tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41506557449501095032023-10-25T08:36:56.549-07:00BREAKOUT NOVEL: A RACE TO THE FINISH<a href="https://jobarneywrites.com/">New books & updates at www.jobarneywrites.com</a>Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-89453297257736036972020-10-09T13:09:00.016-07:002020-10-19T11:18:53.804-07:00Website & blog updates<p style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px;">
New books and updates posted now at
<a href="https://jobarneywrites.com/">www.jobarneywrites.com</a> – check it
out!
</p>
<p style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px;">
You can follow Jo's new blog by subscribing
at
<a href="https://blog.jobarneywrites.com/"
><b>blog.jobarneywrites.com</b></a
> – subscribe through a WordPress account or get updates by email.
</p>
Michele Nearyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16756455393297552401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-72272847837183793312018-08-22T11:53:00.000-07:002018-08-22T11:53:22.419-07:00Waiting
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe it’s the
smoke graying the air and the hills lining our windows. Maybe it’s the muffled quietness
of the house, the streets outside, the subdued rooms in our apartment, so
silent that my husband is asleep with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">NY
Times</i> in his lap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bored, I sip my
third cup of coffee trying to focus on the To Do list in front of me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are in a
period of waiting. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are waiting for a doctor’s call to set a
surgery date; waiting for a piece of mail with news of a query sent to a
magazine; waiting for a friend’s call to ease our anxiety about her health;
waiting for a pill to lessen the pain in my knee; waiting for good news from a
son who is also waiting; waiting for a cooler moment to walk to the grocery for
food for tonight’s dinner; waiting for the TV show that is our habit each
evening and makes us believe, at least for a moment, in the media’s ability to
tell us today’s truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When we get a
surgery date for Don, if I get a response from the magazine, when my friend
calls, when I take a chance on walking to the store, after all this waiting, I
will begin to understand that waiting is never over. New waitings will arise. I
know this because of a call I got just now which ended one of the waitings I’ve
been living with: the publication of my next novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had plans for the
book’s arrival, a To Do list of promotions, readings, newsletter notes, a
launch with champagne, maybe. Then the call came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My publisher informed me that instead of a
firm launch date, she is going out of business—on the day she had set for my
book to be born.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That waiting is over. At first I felt
relieved. My To-Do list dissolved. I could. . . Maybe</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>even . . .Then she suggested I try
self-publishing. “You’ve done it before,” she reminded me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have given the idea some thought since her
call. My story is an okay one, one I’d like to see in print. I’m thinking that
maybe I can even change its title, the awful one given to it by the now-gone publisher.
Maybe, maybe. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So now I’m beginning
the wait for my book to be born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again. My
To Do list has changed, is growing complicated. I need to clean off my desk, get
organized, learn how to deal with the digitalized materials that I’ll be sent, leftovers
from my publisher’s emptied files. I will re-title the book, create a new
cover, plead for help from Createspace. Probably cry at least once.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I won’t have
time to notice the gray smoke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</style>Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-83654766058670098362018-07-01T11:45:00.000-07:002018-07-01T11:45:35.022-07:00THE IMPORTANCE OF MONOLITHS
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have been thinking a lot about memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m losing mine, it seems, like a lot of my
aged friends, but I’m realizing that it is short-term memories that go, not the
ones from seventy years ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood Sisters</i>,
had its beginning in a memory of a 1940’s house, the first house my parents
bought, a Cape Cod. No one in my family had ever been East and we were not sure
what that meant. Our Cape Cod was a two-bedroomed, unfinished attic and
basement, square house with one large plate window in the living room, surrounded
by twenty or more similar houses with plate glass windows. It was heaven, for
my mother, and a haven for the rest of us. My bedroom in the attic was blue, my
sister’s pink, and I smile now at the innocent growing up I accomplished that house.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This year has become an old-peoples’ story:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a sick spouse, an agitated wife, anxious hours
of waiting beside a bed. We needed a break, and we decided that we would go to the
coast, visit a town I knew well years ago, and of which we owned a part after we
married. A return to the past for both of us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everything was different. Our favorite restaurant as closed,
the old coffee shop was gone, the huge creamery a town away was handing out
free ice cream, causing massive highway congestion from which we turned back. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Exhausted, my husband said he needed a nap. I needed to walk
on the sand scattered with agates one more time to confirm a memory or two. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Was the cedar cabin on the hill, in the trees, my retreat
for a month, the place in which I found myself, part of me at least, after
losing a marriage, still there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t
remember the street. I only had a guess at how far up the steep roads above the
ocean it would be. I remembered patterned siding, a wooden walk to its front
door, a small stained glass window, trees hiding the rolling ocean below. I started
walking. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should have brought
my cane. I rested as few times on concrete curbs as I made my way up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ahead of me a man sauntered along with his dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked him if he knew of an unusual cedar
house in the woods. I explained that I had an old, fine memory of spending a
month recovering in it years before. He said he might know of a place like
that. And minutes later, the house appeared on the left side of the road. I hesitated. He took my arm, led me to the wooden walk. “No one’s here. Do
you want to go closer?” I touched the open gate and turned back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No, this is enough. It is just as I remember
it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I made my way down the hill to my next memory, the tunnel through
the promontory at the end of the beach. I knew what’s on the other side--monoliths
rising out of the sea. I had used a screwdriver to scrape off mussels at their
bases, working fast to beat the tide, carried them to the cedar house wrapped
in my sweatshirt. The tunnel was still there. Slippery rocks lined its dark path.
I took two steps and knew I’d never make it to the exit. Then a man asked if
I wanted help. “I just want to see one of the big rocks again,” I murmured. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He reached out a huge hand, took mine in one of his, his
lighted i-phone in the other, and said, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Let’s go.” As we chose our steps carefully, I told him I’d
written a novel about these rocks, this place. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The monoliths were still there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like memories. We turned back. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the entrance I found a waiting
husband, who smiled, asked, “Like it used to be?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes,” I told him, “somethings will never change.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I </div>
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</style>Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-64987735408459763832018-05-17T13:07:00.000-07:002018-05-17T13:07:35.288-07:00THE UNDERSIDE OF BEING A PUBLISHED AUTHOR
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">have a long morning
ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s either wash and fold the
laundry or sit here in front of my computer waiting for my publisher to send me
her decision about the title of my next book. I looked up <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood Sisters</i> and discovered that not one but two other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood Sisters</i> have been published in the
last year or so. Mine would be the third, triplets, too
many for folks to page through looking for a family saga rather than a murder mystery. I complained, but to late. That day I got the proof copy of MY <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood
Sisters </i>in the mail, great cover and 181 pages, to read and correct.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Which I did
immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stuck a little tab on a page
whenever I found an error, sometimes mine, most often in the typesetting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My book bristled with tabs when I finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next morning, I sent an email with the
page numbers and the errors to my publisher. That’s why I’m sitting here
twitching. I’m waiting for the next step in this process, if not a new title, at
least the receipt of the ARCs for the finished book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ARCs are the
e-version of the review copy, just about as perfect as it can be, to be once
more looked at, and then, in the next breath, sent to book reviewers who will
read the book and maybe write a critique to their blogs, to Amazon, to B&N,
etc. When this gets rolling, my book will be available on line and in paperback
so that I can carry copies to local bookstores and ask that they place them on
their shelves. And offer me a chance to sign, read, and. . .</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m
getting a headache thinking about all this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead of dwelling on the underside of being an author, I’m going to
send you a bit of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood Sisters,</i> or
whatever it will be called.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enjoy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">CHAPTER ONE</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I
close my eyes, my lips. Only my nostrils move as they take in what air is left.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soon</i>, I think. Plastic film stretches
taut against my cheeks. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Now</i>, I think.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A scream slices through soothing fog, forces my eyes
to open.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Mom!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom!” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I am rolled over. Cool air floods across my face. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Not now</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You were supposed to come home at dinner time.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I watch my son’s face crunch
into its usual confusion. “We got finished early. Why are you laying down on
the grass?” I feel his arm slip under my neck as I struggle to sit up. “Why did
you put on that grocery bag?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My head on his shoulder, I
smell the sweat his anxiety has stirred up. I find the strength to lie. “It was
just an accident.” Shreds of plastic dangle from my neck like a tired lei, red
duct tape cuts into my chin. No sense trying to tear off the tape. “Go inside
and get the kitchen scissors. Be careful.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jimmy releases me. I hear his
heavy feet on the porch steps. In a moment he’s back, the tool’s sharp ends
point at my throat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Slowly, Jimmy. Keep the
scissors away from me and make little cuts in the tape until we can tear this
off.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I watch as he fumbles with the
wrinkled plastic, brings the blades inches away from my skin. “Careful, Jimmy.”
