C. S. Rickard

I woke this morning to water droplets on the windows and a thick fog smothering the neighborhood. The houses across the pond from my backyard look fuzzy and veiled in mist. The only thing visible beyond the first row of houses is the blanket of fog. Perfect setting for the post I’ve been contemplating the past few days.

I was going to name this post: Is struggle and hardship a bad thing? However, the real point isn’t so much about struggle and hardship as my perception of myself for thinking it isn’t. So the title became what it is: Am I a cruel mom?

Sean had begged for several years to get a pet bird. I kept telling him he was too young. When he turned ten, I told him if he wanted a bird, he’d have to earn the money, not just to buy a bird and cage, but he would have to keep earning money to buy the food. The bird would be solely his responsibility. Sean being Sean jumped in with both feet and earned the money in a matter of months.

Of my three kids, Sean is the only one I don’t worry about when it comes to surviving financially as an adult. I know he can, and will, do any job necessary to survive. My other two, however, are total job snobs, but that’s a seperate story.

After purchasing Whistles, a green parakeet, Sean decided he needed a friend and bought Jack, a blue one. Sean was pretty good at taking care of them early on, but like most kids, the habit got old, fast. He made sure he always had food in the house, just not necessarily in their cage. After the divorce, the birds switched houses with Sean, so two weeks at my house and two weeks at their father’s. Whenever they were at my house, I always checked on them each morning after Sean went to summer camp or school to make sure they had food and water. If they were low, I would remind Sean to check when he got home that day.

As the months wore on, my reminders started falling on deaf ears or he would reply that he just did it (when I knew he hadn’t). I would let the birds go a few days while commenting once each afternoon about their food or water. When nothing was done, I would do it and then tell him what I did and why. The transition to mom taking care of the birds prompted several conversations about the benefits of giving the birds to the zoo or someone else who wanted them — because mom didn’t. His first reaction to those conversations was to take better care of the birds. Of course, these always came in short bursts of activity that quickly fizzled to nothing.

When the kids switched houses three weeks ago, Sean walked into my house without his birds. I noticed right away, but said nothing. I wanted to see how long it took before he remembered he left them at his dad’s. As fate would have it, I had to stop at his dad’s that Thursday because Sean left his hat there and it was hat day at school on Friday. Sean noticed a feather on his hat and then remembered his birds. I told him right then that this couldn’t continue. With practically no effort on my part he agreed that it would be better to give the birds away. We decided they’d do it when he switched back to his dad’s house the following week.

Unfortunately, the birds were out of food and neither Sean or his dad realized it. So Jack died the following week and Whistles died two days later.

Sean was in complete shock that they had died. I had warned him several times that they could die without food or water, but I don’t think he really believed it would happen. At one point when he was crying, he said it was his fault and it should have been him who died, which is the whole point of this post.

As much as I love and respect all life, part of me was glad the birds died. Sean is a very reactive individual. He is very focused and intent, but he has no appreciation for his actions or their consequences. He never has. Hearing him say those words, and knowing he meant them, made me think the entire experience was well worth it. As bad as this was for him, I truly think it will stay with him and make him a better person. Things like this are never pleasant, but I truly believe they are necessary in shaping who we are, hopefully for the better.

Two days later, Sean dug a grave in his dad’s back yard and the three of us buried Whistles (dad had already gotten rid of Jack’s body by then).

The other week I posted about finding inspiration for writing. This week, I stumbled across an article that touches on a similar theme. The Millions posted an article called Working the Double Shift.

Here are a few excerpts that I particularly liked in the article:

“[An] element to the way we all think about the conflict between a day job and writing full-time is that even us writers sometimes fall into the fallacy of thinking of writing as a romantic hobby. A hobby isn’t a job, it’s not work – it’s “recreation.” This is why when we say, “I’m going to quit my job and write full-time,” it sounds so romantic and idyllic. It carries images of getting out of bed late, drinking large mugs of tea or coffee, sitting at a desk in your pj’s, staring at the trees through the window, and playing with your muse… But if we match the language to the reality, the phrase would actually read this way:

“I’m going to quit working and work full-time.”

That doesn’t sound romantic at all does it? And, if you talk to full-time, un-famous writers they’ll confirm just how unromantic writing full-time is.”

I completely understand this statement. However, I think the author misplaces this experience solely on writers. The fact is that this can be experienced by most people who work from home, regardless of their profession.

