Some while ago I joined a writers' website called Authonomy. It's hosted by Harper Collins and the premise is that aspiring writers post their manuscripts for critique by their fellow writers. Those few that get enough backing (read, become popular) are awarded with a visit to the HC editor's desk, for review. The rest try valiantly to learn from their peers and continue honing their writing and story-pitching skills.
It seems like a pretty good system: one gets live feedback from actual human beings, learns to take and give good critique, and hopefully benefits from hearing about the flaws and strengths of their work. I've just gotten active over there in the last two or three weeks, and it's interesting.
But there's a side of it that I find frankly ... weird. Mind, I have yet to post a manuscript there, though I plan to by or at the first of the year. But amidst the drive to reach the Editors' Desk and climb the ratings chart, there is a culture of self-promotion that I don't think I'll ever find personally comfortable. People pounce on each other with read requests and/or offers of read-swaps like a convention of door-to-door salesmen. I'm not sure how anybody even finds me, amongst the hundreds of members there, but they do, and almost daily I receive requests to read and back someone's book.
Which is fine, but sometimes it's so out of the blue, I just ... don't know what to say. Why me? What makes this person think I would make a good reader for their topic of choice? Another quandary is that I'm apparently a picky reader. Sometimes the writing is perfectly fine, but the story just doesn't grab me. Sometimes the story might be okay ... but the author and punctuation are not friends. (Do they have a volunteer proofreader's pool, there?) And sometimes the writing, the story, everything, is just ... not something I would look at for three seconds in a book store.
Suddenly I have vast and growing sympathy for what agents and publishers must experience. The worry here is that, on Authonomy, I have to consider that I'm going to want my book read and critiqued, so I can't be too much of a snob, or nobody will give me the time of day!
Oy. I don't know if I'm clever enough to play the game, over there. But I'll do my best, and try to be fair and kind, and if I really can't get my teeth into someone's book, I hope they'll forgive me if I decline to read. I feel I would rather say a polite and kindly, "No, thank you," than try to read and end up blathering some response that would help them not at all.
Well, that's half an hour I'll never see again. Back to working on my long pitch for my book. The end of the year is only days away ...
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Once More to the Dogs
It's very rarely indeed, that we can point to any single person and say, "That person changed my life."
Oddly enough, only tonight it dawns on me, I know two such persons. Those people are my sheepdog trainer/instructor, Sandy Moore, and her good blue dog, "Mister."
My hubby and I moved into this area just over ten years ago, from a ranch in San Diego County. I'd had one winter's sheepdog lessons with my dog, Della, through a trainer down there, and I wanted to continue my training. So, I asked around to see if any stockdog trainer existed in the Carson Valley. This led me to Sandy - and to her constant companion, Mister.
Mister was one of Heaven's fortuitous accidents, a chance breeding between a Belgian Sheepdog and an Australian Shepherd. He was an only pup, and he chose Sandy just as much as Sandy chose him. When I met him, Mister was about 3 years old, a tall, confident, handsome rascal with an intelligent face and bright, wise eyes. Over the years, I got used to pulling into the yard and having him appear at my truck door, wanting to know who I'd brought and if I had any spare cookies. He was a constant fixture on every lesson day, and probably knew us all by name.
Mister was, in all the best ways, the lord of the manor. There on the ranch where Sandy trained, Mister was her hired hand. Sorting sheep, offering backup to inexperienced young dogs, standing patiently at the gate while Sandy worked with her students, he seemed for all the world as if he were supervising affairs. In his mind, he probably was.
The Blue Dog made an indelible impact not only on his human friends, but also sometimes on their dogs. Mister taught my boy, Jesse, his social graces: how to hang out and chill, how to wait one's turn. He also influenced Jesse in unexpected ways. All on his own, without my teaching, Jesse learned from Mister how to bring sheep out of a heavily crowded pen by crawling in under them. Jesse also learned from Mister the peculiar knack of shouldering sheep, particularly lambs, to get them moving, rather than using his teeth.
As a stock dog, Mister was amazing. I've seen with my own eyes how he could grab an uncooperative sheep and, without drawing blood, just slam the darned thing to the ground. When the sheep got up, Mister would simply stand there, watching, and sure enough, the sheep would do as Mister wanted. I've seen him go after a cow with every fang bared, and I've seen him nudging wobbly little lambs along, ever so gently. He was Sandy's partner, her friend and right hand, and more faithful than any human could be.
As Mister grew older, often he and my Jesse would stand at a fence together, quietly watching others work and undoubtedly exchanging notes. Thanks to Sandy, training and working my sheepdogs became my great passion. Thanks to Mister, Jesse became a true gentleman of a dog. Together, Sandy and Mister helped shape a very large part of my life, and I cannot imagine my world without their influence in it.
