What I Wanna Do

What I really want to do is what everyone (well, working everyone) really wants -- my own business. I could have a nice little niche business -- but it would work so much better (Translation: make more money, interest more people) if I lived somewhere else.
Not that I couldn't live here and commute, as so many, many people do, it's just that IF I'm going to have my own business, I'd expect to have it on my own terms.

Ideal terms would be to have a big ol' house, and the business could be in the front rooms. I'd have a big picture window for displays and for light inside, and inside there would be dimmer areas, for computer work and desk work and things of that nature.

My business is a "Writers World". For profit and pleasure, I'd sell office supplies -- papers, inks, pens, pencils, posterboards. For pleasure, I'd have Book Nooks and Reading Rooms, with coffee and maybe vending machine type snacks. I'd like to offer sandwiches and stuff, but that would be too much starting out. There are necessarily more complicated health and safety standards when selling made to order foods. So, I'd start out with packaged foods. People could pull up a chair, curl up on a couch with any Recycled book from the shelves, tables, or baskets.

Of course, they'll be able to buy the books if they want to. Or trade them. I expect the books to be the real draw for most of my customers.

I'll also have a 'business center' for people who want to work on computers, or draw at desks. Maybe a few phones -- probably not pay phones as I once envisioned -- for those who need to use a public phone of some sort. There are so few, and still a need for them for a few people. It wouldn't be difficult to include a few within an established business. It would be good for those needing this service to have a place to sit and a desk or table top where they could spread out their paperwork and write down their notes from the calls.

I'd have a children's section, and mats, and maybe a play area -- I'd have to check local laws on that. I won't be a babysitter at my business, but I love having kids around as long as someone else is responsible for them. I'd have books for them, and easels and crayons and miscellaneous creative stuff, because kids should have fun. I'd probably need "Not Responsible" signs, and maybe waivers, and would still need an exorbitant amount of liability insurance anyway. (Or I could 'take my chances'. That's usually not a good business option.)

And I'd have a selling section -- I'd sell handmade stuff and arts&crafts and self-published books and even secondhand stuff. I'd have to be careful there, because I could turn anyplace into a Hoarder's Haven with secondhand stuff. I hate throwing usable things away. I'd sell this stuff for a percentage, so I'd probably have a decent chance of making money -- or traffic -- with that aspect.

Lacking the big front rooms, I could rent a storefront. There are plenty of storefronts empty here in town, but they aren't for rent, and, at this time, I couldn't afford them. Doesn't stop me from looking and wanting and wishing, though. That blue house would be perfect. One window for books, baskets, and chairs, the other window for the best of the crafts and clothing.

That's what I ultimately would like to do.

For now, I would be happy to find a flea market close to home where I could sell my recycled books and 'stuff'. They are all too far away and possibly too expensive, especially after adding in gas and food and drink.

But that's what I want to do, and how I think I could start. Would you like to be my customer? I'd love to have you as one.

Chaos in Colorado & the Right to Know

Last week, there was a shooting in Colorado. No doubt everyone has heard of it by now, and they've heard misleading quotes, incomplete assessments, rumors, outright lies, and everywhere the young man's name all over the news. We've seen it and him and he knows he's going down in the history books, so now he's going to act or claim crazy. (As if a sane person would shoot up a theater and booby trap his own home.)

I'm not naming him. There are enough people and mechanisms doing that, and that is what this young man is eating up. He's FAMOUS! He's INFAMOUS! He's on the Front Page, he's the LEAD Story, he's on YouTube, he's shared and reshared on Facebook and other social media.

Everyone knows his name. He can sit back and wallow now. And that's exactly what he's going to do.

To most of the public, especially the politically attuned, the Horrible Happening is a new reason to scream and open debates about gun control. It is somehow the fault of the guns that they were amassed and misused in this fashion.
To me, the issue should be about the media. The Fourth Estate.
We have freedom of the press. That's a good and wonderful thing.
Until something like this happens.