I choke back a gurgle of unexpected laughter. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might want to die, but I don’t want to be
murdered.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I hear a click. Then another.
“I’m doing it, Mom!” I push the scissors away, grip at the tape on each side of
his snips and rip it in two. I am released from its chokehold. “You did good,
Jimmy.” I sit up, pick up the remnants of my failed plan, and hand the torn
plastic, the tape, the note to my son. “Put these in the garbage can, please,
while I fold up the blanket and then we’ll go inside and you can tell me about
work today.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nothing has changed. I am
still a mother of a damaged son, the wife of a damaged man, living a life empty
of hope.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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</style>Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-78952796242314067292018-04-28T18:08:00.000-07:002018-04-28T18:08:02.724-07:00BIRTHING A NOVEL
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thanks to those
of you who suggested a title for the story of the laurel hedge and the postwar
life in a housing development. I sent them along to my publisher, a nice person,
I’m sure, since she agreed to publish my books, and she conferred with whoever
shares her office and said they had come up with a title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She hoped I liked it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: red;">BLOOD
SISTERS</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I gasped and
then realized that she’d picked up on a scene where Patsy and Eleanor decide
they can be friends and share lives, once they had found their ways through the
hedge. They didn’t draw blood, but they did agree that they would have each
other’s back if the going got rough. “Blood sisters, like Laverne and Shirley,”
they say. If you don’t remember who Laverne and Shirley are, you are young and you
need to Google them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, we have a
title, I have edited my bio for the back of the book, the cover is unofficially
designed but cannot be revealed quite yet. And yes, I like it. A book is about
to be born.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So now, all this
author needs to do is to bring her almost -book, coming out in September, to the
attention of her friends. That’s why I'm sending emails to everyone, acquaintances, relatives,and anyone else who has landed on my contact list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> Two sendings, actually, because I got exhausted and quit midstream in the list.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">At this point, I
find I have a need to talk about writing with other writers or those who are
interested in writing. As an ex-English teacher, I have the tools of getting
the sentences on the screen, but what I’m lacking is the support that
comes from sharing ideas and words with like-minded folks, who like me, have thoughts that bud
half-formed, need to be pruned, poked at, fertilized, maybe even weeded, and of
course, admired as they develop.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">With that
awkward metaphor, I wonder if you, dear reader, are interested in talking about your desire
to write, sharing a some of your words, learning what others are writing about,
meeting occasionally in a casual writing group. I have a dining room table and
a coffee pot. We are on line and can operate that way too, minus the coffee. I’d love to hear what’s blooming in your quiet moments. Let me know, here or by email: jobarney@earthlink.net.</span></div>
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</style>Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-52871255056942586022018-04-09T13:19:00.001-07:002018-04-09T14:13:06.781-07:00Behind a Laurel HedgeOkay, I misspoke--or mis-wrote--or even worse, mis-forecast my future a while back. I said good bye to my readers, you folks who have been tuning in to <i>Breakout Novel: A Race.</i> . . on and off for several years. I know about you because Google Analytics (a ghostly Google entity) has let me know that even after I gave my last hurrah to this project, some of you kept tuning in.<br />
<br />
I'm back as a blogger. I'm also back as emerging novelist, not that I haven't been emerging for fifteen years or more until I decided to stop emerging. The reason is that my publisher has accepted a new story of mine, one that I wrote a year or so ago and gave up on because it didn't have an old lady in it. She will publish it in September, despite the fact that it doesn't fit the Henlit model. No old ladies wander its pages, just memories of an old lady. Me.<br />
<br />
The time is about l970; the place is the postwar housing development I grew up in and left in l956 for marriage and who knew what. The small bungalows were built for returning veterans and for<br />
shipyard workers like my father. Families had some money, probably for the first time in their lives. They could afford a new house, two bedrooms, one bath and yards big enough to build a garage in. They were beginning again, this time without war. The future looked good. The neighborhood filled working husbands and wives who had time to make friends over morning coffee klatches. <br />
<br />
But war continued, not THAT war, but the one in Korea, then Vietnam, then the Middle East. When the first settlers in the development moved on, their old homes filled with new surges of veterans' families glad to have a chance to begin again, to heal. Eleanor, old timer, white, in the neighborhood, meets her new neighbor, Patsy, black, through a hole in the overgrown laurel hedge that separates their houses. Different wars, different colors, similar struggles. Their lives entangle, like the limbs of the hedge between them.<br />
<br />
I really like this story. However, my publisher and I cannot agree on a title My idea, <i>You've Come to</i> <i>the Right Place </i>is a copyrighted song title. She says we can't use it. Do any of you have a suggestion? <br />
<br />
<br />Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-75100397657418156532017-11-12T18:31:00.000-08:002017-11-13T18:11:14.598-08:00Her Last Words<style>
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<i>THIS IS WHAT I MEANT WHEN I MENTIONED MY NEW TALENT FOR TYP0S IN THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS LAST BLOG. (My last words, promise)</i><br />
<br />
Lou died two days ago—Lou, the character in one of my first
novels based on good friends of mine, a funny friend, a quiet person who attracted
us to her because of her lack of pretension, her open heart, and her sense of
humor which at one time had us sorority sisters rolling across the sorority
living room she played EbbTide on the piano. We danced vertically until
we had to lay back breathless with laughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her real life name was Pat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The other three friends in a novel that had several titles and ended up
published as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Last Words</i> are also
eighty-two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are saddened and yet realizing
that we are walking, or shuffling, me with my three canes and bum knee, the
same path that Pat has meandered..</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The end of a long-term friendship like mine with Pat has forced
me to again to accept that I too will come to the end of the trail I’ve been following
since college, a trail with gorgeous views, difficult ascents, quiet shadows,
and surprises, like the trilliums Pat introduced me to fifty years ago and the
sweet salmon berries my sons handed to me along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m hoping that there will be a few trilliums
and salmon berries left as I poke forward, my cane leading the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I also know <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that I’ll be leaving a few items along the
trail, like the pioneers lightening their loads on their ways to Oregon</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most painful items are friends like Pat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not really left behind, just tucked into memories
that arise at quiet moments at night like the yellow evening primroses that
have delighted me on this journey. As I try to find sleep, I can still see her
cross and re-cross her skinny legs as she drags on a cigarette, her elbow on a
knee, in the Solarium, making us laugh. “You were saying,” she whispers through
a cloud of smoke.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also painful to drop along this trail, but inevitable, is my
dream of writing a break-out novel, of scratching some sort of meaningful mark
on the literary world, one that would make the days crouched here in front of my
computer, the hopeless investment of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my retirement
funds on advice and editing, the dismal dreams of a sale at book sign-ins and
readings, worth the effort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a while it
was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No longer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I join a small group of writers I admire, in saying, I’m
done. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It all was worth it, the dreams,
the disappointments, the email tension, but it isn’t any more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alice Munro and Philip Roth announced their
retirements recently. Others have just gone silent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew it was my time to move along with a lightened
load when I realized that I can no longer type one line of words without three
or more typos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two books I have
written in the past two years have been clear examples of how slow that makes
writing a couple hundred pages and are evidence of the wisdom of knowing when
to quit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve decided to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pause <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and enjoy the scenery along this part of the trail.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading these thoughts for the past years. I’ve enjoyed writing them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I'll think of you</span><br />
always as friends. JO</div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-16412837385540930962017-09-12T17:00:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.351-08:00What A Difference a Word Makes
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Well, I’ve just frozen my credit accounts, directed a check to the Red Cross, called a person
whom I don’t know to ask why she sent a letter that indicated my mother, age
102, has an insurance policy. (Turns out she does, protecting her cremation plan
from Medicaid) and then I delivered to a bank the monthly Mom/Nana checks from her
children and grandchildren to cover the fees in her adult foster home. After that I
sat for an hour waiting for Medicare or Medicaid or anyone to answer the
phone and tell me if she is eligible for funds to help her family
pay her bills. I finally gave up. I electronically deposited a small check from my publisher
before I was tempted to say What the hell and get a pedicure with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that this morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No writing, only a little reading during the long phone wait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No walk around the park to get my legs moving
in a normal, not alarming, way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At noon I called a
friend, a very good friend who is not feeling good these days, and wished her
well. Talking to her was the best part of my To Do list. The second-best part, an
hour later, was a self-reward glass of wine on the terrace and the realization that
this was the first time I’ve seen blue sky in two weeks. The wind has sifted; the smoke from Eagle Creek is headed in another direction. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The business part of this day had accumulated during the previous
week as I plowed through the hundreds of red lines on the manuscript to my editor
sent back, not with accolades but with notes: “This character’s name was
different on page 30;” “Did you really mean to skip what happened after he hit
her?” “The little I know about gonorhea doesn’t include bed care, and it’s
spelled differently,” and so on. I finished, depressed and exhausted by the eradication of red lines, and spent this morning trying to distract my depression by
frantic busy-ness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After giving silent thanks for the return of the blue
sky and my glass of wine, I went to my computer. My publisher had emailed: “Jo,
we love your writing; send the next one and we’ll be glad to look at it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No promises, of course, but the words, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We love your writing</i>, wiped out of any remnants of my despair. I celebrated
with another glass of wine and understood how words can change a day if not a
life. I hope I am able say something that powerful to someone else tomorrow. I’ll
