Hola, ReaderFriends! With a busy week staring me down, a book that needs writing, and an hour of nap time in which to write, I'm going to work on the book rather than blogging this week. Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you next week. To make it up to you, here's one of my favorite videos: The Sad Cat Diary. You've probably seen it, but it's totes worth a re-watch :)
Have I mentioned that I'm a geek? Well, I am, and I was reminded of that fact this morning, listening to the radio while building towers of random crap for Wallaby to knock over (rinse, repeat). Said the morning show hostess on the radio: So, there's a new study out today, sponsored by (insert name of undershirt company-Hanes? Fruit of the Loom? I forget). It says that men make more money when they tuck in their shirts at work. Men who tuck make an average of 77k, whereas men who don't tuck make an average of 60k. (Insert semi-witty banter with the male cohost, who is apparently a non-tucker.) Me: Bzzzzzzt! Wallaby: ??? Me: That's a penalty buzzer on the play. You see, I'll bet you a box of Cheerios that they just compared salaries between tuckers and non-tuckers, and didn't control for profession … Even though I think we can both agree that certain higher-paid professions would, as a matter of course, expect one to tuck in one's shirt, whereas certain less well-paid professions would come with no such expectation. So there's an inherent bias in their calculation. Wallaby: (knocks over a tower composed of six blocks, a rubber ducky, and three giant LEGOs) Me: My thoughts exactly. To give credit where it's due, the hostess mentioned that this was, indeed, the case, and thus the findings of the study should be viewed with some caution. (Okay, she didn't use exactly those words, but that was the gist.) But it got me thinking about other situations where the media lies with so-called statistics. "Our #1 best selling sofa!" Which isn't terribly impressive if, say, their #2 most popular sofa sold ten units last year and this one sold twice that. "100% customer satisfaction!" How, exactly, are you measuring this? "99% accurate" Do a Google search on how home pregnancy tests define this term. It's an eye-opener! Which isn't to say that we're not guilty of the same shenanigans in the writing world … My last Mustang Ridge book was a top five Amazon best seller! (For new releases Western Fiction, that is.) If you make the niche small enough, eventually everything is a bestseller. Which really takes the oomph out of the word, don't you think? Is there a solution? I'm not sure. I don't know if there's even a problem. But I do know that most of us out here on the other end of some of these claims aren't as dumb as the claim-ers are hoping. And then they wonder why a smart consumer doesn't take everything they're told at face value!
Back when I was in my early twenties, working as a landscaper (long story), I sprained my wrist. Upon arriving at the restaurant for a night out with friends, sporting a wrist brace, I got the expected "Uh, oh. What did you do?" Me: I was pushing a wheelbarrow when the tire hit a rock and the handles twisted. I had a choice between hanging on or dumping a full load of dirt in the client's swimming pool. So. (I lifted my bandaged wrist.) The pool stayed clean. Friend: Aw, come on. I was hoping for a better story than that. Like you got bucked off or lost your grip on a bar stool or something. Me: Sorry. This has, of course, been followed in more recent years with more interesting stories, like The Time Jess Dislocated Her Elbow, Put It Back In Its Socket, And Walked Back To Civilization and The Time Jess Went Over Her Handlebars And The Medic Was Wearing Fairy Wings (it was a Halloween bike ride). This past week, however, I encountered a most excellent version of the "How I wrecked myself" story, and (for a change) it wasn't mine. To whit: Arizona (looking at his phone): What's a clavicle? Me: Collarbone. Why? Arizona: GW (his best bud of many years) effed his up and needs surgery. Me: Ouch! What did he do, go over the handlebars? (Phone makes beeping incoming-text noises.) Arizona (reads): He hit a pack of javalinas. Me: A what of who? Arizona: They're a kind of wild peccary, forty or fifty pounds each. I guess he was riding downhill in the dark and didn't see them in time. Me: ?? Later, there was some gearhead discussion of how GW's suspension had performed while rolling over several of said creatures. Apparently, it absorbed the first couple of bumps, but after that, the javalinas won. (And all ran off into the bushes.) It was agreed that mountain bike suspensions generally aren't engineered for javalina. (And for Chrissakes, autocorrect, I still don't mean 'javelins'!) I can just imagine the conversation if the question were to arise: Bike designer 1: Javalina? Really? Who does that? Bike designer 2: Some guy in Arizona. But maybe we should run some tests, see if we could change the dampening on the shock to absorb bumps like that. BD1: Test? With what? A bunch of hams? BD2: Two words: Pig Roast. BD1: I'm in! The moral? Sometimes truth really IS stranger than fiction.