Sadly, I must now imagine a world without Mister in it. Last Tuesday, that grand old man, that good old Blue Dog, went on ahead to fields that our feet cannot yet tread. I've said enough farewells, in this past year, to know well the grief of losing a canine friend. But Mister was something extraordinary, a personage whose like but seldom comes along. He left his paw prints large in so many lives and so many hearts, but no one will mourn him as deeply as Sandy. My circle of friends is diminished by one, and while I know he is at last free of pain and weakness and the infirmities of age ... I'll miss him.
I'll miss him.
I leave the final words for Mister's passing in the form of a quote from Sandy herself:
"He seemed neither old nor young. The character of his strength lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills and as young as the wild. I never tired of looking at them."
~ John Muir
Mister -- Born: March 17, 1996 -- Passed: Dec 1, 2009
Good night, old friend.
.
Oddly enough, only tonight it dawns on me, I know two such persons. Those people are my sheepdog trainer/instructor, Sandy Moore, and her good blue dog, "Mister."
My hubby and I moved into this area just over ten years ago, from a ranch in San Diego County. I'd had one winter's sheepdog lessons with my dog, Della, through a trainer down there, and I wanted to continue my training. So, I asked around to see if any stockdog trainer existed in the Carson Valley. This led me to Sandy - and to her constant companion, Mister.
Mister was one of Heaven's fortuitous accidents, a chance breeding between a Belgian Sheepdog and an Australian Shepherd. He was an only pup, and he chose Sandy just as much as Sandy chose him. When I met him, Mister was about 3 years old, a tall, confident, handsome rascal with an intelligent face and bright, wise eyes. Over the years, I got used to pulling into the yard and having him appear at my truck door, wanting to know who I'd brought and if I had any spare cookies. He was a constant fixture on every lesson day, and probably knew us all by name.
Mister was, in all the best ways, the lord of the manor. There on the ranch where Sandy trained, Mister was her hired hand. Sorting sheep, offering backup to inexperienced young dogs, standing patiently at the gate while Sandy worked with her students, he seemed for all the world as if he were supervising affairs. In his mind, he probably was.
The Blue Dog made an indelible impact not only on his human friends, but also sometimes on their dogs. Mister taught my boy, Jesse, his social graces: how to hang out and chill, how to wait one's turn. He also influenced Jesse in unexpected ways. All on his own, without my teaching, Jesse learned from Mister how to bring sheep out of a heavily crowded pen by crawling in under them. Jesse also learned from Mister the peculiar knack of shouldering sheep, particularly lambs, to get them moving, rather than using his teeth.
As a stock dog, Mister was amazing. I've seen with my own eyes how he could grab an uncooperative sheep and, without drawing blood, just slam the darned thing to the ground. When the sheep got up, Mister would simply stand there, watching, and sure enough, the sheep would do as Mister wanted. I've seen him go after a cow with every fang bared, and I've seen him nudging wobbly little lambs along, ever so gently. He was Sandy's partner, her friend and right hand, and more faithful than any human could be.
As Mister grew older, often he and my Jesse would stand at a fence together, quietly watching others work and undoubtedly exchanging notes. Thanks to Sandy, training and working my sheepdogs became my great passion. Thanks to Mister, Jesse became a true gentleman of a dog. Together, Sandy and Mister helped shape a very large part of my life, and I cannot imagine my world without their influence in it.
Sadly, I must now imagine a world without Mister in it. Last Tuesday, that grand old man, that good old Blue Dog, went on ahead to fields that our feet cannot yet tread. I've said enough farewells, in this past year, to know well the grief of losing a canine friend. But Mister was something extraordinary, a personage whose like but seldom comes along. He left his paw prints large in so many lives and so many hearts, but no one will mourn him as deeply as Sandy. My circle of friends is diminished by one, and while I know he is at last free of pain and weakness and the infirmities of age ... I'll miss him.
I'll miss him.
I leave the final words for Mister's passing in the form of a quote from Sandy herself:
"He seemed neither old nor young. The character of his strength lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills and as young as the wild. I never tired of looking at them."
~ John Muir
Mister -- Born: March 17, 1996 -- Passed: Dec 1, 2009
Good night, old friend.
.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
I Measure My Life in Dog Years
In 1983, I met the man I would one day marry. In 1984, we got our first dog.
We acquired Cub as an 8-week-old puppy, while visiting a friend who was Animal Control officer in the tiny town of Bridgeport, CA. He got a call someone found a dog at the dump, but it turned out to be a fat, healthy Australian shepherd pup - with a tail. When the pup cried in her kennel, I took her in my lap where she fell right to asleep. When it came time to leave, our friend said, "Well, you three better go on home."
Cub became our constant companion for the next eleven years. She was beautiful to behold, black and tan with a blue merle collar around her neck, copper on her cheeks and eyebrows, and a glorious plume for a tail. Yet however eye-catching her appearance, (and people often remarked) it was her spirit that shined the most. As a puppy, Cub was silly, happy, and playful. As an adult, she was silly, happy and filled with the joy of life. She could put timid dogs at ease, soothe dominant dogs' anxieties, and she greeted everyone she ever met with a beaming, loose-tongued smile.