start with, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I love how you. . .”</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-46684232413851281082017-08-16T21:05:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.383-08:00CHURNING
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It’s a small city park, built to meet the requirement of the
city’s quota of greenspace in an area that used to be filled with warehouses
and train tracks. I look down on the scene from my condo terrace four floors above
it, not from the fourteen floors I couldn’t afford, but okay, especially on
this day, where blue skies, white clouds, fill the air above the surrounding hills
instead of the smoke-gray fog we have dealt with for two weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s safe to breathe, these clouds signal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
So, I do, over a glass of dry Riesling
celebrating an avoidance of a $200 charge to replace the toilet paper holder in
my bathroom. My back aches, my mind frizzled by the conquering of an Allen wrench
one more time. At eighty- two, that’s about all I can conquer these days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Below me is the three-acre park; a green
oval snuggles in its middle, a playground blooms with racing children at one
edge. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the other end of the oval, an
empty dog park waits for customers. I’ve looked down on many community festivals rollicking
for a few days on that green grass--lively colored tents drawing people in to
taste homemade cider, local barbecue, yoga moves, a smiling summer parade of
pleasure seekers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
afternoon, sipping my award-wine, the scene below me is quiet. Fifteen or so small
active bodies, a cluster of parents and au pairs, one grandparent, keep watch as their
thrill-seeking children ascend and descend the play structure’s chains and
slides or spill shovels of sand on each other. The kids laugh, chase. The
adults talk or look down at their phones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>An oval path
wraps the park, a running-walking kind of concrete trail, 1/8<sup>th</sup> of a
mile-- just the right length for older folks to use in exercise routines. Dog
owners walk it, too, their four-legged friends enjoying and using the grass at
its edge. The empty dog park is enclosed by a fence that separates the big dogs
from the little ones, for some reason. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I lean over my terrace’s railing
and watch an electric wheel chair roll up to the gated entry to the children’s playground.
A German Shepherd leashed to the chair barks twice. A child, a girl by the
colors of her blouse, jumps off the back of the chair and runs to the locked gate
and turns the lever. The gate opens, and she moves through it, pushing aside a
two-year-old hoping to break out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
She closes the gate behind her. The
dog, rigid, alert, barks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once. Loud. A warning.
The girl heads toward the chains. Another bark, this time high-pitched, almost
frantic. She pauses, looks at the play structure. The dog brushes against the
gate, watching.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The girl turns, goes back through the gate and
climbs onto the blanketed mound in the chair. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wraps her arms around it, whispers
something. She returns to the playground. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dog, motionless, stands guard. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I am distracted by the non-moving
chair-person, the anxious dog, and when I look back toward the play structure, I
have lost the girl in the colored blouse. I cannot locate her on the chains,
the slide, the sand or the benches. I sip my wine, wait. Five minutes. I still
cannot find her. The dog and the chair remain at the gate. I remain at my railing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are we all searching?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sun is obscured by a cloud. In a gray shadow, I wonder has the girl
escaped from a bad situation? Has someone captured her and taken her away? Why
is her dog worried? Has the person in the chair fallen asleep and does not know
she is missing? Dead? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Should I do
something, hovering four stories above them?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The person in the chair does not
move. The dog ignores those going through the gate, his tail still.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Then a ray of sunlight
cuts through a meandering cloud and the park lightens and becomes the harmless
place it is supposed to be. A girl in a flowered blouse emerges laughing from a
bush tunnel. She runs through the gate, hugs the hump in the chair, and climbs
onto the passenger step behind the hump. The dog rises, stretches the leather leash as
he leads the two of them onto the oval path. They disappear into the dog park. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I almost had a book in this scene. I
think it’s still churning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-38067884923321875232017-07-12T18:09:00.001-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.371-08:00Letter to My Best Friend in the Eighth Grade<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
July 12, 2017</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hello, Mary!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Your letter arrived a day ago and I have read it with both a
sad kind of recognition of old age we each are living in, and a firm sense of
the joy of friendship, which we still enjoy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m reading about Karl and the cords of his oxygen machine winding
through the rooms and feeling sympathy for what you both are experiencing. And
a new kind of sisterhood with you, Mary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Don and I don’t have tubes stretching through the house, but we do have a
device that Don hates, which apparently, if he decides to use it, will allow
him to sleep soundly (even though it rattles all night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> ) </span>Ear plugs for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unlike you two, we haven’t lost weight, but we do not travel
well anymore. Don still drives, but unhappily, and we both inch our ways out of
car doors and wonder why we decided to go to where ever we are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have been in a very bad-walking period in
the past few months, lower back pain, dragging heels, and one day I looked at
myself as I shuffled my way past a reflecting window and thought, “My god, that’s
an old lady.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don gets dizzy and needs
to lean against passing buildings. Sometimes my back hurts so much I want to
sit down on the next curb. We hold hands to support each other, not to indicate
our close relationship, and we meander along the sidewalk in such a way that people
approaching us step aside to get out of our way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We just had a small argument over whether I should defrost
the pork chops in the freezer or whether he should walk down to Safeway and buy
new ones since he’s discovered we still have fuel in the barbecue and he’d like
to cook at least once this summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“They’ll
defrost fine,” I reassure him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“You always move in on what I’m doing,” he
answered.<br />
I acknowledged a need to control
our meals, remembering on past experience. "And besides, it’s a beautiful
day.” We could sit on the terrace, relax while the meat softened. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No." He will walk to Safeway. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You always buy five times what we need, and
impulse-buy in every aisle,“ I answered, remembering a recent blackening container
of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hummus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You always…”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“You always say that,“ he murmured,
going back to his <i>New York Times</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At 82, I’m too old to keep the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you always</i> argument going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
remember Mom and Dad using that phrase. I recall the chapter on family
counseling in my professional life that warned against it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder if our grave stone will read, “You
Always.” I need to do something.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I just did it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Do
whatever, honey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll be happy to eat
whatever you bring home.” I smiled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
smiled. We’re at peace, sort of. The sun’s still glowing on the terrace.<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll work on the phrasing of my next accusation
about the socks left like mating varmints under the bed, discovered this morning
by the rug-cleaner who almost sucked them up into his machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Living this long with another person is difficult, especially
when you have forgotten who, if anyone, is in charge. Tonight, he’s
cooking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tonight, I’m having a glass of
white wine. In the end, it all works out, they say.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mary, call me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
though we haven’t seen each other in years, we’ve gotten to this place together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to talk, like we did when we were thirteen. Jo</div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-26868571425073875872017-06-14T15:30:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.357-08:00Not Out of the Woods Yet
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve not contacted the dating sites for old people that I
thought might be the basis for my next novel, as I may have promised in the last
blog. Last week I was hacked, that is, my computer was hacked, and I decided I
didn’t care to share my interest in a new man with the Russians. The old one I
have is adequate enough although not grist lately for my writing mill. Since I’ve
heard no new stories of aging hands across the internet, my next inspiration
came when I noticed that when one is driving along a road lined with second and
third growth evergreen trees, all the same height like a field of corn because
they were planted all in the same month, except that sometimes one tree many
feet taller sticks up above<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son, the woodsy guy, explained that
when the first-growth trees were cut years ago, often one tree was left behind
to mark the boundary of the plot. This tree is called a Witness Tree. It is probably
over one hundred years old, still witnessing the world of second and third growths
below it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Think about this in terms of a novel:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a long-lived, tall old woman witnesses of the
activity of younger ones living around her, their desires to grow, the havoc of
natural disorders they endure, the destruction and scars left by mistakes and fate,
and finally, the thinning out and weakening of that generation. When a new crop
of seedlings is planted at her feet, our old woman settles back in her
comfortable rocker and watches the third growth take over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought I had my next old lady novel. I could imagine my straight,
tall Grandmother Gage, whom I knew only from a l930 photo, her gardening tools
at her side, as my protagonist. She watches a second growth in her family, and
I’m part of the third growth, my sons, already tall, are the fourth growth in
this metaphor. I’d call the book Witness Tree, of course.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I Googled “witness tree” to get to make sure the facts in
this nature-inspired story were mostly correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lucky I did. I discovered that a book with my title, based on a woman’s
fascination with a very old tree in New England, was published last year. That particular
tree witnessed the Civil War and later historical events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the cover, the author sits at the base of
the tree, patting its old bark. The book has very good reviews. Not only that,
but other east coast Witness Trees were mentioned, mostly deciduous, none of
them <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a tall Doug fir.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I told my son this disappointing news, he said I should
consider other trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had I ever heard
of Nurse Trees, fallen old, old logs on top of which new, huge trees grow from
the tiny seeds that have dropped on them? I Googled “Nurse tree,” saw photos. I
remembered, then, I had seen them in the Hoh Valley of the Olympic National
Park, roots tangling around the rotting trees that gave the new ones their
start. They are intriguing, beautiful. I got excited for a minute or two. Maybe?