The other day, Arizona, Wallaby and I were doing the weekly grocery shopping. Or, rather, Arizona and I were doing the weekly shopping, whilst octopus-baby (who is now big enough to ride in the cart as long as it's got a working seatbelt) did his best to put the whole world in his mouth. Although we were cruelly depriving him of his current favorite snacks (mulch, leaves, cats …), he was willing to be placated by, well, pretty much anything he could get his hands on. The yuckier the better. [I'm not proud. Yesterday, he got hold of the kitty litter scoop. #parentaloversightfail] Anyway, in the salty-fat aisle (you know, chips and nuts), I went for the usual location of Snyder's Butter Snap pretzels, and stalled, confused by the lack of the familiar brown-and-yellow bags. Thinking the store had done one of those 'we're going to move everything around so you can't find shit' shuffles (which are supposedly meant to get consumers out of their ruts and spur them to try something new, but I'm pretty sure are really some diabolical population-level IQ test that I constantly fail), I stepped back and looked around. Arizona pointed. "They're right there." I turned back to the usual spot. Hesitated. "There. You just had your hand on them." Here, I will note that his tone could mean only one thing: we needed to hit the McD's at the front of the store for a small fry, stat. Because for some reason, the combination of hunger and watching me dither over a food choice at the grocery store is one of the very few things guaranteed to put an edge in my husband's voice. That, and the traffic in downtown DC. But I digress. Back to the pretzels--As I looked again, I realized that Snyders had redone the packaging of our beloved butter snaps, from brown-and-yellow to … baby poop? I mean, really. It's a drab, yucky mustard color that somehow does a Predator-worthy camouflage move to blend into the shelves like nothing I've ever seen. Or not seen, as the case may be. Later (after his fries), Arizona said, "It's like that color that's in every house on every DIY renovation show ever. The one that people immediately say 'Ugh. We'll have to repaint.'" Which makes me think about branding, and how it can sometimes be a good idea to shuffle things around, while other times it just confuses the crap out of people, makes them feel lost or (worse) means they can't find your work because it doesn't look anything like they're expecting it to. And, yeah, we're not talking about pretzels anymore, or not entirely. But that's all I'm saying about my current MIP (mess-in-progress, not to be confused with a WIP--work in progress--because the latter is, yanno, actually working). Instead, I'm going to take my pretzels in the camo-drab bag, and get back to my mess. Oh, and the toilet paper? Arizona and I are both thumbs down on the new Scott tubeless TP. We're good earthlings and all, and didn't figure we'd miss those little cardboard beauties. But after half a package of fumbling at a time when, well, one doesn't really want to have to fumble, I'm ready to give this experiment a 'fail.' We don't use a TP dispenser (otherwise known as a kid-and-kitten toy), so for us this particular brand expansion is a no-go. But your mileage may vary!