This beautiful girl accompanied us on countless miles while we rode cattle ranges and mountain trails. She had almost no skills as a herding dog, but she was a splendid trail dog, tireless and wise, and she did have one great skill. Cub could bark a herd of cows out of a willow thicket like nobody's business, and she wouldn't quit until the last one came out.
We honestly had no idea how extraordinary she was, as a physical type. We thought it normal to ride 15 to 40 miles a day and Cub would not only keep up, but she would almost double the mileage. Yet when we brought her in for vet checks, the vets would sometimes call in their assistants to admire Cub's iron-hard musculature, or the rawhide toughness of her feet. She was just our dog, our partner and pal, who loved playing stick and chasing balls, going swimming, pouncing after fish in the streams, and following the wild trails with us.
In all, Cub lived the perfect dog's life. She never knew a chain, rarely felt a leash, and lived a life of near-total canine freedom on the cattle ranges and amongst the peaks. We lost Cub to illness in October of 1995, and our vet wept with us, as he administered his final mercy.
We got our next dog the following year, ostensibly as a companion for Nikki, the spaniel-border collie rescue we'd acquired along the way, who fell into depression after Cub's passing. Born on St. Patrick's Day, 1996, Della was a Border Collie-Aussie mix from a rancher friend's breeding. Della proved to be a worthy successor to Cub, a delightful personality full of bounce, happiness, and playfulness and she absolutely lived to be with us. She was not much of a working dog, either, but who cared? Della filled our lives with joy and laughter.
However, poor Nikki never recovered from the loss of her mate, and refused to have a thing to do with Della. So, we bought Dolly from the same breeder in 1997, a puppy for our puppy.
Though full sisters, Dolly was Della's opposite in almost every way. The only things they really had in common were parents, pointed ears, and black-and-white coats. Dolly was serious, oh, so serious, and had a poker face, to boot. Oh, she'd play and chase sticks and loved a game of tug-of-war, but she did these things with a powerful sense of competition. Dolly ruled the back of the pickup truck and when strangers came to our gate, she'd stand off and eye them with a cool lupine stare that could mean anything or nothing at all.
As with Cub, Della and Dolly were our companions of the trail, logging innumerable miles in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and on ranches in southern Cali and Nevada. They proved a good team on cattle, a one-two punch that convinced most cows to get a move on, and together, they bolstered each other's confidence. Dolly was tough as an old used boot, one time colliding with Della at full speed, whilst they both went after the same cow. Dolly hit her sister hard enough to crack one shoulder blade, and she tumbled on impact, but came up screaming - mad as hell and trying to catch and eat that cow on only three legs. Dolly healed up just fine, though, and continued on her butch and stoic career.
Della retired herself from herding at about age 8, just lying down in an arena one day when Dolly brought in a group of sheep. Della only worked to please us, not because it was her calling in life, and she thought it much better to stay home and play pampered house pet.
However, our lifestyle changed and we only cowboyed or packed mules part time, and the sisters settled gracefully into retirement. We lost Dolly on December 8, 2008, a victim of lymphoma. The doctors gave her 2-3 months to live. The tough old thing stuck it out for almost 5.
Nor can we forget Rose, my first purebred Border Collie. She was born on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1998, from a nice pair of working dogs owned by our good friend, Chris Rigali. We were packing mules in the Sierras in those days, so Rose kind of grew up like a canine Tom Sawyer, playing with our older dogs, chasing squeaky critters, and rolling in whatever stinky stuff she could find. By six months old, she was going up the trail with us, a little black coyote slinking among the rock slides and flying across the alpine meadows.
I found a sheepdog trainer here in Gardnerville when Rose was about 10 months, but ... I had me a bit of trouble. Our sweet, fluffy, mild-mannered Rose turned out to be a Tasmanian devil on sheep: driven, direct, independent, hard-willed and way too much dog for me. My trainer did the best she could, but I simply lacked the skills to manage a dog as tough and headstrong as Rose. Then at about age 3 and a half, she had a fall, injured her hip - and X-rays revealed she had severe hip dysplasia. She'd held herself together this far by little more than muscle tone and willpower.
Our vet performed a femoral ostectomy, but Rose never recovered to 100%. Eventually, I had to concede that my tough little girl's career as a sheepdog was essentially over. It broke my heart, and I've never shed the idea that somehow, I failed her. I should have been more careful; I should have known something was wrong before she got hurt. But Rose lived out her days as our beloved friend, as quiet and gentle at home as she was hell on wheels with sheep.
We lost Rose to cancer just this June, four months after Dolly.
Now ... we look at one more loss. Tomorrow at 4:00 p.m., we send our sweet, cute, funny little Della beyond the Rainbow Bridge. That's easier to say than that we're hauling her down to be killed. I don't know if it's three deaths so close together, or if it's the fact she's the eldest of the three, but this time is so much harder.
