Better To Reign in Hell

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So, I couldn’t get on my blogger account this morning. I went to my login page and it wanted me to re-enter all of my information and I didn’t remember which of my plethora of passwords I was using for it. So I did the “forgot my password” routine, received the email, had to enter the warped letters for security, received the next email, link took me to a page to enter my new password. But nothing happened. Spin spin spin.

I tried it again. Nothing. Went back to blogger page, tried a few potential passwords. Nope. Tried my “forgot my password” routine again. Spin spin spin. Only this time the page won’t load at all – I can’t try to enter new passwords because the spaces won’t even come up.

With my amazing reasoning abilities, I deduce that Something Is Wrong with Blogspot.

The logical thing to do is wait, come back later and see if they’ve sorted it out. After all, nothing on my end has changed since I logged on last night. But. I. Just. Can’t. Do. It.

I have to keep rechecking the pages, reclicking the links, to once again discover that nothing is working. Spin spin spin.

There’s an old saw that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, variously attributed to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin or whoever else seems a likely source of pithy remarks. (Wikiquote says it’s actually from Rita Mae Brown – but that doesn’t give the same caché.) It’s one of those bits of common wisdom that gets circulated and recirculated like a salient bit of gossip at a cocktail party. It arouses our interest because we recognize our own behavior in it. In fact, if you Google that exact phrase, you’ll get in the neighborhood of 17,000 hits.

The prospect of insanity worries us all. And somehow, the user/computer relationship exacerbates the fear. Perhaps because, often, on the computer if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you DO get different results. Perhaps this indicates that the universe is not a fundamentally rational place at all.

So, I broke my little spin spin spin cycle and opened Word to write this out. Akin to working on paper – heaven forfend – should the power go out.

At least I feel good about having a different result.

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was

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I’ve been tracking my time the last few days. Renee Knowles got me going on it when she gave her Career Bootcamp workshop at CRW the other day. Her point was that, if you’re not getting everything done that you want to — like drafting that bestseller — then one approach is to track your time and see where it’s going.

Now, my schedule is pretty tight: I get up much earlier than I like; I go work out; I hit this blog (new activity); write for another hour and a half or two. Then I shower up, practice harp, work my day job. At night I have meetings sometimes or I hang with David, which I believe in as relationship investment time. So I think I have my time pretty well accounted for. But I thought it would be interesting to check.

I made a spreadsheet (it’s the Virgo in me — can’t resist a spreadsheet) with my day listed in 15 minute increments, from 5:30 am to 11 pm. When my mom asked Sunday evening what I’d done that day, I sent her my 15 minute blow by blow list. Every mother should have such a responsive daughter. After she asked why on earth I’d done this, she remarked, “right off, I’d say less computer time.”

No shocker there. Though I defended it as an unusually heavy computer day because I’d been at the workshop the day before and had lots of catch-up to do. But even tracking my work day yesterday, which admittedly involves being on the computer all day, a huge chunk of my day is spent on emailing, instant messaging and looking stuff up on the internet. No, not surfing so much as deliberately going from link to link, reading the daily stuff on my list.

Okay, so there’s networking which, just like relationship investment, takes time. No way around that. And even Renee, like many others before her, exhorts reading blogs if you’re trying to market work as a writer.

The upshot is: what’s dropping out is my reading time. Even though I’m in the middle of a fascinating book (Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer) and had time scheduled to read it, that time decreased, wedged up against my looming bed time hour, and I spent more time on the computer. Working on stuff to market my work, so I can sell books to people who have less time to read them.

Huh.

Swiftly Flow the Days

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Nineteen years ago yesterday, my high school sweetheart got married. No, not to me, though I was there. It seems like all of us were there – a million years ago and just yesterday. We came together from our post-high school mini-diaspora, convening on a cruise ship leaving Miami. Three of us delayed by snow in Denver — a blizzard much like today’s — barely made it. We were so relieved that we beelined for the bar on the top deck and hit the frou-frou drinks, wondering where everyone else was. Turns out everyone else was getting the safety demonstration. We three were forever after designated the unicorns, destined for extinction, should the boat go down.

Kevin and Linda were the first among our group to marry. The first to have a baby — who’s now a senior in high school herself, planning to launch out to the east coast come fall, ivy league schools willing.