But then I had trouble coming up with a plot involving a dead old woman with
babies growing out of her body. I don’t write paranormal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It scares me. Perhaps I’ll go back to old
ladies placing ads on the Internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-39160667975058982772017-04-26T16:47:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.374-08:00PLUGGING ALONG
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I spent a sleepless night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My midnight questions had to do with this blog. I’m already over two
weeks overdue getting my monthly ponderings out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, what’s happening? Have I run out of blog
gas?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Probably.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
written about my own misgivings about writing, my despair with being published,
my dreams of a couple of new books which just won’t get written. Why no ideas
now? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have looked at
other writer’s blogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They describe the use
of apostrophes, about the importance of the first sentence of a story, about
building a platform, about buying their new books of advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I, for the past five years, have offered nothing
of value to my readers ––only cries of frustration, anguish, a few visions of
the tulips on my terrace, and maybe one or two dismal observations on being an
old woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Advice, wisdom, words of
value? NO.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It may be time to say goodbye to my readers, whoever they
are, except for Steve, who always comments on my attempts to connect, and I am
so glad for him, but how long can he keep jacking me up, making feel as if I’m connecting
with someone?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I just read a free, unasked-for piece of advice about blogs that
informed me that I should be having a conversation with my readers, asking them
for help, for yesses and noes, for ideas, even.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I haven’t done any of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Only a few of my readers have felt it necessary to respond to my musings
or my questions, or my deep thoughtliness. Last night I decided to try one more
time to touch hands and minds with my readers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have had my evening white wine and I’m ready.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I write for older women, like myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My three books have done as well as can be
expected, kind of like in a hospital for books. I have two more, also centering
on older women and the new paths on which they hesitantly step. I haven’t found a
publisher who wants to risk accepting them. I haven’t the energy to self-publish them. (I’m
82, now, as you know, if you have been following for a while.) For my sense of well-being,
I need to get writing again and I need some advice—or inspiration—or a few new
characters to inspire me–– from you, so here goes:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A friend calls, also “elderly” although the adjective makes
us both sick to our stomachs. We start laughing as she tells about another
friend, Mabel, who decided to find love somewhere, even in the over-fifty dating
sites on the internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has had
several responses. Each leads her to believe that she may have to do this on
her own: church choir, mah jon table, or a world-wide trip on a ship with lots
of sea time and a few lonesome sailors. Or maybe, never, a loverless <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">maybe</i> where she and a few friends will
drink white wine and stream TV shows. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mabel’s stories of searching
for a man made us snort out loud. She turned down the thoughtful fellow who asked
her if she minded if his erection lasted three hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“V, you know.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
one with the greasy forehead and nose hair who stiffed her for their wine and
small plates, leaving her for the “boys” room, never to return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the shaky fellow who worried that if her
children lived in her house, would there be any privacy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I live in a group home,” he added, not revealing
what kind of group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One nice, seventy-year-old,
younger by a few years than Mabel, made it to her front hall, where he
apologized for not heading directly to her bedroom because he’d masturbated an
hour before and probably couldn’t function for a day or so. She hadn’t been
thinking about bed at that point, only whether he drank decaf.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, if you have read this far, I need your help. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without names, tell me about other older folks
who have tried to find love on the internet, because your stories will be in my
next novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My 102-year-old mother unwittingly
created the title when I asked how she was doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Just plugging along,” she answered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will continue this blog, and I’ll try to make it a two-way
conversation. I’ll ask for inspiration and you, if you want to, can answer in the
comment column—or call me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-59558535527494875732017-03-02T14:10:00.000-08:002017-11-13T12:56:35.392-08:00Turning to Dust? Or Is It Just a Too Long Winter?<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I just finished a wonderful,
sad book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i>, by Magda
Szabo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end, an old woman’s
long-cached hoard of furniture disintegrates at a touch--worms had been eating
at the wood for years.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">So, when a week of negative
events rolled out for me, all I could think was “Everything I touch is turning
to dust.” I love the book. I do not feel the same way about this week. It began
when I couldn’t make Word come up on my computer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was after I had tried to install an app
and got the message that my computer was too old for what I was trying to do. I
know about being too old, but I didn’t realize it also<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>happened to electronic devices like my Mac.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I called for help, and an accented,
but understandable, young man listened and advised me to change to the most
recent Mac version.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Free, Ma’am,” he
said. I punched a few keys, and sat for many minutes while the new thing,
Sierra Whatever, was being installed. The next day I sat for three hours while
another young man in the Philippines wandered around with his cursor in my
computer. Word came back but my desktop was a foreign territory. My folders
looked as if I had thrown them across the computer, willy-nilly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A list of “Help” items appeared for a short
while, and somehow I erased it. I okayed a bill for $69.00 for something I
cannot remember. I did not touch my Mac for a day, afraid what would crumble
next.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">In past weeks, in a spurt of
creative energy, I had ordered four new pillows for our gray sofa, all patterned
but all gray. I was going modern, mono-color, which was cheaper than buying a
new sofa. They arrived separately, and I tore open the Fed Ex bags one at a
time. Yes, they were all gray, but four different kinds of gray, none the right
gray. “I guess maybe buyjng from catalogues is not the thing to do for pillows,”
Don commented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“T-shirts, maybe, but not
gray pillows.” He said this as he walked out the door with the last bundle to be
returned to the Fed Ex store down the street. He was trying to be kind. I was
tearing up with frustration and he was close to laughing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">But he brought home a pizza,
half-baked, and said he’d heat it up. When the ten minutes were up, he opened the
oven door, tried to slip something under the pie, and swore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pizza had crumbled, like Szabos’ furniture,
and was stuck onto three different very hot surfaces. This morning I tried
using the cleaning button on the cheezy lumps in the oven, and fifteen minutes later the fire alarm
beeped loudly and continuously until we opened windows and doors, which is not
a good thing since we live in a condo with many neighbors within earshot and
smellshot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The smoke cleared. I went my
revived computer, and two rejections for a novel I had hopes for waited for me.
