Month: October 2013

Lessons at Dinner

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

My dad was great for using time around the dinner table to teach to a captive audience. Sometimes his lessons were simple, like how to count change. Usually however, he would either ask us questions that had no ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, or make a statement. He’d give us time to think, come up with our answer, and be prepared to debate our response. Because there was a lot of debate. Or arguments, depending on which side of semantics you stood. 

He was equally good at lessons on other types of semantics. For instance, if you said ‘So can I!’ he’d invariably respond, ‘Which eye do you want soaked?’ That old chestnut still irritates me. But not as much as when I had a story to tell and his other common line came into play.

I’d rush home from school with a very important, very good story to share. Especially after I’d embellished it some and made it an even better story. Somewhere in the middle of the telling I’d say, ‘It was exactly like…except that…’

Can you hear the response?

He’d interrupt to say that whatever I talked about wasn’t, after all, exactly like something because I’d just pointed out a difference.

I’d stumble to a halt, the flow of my really good story blocked. There’d be a moment of silence while I gathered the threads of the tale together.

‘Well, okay, but see, it really was exactly like…except for…’

And here would come the interruption again.

Today I heard someone say, ‘He never talked! And when he did…’

Wow. Dad’s voice rang so loud and clear. 

Now, thinking about it, I believe the true lesson I learned during those dinner table debates and the early story telling was this. 

How to edit.

And with that, here’s one of his famous statements. He took a glass of milk, put it in front of us kids and told us we couldn’t touch it. Because to touch it we’d have to go half way. And then half way again. And again. And because there was always another ‘half way’ to go, we would never be able to touch the glass. I can remember saying ‘I’m touching it right now!’ Nope. There was still an infinitesimal half way to go. Someone once told me that he was actually teaching us some law of physics. 

Sorry, but no. I felt that darn glass under my finger. And I’m still prepared to defend that with some rude semantics if need be.

He's really not touching that glass. He may think he is, but he's only half way there.

The nephew’s really not touching that glass. He may think he is, but he’s only half way there.

 

The Act of Reading

/ Lisa / Leave a comment

I just came across an interesting question.

Has the act of reading made a difference in your life?

Well, I don’t know if the actual act of reading has, other than it limits physical activity because I can’t read and walk at the same time.

But has reading made a difference in my life?

For me, that’s an obvious yes. I wouldn’t write if I didn’t read. I wouldn’t daydream, that’s for sure. Who knows what kind of adult I’d be if I hadn’t spent so much of my younger years either deep in a book, or deep in an imaginary story. That added up to a lot of solitude.

It reminds me of the time I sat on my bed, crying, because the siblings were outside playing basketball and hadn’t asked me. My mom sat next to me and said, ‘well, would you have gone if they asked you?’ My response was a dramatic ‘No, but I still wanted to be asked!’. No, I wouldn’t have gone outside and played basketball because the blank paper and the sharpened pencil waited. Symbols of those wonderful imaginary worlds.

There’s the obvious positive outcomes of early reading. A lot has been written about how that impacts brain development, confidence, etc., but this has me wondering about the less obvious impacts. No so much physical brain development, but the emotional.

I can’t remember how old I was when I started reading, but I do clearly remember how old I was when I started telling stories, and even the first story, and my awareness of the power of storytelling. So for me, that came before reading, and I assume reading just enhanced the desire to tell more stories. And I definitely became someone for whom the story world in books was more real than what was going on at school or at home. I wonder if I would have read so much if I hadn’t first discovered stories. Sounds like an ‘egg before the chicken’ type of question.

The question fascinates me because I find I can’t imagine not reading. How do you separate reading, and stories, from who you are? I can’t.  Maybe the actual question is, who would you be if you didn’t read?

 

Reviews

/ Lisa / 4 Comments

Book reviews are gold for authors. I’m tempted to stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign that says ‘Bought my book? Please write a review’.  It’s free advertising after all. But did you know that there are whole websites devoted to reviewing books? Well, with the internet, of course there is. Writers can submit their books for online reviews, which obviously can increase, or crash, sales. I just finished reading a blog post by Molly Greene (www.molly-greene.com) about book reviewers. As always, with Ms. Greene’s blog posts, I found it interesting and informative. There was a list of things not to do when approaching a book reviewer.

Things like no mass mailing, researching their website first to make sure it’s a fit, being professional, etc.

And you know what this is? The modern-day version of sending out query letters to traditional agents and publishers. I remember those days not-so-fondly. The Writer’s Market annual guide to agents and publishers, a huge heavy book with all the listings. Going through it with a highlighter marking all the ones that accepted mysteries by unpublished authors. Then researching them to find out if my mystery fit their wish list and making sure they were legitimate. Then agonizing over the perfect query letter, mailing it out, and waiting weeks for the rejection letter.

Interestingly, one thing I learned from that process was that there are degrees of rejection. In the beginning I got form letters. Once I even got my self-addressed, stamped envelope returned, with nothing inside, and simply the words ‘no thanks’ scrawled across the back of the envelope. But hey, it was hand written! Then I improved to where I got personalized rejections with things like, ‘this may not be for us, but send us your next one’. Talk about excitement when that one arrived.

But I digress.

What is obvious is that the work stays the same, no matter what the medium. Whether I’m sending out stamped envelopes or hitting the ‘send’ button, some things never change. Research. Professionalism. Being polite. Knowing your market. Knowing your product, etc. Which, in many ways, is true within all walks of live. Respect for all things.

It’s kind of reassuring, in these days of computer programs I flounder with, that there’s something I recognize from the ‘old days’. I don’t need my teenager to explain this to me. I just need to do some research. Been there, done that, can do it again.