Della is terminally ill. They first diagnosed her with a raging bladder infection, which we treated with medication and she seemed to recover. But within 4 days of finishing her meds, she began a steep decline, and stronger medications have done nothing at all. She's stopped eating, she's lost weight, she's weak, she sleeps 23 hours out of 24, and most of all, our loving little Velcro dog, who yips insistently if we shut her out of our sight, wants nothing but to be left alone. Last night, we brought Della upstairs to bed, but when we started turning out the lights, she just walked outside, went downstairs and spent the night out sleeping under the juniper bush that's become her den.
It's time. She's tired, she's sick, all that sparkle and joy is gone, and she's done. But I'm not ready, even if she is.
Oh, I still have Jesse, my brilliant Border Collie partner, who came to us as a rescue eight years ago and inadvertently filled the void Rose's lameness created. He turned 10 in February and while he's a bit slower these days, he still loves and lives to work sheep. We still have Scruffy, Tye's corgi-border collie rescue who, now at age 9, is pretty much Tye's shadow. Plus, I've young Nick, my gifted, beautiful border boy in whom I've placed such hopes. Further, I've put in for a pup, a full sister to Nick, whom I hope to get in early fall.
But when it comes to Della, I want to grab and hold her and weep into the fragrance of her fur, crying, "Not yet! Don't leave! Don't go!"
This time, for whatever reason, I'm not at all prepared to say goodbye. Maybe it's the history, the miles and the years. Maybe it's that we have loved her so well and so long. There will always be dogs in our life. Since Cub fell asleep in my lap twenty-five years ago, we can't imagine it any other way.
However, Kipling was not wrong when he wrote this verse, which I will leave with you:
We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-term loan is as bad as a long--
So why in--Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
~*~
We acquired Cub as an 8-week-old puppy, while visiting a friend who was Animal Control officer in the tiny town of Bridgeport, CA. He got a call someone found a dog at the dump, but it turned out to be a fat, healthy Australian shepherd pup - with a tail. When the pup cried in her kennel, I took her in my lap where she fell right to asleep. When it came time to leave, our friend said, "Well, you three better go on home."
Cub became our constant companion for the next eleven years. She was beautiful to behold, black and tan with a blue merle collar around her neck, copper on her cheeks and eyebrows, and a glorious plume for a tail. Yet however eye-catching her appearance, (and people often remarked) it was her spirit that shined the most. As a puppy, Cub was silly, happy, and playful. As an adult, she was silly, happy and filled with the joy of life. She could put timid dogs at ease, soothe dominant dogs' anxieties, and she greeted everyone she ever met with a beaming, loose-tongued smile.
This beautiful girl accompanied us on countless miles while we rode cattle ranges and mountain trails. She had almost no skills as a herding dog, but she was a splendid trail dog, tireless and wise, and she did have one great skill. Cub could bark a herd of cows out of a willow thicket like nobody's business, and she wouldn't quit until the last one came out.
We honestly had no idea how extraordinary she was, as a physical type. We thought it normal to ride 15 to 40 miles a day and Cub would not only keep up, but she would almost double the mileage. Yet when we brought her in for vet checks, the vets would sometimes call in their assistants to admire Cub's iron-hard musculature, or the rawhide toughness of her feet. She was just our dog, our partner and pal, who loved playing stick and chasing balls, going swimming, pouncing after fish in the streams, and following the wild trails with us.
In all, Cub lived the perfect dog's life. She never knew a chain, rarely felt a leash, and lived a life of near-total canine freedom on the cattle ranges and amongst the peaks. We lost Cub to illness in October of 1995, and our vet wept with us, as he administered his final mercy.
We got our next dog the following year, ostensibly as a companion for Nikki, the spaniel-border collie rescue we'd acquired along the way, who fell into depression after Cub's passing. Born on St. Patrick's Day, 1996, Della was a Border Collie-Aussie mix from a rancher friend's breeding. Della proved to be a worthy successor to Cub, a delightful personality full of bounce, happiness, and playfulness and she absolutely lived to be with us. She was not much of a working dog, either, but who cared? Della filled our lives with joy and laughter.
However, poor Nikki never recovered from the loss of her mate, and refused to have a thing to do with Della. So, we bought Dolly from the same breeder in 1997, a puppy for our puppy.
Though full sisters, Dolly was Della's opposite in almost every way. The only things they really had in common were parents, pointed ears, and black-and-white coats. Dolly was serious, oh, so serious, and had a poker face, to boot. Oh, she'd play and chase sticks and loved a game of tug-of-war, but she did these things with a powerful sense of competition. Dolly ruled the back of the pickup truck and when strangers came to our gate, she'd stand off and eye them with a cool lupine stare that could mean anything or nothing at all.
As with Cub, Della and Dolly were our companions of the trail, logging innumerable miles in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and on ranches in southern Cali and Nevada. They proved a good team on cattle, a one-two punch that convinced most cows to get a move on, and together, they bolstered each other's confidence. Dolly was tough as an old used boot, one time colliding with Della at full speed, whilst they both went after the same cow. Dolly hit her sister hard enough to crack one shoulder blade, and she tumbled on impact, but came up screaming - mad as hell and trying to catch and eat that cow on only three legs. Dolly healed up just fine, though, and continued on her butch and stoic career.