I don’t cry about rejections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I swear, a
habit I blame on the pizza destroyer. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The doors to the terrace were
still open and I went to close them, the furnace going crazy trying to get to
70 degrees in the 40-degree sunless afternoon that had crept in under the smoke.
My winter pots with their black, dissolving geraniums cringed at me from their
posts along the metal railing. But in each pot, spikes and flops of green
peeked out above dirt still wet from the latest rain storm. My bulbs, forgotten
for a year, hiding under dead geraniums and the roots of fermenting annuals, greeted
me, were telling me that I needed to take courage, stop swearing, smile. And to
send out more queries, like hopeful green leaves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Spring is coming,” they assured me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-14285967944532617632017-01-16T17:58:00.004-08:002017-11-13T12:56:35.346-08:00A WALK, THEN I SWEAR I'LL FINISH THIS THING!
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, I’ve done it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I believed I had finished the next book, even found a literary-sounding
title for it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Hedge</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even had a
Manhattan to celebrate last night before my husband and I settled in to try to
understand <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Young Pope</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’s another story. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This morning I decided to look over the short list of words
I had jotted down as I wrote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
inclined to use the same word over and over again,. (It feels so right in the
first draft) and I think this time the word will be “pull” as in “pull up a
chair, pull out a hanky, pull up into a driveway.” Not “Pull out a gun,” like
my last book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I bring the 220 perfect pages (I have been revising for a
week) to the screen and type “pull” on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Search in Document</i> function. The list that comes forward looks as
if it is suffering from a plague, orange spots, fifty or more scattered on, seems
like, every page. How many synonyms does “pull” have?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try a few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I can do this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At about the tenth
change, I realize I cannot just change all the “pulls” to another word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each has to be looked at in its verbal environment,
individually assessed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s snowing and icy outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have two frozen meals in the fridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
About, maybe at “pull” # 40, I hit a wrong button or fill in
the wrong space or something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of my “pulls”
and any others that still linger in the next hundred pages have been transformed
to “takes.” This change might make sense in some instances, does not in most
others, and the result is definitely as bad too many “pulls.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The plague has spread.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, four hours later, and not yet finished, I have gotten
rid of sixty out of sixrt-five “takes.” (It seems that in the original draft, I
had overused “take” as well as “pull”.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The only thing, beside the glass of white wine I’ve finally
poured, that makes me feel better about spending an entire day searching for
two words is a memory I have of my first novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wednesday Club</i>, a story of a counselor and her five counselees, as
they all struggle through divorce, abuse, bullying, and really bad Teachers
(and that’s only the counselor’s side of the story).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For some reason, I did the same search then
as I did today, when one word that kept cropping up no matter what was
happening on the page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Smile.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One hundred and ten times in three hundred pages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little kids and their counselors smile a lot,
if given the chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left a lot of “smiles”
in the manuscript (what other word fits?), and the book never got published,
even by me. But it’s my favorite story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe when the ice and snow melts and I recover from today’s session, I can
go out, get a little exercise, get the blood flowing once more, and I’ll look at and love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wednesday Club</i> one more time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-40425398103120067672016-12-16T11:34:00.000-08:002017-11-13T12:56:35.379-08:00MERRY CHRISTMAS AS USUAL!
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a Christmas scene outside my window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Snow. Sun. A lovely moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still feel sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tony Martin singing in the next room doesn’t
help either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve tried three times in the past week to find a perfect
Christmas tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew what I wanted—a
bare tree, not fake green anywhere, just sweet Led lights at the tips of its leafless branches,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my
twenty-year-old dried pomegranates swinging in all their maroon grandeur inside
the web of light. It would be small enough to not overwhelm our living room,
cheerful enough to greet the several sets of friends and family who would be
visiting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It did not exist at any of the local stores I visited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I resorted to online sites, clicking through
hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures of every kind of tree one could imagine,
even several which would stand up-side-down in a tree yoga pose for the season,
don’t ask me why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I found it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bare branches, little lights, just the right size,
almost the right price, but close enough.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The box came a week later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I love to decorate for Christmas and my husband doesn’t. But this tree
would be simple, easy, not involving the two large containers filled with gold
balls and chains and strings of lights stuffed at the bottom of the storage
cage in our condo’s lower floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only an
electric outlet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We would plug it in on Saturday night, and celebrate the season
and the tree with martinis after the arduous task of taking it out of its
box.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christmas carols floating around
us, olives floating in our glasses, I, butcher knife in hand, ripped open the
box, pulled out the packing, and found nestled in puce-green tissue, three
ugly, red,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>metal,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>containers<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baskets</i>, the tags said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Disaster,</i>
I said, wanting to either cry or say a very bad word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did both.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The red things are still in our bedroom waiting for the
Return Label promised a week ago so that I can send them back to wherever they
came from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I returned to the computer,
this time searched Amazon’s offerings, vaguely aware that they sold things
other than my books. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, yes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another tree, even better than the first,
cheaper, at least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ordered it and was
promised two-day delivery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That would
have been today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I moved furniture to
make room for it, found the old pomegranates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Got ready.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then it snowed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently even where this tree has been
waiting for us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An email informed me
late last night that its journey has been delayed because of bad weather. Sorry,
they said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t respond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One cannot swear at Mother Nature, can she?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I’m sitting at the window, watching bundles with legs
sliding their dogs in the park below me and an occasional car creep along shiny
asphalt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once I convince myself that
a tree does not a Christmas make, I’ll put on my puffy jacket and cap and head
out for the figs I need for figgy pudding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My family loves figgy pudding at Christmas, but we all know that pudding
does not make Christmas either. Love does, and we have lots of that, no matter
what the weather is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-39612964645511738952016-10-30T13:11:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.376-08:00ONCE AGAIN A SEARCH FOR A STORY<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve always known how my books will end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Begin with a character or two, get them in
trouble, get them out of trouble, or changed, and end with most everybody as
happy as flawed humans can be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I have
a bad guy, he’s dead or redeemed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know
my protagonist and antagonist well; I keep their biographies beside my computer
and sometimes these folks get a little angrier or sexier or more understanding
than I had planned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So do my real
friends as I get to know them better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, with this new story, I decided to “let the
characters lead me,” as some novelists claim happens and they have led me to
Google, dozens of times, because they keep developing in ways I hadn’t
anticipated. The book starts with a depressed woman failing at committing
suicide. Her son saves her. A new neighbor who is black becomes her friend, a
hedge between their houses becomes a metaphor, the husbands of the women are
war-damaged men, their children have/are problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I started, this began as a look at
depression, a symptom of a number of women, including myself at times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In order to follow my characters, every time I sit down (and
I’m at 40,000 words), I find myself going to Google. The setting is just after
the VietNam war ends. My Google searches are to determine if what I’m writing
is anachronistic, since I had young children at that time and did not do much
except go to their hockey games and warn them that TV would make them blind and
popular music deaf. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So far, my list of searches includes slang terms for Asians,
Elvis Presley, antibiotics, weapons used in the Korean and Viet Nam wars, disposable
diapers, autism, Down syndrome, grenade blasts, battle fatigue/shell
shock/PTSD, how the vas deferens are surgically, and by war injuries, severed,
(U tube has a video I couldn’t stop looking at), drug treatment centers, the VA
hospital,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dagwood, Laverne and Shirley
(which seems funny even forty years later),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Legos, DNA,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goodwill sheltered
workshops, group homes, state institution, pancreatic cancer, divorce in the
70’s, Ed Sullivan, and more, including hedge trimming. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If nothing else, I have been educated by this study of the Seventies,
a decade I don’t really remember. I have recovered some dim pieces of my past
and I now know when Presley died and the year our soldiers were airlifted out
of Saigon, the first use of DNA. My book is trying to get itself to a climax
and a conclusion, and Google and I are struggling to help it get there. As I
said, I still don’t know what that will be, but I’m enjoying the trip. Here is
the first paragraph of what I’m calling right now, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You’ve Come to the Right Place.”</i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-language: JA;">*</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "american typewriter condensed";">I<i>
close my eyes, my lips. Only my nostrils move as they take in what air is left.
