The Gamble of Life

Life is unpredictable. And at my age, it's also a gamble. I find myself at a stage where I'm having to make decisions now about my future security. It can be something as simple as deciding whether to take a weekend trip. Or whether to stick away the money a trip would cost for later years. I have one decade to save for retirement, and I haven't done much in that direction so far. I waffle back and forth between having it all now, taking trips while I'm still young enough to enjoy them, or pinching my pennies and socking it away for my elderly years.

Here's the rub: What if my elderly years don't come? Who knows what will happen between now and then? My mother socked it away, she took trips, too, but she invested her money and had all the retirement programs that came with her job. She did all the essentials financial advisers tell you to do, and what happened? She died at 64. I think about Mother a lot when I start thinking about financial security. She was disappointed that she had worked so many years and would never even collect on her Social Security. She mentioned it to me, in her last weeks before lung cancer finally took her. She said it was the thing that made her the angriest about dying, all that careful planning, basically for nothing.

My SO also has a sort of laissez-faire philosophy about retirement, and he's closer to it than I am. But he has also had his cancer-death scare, and feels reluctant to deny himself anything because of it. He says when you're lying there, the radiation mask over your face, you make all sorts of resolutions about things you're going to do, if you can just make it through one more week of treatment, if you can just beat the disease. And I do see the senselessness of saving for the future if that future never comes.

We had friends over last night. This is the friend who went into a coma after knee surgery. He's so much improved, but his ordeal is clearly marked on his face. And he still has moments of confusion. He's not ready to resume life as it was, not quite yet. He, to me, is the poster child for the slender thread we walk in life.

I bought a greenhouse kit. It's supposed to arrived via FedEx the middle of next week. My sweetheart is dreading the prospect, but he's so patient with me and my tangents. He seems to always want to make me happy. I can't believe how I lucked out finding such an affectionate and caring man. The gamble of life again, I guess. Anyway, I need someplace to put all my established foliage plants, and it will be fun to start seeds there, maybe take cuttings again. I enjoy growing things from cuttings, and you need a greenhouse to do it properly. Daddy's excited about it. I think the greenhouse will give him an excuse to come over more, and that will be a good thing, too.

Think I've finished the children's book. A friend whose an elementary school teacher read it and really bragged on how much she loved the character, said she would definitely read it to her class when it's published. She seemed so certain it would be. She made a suggestion for the ending, said it was a little too abrupt, and so I have worked on it and think I've made it better. I might be ready to submit it to a publisher now. Don't know why that's scaring me a little. Got to man up, as they say. Be brave. I've been down this road before, after all. It's just been awhile.

Onward ....

Writing for Children

My SO read the children's book yesterday, after I had -- I thought -- polished it as much as I could. Everybody needs a first reader and he was interested in what I had done. He knew the story, I've talked about it enough. In fact, I got the idea for it on a trip we took to West Texas back at the beginning of the year. So he read it, I felt, with care. He must've gone through it twice, said it was cute, but he had some problems with the ending. I could tell he didn't "get" some of the things I had tried to make clear, which is always an indication that I haven't done my job well enough. He also raised some questions I assumed a reader would understand from context. So it was a productive read and discussion, and I will incorporate some of the ideas we threw around. Also, I'll see if I can find an effective and succinct way to fix some of the problems, but I have decided to let it sit awhile yet. We're going to the Coast tomorrow, and so it feels like a good time to put the manuscript back in the cooker. When we return in a couple of days, I'll pick it back up and work on it once again.

This is a book for young (preschool) readers, a picture book, and I have so many ideas for illustrations. I wish I could draw. I understand that the publisher most generally choses the illustrator, so I probably won't get much input. But I wonder if the writer is ever consulted for ideas. If the thing is accepted for publication, it will be so much fun to see what an illustrator might do with the story.

One of the things I have read over and over is that a children's picture book should be 32 pages, and that every page should lend itself to an illustration. So yesterday I broke the paragraphs down into logical pages. It easily came to 32, and I think there are tons of illustration opportunities. I'm not usually so enthusiastic about things I've written, but I have really enjoyed this writing project much more than anything I've done in a long while. I'm anxious to finish it and send it off, just to see what might happen. I don't think I'll be crushed if it doesn't find a publisher quickly. I feel like I'm learning something new and I'm liking that a whole lot. After all, I wrote dozens of short stories before I had one accepted, and four novels before LILY found a home.

