When I wrote my 50,000th word during last November's NaNoWriMo, I earned myself a CreateSpace proof copy of my book. In the middle of the month, when I strained to find time and inspiration to continue, this reward kept my feet (or in this case, my fingers) moving ever forward. It won't get me too much closer to The Dream of being a best-selling author but it does - technically - get me part of the way there by being a published author.
The problem is, there is a limited time to receive this reward and despite having written just beyond 50,000 words, the novel was nowhere near an end. My motivation to complete it, however, was ... at its end, that is.
If I haven't mentioned this before, I'm a terrible Closer - a fact that drives those near and dear to me absolutely, insanely bonkers. I'm really good at starting, but that's little consolation when what you've started sits in a closet for two years, waiting to be completed.
I had this idea to make these reusable grocery totes from fabric that had always captivated me when I'd wander the aisles at Joann's or Hancock Fabrics. I didn't need a pattern; I'm actually pretty good at fashioning things like that from scratch. I made a decent amount of money a few years back creating "poster pouches" for the die-hard Phish poster collectors who had to run in and grab the show poster and then worry about its safety for the remainder of the show. So I created these long, slender bags that held poster tubes of various sizes. I lined them with vinyl to help resist water and covered them with cool fabrics like corduroys and interesting patterned cotton and sewed a shoulder strap on so they could be comfortably worn throughout a show for those people who were just too nervous to lay their paper booty on the ground. I created the pattern from scratch on a scratch piece of paper that I've long since lost and went and bought a whole bunch of different kinds of fabric and vinyls and went to town. I created the first one in about four hours and got so I could do one about every three hours.
I don't know exactly how many I made but we sold all but two of them for barely enough money to cover the fabric and supplies, much less labor. It wasn't a very lucrative business given the time it took, the money spent and the limited client base, most of whom only needed to buy one. My husband convinced me to create a wider, longer pouch for tapers but again, limited client base and even more money for more fabric. That may be the one project I started that I actually chose to finish rather than finished without ever making a cognizant choice.
What I'm getting at is I have a short attention span. I'm like a puppy. I jump from thing to thing with a wagging tail and when I grow bored, I jump to the next thing. Or I take a nap. Taking on a novel was a huge thing. My mistake, I think, was making my goal 50,000 words rather than actually finishing the novel. I made my goal, I didn't need to continue. But that's not entirely true. I really did need to continue.
So I have this free proof copy I can use, but I only have till July 1st to claim it. I have an unfinished novel that no longer interests me and a few short stories that keep me happily writing. What to do.
Why not use the proof copy to compile my short stories? I have many. Some will never see the light of day, even with this proof copy - they were practice stories and read as such. Some of them, however, are actually really good. I'm a good writer, better even than I am at creating bags. But I am a short story writer. Besides the 50,000 words I threw together in November, the longest thing I've written before is a 100 page novella that bored me around page 60. Somehow, I persevered and completed the novella but never completed the idea - it was intended to be a series of novellas with a common character.
The beauty of the short story is in its compact nature. I can get in, right in the middle of the action and end it within 25 pages. If I have an afternoon and inspiration (and the ability to block out Facebook and the various other online distractions - the Leechblock add-on for Firefox is great for this), I can write the entire story. Or if not in one day, certainly two or three days is no problem. Because it doesn't drag on, because there are a limited number of words to go from the beginning to the end, the story is all action. There is no need to describe the banister which has been in the family 107 years and polished to a sheen by the sliding asses of generations of rambunctious boys and girls. If a description of a non-essential element of the story goes beyond one medium-length paragraph, it can be edited.
So I started with a story I wrote a couple of years ago. I have no idea where it came from - it evolved from a name that popped into my head. That one is definitely in the proof copy; it just needs a final edit for schlock and it's done. Then a story I wrote a couple of weeks ago inspired by an email I received from myself. That one will need more editing, but it's sitting and I'm forgetting for now. And another story I started a couple of days ago - again, I had a name in mind and wrote a sentence with that name in it and the story began. I found a couple of really old stories on my website that I think I can put in as well; they need a little updating and a lot of editing but they're still really good stories, even from so long ago.