Della retired herself from herding at about age 8, just lying down in an arena one day when Dolly brought in a group of sheep. Della only worked to please us, not because it was her calling in life, and she thought it much better to stay home and play pampered house pet.
However, our lifestyle changed and we only cowboyed or packed mules part time, and the sisters settled gracefully into retirement. We lost Dolly on December 8, 2008, a victim of lymphoma. The doctors gave her 2-3 months to live. The tough old thing stuck it out for almost 5.
Nor can we forget Rose, my first purebred Border Collie. She was born on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1998, from a nice pair of working dogs owned by our good friend, Chris Rigali. We were packing mules in the Sierras in those days, so Rose kind of grew up like a canine Tom Sawyer, playing with our older dogs, chasing squeaky critters, and rolling in whatever stinky stuff she could find. By six months old, she was going up the trail with us, a little black coyote slinking among the rock slides and flying across the alpine meadows.
I found a sheepdog trainer here in Gardnerville when Rose was about 10 months, but ... I had me a bit of trouble. Our sweet, fluffy, mild-mannered Rose turned out to be a Tasmanian devil on sheep: driven, direct, independent, hard-willed and way too much dog for me. My trainer did the best she could, but I simply lacked the skills to manage a dog as tough and headstrong as Rose. Then at about age 3 and a half, she had a fall, injured her hip - and X-rays revealed she had severe hip dysplasia. She'd held herself together this far by little more than muscle tone and willpower.
Our vet performed a femoral ostectomy, but Rose never recovered to 100%. Eventually, I had to concede that my tough little girl's career as a sheepdog was essentially over. It broke my heart, and I've never shed the idea that somehow, I failed her. I should have been more careful; I should have known something was wrong before she got hurt. But Rose lived out her days as our beloved friend, as quiet and gentle at home as she was hell on wheels with sheep.
We lost Rose to cancer just this June, four months after Dolly.
Now ... we look at one more loss. Tomorrow at 4:00 p.m., we send our sweet, cute, funny little Della beyond the Rainbow Bridge. That's easier to say than that we're hauling her down to be killed. I don't know if it's three deaths so close together, or if it's the fact she's the eldest of the three, but this time is so much harder.
Della is terminally ill. They first diagnosed her with a raging bladder infection, which we treated with medication and she seemed to recover. But within 4 days of finishing her meds, she began a steep decline, and stronger medications have done nothing at all. She's stopped eating, she's lost weight, she's weak, she sleeps 23 hours out of 24, and most of all, our loving little Velcro dog, who yips insistently if we shut her out of our sight, wants nothing but to be left alone. Last night, we brought Della upstairs to bed, but when we started turning out the lights, she just walked outside, went downstairs and spent the night out sleeping under the juniper bush that's become her den.
It's time. She's tired, she's sick, all that sparkle and joy is gone, and she's done. But I'm not ready, even if she is.
Oh, I still have Jesse, my brilliant Border Collie partner, who came to us as a rescue eight years ago and inadvertently filled the void Rose's lameness created. He turned 10 in February and while he's a bit slower these days, he still loves and lives to work sheep. We still have Scruffy, Tye's corgi-border collie rescue who, now at age 9, is pretty much Tye's shadow. Plus, I've young Nick, my gifted, beautiful border boy in whom I've placed such hopes. Further, I've put in for a pup, a full sister to Nick, whom I hope to get in early fall.
But when it comes to Della, I want to grab and hold her and weep into the fragrance of her fur, crying, "Not yet! Don't leave! Don't go!"
This time, for whatever reason, I'm not at all prepared to say goodbye. Maybe it's the history, the miles and the years. Maybe it's that we have loved her so well and so long. There will always be dogs in our life. Since Cub fell asleep in my lap twenty-five years ago, we can't imagine it any other way.
However, Kipling was not wrong when he wrote this verse, which I will leave with you:
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-term loan is as bad as a long--
So why in--Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
~*~
Della - 17 March 1996 - 30 July 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Killing Your Poodles
The thing about writing is this.
I love to write. I've always written. Voices, images, scenes and words have always whirled in my brain. Dialogue and characters tumble from my fingers, and when the Muse is really talking, I can barely do anything without a pen at hand. I'll have post-it notes stuck everywhere, I'll get up to scribble in the middle of the night, I'll be fumbling at stoplights with scraps of paper pinned to the steering wheel, trying to capture a thought before the light changes.
Sometimes I've even doodled on a pad on the truck seat beside me, whilst whizzing along at 60 miles per hour. But we won't talk about that. ;-)
Two things, however, often trip me up. Perseverance ... and editing. It's the latter I'm wrestling, now.