I’ve been telecommuting for over 13 years now. I stumbled into it before it was considered an option for employees. (One of the perks of having a unique set of skills that your employer really doesn’t want to lose!) Every time I tell someone I telecommute one of two things happens. Either they look at me as if it isn’t a real job and probably some kind of part-time hobby thing. Or their eyes glint with wistful affection at the possibility of it happening to them. In both cases they are mistaken. My job is work. My work-day runs from 8-5, longer if I have the rare project that requires over-time.

When I first started telecommuting, working very long hours was easy and seductive. We all know that there’s always something else that needs to be done at the office. When your office is in your house, you can hear the silent whispers issuing from the darkened room at the end of the hallway. Pleas to finish a certain project. Cajoling about how much better you’ll feel when it’s done. After all, everything you need to complete it is right there. All you have to do is walk into the room.

Don’t do it!

I learned a great deal about myself and self-discipline early on. I also discovered that many people do not have the self-discipline to work from home. You need to determine what hours you intend to work and commit to them. There is no slipping off to the couch to watch television or do something else. No sneaking back in the office after dinner to finish ‘just one more thing.’

However, I will disagree with the earlier statements of the quote. I routinely start my day either in shorts and socks or sweats and slippers, depending upon the weather. I rarely wear shoes while working. I don’t do anything except boot up my computer until I have a mug of hot tea in hand. I also tend to keep the hot tea flowing till about noon. (LOVE my hot tea!) And when thinking over a current problem with a project, I always stare out my office window until I figure it out. Once solved, I turn back to the computer and work away.

I find the process of writing very similar.

“At a dinner some months ago, I found myself discussing the problem of earning a living with a couple of other writers. One of them—a mystery writer who writes full time—said something that surprised me: when he wrote his fiction, he said, he felt that he was drawing on experiences that he’d had before he’d quit his day job thirty-five years earlier.

There was a note of wistfulness in his voice that struck me. My sense was that his life as a writer was somewhat isolated. It was interesting to think of work as something that might help one’s writing, rather than as an uncomfortable but unavoidable impediment to it. What secret purposes might our day jobs serve, aside from the obvious advantages of being able to put dinner on the table?“

Again, I can totally relate to this. Telecommuting worked well for me for several reasons. First, my husband at the time had just accepted a job offer in Florida, so remaining in DC wasn’t an option for me. Second, I have three kids and wanted the flexibility of being at home for them after school. That was actually very important to me. When my kids were younger, I had no choice but to use day-care because I simply couldn’t commit my full effort to either them or my job when I tried to keep them home with me. I decided that when they hit school age, they wouldn’t be in day care any longer. And they weren’t. It also allowed me some flexibility to help them with homework after school and make sure they didn’t pig out on junk food before dinner.

This arrangement worked wonderfully for me as someone who had to work full-time but also wanted to be there for her kids as much as possible. However, as with everything in life, there are always down sides. In this case, the biggest draw-back was lack of socialization for me.

While I telecommuted from FL, my company had offices throughout the US: NY, DC, TX, CA, WA, and IL . I also had clients across the US and several countries, but rarely visited any of them. My work was all done remotely from my home office. My colleagues all worked either in company offices or at client sites as I was the only employee who telecommuted. And none of them worked nearby. So, what’s the downside? I didn’t experience the camaraderie of co-workers. There was no going out to lunch together or hitting happy hour after a long meeting. I also had little opportunity to meet people unless they were parents of my kids friends.

I had thrown myself full-time into work and my kids and didn’t make any time for myself, not even to write. I can honestly say that even today, the only person I can think of to call up if I wanted to go do something would be my mom. Yes, I know, beyond pathetic. Yet it’s true. I’m not an extrovert by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve never needed a lot of friends. My best friend lives in CA. I have another college friend up in NY. I know several moms in the the area, but not to the point that I’d call them friends.

I think my particular situation isn’t solely the result of telecommuting for so long, rather a combination of that and my own personality. The consequences are that my experiences from which I draw on for writing can seem distant and veiled because I don’t experience them regularly. This brings me back to the relevance of my post two weeks ago on finding inspiration.

The Millions article raises several points that I think would interest people not accustomed to working in solitary situations. If you are considering writing full-time, I suggest you read the article and do some research on telecommuting. It is a very solitary career choice and one that you need to work at, literally.

Nathan and Eric had great posts on the e-book price war that started this week.

I abhor WalMart. I never, ever shop there. I do like Target for common household items, but I don’t shop there for groceries or other ’specialty’ items, like books or DVDs. My big gripe with trying to cram something of everything into one place, is that you have to forgo variety. And I LOVE variety!

