleasant to read, it doesn't, in my opinion, offer the same lasting value as do words preserved forever between two covers. It's no secret that some books are written purely for their entertainment value. The stories they tell lack substance and are designed merely to help pass the time on a rainy afternoon. Then, there are those books that teach and from which we stand to learn something new or be reminded of something we might have forgotten. As for poetry, they are paintings that use words rather than pigments to tell a story or to share the author's thoughts in a unique, lyrical and often highly memorable way, condensing often complex ideas into neat packages of symbols and mental images.

Essay writing, on the other hand, differs in that it generally conveys important truths or information either individually or collectively. A single essay can tell a small piece of the story, while a collection of them based on a specific theme expand and extend into all sorts of possible directions that theme might be taken in. Based on fact, essays not only share knowledge but broaden perspectives, and the themes of many are timeless and never lose their meaning no matter how faded their pages.

Writing is hard work, and the competition is stiff, given how the internet has opened venues up to everyone and anyone who can type a legible word. Bad writing abounds, but don't tell its authors that. For many delude themselves into thinking that contributing to micro-blogs at a penny-per-view makes them bonafide writers. Anyone can nail a few boards together into something that vaguely resembles a book shelf. But only an artisan can make that book shelf into something you'd want to preserve for all time. And therein lies the difference between writing and good writing, only there are exponentially lots more words to wade through than there are poorly-nailed-together boards before one reaches that conclusion.

So back to my own attempts at writing, humble as they are. I knew going in that there was a very good chance that I'd die before ever getting rich off them. And on that note, I take great comfort in the fact that many of the world's best and classic authors were long gone before their work made an impact. Names like Dickinson, Poe, Kafka, Hurston, Keats and Lovecraft are hardly to be scoffed at. But in truth, they all left bodies of work that would be appreciated only after their demises. That's a sobering truth indeed, and it leaves a writer, any writer, with a choice to make between hoping for some sort of tangible remuneration or writing simply to keep one's spirit alive long after the clock has stopped ticking.

Because writing, like any art, is an extension of the author's spirit. And writing, like any art, requires imagination that generates ideas, and when enough of those ideas have accumulated, they need somewhere to go, releasing bits and pieces of the creator's psyche in the process. This is easy to see in van Gogh's "Starry Night," where those twirling star vortexes adequately depict the painter's inner state at the time. It's not so easy to decipher in Toni Morrison's complex narration, but it's there in how she makes us dig to find its meaning.

So I hold in my hand a purple book that contains a year's worth of impressions garnered when I lived in the woods or some place that wasn't far from them. Hopefully others will hold their own copies, too, and I am going to try very hard to see that that happens. Not because I seek fame and fortune but because I'm in that book sharing what I've done, where I've been, what I've seen, and what I've learned, and I hope that readers are listening.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

The Path Not Taken

The decision to share my writing in a different format did not come easily. It meant weeks of soul-searching and wondering if it was indeed the right choice to make. For almost six years, I wandered the woods and fields in this part of the world or took long roundabout drives that led me farther and farther and more deeply into the world of nature, beyond her external trappings, beyond what she chooses to show those who only cast casual glances about them but don't invite, for whatever reasons, their other senses, or their souls, into the process.

There was a time when I myself could be in a lovely place and not see it for what it was. I might have been lost in conversation with someone or focused on some other activity or event that minimized my surroundings. But then, I moved to the woods, and it was there that I finally learned not only to see, but to feel, to let nature wash over me and impart her own unique sort of wisdom, one which is often not possible to even put into words.

During those years, I went through periods in my life when nature and her beauty receded from my view to allow other things in, things that had to be dealt with, sadnesses that had to be borne, problems that needed working out, losses that had to be shouldered, and changes beyond my control that had to be faced. When I think back, I remember it occurring to me following any of those experiences that, had it not been for nature and her solace, lurking ever in the background and on their fringes, I might not have come through it all as unscathed as I did.