The goal is to get nine stories. I know Salinger already did Nine Stories but nine is my number and I don't have to call it the same thing. But it will be the same thing. Nine stories. I read Salinger so easily because I write a lot like him. So why the hell not.
I just need four more. By July 1st.
09 April, 2010
24 March, 2010
America - Fail!
After 16 Years in Prison, a Whole New World
To sum up the story, Greg Taylor was freed from prison, 16 years after being wrongfully convicted of murdering a prostitute. The State of North Carolina dug deep upon his release and handed him a $45 check for a room that night. I should imagine it took him at least seven hours to find a motel that would accept only $45 for a night and no credit card for a security deposit.
The disgusting thing about this story - okay, the most disgusting thing about this story then - is that it further proves that we have completely lost sight of one of the most fundamental ideals of the original America in favor of the one of the most common sins of the current America. The prosecutor who so zealously made the case against Mr. Taylor was fighting for what amounts to be no more than a notch on a bedpost. A deep notch, to be sure, but a notch nonetheless.
An upwardly mobile prosecutor advances his or her own political cache with each successfully fought high-profile case. He or she is commended on their numbers alone; the quality of work behind those numbers is beside the point. The same thing can be said for the police officers who “solved” this case and so many cases like it across the country. Their job is to get their man. Their man may not be the man who perpetrated the crime but that’s not really their concern. Their concern is decorations and commendations. Which have more to do with numbers, again. We’re obsessed with numbers but could care less about the truth behind those numbers.
The phrase Innocent until proven guilty has become an empty idea that no longer matters to the ever-increasing empty heads of our fellow countrymen and leaders. Never mind the fact that it is one of the most basic tenets that we built this country on. I know, it’s a shock - we did not, in fact, build this country on mass-manufactured plastic flags in which to wave and proclaim a patriotism we don’t actually possess because we don’t even know what our country stands for anymore.
America began as a statement. As an English major and a lover of philosophy, this is my favorite part. In what once were a few colonies of settlers still beholden to a far-away and unpopular king, a germ of an idea for a just and progressive society began. Our forefathers had grown weary of and had chosen to escape a fading world in which the Few heaped a lifetime of overwhelming injustices upon the Many. The migration began in the name of religious freedom which is merely a nuanced subset under the very large umbrella of Freedom of Thought.
In the foundation of this new freedom, the architects planted a few basic kernels that seem simple on the surface but have power enough to suspend and sustain America indefinitely. One of those being the utterly modern concept of the presumption of innocence. Up till this point, the basis of a guilty verdict was made almost solely on a person’s social strata rather than the merits of the case. If a man of wealth accused a destitute woman of a crime, the prosecutor didn’t need to bother with burden of proof. The wealthy man won. The destitute woman’s morality was in question merely because her parents and her parents’ parents ad infinitum didn’t have the money to live on the right side of the tracks.
The concept of presumed innocence was a large leap for civilization in the 18th century but our forefathers saw it as an important declaration for the kind of country they hoped would flower under their feet. It gave an ordinary citizen rights that he or she hadn’t had before and it put the priority on fairness over fear. It says that we are more concerned with the crime of punishing an innocent person than we are with the retribution of a guilty one.
This isn’t an easy concept, and for anyone who has been a victim of crime - especially any form of violent crime - this may be downright impossible to grasp, but the fact of the matter is, in a country that is as concerned with the freedom of its citizens as America claims to be, that freedom can’t come with self-serving exceptions. Oh, except when someone falsely accuses you of a crime. Oh, except when an ambitious prosecutor needs another notch on his bedpost. Oh, except when an apathetic cop found you standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and came to the wrong conclusion. That’s not freedom, that’s luck. Luck doesn’t belong in a progressive society anymore than slavery does. Nor should we rely upon it.