Editing is an evil necessity of writing, and one that can be hard to do. The initial phase is pretty much lumberjack work for me: get in there with an ax and chainsaw, and whack off large chunks of extraneous prose. That's not so hard, especially since I learned the trick of keeping an "Outtake File." If I have a scene or chunk of dialogue that's too precious to delete, I simply cut/paste it into a document in the Outtake File, where it can die a peaceful death by neglect.
The hard part, though ... is gearing up with the flashlight and SWAT gear to hunt down the other billionty excess words. This is the part that hurts. This is where I go after all those lovely, lovely turns of phrase and grind them into dust. This is where virtually everything that ends in "ly" goes spiraling into the dark, where commas cringe beneath the glare of spotlights to see if they're fraternizing with two many adjectives, where whole sentences whimper at knife point for fear of being found substandard and thereby marked for extinction.
I'm killing my poodles. And it sucks. Plus it's also friggin' tedious.
But it's necessary, because as anyone can tell, brevity ain't my strong point, and I never use one word where three or four will suffice. Funny thing is, when I started my current novel manuscript - at least two years ago - I initially prided myself at writing fast paced, sparing prose. Ha. That didn't last long. So, here I am, sharpening the knife once more.
Do I have a point to all this? No, not really. But I feel better for having vented/whined and slaughtered a few metaphors, and now I can get back to editing. Yeah, I really do have aspirations of becoming a published novelist one day, but I'm pretty sure there's faint chance of that, so long as my writing remains on my hard drive. ;-)
Okay, putting the infrared goggles back on. Wish me luck, I'm goin' in. ;-)
Cheers ~
Me
I love to write. I've always written. Voices, images, scenes and words have always whirled in my brain. Dialogue and characters tumble from my fingers, and when the Muse is really talking, I can barely do anything without a pen at hand. I'll have post-it notes stuck everywhere, I'll get up to scribble in the middle of the night, I'll be fumbling at stoplights with scraps of paper pinned to the steering wheel, trying to capture a thought before the light changes.
Sometimes I've even doodled on a pad on the truck seat beside me, whilst whizzing along at 60 miles per hour. But we won't talk about that. ;-)
Two things, however, often trip me up. Perseverance ... and editing. It's the latter I'm wrestling, now.
Editing is an evil necessity of writing, and one that can be hard to do. The initial phase is pretty much lumberjack work for me: get in there with an ax and chainsaw, and whack off large chunks of extraneous prose. That's not so hard, especially since I learned the trick of keeping an "Outtake File." If I have a scene or chunk of dialogue that's too precious to delete, I simply cut/paste it into a document in the Outtake File, where it can die a peaceful death by neglect.
The hard part, though ... is gearing up with the flashlight and SWAT gear to hunt down the other billionty excess words. This is the part that hurts. This is where I go after all those lovely, lovely turns of phrase and grind them into dust. This is where virtually everything that ends in "ly" goes spiraling into the dark, where commas cringe beneath the glare of spotlights to see if they're fraternizing with two many adjectives, where whole sentences whimper at knife point for fear of being found substandard and thereby marked for extinction.
I'm killing my poodles. And it sucks. Plus it's also friggin' tedious.
But it's necessary, because as anyone can tell, brevity ain't my strong point, and I never use one word where three or four will suffice. Funny thing is, when I started my current novel manuscript - at least two years ago - I initially prided myself at writing fast paced, sparing prose. Ha. That didn't last long. So, here I am, sharpening the knife once more.
Do I have a point to all this? No, not really. But I feel better for having vented/whined and slaughtered a few metaphors, and now I can get back to editing. Yeah, I really do have aspirations of becoming a published novelist one day, but I'm pretty sure there's faint chance of that, so long as my writing remains on my hard drive. ;-)
Okay, putting the infrared goggles back on. Wish me luck, I'm goin' in. ;-)
Cheers ~
Me
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Looking Back ... an introspective
Twenty years ago, northern Nevada came out of one of the coldest winters on record. Temps hit well below zero (-40 to -50) a foot of snow never melted, and barely an automobile ran that couldn't tolerate a cold start. At one point, the National Guard air-lifted hay to herds stranded on the Idaho range. That year, 1989, hubby and I worked for a million acre cow outfit, the IL Ranch in Elko County, Nevada. It was a bitter winter but spring came on like glory, with grass growing to the horses' knees, pools of lupines blooming on the hills, and the perfume of wild chokecherries filled the canyons as we rode.
1989 was also the year a remarkable TV mini-series aired: "Lonesome Dove." I remember the boys in the bunkhouse huddled each evening around that grainy little TV they had, and they'd debate the authenticity of every scene, every buckle and bullet, over meals in the cookhouse where I presided. Come spring, the chuck wagon rolled out, the cattle were moved to summer range, and hubby and I were stationed in an itty bitty camp trailer out in the middle of nowhere, bearing responsibility for a thousand yearling heifers.