I have never bought a book from a Target, grocery store or anyplace other than a bookstore, whether brick and mortar or online. I wish I understood more of the implications of the pricing war, but my initial sense is that WalMart realized it didn’t offer the cheapest items in the area of books and decided to stick its feet in the pool. Of course, Amazon, being the big fish in that pool, retaliated in kind.

At present, the price reductions haven’t effected the profits to publishers or authors, but plenty of people worry that it will. Again, showing my ignorance in the business side of things, as long as there are multiple places through which to sell books, I don’t see how Amazon or WalMart have any bargaining power to try and force publishers to reduce their costs to match the below-profit prices these guys have been offering. My only hope is that it won’t last long enough to force the remaining independent booksellers out of business. I don’t see how they could compete at all in this type of environment. Of course, the fear is that WalMart or Amazon will force so many out of the field that they will then have that ability eventually.

Along those lines, the ABA sent a letter to the Department of Justice requesting an investigation into the pricing war. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

With all of the focus on e-books and online purchases, there are still those naysayers that think e-books are a fad or won’t last long. And there are those on the opposite side touting the beauty of e-books to the doom of paperbacks. I think both are wrong. I love e-books, but I love paperbacks as well. I still buy both and see the value in both. I think they complement one another. I also think online sites like e-stores, author websites and blogs offer a wonderful marketing opportunity for both paper books and e-books.

There was also an article by LibraDigital regarding the marketing power of free online chapters. Here is an excerpt summarizing the results:

“We know that allowing readers to preview book chapters before buying has a positive impact on both print and eBook sales,” said Russell P. Reeder, President and CEO of LibreDigital, Inc. “In the case of one well-known book publisher, one in three people who browsed decided to purchase the book online. As a result, leading publishers are increasing their use of online previews when planning promotional campaigns for both new and existing book titles.”

I fully intend to offer my first chapter free online. Even before this article came out, I instinctively knew it would help, probably based on personal experience. This year I read first chapters offered on websites of authors I’d never read before, and ended up buying about 6 books as a result. Four of those were e-books, the other two were paperback.

I think paper books and e-books will both be around for a very long time.

Moonrat posted a link to this article on writing by Alexander Chee, based on a class he took with Annie Dillard. The content wasn’t necessarily new to me, however, the way it was written made me think of my own writing on a much deeper level. Below are excerpts from the article I found most relevant:

“In her class, I learned that while I had spoken English all of my life, there was actually very little I knew about it. English was born from low German, a language that was good for categorization, and had filled itself in with words from Latin and Anglo Saxon words, and was now in the process of eating things from Asian languages. Latinates were polysyllabic, and Anglo Saxon words were short, with perhaps two syllables at best. A good writer made use of both to vary sentence rhythms.”

“If you’re doing your job, the reader feels what you felt. You don’t have to tell the reader how to feel. No one likes to be told how to feel about something. And if you doubt that, just go ahead. Try and tell someone how to feel.”

“The passive voice in particular was a crisis. “Was” only told you that something existed—this was not enough. And on this topic, I remember one of her fugues almost exactly:

You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in the verbs. The passive voice needs gerunds to make anything happen. But too many gerunds together on the page makes for tinnitus: Running, sitting, speaking, laughing, inginginginging. No. Don’t do it. The verbs tell a reader whether something happened once or continually, what is in motion, what is at rest. Gerunds are lazy, you don’t have to make a decision and soon, everything is happening at the same time, pell-mell, chaos. Don’t do that. Also, bad verb choices mean adverbs. More often than not, you don’t need them. Did he run quickly or did he sprint? Did he walk slowly or did he stroll or saunter?”

“Your unique perspective, at this time, in our age, whether it’s on Tunis or the trees outside your window, is what matters. Don’t worry about being original, she said dismissively. Yes, everything’s been written, but also, the thing you want to write, before you wrote it, was impossible to write. Otherwise it would already exist. You writing it makes it possible.”

“She spoke often of “the job.” If you’re doing your job, the reader feels what you felt. You don’t have to tell the reader how to feel. No one likes to be told how to feel about something. And if you doubt that, just go ahead. Try and tell someone how to feel.

We were to avoid emotional language. The line goes grey when you do that, she said. Don’t tell the reader that someone was happy or sad. When you do that, the reader has nothing to see. She isn’t angry, Annie said. She throws his clothes out the window. Be specific.”