Nothing about this is new. The world turns, times change. Turn around and you’re four, turn around and you’re grown. Sunrise, sunset, seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers. So many songs about it. The last from Fiddler on the Roof, which we staged in high school, Kev playing Tevye. Now Gwen Stefani sings “If I Were a Rich Girl,” in a ragga remix.

There are rumors of a reunion tour for us: a cruise next January to celebrate 20 years. Unless the ivy league schools come through with acceptances only and no scholarships. And who knows who would make it? Our diaspora is entrenched now, our lives have traveled so far down the diverging pathways that we haven’t communicated in years.

But, hey, the unicorns made it.

(Happy anniversary, Kev & Linda)

To E-Pub or Not to Be?

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I didn’t post yesterday because I was on short time. After the workout, I grabbed breakfast, cleaned-up and headed down to Brighton, Colorado for the monthly meeting of the Colorado Romance Writers (CRW). I met up with Liz Pelletier in Ft. Collins and we drove the rest of the way together. Meeting Liz in person was great fun, since we’d only ever talked online, via the FFP loop (the Futuristic, Fantasy & Paranormal interest group of RWA).

The CRW folks welcomed me graciously and with great enthusiasm. Renee Hagar, who writes as Renee Knowles, and both writes and is an editor for Wild Rose Press, gave a workshop. Wild Rose Press is interesting because it’s an e-publisher. I confirmed with Renee that they have no bricks and mortar offices. The editors work out of their homes, books are published either electronically or via a print-on-demand service, probably through Amazon.

Wild Rose Press is an up and coming publisher for romance, which continues to be the hottest selling genre. And they have my full manuscript right now. It makes a writer like me feel torn. If Wild Rose Press will have me, how could I turn them down? Yet, electronic publishing still carries a stigma. RWA will not allow ebooks for consideration in the industry’s most prestigous award, the Rita — the romance equivalent of the Hugo or the Nebula. RWA’s stance is that the writer is not valued enough in e-publishing. When few writers make more than $1,000 on an e-book, RWA has a point. Those are hardly professional wages. To provide a contrast, ten years ago Redbook magazine paid me $3,000 for one essay, which was right about the “industry standard rate” of $1 per word.

E-publishing is clearly the future. As the big publishing houses tighten their belts — Houghton Mifflin Harcourt editors were recently told not to acquire new books — as printing materials grow more expensive and less acceptable in the Green Era, shipping and distribution grow more problematic, e-publishing is the answer to so many problems. E-book readers are becoming popular and affordable. And a younger generation is coming up without the resistance so many of us feel to reading electrons on a screen. I think there’s no denying that e-books will eventually lose their stigma and will be the primary, if not exclusive medium, for reading in the future.

And yet, the advent of the internet has clearly devalued the written word. Blogs such as this one, where I write for free, abound. Anyone can pay to have a book published. E-publishers can take risks on new authors because it costs them little investment — a double-edge sword for the writing world as it’s easier for a new author to get published and yet, it implies that the standards have lowered.

And the writing itself? Is inarguably cheaper. Never mind a writer being paid $1/word. From an e-publisher, she may be getting less than 50 cents per book. Which, of course, is better than no book at all.

What a brave new world, and what shall we make of it?

Everyone Is Named Nancy

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My mom lives in Tucson half the year now. Snowbirds. As cliche as retirees from New York and New Jersey heading to Florida, she’s one of those Colorado dwellers who heads to Arizona for the winter. And part of the fall. And pretty much all of the spring. In fact, it’s really a 65/35 proposition at this point. They’re reliably informed by their Tucson neighbors that they’ll gradually be spending so much more time in the desert home that they’ll go full-time and sell the mountain one.

This is the third winter she and her new husband have spent down there. “New” being a relative term, since they married two years ago this May. They’ve had to consciously build friendships in Tucson, since their lifelong social circles were in Denver. So they invite neighbors for dinner, sign up for charities and various events — sifting through the people they meet looking for compatible couples and potential friends.

Through a strange coincidence, several of the gals in the couples they like most are named Nancy. There’s Jack & Nancy, Bill & Nancy, Jim & Nancy, John & Nancy. It’s so pervasive that, if they can’t remember the name of the distaff side of one of couples — which can happen, lots of new people, on top of the lifetime of names already filed away in their “friends” memory banks — they simply refer to her as “Nancy.” And they’re usually right.