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soon</span>, I think. Plastic film pulls
taut against my nose. <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Now</span>, I think. </i></span></div>
<i>
</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter condensed";">A
scream slices through the soothing fog, makes me open my eyes. “Mom!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom!” </span></i></div>
<i>
</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter condensed";">I
am rolled over. Cool air floods across my face. <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Not now</span>, I mourn. “You weren’t supposed to come home until five.”</span></i></div>
<i>
</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter condensed";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I watch my son’s face crunch into
its usual confusion. “We finished early. Why are you lying down on the grass?” I
feel his arm slip under my neck as I struggle to sit up. “Why did you put on
this grocery bag?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></div>
<i>
</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter condensed";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My head on his shoulder, I smell the
sweat his anxiety has stirred up.</span></i><span style="font-family: "american typewriter condensed"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-4044520183234609292016-10-18T12:54:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.381-08:00A DARK TIME
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I haven’t posted for a while. It seemed a little egocentric
to discuss my small joys and pains, affecting no one but me, when the whole
country is in pain with few joys in which to take take solace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even spent one complete day in bed, reading
what is probably a very funny book and feeling a spark or two of gratitude to
the author for his attempts to pull me out of the doldrums.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I got up at dinnertime, turned on the
news and discovered I was still slogging in them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do we all feel this way during this election month?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That our country is in for a tough few years
no matter who wins—and not necessarily because of who wins, but because of our
inability listen to each other?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the story I’m trying to write now, because I have a
character who is an alcoholic, I’ve talked with people personally involved in
AA and have researched Alcoholic Anonymous programs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My character is a damaged drunk, a poor
husband, a negligent father , an irresponsible worker, and he likes it that
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AA advises that not until a
disaster strikes him will he realize that he has hit rock bottom and there’s
nowhere else to go––except, possibly, up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may be the point at which Jack, my character, will seek
help, from a rehab facility, from a counselor, and from his wife if she is
still around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My plots evolve as I write, and often times
have redemptive endings, so I’m hopeful about Jack’s future. If he turns his
life around, it will be because he <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">decides</b>
to make difficult choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one can
force him to change, not even his weeping wife. I do not know how Jack’s story
will end.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just as I, and we, do not know what will happen next in our
stymied, ineffective, damaged federal government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps we as a people have to hit bottom
before we decide to make choices that will make change possible. I’m not talking
about political parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m talking
about our learning to listen, as individuals, to the geographical,
philosophical, ethnic, rich and poor, young and old strangers who make up our
country–and to paraphrase a familiar set of words, who can make America strong
again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-30522908104658899102016-08-10T18:01:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.363-08:00Andy Warhol and Me<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the many pieces of advice I’ve gotten from my diverse
probes into the internet in search of a magic way to sell my books was that I
needed to send out press releases.I researched the definition of a press release and asked my
patient husband if he remembered ever receiving them as a journalist. He said
he was sure he had. He was also sure they had ended up on his wastebasket. That
was forty years ago, before email, he added.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe it is different these days.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But after emailing twenty cleverly-written, intriguingly
hooked, illustrated (with my best picture and the covers of my books) messages,
and getting no response, not even a rejection email back, I decided two
things:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t know shit about writing
press releases, and even if I did, I was in competition for attention in print with
the other ten thousand self-published writers in the state. Junk folders in newspaper
computers and neighborhood publications must be stuffed to overflowing with our
pathetic attempts to get someone to notice us.
Unknown writers rarely get even an inch of printed space anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Misery loves company, but thinking that didn’t make me feel
better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I began my next novel. I tried to write about someone young,
a romance maybe, they are selling right now, but the page remained blank for days. However, when I uncovered
sixty-year old Eleanor with an impossible grand daughter in my subconscious, the
words started coming. My computer was glad. So was I.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then the phone call came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Someone whose name I didn’t catch, wanted to interview me. For a piece
in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oregonian</i>. About? “Your
writing,” he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I saw your press
release. I’ll come to your place.” I made sure my husband would be here when he
came, just to make sure I was safe. I used to teach Stranger Danger to middle
schoolers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was apparent from his questions that he had created his
own hook:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an 81- year -old woman who
writes about sex. He seemed somewhat pervertedly impressed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I write about older women. Older women are human beings,
they think human things, among them they remember sex, wonder about it. Do it.
Is this so weird?” I asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He left. A
photographer came. She assured me that my writer was well-respected, even won
Pulitzer once. Not to worry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Four weeks later, the article and the video appeared. They
made me look terrific. I loved not only the writing, but the many emails from
friends congratulating me on continuing to write novels about “old ladies” who
discover that they still are in charge of their lives when they might have
given up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like me, perhaps, an old lady
unfamiliar with press releases.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do not write with fame and fortune as my goals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s good because fortune has eluded me. However,
my fifteen minutes of fame,<i> ala</i> Andy Warhol, felt very good. And Eleanor is coming along. All's well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2016/07/breathless_writer.html</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-74862739197096838182016-06-22T15:56:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.406-08:00THE POWER IN A WINK
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes the oddest small happenings trigger a chain of
memories. Not always a long chain, but in this case, potent, despite the
seventy years it stretches across. This kind of summer-wondering has led me to
a profound question: What ever happened to the wink? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have learned that I sometimes have a balance problem when
I’m carrying a bag of groceries and I have a scar to remind me. So yesterday,
groceries slung over an arm and new orthopedic insoles forced me to walk
cautiously as I made my way home from Safeway. The sun was shining, and I might
have been smiling (or gritting my teeth a little) as I went along. Ahead of me
a small grizzled black man stood on one edge of the sidewalk looking my way. He
was old, like me. A little humped, but smiling big, he met <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my eyes. His glance shimmered with good cheer.
I smiled big back at him. I couldn’t hear his words as he winked, but I smiled
even bigger and was forty years younger, my steps light and sure. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My first wink came in the sixth grade. Innocent in those days,
we gained boyfriends through snickering rumors. The latest rumor was that
Erwin, who sat two seats in front of me, liked me. “Did he say so?” I asked the
friend who had whispered the news. Erwin had never even glanced as me. He was
okay, though, except for his Day-Glo socks, and he was never mean on the
playground like some of the boys. When our strict teacher relaxed his patrol of
the room, looking for something in his closet, Erwin turned around, grinned and
winked at me, confirming the rumor. I got the message, but I never did get used
to his bright orange socks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
read that in the Wodabbe tribe in the Niger area, a man who wants to have sex
with a girl will wink at her. If the girl continues to look at him, he will
slightly move his lip corner, showing the direction to his selected bush. However,
Wikipedia</span> adds that in other cultures, a wink can express approval and
appreciation. That’s the kind of wink I am referring to. No bushes involved.<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Other winks are only twitches in my memory, but I’ll never
forget the one in Lucca. I was walking along a street, my husband in language
school, I foraging in English for our dinner. Using my fingers I had learned to
say eight slices of prosciutto and to point at the melons and I had the prerequisite
string bag hanging on my arm. A block or so from the market, three or four old men
stood talking and smoking. They seemed to stand a little straighter as I
approached. They smiled. I smiled back. When I passed the quieted group, the
one closest to me winked and, his voice, low and Italian, whispered “Bella.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Bella,” after seventy-two years of aging, bad knees, sun
spots. I have taken courage from that wink and that word for almost ten years. And
today, a gentle man winked at me and I felt the same surge of joy. If males
understood the power of a wink, they’d learn to lower one eyelid, smile, murmur
one sweet word. No telling what would happen after that, but I think it would
be good.</div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-74426761685485335442016-06-05T15:38:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.404-08:00FAME, LANA TURNER AND ME<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a minute I felt a little like Lana Turner must have felt
as she sipped her Coke at a Hollywood drugstore counter and heard the guy
sitting next to her say, “Would you like to be in movies?” I’m guessing she
turned, smiled brightly, said “Yes,” as he took her by the hand and led her away
to fame.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I sat in a wicker chair, so dry-mouthed I had to force my
lips to open. No drugstore, only the Pacific mumbling below us. “I like the
sound of your story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will you send me the
manuscript?” I licked my mouth, tried to curve it into a smile. “Yes.” The NY
agent walked me to the door and into a life of fame. But first I had to find a
glass of wine or at least a Coke so that I could celebrate, tell the news to my
friend. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We had spent the day at a writers’ workshop listening to a speaker
tell us how we should write our next novels. I fidgeted. I couldn’t relate. I
had finished my next novel and I had paid the fee to pitch it to the guest
agent. I waited two sweat-palmed hours for my fifteen minutes with her and with destiny.