We were younger then, and wild, and we had all the great, open range to claim as our own. Ranch headquarters was 70 miles from town, and if we rode anywhere out there, we went at a spanking trot. When we hit town, it was with all bells ringing, and oh, good lord, the hangovers. I loved that big country with all my soul, and if I'd tipped over dead one day whilst sitting horseback atop some windy ridge, I wouldn't have regretted it, nor lacked for a single thing.
Those were simpler days, and it's not just nostalgia that makes it so. Everything we owned fit in Tye's 1972 Ford F-250, which we fitted with a cabover camper shell and dubbed the "Ford Closet", and in my '73 Buick Skylark sedan. Put studded mud-n-snow tires on that Buick, and she'd claw her way up roads some pickups couldn't manage. We made about $750 a month, near as I can recall. I know we never made more than $15,000 a year. Didn't need much more than that. After all, if we had food, gas, pizza money, a little horse jewelry, and every so often a bottle of whiskey and a new cinch or saddle blanket, we were pretty well set. Sometimes we'd find a twenty dollar bill in our wallets that we'd forgotten we had, and that would actually be worth something.
It was hard life, a good life, the best life, but really a not much of a living. Somewhere along the line, times changed and so did we. I'll be 47 years old, this July. Back then, I never even considered whether I'd be here to say that. Neither Tye nor I can take the hits or falls like we used to, but most of all ... there just wasn't any money in it. Hubby is like a chameleon, able to put on lives like some folks change hats: he's been a marine, a cop, a cowboy, a cook, a miner, a mule packer and a private eye. He led and I followed to the changes in our lives, and now winters on the open range are things of the past.
But I still cling with fierce devotion to the things that make me feel settled inside, including a few good friends and a little piece of rented ground where I can plant a garden, keep some chickens, train my dogs, and not have too many neighbors. I've never learned Tye's tolerance for towns and folks and bustle, but even he needs to come home to peace and quiet. We both still own our saddles. Won't ever sell 'em. We still dust 'em off sometimes and go day-work for local outfits, moving cows or packing mules. We're older and more cautious and more thoughtful than we used to be, but ...
... It doesn't leave you, that country. All it takes is an old song or the scent of rain on the sagebrush, and we're back. Back twenty years to a day when we were pretty much poor all the time, but when we could sit up there on our handmade saddles, and revel in the sort of benign arrogance that belongs only to those who make a living on horseback. Hard to be humble when you see the world from a vantage point ten feet tall.
I don't know that I'd want to go back, or any chances to do anything over. But I'm glad we were there. I'm glad that part of life was ours. I'm glad we can one day sit, old and bent and gray, and look at photo albums of a place and time that might one day be gone, that has already changed, and we can remember our places in it.
It's a good feeling. Now I'm going back upstairs to watch "Lonesome Dove," and to remember where I come from and where my roots will always cling. Blessings to you all, those whom I call Friends. You are part of my peace. :-)
Cheers ~
G. M. Atwater
.
1989 was also the year a remarkable TV mini-series aired: "Lonesome Dove." I remember the boys in the bunkhouse huddled each evening around that grainy little TV they had, and they'd debate the authenticity of every scene, every buckle and bullet, over meals in the cookhouse where I presided. Come spring, the chuck wagon rolled out, the cattle were moved to summer range, and hubby and I were stationed in an itty bitty camp trailer out in the middle of nowhere, bearing responsibility for a thousand yearling heifers.
We were younger then, and wild, and we had all the great, open range to claim as our own. Ranch headquarters was 70 miles from town, and if we rode anywhere out there, we went at a spanking trot. When we hit town, it was with all bells ringing, and oh, good lord, the hangovers. I loved that big country with all my soul, and if I'd tipped over dead one day whilst sitting horseback atop some windy ridge, I wouldn't have regretted it, nor lacked for a single thing.
Those were simpler days, and it's not just nostalgia that makes it so. Everything we owned fit in Tye's 1972 Ford F-250, which we fitted with a cabover camper shell and dubbed the "Ford Closet", and in my '73 Buick Skylark sedan. Put studded mud-n-snow tires on that Buick, and she'd claw her way up roads some pickups couldn't manage. We made about $750 a month, near as I can recall. I know we never made more than $15,000 a year. Didn't need much more than that. After all, if we had food, gas, pizza money, a little horse jewelry, and every so often a bottle of whiskey and a new cinch or saddle blanket, we were pretty well set. Sometimes we'd find a twenty dollar bill in our wallets that we'd forgotten we had, and that would actually be worth something.
It was hard life, a good life, the best life, but really a not much of a living. Somewhere along the line, times changed and so did we. I'll be 47 years old, this July. Back then, I never even considered whether I'd be here to say that. Neither Tye nor I can take the hits or falls like we used to, but most of all ... there just wasn't any money in it. Hubby is like a chameleon, able to put on lives like some folks change hats: he's been a marine, a cop, a cowboy, a cook, a miner, a mule packer and a private eye. He led and I followed to the changes in our lives, and now winters on the open range are things of the past.