The  media is helpful when there is a question of locating a perpetrator or suspect. The media is at its best when reporting events as they unfold. The media is a force to be reckoned with when someone in the public eye is trying to hide secrets. The media tells us we have a right to know, and they will inform us. They can keep us informed of all rumors and speculations as long as they say they are rumors and speculation. Reporting of the booby traps may have saved lives.

But what, exactly, do we have a right to know about? What is needful and/or entertaining and informative? Do we need to know, on a national level, speculation and gossip?
 Is it right to be shoving their microphones into the faces of families waiting for someone to come outside from the scene of a massacre? Is it our right to know when they finally accept the unbelievable unacceptable fact that their loved one is not coming away from the scene?
Is it our right to know what a mother thinks when her son has admitted to this type of horror? Has she no right to the privacy of thought?
Do we have a right to know about every clipped toenail or late bedwetting incident ever in the guilty person's history?
Do we have the right to decide -- believe -- he's guilty before there is any sort of due process?
Does the media have the right to claim our right to know gives them the right to lionize punks and publicity hogs?

There are no easy answers, which is why the problems have been unresolved for so many years. There is a right to know, but who can or should decide what anyone else has the right to know?  Is there, or should there be, a time that it's right to know.

Difficult questions that need to be looked at and discussed and worked on as intently as gun control or defining insanity. It's no wonder that policing authorities try to conceal identities and evidence from the press. Irresponsible reporting compromises deaf, dumb, and blind justice.

And then, there  are young men like this "joker" who do the deed, then, when the media is fully present, walks up to the police and says "Yeah, I did it," then spends the next three days -- or three months, three years, three decades -- smirking and preening and posing for the cameras.


He has the right to know how important he is

The Adams County Informer

I bought my last issue today.

The Informer is a small newspaper in competition with Brown Publishing's  People's Defender here in Adams County. It was a nice paper, understandably small, but full of the small town (county) news. All the car accidents (well, a lot of them), ambulance runs, fire calls -- this information made it to this paper. The thicker, heavier, and more expensive Defender only reported a few, usually the most spectacular -- ones that made the city news broadcasts --  or the ones somehow involving *names* in the county. And  ad nauseum court news (which never really tell anything) and board meetings ad infinitum.

The Informer had  a Picture of the Week from readers, and a few words from the editor Troy Jolly every week. The personal touch.

There wasn't much advertising, which is normal for a little guy competing against an established and many-armed.competitor. There was some kind of political good-buddying going on that kept public service ads from being listed in the Informer. Something about having to reach more people instead of costing less and it really cost less per person to pay more to the bedfellow newspaper. Not fair. Not fair at all. I always thought that those sort of announcements -- sheriff's sales, village and school bids for goods or services, etc -- had to be published  with/in/through all available public media.

I faithfully bought my little Informer every week, because I liked the tone of the paper, and because I love, love, love the idea of a local paper produced locally.  The paper must have been doing okay, because there were new employees being introduced.

Then, in November, Mr. Jolly was elected mayor of Manchester. He's doing a good job, even according to his competition. They are faithfully reporting the changes and improvements happening under Mayor Jolly's watch.

His paper was faithfully reporting the changes, too. So much so that in the last few months the paper could be called the Manchester Informer. That's a natural enough change, so I didn't mind it. Not so happy about it, but I understood.

But now, the car accidents and fire runs have disappeared. The Picture of the Week is missing, and so are the 'Words'.The articles that appear are mostly publicity sent out by the various organizations. Fresh stories are few and far between. When there are fresh stories, they are badly organized and badly written. There are spelling errors and there are grammar errors.

This week there's a glaring grammar error in a Manchester story. AEP has went around and fixed the street lights.... That's exactly what the paper said.

Well, I have went and spent my last fifty cents on the Manchester Braggart's Bulletin. I expect  literacy when I read a newspaper. News would be nice, but literacy is a MUST.