Meanwhile, the weather has warmed way up again. We're in the upper 70s today and it's muggy. There's a hurricane in the Gulf -- on November 9th! I think that's what has made our weather screwy. I am really ready for winter.

We met the man who owns the high-fence ranch behind us today. He was over at the only other (empty) house around here. The SO saw his pickup and thought we should go check to see who was over there. Turns out the man who owns the high fenced ranch, named Miller, also owns the land that house sits on, and the acerage adjoining our place on the south side as well. We talked to Mrs Miller for most of an hour, found out a lot about the history of ownership on this place, which also was at one time a part of the larger ranch surrounding us. It was surveyed out in the 1990s for the ranch foreman and his family. That man raised dogs on the side, and also shortly after moving in, divorced his wife. Apparently, he got custody of his two sons, and they lived here, the three of them, for a few years, then moved to another ranch, leaving this place to sit vacant. So it's no wonder the place was in such a terrible mess when we took possession. We still have lots of things to do.

The SO planted a new tree this afternoon -- like we need another tree -- but this is a Golden Rain Tree, a sapling from a large tree that he dug up over at his land a few miles from here. I like these trees, too, and we have plenty of oaks. Don't need another. Hopefully, we can keep the lunch bunch from devouring it before it can get a good start.

Onward ....

The Measure of Success

Well, the good news is, I finally put the children's book onto the computer. I write my first drafts in longhand, always have. So by the time my work gets put on the computer, it's already been through two drafts. So now, I have a second draft of the children's book, and it's not nearly as awful as I had imagined it to be. I think there is great value in letting a piece of writing sit. Or cook. Giving it a time out, so to speak.

This book was written right after a trip to West Texas at the beginning of the year. It's been cooking now for about six months. When I first wrote it down, I really had no idea what I was doing. I had never, at least not on purpose, written a children's book. I have had many ideas for one, just never actually tackled the beast. As soon as I had the first handwritten draft, I understood how difficult it is to write a children's book. It's a mistake to think that because it's a short piece it's easy. Short writing is often the hardest kind. In the beginning I was so unhappy with the thing, I just took the pages and stuck them inside the laptop case and forgot about them.

And then I started reading about writing children's books. I made a list of books to read, even though I've done a lot of that already, having raised two children myself, both of whom loved to hear me read books. When reviewing books for the newspaper, I would often get assigned the children's books that came in, so I have done a bit of reading for children. But still, you can never educate yourself too much. So I have a list of books to read, and will do that as soon as we return from the trip we're about to go on to Montana.

I'm actually excited about this book, now that it's gone through it's second draft. There's still work to be done, but I decided Sunday, after I had worked on it all afternoon, that I would not reread it again until we're back from the mountains next week. And yet, I find myself wondering if I still have a few contacts that matter at a couple of publishing houses I've dealt with -- and wondering how to find out about that, too. Things change so quickly, and have changed dramatically since I've had a book published -- any book. But that's putting the cart before the horse, something I've preached against in past workshops. Get the thing written, a final draft, then worry about a publisher.

Why is it that writers, many writers anyway, don't consider any kind of work that doesn't result in a published book to be "real writing?" This puzzles me. It's as if the only measure of success is to have something between hard covers. I am constantly asked when I'm going to have another book published. Answering that question is one of the reason I've sequestered myself away from people and places where books and writing are commonly discussed. Most of the people around me now don't really think of me as a writer, at least not a writer of books, and that's OK. That's actually much more comfortable for me. I feel less pressured, and the outside pressure has been one of the things keeping my writing at bay. And anyway, isn't there real value in just writing for pleasure, maybe for posterity, or even just for yourself?

We are still not done with the roofers. I cannot believe how long it has taken them to re-roof this house. Yesterday I made a list of things they had destroyed along with replacement costs. I intend to present the list to the contractor when he asks for his final payment.

Onward ....