They’ve never mentioned if there’s a standard man’s name they use. But it makes me wonder if, someday, when David and I are living in some senescent community, will we call all the women Jennifer?

The Treadmill

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Long a symbol of going nowhere, the treadmill seems a creature of tedium rather than agent of chaos that can unseat you. This is the treadmill’s secret weapon. It camoflages itself as the slow and steady, the reliable pace at a given incline. It lulls you with its consistency. Waits for that moment, the brief break of inattention to attack.

This morning, David was running next to me on the treadmill at a steady pace, when he snagged his hand in the cord running from his MP3 player to his headphones. The MP3 fell, hit the belt, which zinged the little box like a bullet. I heard the SNAP crack through my own music and looked over to meet the equally startled gaze of the guy on the elliptical on the other side of David. Between us, David also looked around for his player, and promptly zinged off the back of the treadmill himself.

I’d done it once, too. One of the first times I went to the rec center, back when my lack of fitness and excess body fat confined me to walking the treadmill. I walked slowly, steadily. It was pretty dull, really. When I decided to pull off my sweatshirt, I didn’t give it a second thought. Of course I can keep walking at a normal pace, especially one regulated for me, while pulling off a shirt.

But as soon as my eyes were muffled — I zinged off the end of the treadmill. Nearly into the laps of some innocent people walking around the track. I flailed a bit, still caught in my sweatshirt. A bit confused about what happened, but still pretty much on my feet. Behind me, the treadmill softly chuckled to itself.

I suppose it’s a lesson in attention. That even the most dull and reliable features of our lives can suddenly throw us to the side in a heap. Perhaps it’s the most dull and reliable that bear the most watching. Those things that become so familiar we cease to pay attention to them. We get comfortable, trust them to pace along at exactly the settings we’ve previously designated and turn our attention to other things.

One of these days, we’ll know better.

High Wind Warning

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Forecast for Laramie Valley
High Wind Warning in effect until midnight MST tonight…
Mostly cloudy. Strong winds. Highs around 40. West winds 35 to 55 mph with gusts to 70 mph. Chance of precipitation 20 percent.

January in Wyoming is for wind. In point of fact, every season here is for wind. I have a Wyoming Wind Festival shirt showing the dates January 1 – December 31.

But it’s worse in January. Maybe because January is so dark and bleak anyway. Little fresh snow, the old ices over, turning grayer and browner as the wind howls over it. Much of our snow here actually sublimates — that’s when a solid skips the liquid phase and goes straight to the third phase of existence, gas. Our snow goes from condensed ice, skips being water and evaporates into the dry air. Sweeping away and leaving us dry, cold and windblown.

You wake to the train-roar of it in the morning, listen to it howl around the chimney in the evening. And on the weather they remind you “high wind warning.” Thanks for the update. But the tractor-trailer rigs upended on the interstate remind us that not everyone respects the wind. The snow-mobile trailer dumped on its side, the contents scattered and abandoned, bear testament. Advise no light trailers. Motorists planning to travel along Interstate 80 between Rawlins and the Summit driving lightweight or high profile vehicles may want to delay travel until later in the week.

See? they tell us. The wind won’t always blow like this.

What’s funny is, when the wind blows really hard like this, our electronic doorbell rings. Don’t ask me why — it’s a mystery of electronics and physics. Static charge? Ions building up? I have no idea. But as I wrote this, the doorbell rang, so I went to disconnect it. Once it starts, it’ll repeat indefinitely. But there was a young woman at the door — very unusual in general, let alone this early in the morning.

She carried a baby in a sling against her breast and a bag of phone books, the wind howling at her back. She asked if this was the site of the company I work for, which it is. My home office is our Wyoming branch. She took my name in exchange for the phone book and declined stepping into the vestibule to note it down.

“Not a very nice day to be doing this,” I said to her. The baby’s dark eyes watched me in solemn wonder. Tucked up against her mother’s breast, under a partially zipped parka, the wind wasn’t tugging at her at all.

“It’s not so bad!” the mother replied cheerfully. And she bounced down the steps, the wind tugging her hair with wild glee.