A while back, I remember blogging (not sure if it was here or elsewhere) about how I sometimes still found myself thinking "When I grow up, I'm going to …", as if being forty-mmrmph and a business owner wasn't sufficient to make me a grownup. But some days (most days?) it didn't feel like it was. At the time, I was willing to say I didn't need to grow up, that I liked still feeling like I had a ton to learn and lots still left to change. So it's interesting to realize that it's been a while since I last thought "When I grow up …" Maybe it was the coffee table. This spring ushered in Arizona's and my first married furniture purchase (aside from our giant bed, known as The Big Soft, that is), when we upgraded our beat-to-hell sofa for a new one, and traded the ottoman for an honest-to-goodness coffee table called Bob's Enormous Coffee Table. (PSA, be careful when Googling 'bob's enormous'. I'm just saying.) Though it seems like the obvious answer, I don't think it was having Wallaby that did it. I mean, sure, I'm making decisions for another human being, but how grown up can one be when the day's entertainment leans heavily on making noises like "phhhhbbbbllllttttt" against said human being's tummy, hiding behind a dish towel, and eating Cheerios with one's fingers? All I know is this past weekend, as I manned up and said goodbye to my beloved Single Girl car in lieu of a new Familymobile, although it felt like a very grown up thing to do--it being my first new car purchase and Arizona's first not-handed-down-from-a-family-member car--I didn't find myself thinking "When I grow up …"
Does that mean I've officially grown up? Hells, no. I've decided it means that I'm no longer worried about whether I'm a grownup, a perpetual twelve-year-old who still thinks fart jokes are funny, or both at the same time. I am who I am, and I'm doing a pretty good job of it. This week, anyway …
This past weekend, Wallaby, his grandma (J-ma) and I went to the Connecticut Romance Writers' fabulous conference. Before, my conference itinerary used to sound a whole lot like: Hang out in the coffee shop and write; go to workshops; give talks; meet with agent; meet with editor; hang out in the bar and socialize. Sleep a few hours when and where convenient; maybe hit the gym or go for a walk outside. Now, they're more like: Whee! It's five a.m. and we're someplace new! Let's investigate! Whee! Let's zoom up and down the really long, nicely carpeted hallway and back! Zzzzzzzzz Whee! Breakfast! Let's wear some eggs! Then hug mommy in her conference clothes! And after that, there are high-level negotiations regarding when and where Wallaby and the Boobs will rendezvous in and amongst me giving talks, going to workshops, etc., and he and J-ma go off for their day's adventures. Then I take a breath, and shuffle my identity back to WriterJess for a few hours, before we rinse and repeat the above. Which, really, is lovely. But life then doesn't look much like life now, and vice versa. And neither does my writing. Where before, I could tune out the universe and write for eight or ten hours, or longer, these days I get two precious hours in the morning before Arizona starts working, and another couple after Wallaby goes to bed (if I can stay awake that long). Which has led to some self-kicking in recent months--you know, that inner monolog that goes something like: I used to write fast. I should have this book done by now. I can't believe I'm not even halfway done. This is crap. No, really, it's crap. Why am I even bothering? Ugh. I need to throw out a chapter. That took me two f*cking weeks to write. I suck. To say that I wasn't really feeling the love of being at a writers' convention this past weekend would be a gross understatement of my angst. But I was scheduled to give a couple of workshops and see one of my best writer-pals (shout out, Virginia Kantra!!) along with one of my best gal-pals (shout out Gail Chianese!!) and many other awesome friends, so I couldn't very well bail. So I went. And to say I felt out-of-step with the crowd would be putting it mildly, at least when it came to talking about writing stuff. I don't have my next book scheduled. I'm not really ready to talk about the Trainwreck-In-Progress. I'm writing … sort of … but … Ugh. Then came breakfast on Saturday. I usually sneak out on keynotes, but the speaker was (fabulous mystery writer and Emmy-winning reporter) Hank Phillipi Ryan, who I've known since she first started writing, so I stuck around. I know she gives good talk. I hadn't expected her to give me an AHA. Followed by a DUH. (Not that she said something stupid, but that what she said made me give myself a big old dope slap.) Because she talked about Not Giving Up. About how she gets to a point in her writing where she just wants to chuck the whole project in the electronic garbage. About how Stephen King's wife had to rescue Carrie from the trash. About how the book is rarely (never?) as bad as we think it is in that moment, and we should just keep pushing through. And you know what? Ninety percent of the audience members were nodding. Which was right about when I reminded myself (as I had been doing all week, but this time it stuck) that I always hate my book when it's about halfway done, and it's never as bad as I think it is. Or if it is, I always figure out how to fix it. (And, as they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming it.) Damned if I didn't come out of that breakfast, not just wearing some of my scrambled eggs (thanks, kiddo), but feeling like I was back in the tribe, no longer alone on a tiny little island in the middle of the Sea of What The Hell Happens Next? And knowing that no matter what, I'm not going to give up.