“After the lecture on verbs, we counted the verbs on the page, circled them, tallied the count for each page to the side and averaged them. Can you increase the average number of verbs per page, she asked. I got this exercise from Samuel Johnson, she told us, who believed in a lively page, and used to count his verbs. Now look at them. Have you used the right verbs? Is that the precise verb for that precise thing? Remember that adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb. Verbs control when something is happening in the mind of the reader. Think carefully—when did this happen in relation to this? And is that how you’ve described it?”

“You can invent the details that don’t matter, she said. At the edges. You cannot invent the details that matter.”

“Talent isn’t enough, she had told us. Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn to do this. It’s not rocket science, it’s habits of mind and habits of work. I started with people much more talented than me, she said, and they’re dead or in jail or not writing. The difference between myself and them is that I’m writing. Talent could give you nothing. Without work, talent is only talent, promise, not product.”

“If I’ve done my job, she said in the last class, you won’t be happy with anything you write for the next 10 years. It’s not because you won’t be writing well, but because I’ve raised your standards for yourself. Don’t compare yourselves to each other. Compare yourself to Colette, or Henry James, or Edith Wharton. Compare yourselves to the classics. Shoot there…Go up to the place in the bookstore where your books will go, she said. Walk right up and find your place on the shelf. Put your finger there, and then go every time.

In class, the idea seemed ridiculous. But at some point after the class ended, I did it. I walked up to the shelf. Chabon, Cheever. I put my finger between them and made a space. Soon, I did it every time I went to a bookstore.Years later, I tell my own students to do it. As Thoreau, someone she admires very much, once wrote, “In the long run, we only ever hit what we aim at.””

I realize I’m probably going to sound a bit strange admitting this, but one thing I love about going some place, even some place as mundane as the grocery store, is the possibility of finding new sensations and thoughts to incorporate into my writing. This past weekend was loaded with them. On Saturday, the trip to Epcot offered some wonderful new observations. The interactions of strangers, the types of people walking in the park, what they did, how they moved, all very fascinating. The beach provided some wonderful sensations like the feel of saltwater in my eyes, sand and salt drying my skin, how tender my feet are when walking on hot sand or rough shells. I’ve experienced these before, but memory fades when you don’t do something very often. It’s nice to not only experience them again, but be aware of the experience. Soak it in. Watch it. Feel it. Revel in it. Then happily tuck it away in your memory for later.

All of these experiences expand my choices in creating and describing actions in my novel. It’s like working all day and getting a bit tired, then chugging a Coke and feeling the instant burst of energy. It’s a breath of life, refreshing and revitalizing, into a store room of vacuum sealed experiences.

The next time you venture out into the world, try not to focus solely on your goal. Instead, take a moment and look around you. Sniff the air. Feel the sun on your skin. Watch the people walking by you. Listen to their conversations, their concerns, their interests, the way they phrase things. You’d be surprised how much this helps you show instead of tell your story.

My sister and I spent the day at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival yesterday. I’ve never been to one, but thought it would be a fun girl’s thing to do. We got a bit of a late start, as I had to drop my daughter off at SAT testing and then we had to drop off my sister’s rental car at the airport. When we arrived at Epcot at 11:30, we were both ready to start eating…and drinking. Can’t forget drinking.

I got hungry for okra so I made a pot of gumbo tonight. The odd thing is, every time I make either jambalaya or gumbo, I always start singing: jambalaya…crawfish pieee….file gumbo…

I have finally gotten around to picking up some potted herbs from Lowes and Home Depot over the weekend. I’ve been wanting to establish a small herb garden for awhile, but just haven’t had the time or opportunity till now. Yes, I know it’s October, but when you live in Florida, you can pretty much plant stuff year round. I would much rather be living further north where I would be walking around to the sound of red and gold leaves crunching under foot this time of year. Unfortunately, I live in a state where our leaves go straight from green to brown in December/January. Sometimes you can catch a few rebel leaves brazenly sporting some yellow or, if you are really lucky, a bit of red, but that doesn’t occur often. So until I can move, I’ve decided to make the best of it. That includes planting some herbs in the fall.

I saved up my money this year to pay for bamboo flooring to be installed in my living room/dining room combo. I had been excited to get this done. Most of my house is in berber carpeting, which is okay, but I want to gradually install bamboo in most of the main rooms and halls. As I have a severe allergy to debt, I don’t get anything installed that I can’t pay for in full when I place the order. Simply put, it will take me a couple of years before I’m finished installing bamboo.

My phone rang as I sat down to dinner. My sister. “Hey!”