I will have to look farther afield for my Adams County Information.

As I lay dying (or so I thought)

Yesterday I thought I was entering my final illness, persistent cramping diarrhea. The pain was worse than childbirth (except for the actual birthing). The effects of dehydration were debilitating, as you can imagine. My sister and my nephew had both commented on bellyaches, so I thought there's probably just something going around, and it was nothing major.

As the day wore on, I changed my mind about that. If there had been gas in our car I would have had my husband take me to the hospital, even though I have no insurance and every test, every procedure, every help would have to be paid for by us. At that point (about 3 in the afternoon) even the IV for dehydration would have been worth the cost. Because I was afraid to drink anything, even warm water.

Instead, I went to bed.
While in the bed, I reviewed my life. It's the first time I ever did that when I wasn't contemplating suicide, so it was a novel experience in its way. The results of the review were more satisfactory this way, I have to admit, but there were some things not so satisfactory.
Of course.

I wished I had played more with my girls when they were young. More walks, more pushing on swings, more silly talk, more books read together, more time. Just more time to enjoy them. But pushing swings is boring after the first couple of shoves to get them going, and neither of my daughters had any great interest in books when they were young. We did walk, from time to time, and the walks nearly always had that 'special' air. I suppose that's a good thing. The regret over not taking enough walks is partly because it indicates a lack of special times, so if the times it happened were special -- well, there's just a balance there, so that one is probably okay.
I hope.

I wish I'd had more patience at some times in some of my jobs, but I have no big regrets over any of those. I gave every job I ever did everything I could, everything I had. Sometimes I didn't have much, and sometimes I hated the work, but I gave it my all. Sometimes my all was more, often less, but it was what I had and I put it into the work.

My writing? I have four completed novel manuscripts on top of the bookcases. I have three of those novels on floppies, which do me  no earthly good these days, but maybe somewhere, someday... someone. I have various writings here and there. It would be nice for my family if I could become posthumously famous, so that I'm not leaving my family nothing but a hole in their hearts.
I hope.

The good-bye letters I wrote a few months ago worried me a bit. I thought about tearing them up before I died, but decided I'd just leave a note with them. Don't remember if I dated them or not. Probably not. I wanted them to be generic, any time. I have letters written to Tracy and to Rex and, I think, to Jean. I haven't been able to bring myself to pout anything in writing for Tammy-and-Hailey. No good excuses for saddling her with my responsibilities, which she would be the one carrying the brunt of the load after the dust settles. No good excuse, no reason.
Anyway, I decided to just write a note, or maybe I'd get a chance to tell Jean before I expire in the hospital. "Hey, never mind those. I wrote them for Christmas last year, or maybe the year before."

It was a different thing to look back at my life this way, from this new angle. I didn't have no instant conversion to wanting to continue living in spite of all its pain, which I have seen happen. I wanted the pain to stop. I wished that I had done some things differently, but feel that I did the best I could at the time.

That's what we should all be doing. The best we can, with what we have. The what we have can be time, or energy, or even interest. Money of the lack thereof is a partial excuse, not a good one.

Be the best you that you can be.

Do the best you can with what you have.

Watch and work and learn and live.

Then,  you can contemplate death with equanimity. Is there any better way to live?

Citizen Journalism: Don't Do It

One thing that makes me really angry is the claim so many media outlets are making to have citizen journalists. Most of theses claims start out fine and good, but they end up being nothing but crap.

No, they end up less than crap. They end up being nothing.
Nothing at all.

I don't know what happens. The person responsible for overseeing that moves on, gets bored, finds another job and doesn't train a successor. Maybe the successor gets bored and finds another job.

I signed up for our local writers group to be a 'citizen journalist' in two of the local papers. One Brown County paper (The Brown County Press), one Adams County paper(The People's Defender). I'd write the articles, and submit them online (for the online editions of the paper.) The person at the other end had to approve the articles and then okay them before they could be posted.
I have no problem with that. If there isn't some regulation, anyone would say anything, and respectable newspaper sites would soon all look like Topix sites. Even Citizen Journalists should be concerned with concepts that at least resemble news instead of middle school name-calling.