“Send me the manuscript,” made the year of writing, the long workshop, the wet hands, the dry
mouth all worth while.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I went over each page one more time, incorporated some of
the changes one of my Beta readers had suggested, and created a title. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Ro</i>ad, I decided late one night.
Done. Punched “Send” and flung my book into the world. Then I waited for fame––or at least a response from the pleasant young woman who had nodded
through my halting synopsis in that ocean-fringed room. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We get three hundred queries a week,” she had warned. Then
she added, “We are a small agency. We bring out about four or five books a
year.” For days I tried not to think of the odds. I went for walks, drank a
little too much white wine, was so crabby that my husband escaped regularly to
the bakery down the street for a little peace and his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the tenth day, I opened my emails and her name appeared.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was not a standard everyday rejection. She referred to
the great weekend at the beach. She had read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Road</i>, liked it, but. . .<span style="color: #18376a; mso-fareast-language: JA;"> “But I’m afraid that I just didn’t get that
breathless sense of connection while reading your pages, and that’s the kind of
enthusiasm that I need to summon when I decide to go to bat for a book.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #18376a; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Fair
enough. I know about that breathless sense of connection. I’ve experienced it
in books I’ve read and loved, the ones I wished I’d written. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Souls at Night</i> by Kent Haruf, the
first half of Penelope Lively’s bio <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dancing
Fish and Ammonites</i>, come to mind. These stories are my kind of stories,
about the lives of older women. Perhaps I’d do better with an agent over sixty
instead of a smiling twenty-something.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #18376a; mso-fareast-language: JA;">But I’m questioning whether I’m brave enough to risk further attempts to find an agent. Or tenacious
enough for more rewrites of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Road</i>,
breathless connections in mind. When I decide, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>have my summer’s work laid out. </span></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-67743023233783076402016-05-02T09:58:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.396-08:00IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BE WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN*<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The online article on marketing one’s novel stated that authors
had to do it themselves unless they’d written another <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades of Grey,</i> and it advised in twenty-nine helpful hints
what I should do to sell my books. “A million books are published a year. You
must find and sell to your audience.” My problem is that my audience, while
growing, may not be reading so much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where could I find people who want to read about older women?
A conversation with my husband, invalided with an injury from falling off a
rowing machine, sobered us. Maybe we should think of a retirement residence, he
said. “They have safe exercise rooms and you wouldn’t have to cook every night.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I wouldn’t have to cook very night if you cooked on Tuesday
and Thursdays.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the idea stuck, not
about cooking, but about where my audience might be found</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I called the social directors of ten local retirement residences.
My goal was to encourage others my age to write. ”It has meant so much to me,”
I said. I didn’t say that I’d mention a few of my books along with how to buy
them. I set up four meetings</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I must have misread my first gig’s blurb in the telephone
book. Its sign read Assisted Living Residence, not Retirement Residence. My audience,
about twenty people, was led in, quiet, attentive, mostly deaf, some asleep,
except for the two who had had <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yearnings
to write about their Second World War experiences. I cheered them on. One
fellow who nodded to me all through my talk, came up afterward, his hands
gesturing and his eyes eager. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Live one</i>,
I thought. He told me several very elaborate jokes. Then his nose started
bleeding. I lent him a tissue and waved goodbye, mid-joke. The best part of the
hour was that twenty folks showed up, and that I had thought to tuck a Kleenex
in my purse.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The numbers declined. Eight at the second talk, unnerving
because my presentation was scheduled in an auditorium that seated fifty, but
good because two of the women had been writers, one of them very angry about a
rejection she had received a few years back. I offered my sympathy. It felt
good to commiserate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the third residence, I sat for long minutes in an empty
room. Then a couple in their nineties wheeled through the door and asked where
everyone was. The two, rich with world experiences, English accents, and a
marriage that sounded similar to mine, disagreed on who remembered what. She
read an essay she had written long before, her memories of internment in WWII Shanghai.
I left , but I said I’d be back. I want to know more, the way a good book makes me feel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At my last stop, the audience I had dreamed of circled
around my chair: seven people who wanted to write. My personal mantra* brought
smiles and many minutes of conversation. As I walked out of the building, a novel
prodded at me. About a writers’ group made up of old ladies with dreams.</div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-8229454575218670612016-03-31T11:34:00.000-07:002017-11-13T12:56:35.413-08:00ALL IN A DAY'S, WEEK'S, MONTH'S WORK<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve just cut to pieces, reassembled, re-read and edited my
next novel which still doesn’t have a title and if things go as they have been,
perhaps not even a life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What happened to this story that I had created at my computer and
in bed at my usual wake-up hour of 3:00 a.m. is that I couldn’t decide at first
from which viewpoint I’d tell the story: the fifteen-year-old girl who was in
the middle of escaping an abusive relationship at a homeless camp under a local
viaduct or that of the seventy-year-old childless woman at whose door the girl
appears one night saying, “Hello, Grandma.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An early morning inspiration decreed that I’d tell this
story from both viewpoints, alternate the chapters, and one would be told in
present tense, the other in past tense. A kind of challenge to me, the writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All went pretty well. I had to keep track of
what was happening two chapters before the one I was writing and somehow keep the
timeline the same for each viewpoint version. When the girl opens the door and
sees her abuser sitting on the porch (her POV), the old lady will hear the
conversation and call the police (her POV), one chapter later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I somehow did this for two hundred pages. Then I read what I
had written. The opening chapter had no hook, the story had an arc but it arced
weakly in two places and the tension I had hoped for dissipated into ho- hum. The
story might have been interesting, but the telling wasn’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I did what I’ve done before with at least one other first
draft. I cut it into pieces and laid them out on our bed. I pushed the pieces
around, moving the third chapter (one that caught even my attention) to the opening
chapter of the book, and combined the two arcs into one big arc involving both
my characters. Then I gathered up the results of the efforts on the bed,
stapled the piles all together, and realized when I looked them<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>over that I’d lost what I wanted to establish
when I started, POV and tenses. Plus, the story read as if I’d put it together
in a Sunbeam Mix Master</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have bandaged this sad wounded story with edits and re-writes
for more than two weeks now. It’s not healed yet. I’m almost sure its condition
is terminal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometime this early morning I remembered a book written by
William Styron, I believe, describing his bout with depression during the
writing of a novel that just wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what he tried. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He, or a writer like him, sat one evening, silent,
at a table as guests talked and laughed around him. Suddenly, the writer got up
from the table, went into his study, picked up his manuscript, grabbed a shovel
in the back hall, went outside, dug a hole, and buried the sucker in the
vegetable garden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess my novel is lucky I live in a condo with four small pots
of geraniums on the terrace and no shovel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-50664206024261956452016-02-24T12:31:00.000-08:002017-11-13T12:56:35.386-08:00It's Been a Quiet, Reading, Thinking Month, a Waiting Week
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
It makes sense that my books’
protagonists are older women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I‘m