But I still cling with fierce devotion to the things that make me feel settled inside, including a few good friends and a little piece of rented ground where I can plant a garden, keep some chickens, train my dogs, and not have too many neighbors. I've never learned Tye's tolerance for towns and folks and bustle, but even he needs to come home to peace and quiet. We both still own our saddles. Won't ever sell 'em. We still dust 'em off sometimes and go day-work for local outfits, moving cows or packing mules. We're older and more cautious and more thoughtful than we used to be, but ...
... It doesn't leave you, that country. All it takes is an old song or the scent of rain on the sagebrush, and we're back. Back twenty years to a day when we were pretty much poor all the time, but when we could sit up there on our handmade saddles, and revel in the sort of benign arrogance that belongs only to those who make a living on horseback. Hard to be humble when you see the world from a vantage point ten feet tall.
I don't know that I'd want to go back, or any chances to do anything over. But I'm glad we were there. I'm glad that part of life was ours. I'm glad we can one day sit, old and bent and gray, and look at photo albums of a place and time that might one day be gone, that has already changed, and we can remember our places in it.
It's a good feeling. Now I'm going back upstairs to watch "Lonesome Dove," and to remember where I come from and where my roots will always cling. Blessings to you all, those whom I call Friends. You are part of my peace. :-)
Cheers ~
G. M. Atwater
.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Nick - good boy
This is what I love about my border collies. They are beautiful just by the nature of their being.
That is Nick, my pup from Geri Byrnes' Annie & Dan, taken April 26, '09. Here Nick is not quite one year old. Someday, if I get my act together, he's gonna be one helluva dog.
That is Nick, my pup from Geri Byrnes' Annie & Dan, taken April 26, '09. Here Nick is not quite one year old. Someday, if I get my act together, he's gonna be one helluva dog.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Life's That Way - a Book Review
Book Review
I confess to having some trouble figuring out how to write this review. Not because the book isn't remarkable - it is - but because I did not want to cheapen its import with a casual splash of words. This book means something to me. As a cancer survivor, I found it means more than I can easily express.
"Life's That Way" is, foremost of all, a love story and a testament to the human spirit. Jim Beaver does not portray his wife as a flawless woman, nor paint himself as a perfect man. Rather he says, look, we're all kinda screwy, but that's just a little dust on the furniture. Loving someone, that's what truly counts.
Jim's writing style is of such candid feeling that it gives the book a rare grace and readability. The immediacy of the narrative, however, is what struck me most. Presented here are emails and messages in present tense, things that happened now, today, not five years ago. Today Jim talked to Cecily's doctor, today Cecily got her MRI results, today Maddie asked why Daddy was cwying. I think this is what makes the book's reality so poignant.
It is why I read each entry on Cecily's illness as if following the battle of a friend, so immersed in the story that I forgot this is already done. It is certainly why, when Jim wrote of her death in the terse language of the utterly bereaved, I had to walk away. I had to put the book down and go wrap my mind around the finality of Cecily's loss, despite knowing that she is these five years gone.
When I resumed reading, it was an amazing voyage. Sometimes I felt like an invisible voyeur, that I shouldn't know this much about another's pain. But lest you think this is a tale of unremitting sadness, know this: it is not.
What shines throughout is the fierceness of Hope. Every time the darkness falls, every time tears hit like a monsoon storm, Jim picks himself up and goes on. Every step of Cecily's illness, Jim's hope burned unceasing. He speaks with awe of the support of friends, and does not concede the fight for an instant. Even in his darkest days, he reminds us that we're all just human beings. Contrary to the movies, we do not suffer nobly and sometimes we're just plain petty. But it's okay, because if you love, really love someone, you can make the little stuff just not matter.
After Cecily's death, Jim is a man at Ground Zero of heartache, the smoke and ash of his dreams all around him. But as his brother-friend, Tom Allard reminds him, "Life's that way." Not in tones of fatalism or inevitability, but as a form of direction: Life's that way. Go. Find it. It's still out there.
And it is. Where Jim finds life is an ongoing saga of little, everyday miracles. Maddie's growth and development. Friends who help. Family who cares. Gifts of chance and gifts of love, deeds of caring and deeds of practicality, (a theater troupe helps Jim move into his and Cecily's new home) and random acts of kindness from so many loving hearts. Somewhere along the line, it dawned on me that Jim and Maddie are two of the most blessed people on earth.
Life's that way. It's not in a casket or a picture frame draped in black. Life's in the hearts of loved ones, in the eyes of Jim's little girl, in the words he wrote so faithfully, chronicling his journey through the Valley of Shadow. In this book, Jim Beaver unflinchingly bares his humanity for all of us to see, and from this, I take a very important lesson. We need not be so strong we never break. We need not be so brave we never weep. We need not aspire to such perfect selflessness that we must condemn our moments of human frailty.
If we must suffer, if we must grieve ... just remember. Life's that way - there, where love resides.
~ G. M. Atwater
http://www.lifesthatway.com/
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)