In many ways, the America of today bears little similarity to the America that was borne of high-minded ideals. It’s a shame, perhaps even a crime, but it is what it is. We are a different species these days, more hungry for power and fame than for thought and process. Mr. Taylor is not the first guy to spend 16 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, nor will he be the last. We have willfully returned to an age where our society prioritizes fear over fair, greed over good, so it should come as no surprise that our prisons are rife with innocent people who can only hope that they will one day be exonerated and all the better if it comes within their lifetime.
It’s not even safe to be a law-abiding citizen these days.
To sum up the story, Greg Taylor was freed from prison, 16 years after being wrongfully convicted of murdering a prostitute. The State of North Carolina dug deep upon his release and handed him a $45 check for a room that night. I should imagine it took him at least seven hours to find a motel that would accept only $45 for a night and no credit card for a security deposit.
The disgusting thing about this story - okay, the most disgusting thing about this story then - is that it further proves that we have completely lost sight of one of the most fundamental ideals of the original America in favor of the one of the most common sins of the current America. The prosecutor who so zealously made the case against Mr. Taylor was fighting for what amounts to be no more than a notch on a bedpost. A deep notch, to be sure, but a notch nonetheless.
An upwardly mobile prosecutor advances his or her own political cache with each successfully fought high-profile case. He or she is commended on their numbers alone; the quality of work behind those numbers is beside the point. The same thing can be said for the police officers who “solved” this case and so many cases like it across the country. Their job is to get their man. Their man may not be the man who perpetrated the crime but that’s not really their concern. Their concern is decorations and commendations. Which have more to do with numbers, again. We’re obsessed with numbers but could care less about the truth behind those numbers.
The phrase Innocent until proven guilty has become an empty idea that no longer matters to the ever-increasing empty heads of our fellow countrymen and leaders. Never mind the fact that it is one of the most basic tenets that we built this country on. I know, it’s a shock - we did not, in fact, build this country on mass-manufactured plastic flags in which to wave and proclaim a patriotism we don’t actually possess because we don’t even know what our country stands for anymore.
America began as a statement. As an English major and a lover of philosophy, this is my favorite part. In what once were a few colonies of settlers still beholden to a far-away and unpopular king, a germ of an idea for a just and progressive society began. Our forefathers had grown weary of and had chosen to escape a fading world in which the Few heaped a lifetime of overwhelming injustices upon the Many. The migration began in the name of religious freedom which is merely a nuanced subset under the very large umbrella of Freedom of Thought.
In the foundation of this new freedom, the architects planted a few basic kernels that seem simple on the surface but have power enough to suspend and sustain America indefinitely. One of those being the utterly modern concept of the presumption of innocence. Up till this point, the basis of a guilty verdict was made almost solely on a person’s social strata rather than the merits of the case. If a man of wealth accused a destitute woman of a crime, the prosecutor didn’t need to bother with burden of proof. The wealthy man won. The destitute woman’s morality was in question merely because her parents and her parents’ parents ad infinitum didn’t have the money to live on the right side of the tracks.
The concept of presumed innocence was a large leap for civilization in the 18th century but our forefathers saw it as an important declaration for the kind of country they hoped would flower under their feet. It gave an ordinary citizen rights that he or she hadn’t had before and it put the priority on fairness over fear. It says that we are more concerned with the crime of punishing an innocent person than we are with the retribution of a guilty one.
This isn’t an easy concept, and for anyone who has been a victim of crime - especially any form of violent crime - this may be downright impossible to grasp, but the fact of the matter is, in a country that is as concerned with the freedom of its citizens as America claims to be, that freedom can’t come with self-serving exceptions. Oh, except when someone falsely accuses you of a crime. Oh, except when an ambitious prosecutor needs another notch on his bedpost. Oh, except when an apathetic cop found you standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and came to the wrong conclusion. That’s not freedom, that’s luck. Luck doesn’t belong in a progressive society anymore than slavery does. Nor should we rely upon it.