interested in older women because I am one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I also read about women who have survived the traumas of being young and
are now facing the uncertainties of age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So, I expected the three books I chose last month at Powell’s to have been
written by writers like me. Old ladies. Not true. And all three books have
found permanent spots in my bookcase. I’ll read them again and again for
pleasure and for contemplation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dancing Fish and Ammonites</i>, a memoir by
Penelope Lively, describes being eighty so truthfully that I had to refrain
from reading the first few chapters aloud to my sleeping husband. “You get used
to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that surprises me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You get used to diminishment, to a body that
is stalled, an impediment?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, yes,
you do…” Reading it, I felt I’d found a sister, one who writes about being old
a lot better than I do. Not an <b>old </b>lady, a<b> vital </b>one.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-eYAqmkIqLOopYZh8PlWPGpDgRdxphSxK041HYiKc7sornFLkj88rrEgEBNe5msAw7x3Yib4TGwD41oF_IsZo7MdpQq5oJyYnPDhAs1waMXoaxxcTHj4kNcfbOFewjRO5tIvIv7FVoZ7Z/s1600/613EhmOXA0L._AA160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-eYAqmkIqLOopYZh8PlWPGpDgRdxphSxK041HYiKc7sornFLkj88rrEgEBNe5msAw7x3Yib4TGwD41oF_IsZo7MdpQq5oJyYnPDhAs1waMXoaxxcTHj4kNcfbOFewjRO5tIvIv7FVoZ7Z/s1600/613EhmOXA0L._AA160_.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Souls at Night</i>, by Kent Haruf, tells
of a brave seventy-year-old woman who visits her widower neighbor and asks him
to sleep with her. He does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a
wonderful story of love, family, and the realities of being alone, aging. Haruf
wrote this in his seventies, his last book, published posthumously. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijYPo8U7eySNoYgJzKu-wRBJezOkizwHE3yPvntryrxl0Wti2xyNE5WGDIbBhMY6dn5KcoUNdL-HdbUEri0sSkPi308gvwW_p_-i7XNjYQmYejTpO2wGbWMcjLQeY9VDTaSNvBp4D3ZHVz/s1600/418qIjdmtWL._AA160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijYPo8U7eySNoYgJzKu-wRBJezOkizwHE3yPvntryrxl0Wti2xyNE5WGDIbBhMY6dn5KcoUNdL-HdbUEri0sSkPi308gvwW_p_-i7XNjYQmYejTpO2wGbWMcjLQeY9VDTaSNvBp4D3ZHVz/s1600/418qIjdmtWL._AA160_.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Rabih Alameddine
tells the story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Unnecessary Woman</i>,
who lives alone, unfriended, in an apartment in Beirut as war circles around
her workroom where she translates classic translations into Arabic and then
places her manuscripts in boxes in a back room to be read by no one. I had to
look up Alameddine’s bio to confirm that this gorgeously written, sensitive
description of an isolated old woman, was written by a man.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZbT-th1c5XJ8I622m5nkfW5BPeyuOjhi-dKh7PCOm6Gh7PUVyI_B_B2Y7O7FVGXQn_hRbAYJCTjhLQr7M9zaZXo9NwhAXylvc2b9ZCI8YXQP8dQA40vl83yXEh32cHAxOggf0vdWklkHL/s1600/51VJ2zHPybL._AA160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZbT-th1c5XJ8I622m5nkfW5BPeyuOjhi-dKh7PCOm6Gh7PUVyI_B_B2Y7O7FVGXQn_hRbAYJCTjhLQr7M9zaZXo9NwhAXylvc2b9ZCI8YXQP8dQA40vl83yXEh32cHAxOggf0vdWklkHL/s1600/51VJ2zHPybL._AA160_.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Symbol;"> When I tried to place book covers on this post, my computer started writing in Greek. Really. I believe this was punishment for stealing images from Amazon. I'm trying again. As one of my books states, "It's never too late to. . ." whatever, even become a thief. And I'm thinking that it's time to get back to the rewrite of the untitled manuscript in front of me––right after I attempt this little diversive crime . And finish Elizabeth Strout's new novel lying open on my chair.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-26515571032034216892016-02-02T16:32:00.000-08:002017-11-13T12:56:35.354-08:00A WRENCHING EXPERIENCE
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
As the final pages of the first
draft of my next novel fell out of the printer and were punch-holed into
submission, it became time for me to tackle the next challenge: the recalcitrant
toilet paper holder problem.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Its
downward slant seemed designed on purpose to send the roll of toilet paper off
itself and onto the floor, out of the reach of the seated roll-ee. Dangerous. I
found an Allen wrench, the place where a tiny screw was not screwing well, and
I crawled along the foot of the toilet bowl towards the culprit .</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
After few minutes of
fiddling with the wrench, I got good at “righty tighty, lefty loosie,” and I
worked the screw loose. About the size of a comma, it, now liberated, dropped
to the floor behind the toilet, not once but thrice, and I was forced, on my
knees, to feel my way to its resting places. Each time, the wrench slid under
the rug or the counter or under an aching knee. I gave up, limped away.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
that evening, over a glass of wine and his latest manuscript, I coerced my carpenter/writer
buddy to help me. It would be an Even Steven deal. I was willing to assist him
in placing his commas. He would get my toilet paper thingy level. He agreed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I noted that he straddled the toilet, rather
than crawling behind it as I did. His approach, aggressive, male, however, led
to him dropping the screw, the wrench, and then, with a deep inhale, a mutter
of the same words I’d used. The bar went on slumping. My friend wondered out
loud if commas were worth the effort.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Would
super glue work?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Haven’t
a clue. Any Malbec left?” he asked and we went on to commas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
This evening,
undaunted, I discovered a tube of super glue in our weird-tubes cabinet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I can
do this</i>, I told myself. I straddled the toilet, loosened the screw, dropped
it but didn’t swear, squeezed the glue into the hole and when I found it, onto
the screw, wrenched it one more time, and wiped the overflow off with my
fingers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Within minutes the
holder was solidly parallel to the floor, no longer a threat to the rolls that
trusted it. And within the same minutes my fingers had become a mass of bone
and flesh, no longer fingers. No longer possible were attempts to poke at keys
on my computer. No longer did the corkscrew fit into my paw. No longer could I
avoid noticing the irony of believing that one can be good at anything she
tries, when her fingers are glued together. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
I still believe. But sometimes it takes
time, a very hot shower and a bottle-opening husband to affirm that belief.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4150655744950109503.post-69720967019373635192016-01-25T10:26:00.001-08:002017-11-13T12:56:35.399-08:00A Friend Writes!<img alt="otrrelease.jpg" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-7841" height="200" src="https://chattycathiechatters.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/otrrelease.jpg" width="189" />
<br />
<h1 style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>ON THE REBOUND</i> IS NOW AVAILABLE!</b></h1>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Author:</b> Jim Cangany
<b>Release Day:</b> January 26, 2016
<b>Genre:</b> Sports Romance
<b>Publisher:</b> Penner Publishing</div>
<hr />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
SYNOPSIS</h2>
<i><img alt="FINAL_AMAZON-APPLE-EBOOK-300x464" class=" wp-image-7886 alignright" height="331" src="https://chattycathiechatters.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/final_amazon-apple-ebook-300x464.jpg" width="214" />On The Rebound is a sweet, sports romance set on the campus of fictional Irving University. It's a story about second chances and features a women's college basketball team. Here's a teaser for you.</i>
<i>After he's caught in a grade fixing scandal, men’s college basketball coach Greg Miller is thrown a lifeline when an old friend offers him a job with the small-school Irving University women’s team.</i>
<i>Academic Advisor Ciara Monaghan knows first-hand the heartbreak and havoc a cheating man can wreak. She wants nothing more than to protect the University's reputation by seeing to it that Greg’s stay at Irving is short.</i>
<i>The last thing either of them wants is the attraction they can’t deny. Can a struggling member of the basketball team bring them together to see how wonderful a second chance at life, and love, can be?</i>
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ABOUT JIM CANGANY</h2>
<img alt="JimPhoto" class=" wp-image-5139 alignleft" height="248" src="https://chattycathiechatters.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/jimphoto.jpg?w=200" width="165" />Jim Cangany was forty pages into his first manuscript when he realized it was a romance. He went with it and has great joy writing sweet, contemporary love stories. A lover of things that go fast, when Jim’s not writing, you can probably find him checking into the latest from IndyCar or pro bike racing. He lives in Indianapolis with his saint of a wife Nancy, his sons Seamus and Aidan, and the princess of the house, kitty cat Maria.
Visit him: <a href="http://jimcangany.com/" target="_blank">Website</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Jim-Cangany-Author-193385657452953/" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/JimCangany" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7134508.Jim_Cangany" target="_blank">Goodreads</a> or <a href="http://jimcanganyauthor.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumbler</a>
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BUY NOW AT YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER!</h2>
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Jo Barneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723254874014314390noreply@blogger.com1