On Writing...A long-time popular definition of writing went something like, “Writing’s easy: just take a knife, open a vein.” I once wrote my definition of writing: The excruciating ecstasy of transforming gray matter to black type. However you define writing, it’s hard work. A writer’s life is a hard one, and often thankless. Sometimes the people charged with selling and promoting your book never even read it. No matter how many good books you write, each new one (especially if a new concept or new series or genre) is just another time you have to prove yourself. Most folks, I think, assume writing is easy, especially if you don’t complain a lot about your craft. But they have never faced a thick stack of blank paper waiting to be filled only by that open vein. A writer’s job is 24/7/365, which usually draws guffaws from folks who are not writers. Other writers understand that it could never be any other way. Writing is more than a job, a commitment, a mindset; it just is. You are either a writer or you are not. Writers and their readers are a different matter. I liken the relationship to a grandmother and her grandchildren; it can’t get much better than that. Your readers love you, appreciate you, and want you. To others, you may be more a thorn in the side. If I sound slightly disgruntled, perhaps it’s because it’s the beginning of a new year and no one I usually write for seems to need me to write anything. That is not a problem to me; I have more to write than I can possibly ever write so I see this as an opportunity. Opportunity is what abounds for writers today. I love that writers (good writers and bad writers) can put their books online, share them a chapter, even a sentence, at the time, and pretty much hook-up with their readers at will. Why not?! I’m always getting requests from wanna-be/got-a-book-in-them writers on what to do. Today the options are only as limited as your imagination. I am imagining all kinds of new ways to write to my readers. Some are possible, others not quite yet (my brain right to their brain, for example), but are coming online, so to speak, faster than the speed of transforming gray matter to black type. Gray matter to gray matter…hmm…I shall try to telepath a story direct to my grandkids sitting in their school desks today. So, teachers, if you see them incomprehensibly giggle in the middle of math, you’ll know my new writing style is working. My vein to your brain. Saves time, printing cost, and no “the computer is down” or downloading from amazon. Writing. What a joy! What a job! Guess I better get to it, hey?
A Book of Days AKA The (New) Old Farmer's Almanac
Well, last time I wrote "The future is so yesterday!"
Now, I'm writing to say that I have oft been inspired by old almanacs,
which I have a small but treasured collection of. (Yeah, you can end a sentence with a preposition,
or as a writer much more famous than me once said, "A sentence that ends with a preposition is something up
with which I cannot put"...to show the absurdity of always adhering to formal grammar.)
Just in the nick of time for the new year, I published Mimi & Papa's Everyday Amazing Almamac.
I actually wrote it about this time last year (off and on for months) at my drawing board surrounded by all
my favorite old almanacs. Actually my version is known as a "Book of Days" since it usable any year, eg,
dated, but not year-dated. Make sense? Over the holidays I met a woman who says her father still plants according to the OFM (Old Farmer's Almanac), and I am sure he is not the only one. My grandmother always spot-on diagnosed our family illnesses by referring to that body in the OFM. Lord help us, she then consulted the old-time remedies which often ended up with my sister or I getting plastered with a mustard plaster. The history of almanacs dates back to pre-Biblical days, as I recall. You can tell 'cause it's been spelled almanack, and almost every other assorted way. As we all recall, Benjamin Franklin, AKA "Poor Richard" was a fellow almanacaholic.
Outside of my personal interest and addiction to all things almanac/almanack, etc. and books of days, I had reason and purpose to do an almanac an entire year ago for the digital educational market. Sounds like a real loser product, hey? I care not. I just respond to the Muse. This lively "Daily Dozen" (which usually refers to exercises, and actually these are exercises for the brain), has been a big hit. Think about it: enter the darkened classroom early, exhausted, perhaps hungry, and the dog ate your homework (hey, it happens—ask Grant)...to encounter yet another cadaverous gray and white mimeographed worksheet, or...DAH DAH DA DAT DA DUM!...a giant electronic whiteboard ablaze with
sock monkeys and 12 fun things to read, do or take a silly quiz on. Hey, you choose.
Teachers wowed us with their responses to this digital almanac, turning the early morning fun ("They race into my classroom now!") into extended lesson plans, connections to current events, the world, and the rest of their (dare I say it, "boring" studies. Well, who can resist a sock money? Or a Funky Forecast? Or, 11 other audacious facts, riddles, etc.?
Writing them sure kept me on my toes. Like Forest Gump's box o' candy...darn if you can just eat one!
Which brings me to my conclusion: If the OFM can now be a virtual global digital experience, yeah, as I said last time:
The future is so yesterday. Which leaves us exactly where? Oh, maybe in the hands of excellent teachers and
invigorated, enthused, morning learning riotous students.
Gotta get back to work. This whatever comes next is just too dang exciting!
Carole Marsh says...The Future is So Yesterday!
Duh? Huh? Oh, yeah, folks, believe me! The future is so yesterday. When did this happen? I suppose when we weren't looking. At the turn of the century, we had a clue that the future AKA the Twenty-first Century was coming, but we are already past the first decade of that event boundary.
No, today there is a mechanical heart that whirrrrrrrs blood through your veins via spinning blades—no motor, and, no heartbeat required! Books have given way to eBibles, ecomics, and e-everything else. New planets the size and approximate atmosphere of Earth are being discovered. Dreaded cancer IS curable in many instances. And more, so much more.
This all is on my mind because I run a business. Last year I described employees (mine and others) as being either Old-Fashions or Newfangles. The differences were clear. This year I feel the import of such distinctions even more clearly. You are either part of the past, or, as Buzz Lightyear might say, "To infinity and beyond."
I can tell that the future has already come and gone because so many Newfangles now start up businesses with no baggage of the past. They enter the economic fray already up to speed, and indeed, beyond, taking everything to the next new new level.
I have always been a futurist, in spite of the fact that I live a big chunk of my life in the past in my involvement with social studies. But nothing about how that history curriculum now gets done has anything to do with the past. Today you either work at the speed of light or get left behind. I have a hard time selling that concept.
My job is to create, and often those creations have no name. That hinders me not and should not hinder or stymie those charged with helping me. So don't be an Old -Fashion, be a Newfangle. We don't want to eat our competitors' edust, do we?
Yes, the future is so yesterday. I'm not sure what we're in now, but as Betty Davis once said in a movie, "It's gonna be a bumpy ride."