In many ways, the America of today bears little similarity to the America that was borne of high-minded ideals. It’s a shame, perhaps even a crime, but it is what it is. We are a different species these days, more hungry for power and fame than for thought and process. Mr. Taylor is not the first guy to spend 16 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, nor will he be the last. We have willfully returned to an age where our society prioritizes fear over fair, greed over good, so it should come as no surprise that our prisons are rife with innocent people who can only hope that they will one day be exonerated and all the better if it comes within their lifetime.
It’s not even safe to be a law-abiding citizen these days.
15 March, 2010
FutureMe
I received an email in my Gmail box last night that I had to open, out of sheer curiosity. The subject line was Tell The Kids I say Hi. The text read as such:
I had a couple moments of wide-eyed fear reading this. Who knew this stuff about me?? Then as I re-read the first line in the email, I began to understand.
This is an email I wrote myself almost exactly five years ago – 20 days before we closed on our first condo and three months and some-odd change before our wedding in Jamaica. While I don’t remember the details, clearly I stumbled upon the site FutureMe.org and thought it would be a kick in the pants to write to the Me in 2010. And knowing the Me of 2005 – who isn’t really all that different than the current Me – 2010 must have seemed like a lifetime away. Could I make 5 years of marriage? Would I have kids within those 5 years?
Other than the surprise at having mentioned kids in the positive five years ago, the brief email sounds like me. And while I don’t remember having written those words, I can’t deny they would be my words.
So, to answer it: I have stopped smoking, for the most part. Everything went well with the condo and we have lived there – mostly happily – all this time (I had a clue in 2005 that the bottom would drop out of the real estate market, but I didn’t think it would have affected us as it has and ensured that we have spent more years at the condo than originally intended). Jason and I are fabulous. We have no kids – great or not – but Terry is still swimming strong and we’ve added a psycho cat to the mix. And I still have not forgotten where I come from although, in the intervening years, I have actually gotten back in touch with many of my former high school classmates through the magic of Myspace and Facebook.
So of course, after reading the email from PastMe to FutureMe, I returned to the FutureMe website to pen another email to another FutureMe, five years further down the road. And provided the Mayans were wrong, I should get it and hopefully will have fulfilled many of its expectations by then.
The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Friday, March 4, 2005. And sent via FutureMe.org
______________________________
Dear FutureMe,
if you're still smoking, you're a fucking idiot!
hope everything with the house went well hope you and Jason are fine and have some great kids don't forget where you came from and never pretend to your kids that high school is a wonderful place
PastMe
I had a couple moments of wide-eyed fear reading this. Who knew this stuff about me?? Then as I re-read the first line in the email, I began to understand.
This is an email I wrote myself almost exactly five years ago – 20 days before we closed on our first condo and three months and some-odd change before our wedding in Jamaica. While I don’t remember the details, clearly I stumbled upon the site FutureMe.org and thought it would be a kick in the pants to write to the Me in 2010. And knowing the Me of 2005 – who isn’t really all that different than the current Me – 2010 must have seemed like a lifetime away. Could I make 5 years of marriage? Would I have kids within those 5 years?
Other than the surprise at having mentioned kids in the positive five years ago, the brief email sounds like me. And while I don’t remember having written those words, I can’t deny they would be my words.
So, to answer it: I have stopped smoking, for the most part. Everything went well with the condo and we have lived there – mostly happily – all this time (I had a clue in 2005 that the bottom would drop out of the real estate market, but I didn’t think it would have affected us as it has and ensured that we have spent more years at the condo than originally intended). Jason and I are fabulous. We have no kids – great or not – but Terry is still swimming strong and we’ve added a psycho cat to the mix. And I still have not forgotten where I come from although, in the intervening years, I have actually gotten back in touch with many of my former high school classmates through the magic of Myspace and Facebook.
So of course, after reading the email from PastMe to FutureMe, I returned to the FutureMe website to pen another email to another FutureMe, five years further down the road. And provided the Mayans were wrong, I should get it and hopefully will have fulfilled many of its expectations by then.
24 February, 2010
Stuck in the 1900s
For being the techie that I am, it is surprising even to myself how little I have actually entered the 21st Century. I mean, sure, I have a cell phone with internet access - that came about more from necessity than mere desire: at my job, much of my internet wanderings are blocked by my own department policy, including personal email and it just wouldn't do for me to be blocked from Facebook all day long.