Now, my hope is that those snippets of time of which this book is made, these sights, sounds and impressions, will continue to float out there in the universe like milkweed or dandelion seeds, alighting wherever they will and taking root in the minds of others, where it will hopefully spark the same sort of curiosity, the same level of passion, that nature has instilled in me.

I'm grateful to all who go on that walk with me, as it is one we cannot take often enough.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

Funny...

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine read the first short novel I'd published and told me that she was going to pass it on to her son-in-law who is an editor at a large publishing house. I was skeptical at first, and once again, I allowed my fear to cancel out what should have been joy at knowing that she thought my work good enough to show to this man. When I hadn't heard back from her after a few weeks, I decided that he'd probably taken a look at it, had decided that it wasn't worth his time, and she was just too nice to hurt my feelings by telling me so.


As it turned out, that wasn't the case at all, for about a week ago, I got an email from him that she forwarded to me in which he informed me what he thought the book needed. He also told me that it had promise, was well developed, and well written, and he had just three problems with it: it's too short, and I should expand and elaborate more upon two key sections of it in order to grow it into a full-length novel.
 
Having nothing to lose at that point, I replied to him directly to thank him for his time and his suggestions and to ask if he'd consider my book again if I were to develop it into a novel. I am now awaiting his reply, as I have other projects to work on in the meantime. I may, however, just go ahead with expanding it, and then seeing if I can publish it elsewhere if I either don't hear from him and I do and his answer is that he wouldn't be interested.


I suspect that I should be seeing this as valuable information, for I doubt that many writers get this kind of impromptu unsolicited feedback from any editor. And if he feels this strongly and actually took the time to share his thoughts with me, then I'd be foolish to ignore his suggestions and just let the project lie there unfinished.


It seems that I have resolved my own dilemma simply by rehashing it out here in this blog. Funny how that works...


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/

A Gray Day

Either my mood matches the day or the day matches my mood. I've never quite known which it is. Maybe it's neither, or maybe it's both. One thing I do know is that certain days seem to lend themselves more efficiently to the writing craft, and I spend far too much time deliberating this rather than actually setting words down. (I would once have said setting words "to paper," but in this technical age, that no longer applies, at least not in my case, and I feel that something's been lost there along the way.)


In any case, there aren't many days anymore when one of the first things I do is NOT to put something down SOMEWHERE...be it the fits and starts of a story, a bit of blogging, an email, or one of my nature columns. Whatever it is, I am always writing. And in the spurts between those attempts, some futile, some not so much, I am reading, which only adds to the confusion some days. Reading has an uncanny way of taking me in an entirely new direction from where I am presently at along some point in a composition, and that can be dangerous, especially if the story and the writing are engaging enough to take me that far away.


My reading tastes have always been pretty eclectic, and I have finally reached a point where many people were some 150 years or so ago when a book, ANY book, was a thrill to work through, if only for the simple joy in the act of reading itself. As time went on, literary tastes became more specialized and narrowed to the point where, nowadays, many people read, sadly, only one or two types of books. And I know a woman who, when asked what she reads, replies, "Oh, I read large-print books, because they're easier on my eyes." Duly noted.


But I digress. I rarely go to libraries anymore, which is, yes, quite sad, so I must do something about that. I usually don't have to, though, because I always have quite an assortment of "found" or "otherwise obtained" books kicking around that I slowly work my way through, and there is no rhyme or reason to it at all. Here's an example.


I just finished reading "Concubine," by Nora Lofts, concerning the partly fictionalized account of Anne Boleyn's treatment at the hand of Henry VIII. Now, I'm reading another oldie but goodie entitled "All the President's Men," by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which is the historic account of the Watergate break-in. I was not closely attuned to that event while it was actually taking place, but as the old saying goes, "better late than never." And this aptly illustrates my point about how a book can take me far far away from the moment, as this one certainly has. I'm back in the 1970's, a time when I was first married and raising my first child, and it is a gross distraction from where my "writing mind" is at the moment.


But that's how a writer's (at least this writer's) mind works...it's in a thousand different places at any one time, and the trick is always to get back to square one, and the RIGHT square one, which is where I was at when I decided to take this latest little side trip.


Now where was that again?


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/