The problem occurs somewhere down the line, when things change at the other end of the process. The CJ blogs in the Brown County Press lasted just under a year before the editor at the other end just quit approving things for publication. Nothing was going through. It wasn't just our articles that weren't going through, it was anyone's. Everyone's.

No Citizen Journals were being furthered, but the blurb remained on the website encouraging  sign ups.

The People's Defender stated that after they got a feel for your writing, if all was well, they could and would set the articles to auto-approve. I could write them, and they would post. Good deal.

Except that within three months, no one there was approving anything. let alone setting anything up for automatic. It was, and is, very much like throwing one's words into a black hole.

I have a lot of articles submitted and never approved. What am I to do with these articles? True, they are no longer timely, but that isn't always an issue. These are my words, my work, and I crafted them as carefully as I could. They were intended, after all, for a journalistic website.

I can't use them anywhere else, since they more or less belong to the papers they were intended for. Even if that isn't strictly true, I can hardly take the articles elsewhere. What if someone decides to go ahead and publish them, even after all this time? How does that make me look, as a writer striving for professionalism?

If you are thinking of signing up somewhere locally as a citizen journalist, please consider these points. Check out the editor, check the execution. Don't let your work go to waste in someone else's database.

Routine Romance

It's amazing how boring genre romance novels can be after you've been reading outside that field. Thrillers. for instance, can be arson or kidnapping as well as murder  or escape. Family saga or adventure type stuff is as varied as people.

Not that there aren't outstanding romance writers, even those that follow the formula. There are, and most of them grow away from the formulas and let their skills shine. It doesn't matter if the skills are character development, plot, description, or just a convoluted mind. Good story telling is good story telling.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because the genre publishers are really slipping up. Recent romances that I have read are full of typos, grammar errors, and just plain silliness. The problems are almost worth the reading. A recent novel referred to the smart guy and the tough guy pair as the brain and the bronze. Another book from the same publisher informed me that the man's heart raced, and then his pulse did too. (That one struck me as so funny I texted it to many of my writer friends.)

Why read, you might wonder, if the stories and story telling are so bad.
These books, these (incompetent) authors have been published. Like any Unknown Author, I would like to be published. The best advice is always to read what is getting out there.

But do you know what? I believe I'd rather remain an Unknown than to publicly display my idiocy, my editor's inattention, and my publisher's uncaringness for the whole world to see. There's nothing noteworthy in my people's pulse keeping up with their heartbeat, and my brains guy is the one who's bronzed. It might bake his brain, but he's still pretty. and the story is about the brawny guy anyway. He's so much more interesting!

There's an old saying about keeping silent and being thought a fool or opening your mouth and removing all doubt. I think that should apply to being published, too.

In the meantime, I have a list of publishers who are really good for a laugh.

In Media Res

This is advice often given to writers these days. It's the latest publishing gimmick, and now the darned habit is bleeding over into episode tv. The shows are starting with -- say someone getting fired. Then they go back to before they got into the trouble that got them fired.
I don't like this as a regular thing. Every now and then is okay, but not two or three shows in a row, and not as even a semi regular opening. (It's okay as a tag or ad, if it's a program that has used that format regularly.
There are a couple of shows that I now turn off if the new episode starts with the story's climax.

For what it's worth, I think it's also bad writing advice, unless well done. Beginner writers often ask "Where do I start?" For years the obvious answer was to start at the beginning. It often takes a lot of writing and reading to decide when the beginning of the story is, but it's a place to start.

Notsomuch in today's publishing market. Today we are advised to start the story near the end and tell it all as a flashback. (Another style of writing that has to be well written to be readable.)

Sorry, major media. A good read or a good program has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In that order.