But when your mom tells you in passing that she has a new HDTV and Blu-Ray disc player and you are still gathering around your 27" tube television and hoping that your $50 DVD player doesn't crap out again, you know you're in danger of dinosaur-hood.
I was reading a friend's blog today about instant gratification in the 21st Century and realizing that I am living the life he fondly remembers before the days of Netflix On-Demand and it really isn't so bad. In a less-is-more kind of way, the pomp and circumstance of my once-yearly viewing of The Wizard of Oz endeared me to the story of Dorothy's strange journey (no, it wasn't just a dream, silly!) and it is still one of my favorite movies.
Of course, less isn't always more but with so many channels, I can choose for myself which needs less and which needs more. I own the DVD for Independence Day, my husband bought it for me for one of my recent birthdays because I have a tendency to watch it whenever it is on television, which is a lot. It and Dazed and Confused and several other movies that tickle me in some retro way (or in my sick fascination with the Apocalypse way) will always have the ability to stop my hand on the remote. And despite the fact that I now own several of those DVDs, I will still stop on those movies whenever they appear on television, even as the DVDs gather dust.
It's a Freebie. Same thing when WXRT plays "Backwards Down the Number Line" on my morning commute. Sure, I could queue up Phish's Joy album when I get to work and hear the same version of the same song but it won't make me nearly as giddy as when it randomly appears on the radio without any intervention of my own. Same thing with movies on TV. How many times have I been in a frustrated, I-just-want-to-kick-back-and-lose-myself-in-Hollywood kind of mood only to find The Day After Tomorrow on FX and - voila! - the destruction of New York is upon me?
And while I can be envious of those of my friends who have TIVO or DVR technology (or working iPods, or iPhones or fast computers or HDTVs and Blu-Rays), I know that I would still stop and watch Independence Day every single time I saw it on TBS and that I would only watch The Wizard of Oz every once in a blue moon when the mood hits me just right. That's just the way I'm built.
But when your mom tells you in passing that she has a new HDTV and Blu-Ray disc player and you are still gathering around your 27" tube television and hoping that your $50 DVD player doesn't crap out again, you know you're in danger of dinosaur-hood.
I was reading a friend's blog today about instant gratification in the 21st Century and realizing that I am living the life he fondly remembers before the days of Netflix On-Demand and it really isn't so bad. In a less-is-more kind of way, the pomp and circumstance of my once-yearly viewing of The Wizard of Oz endeared me to the story of Dorothy's strange journey (no, it wasn't just a dream, silly!) and it is still one of my favorite movies.
Of course, less isn't always more but with so many channels, I can choose for myself which needs less and which needs more. I own the DVD for Independence Day, my husband bought it for me for one of my recent birthdays because I have a tendency to watch it whenever it is on television, which is a lot. It and Dazed and Confused and several other movies that tickle me in some retro way (or in my sick fascination with the Apocalypse way) will always have the ability to stop my hand on the remote. And despite the fact that I now own several of those DVDs, I will still stop on those movies whenever they appear on television, even as the DVDs gather dust.
It's a Freebie. Same thing when WXRT plays "Backwards Down the Number Line" on my morning commute. Sure, I could queue up Phish's Joy album when I get to work and hear the same version of the same song but it won't make me nearly as giddy as when it randomly appears on the radio without any intervention of my own. Same thing with movies on TV. How many times have I been in a frustrated, I-just-want-to-kick-back-and-lose-myself-in-Hollywood kind of mood only to find The Day After Tomorrow on FX and - voila! - the destruction of New York is upon me?
And while I can be envious of those of my friends who have TIVO or DVR technology (or working iPods, or iPhones or fast computers or HDTVs and Blu-Rays), I know that I would still stop and watch Independence Day every single time I saw it on TBS and that I would only watch The Wizard of Oz every once in a blue moon when the mood hits me just right. That's just the way I'm built.
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