Rejection!

Oh, dear, oh, dear, I lost a Follower.

What that means is: there's some cyberspace way people can sign up to be Followers of particular blogs. I guess that means subscribers.

On my blog "dashboard," I can see how many this blog has.

Well, today I saw that this blog is DOWN ONE Follower.

I was stung.

Now this is ridiculous. I myself jump all over the web, I play the cyberfield without a second thought. Also, after 37 years as a freelance writer, I can get a book rejection and not even blink.

But here's the difference: this is new. I never lost a Follower before. It almost reminds me of the early shocks of my first manuscript rejections. Of not being asked to dance in eighth grade.

I'm glad I know from experience that rejection can become simply part of the process, without rocking me.

In the meantime, Follower, where are you? Is it something I said?







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About Creative Genius

A delightful discovery, recommended by friend Sabine: the TED site and its speaker series...and the talk on "A different way to think about creative genius" by Elizabeth Gilbert, the wildly successful author of, among others, Eat, Pray, Love, three verbs whose order I regularly forget.

TED is a conference that aims to present "the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)." I never heard of it before today and I now feel I've hit pure cyberchocolate.

Gilbert's talk is about the burden of fear and responsibility that a lot of artists and writers carry because the culture no longer believes in muses and daemons, but puts the whole weight of performance on the poor struggling individual. She considers this situation "odious...and dangerous" and is very funny on the subject.

She compares her situation of writing another book at forty with her greatest success likely behind her to the difficulty of starting out as a writer, when the people you run into all say: aren't you terrified...?

She describes herself as a writer "as a mule," she just keeps on pulling.

The idea is: instead of having to be a genius, just do your job of writing, painting, or whatever; and welcome whatever inexplicable assistance shows up in the form of the genius that can occasionally visit any of us.

Go listen to her on the site. She makes this very relieving idea charmingly hilarious and companionable.




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Jump in Soul First

"The authentic self is the soul made visible."

Sarah Ban Breathnach

It does take courage to make one's soul visible. But why cover it up with something much less interesting and alive?



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The Kick of Giving

Just read a new book that could radically change the world if enough people paid attention. Could certainly do good things for the world of any one reader.

Kickback by Robert Urbanowski is a philosophical cousin of a book I co-authored, The Healing Power of Doing Good. Note Kickback's subtitle: "A remarkable new law reveals how you get what you want by putting others first."

It's short, persuasive, inspiring, and practical. Shows exactly how to live by this principle.

Here are a couple tidbits I particularly like:

"Successful people purposefully contribute to others in order to help people accomplish their objectives...In this way, contributors literally surround themselves with success. They can do this because they don't see other people as threats--they see other people as resources. This is true of very high achievers."

"We do not defeat evil--we displace evil by doing good."

"...The common element keeping us from contributing is fear. We are afraid that if we contribute, someone else will benefit more than us, we won't get a fair return for our efforts....However, what we fail to realize is that by failing to contribute all we can, we fail to become the person we can be."


If we do our "networking" with an eye toward how to help, we might even stimulate the economy.








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The Facebook 25: A Self-Portrait

On Facebook, which I find baffling, I've been "tagged" to tell 25 random facts about myself. (Facebook reminds me of the floor of the NC House of Representatives the first time I went there to cover a story as a reporter: people popping up randomly all over the place in one big room, busily clustering here and there, no main focus of interest.)

The person who tagged me, my dentist, sent her own list of 25 items--one of these being the lengthy list of body parts on which she has had cosmetic work done. Well, I'm not going to go that far, but I'm going to put my list of 25, such as they are, here, which is not exactly private. (Bold, yes?) Here goes:

1. I love celebrity gossip magazines.
2. I like to take shortcuts, through parking lots and over little walls, etc. (on foot,I mean.)
3. Oh why not, here goes: when I was 25, I had my ears "pinned back" because they stuck out even more than those of Prince Charles who is also my age.
4. First thing when I get home at night, I need a crossword puzzle and a coconut popsicle.
5. I lived in Varanasi, India for three months once to do novel research and it felt like an entire separate lifetime tucked into this one.
6. I have twin brothers.
7. I like sorting things.
8. Oldies, swing, and marching bands are my favorite music.
9. I listen better if I'm doodling.
10. I'm sick of self-improvement and may give it up.
11. I still think I'm immortal and permanently healthy, even though I'm 60 years old.
12. I've always felt, without evidence, that I'm Irish and Jewish, and have recently learned that the Ireland part, at least, is true.
13. My house and yard are full of things I've painted flowers and designs on: morning glories on my car, tall frond-y weeds on the propane gas tank, the eyes of Buddha on the shed, ivy on the hot water heater, etc.
14. Millipedes give me the creeps. Also, power saws.
15. I love public speaking, off-the-cuff.
16. I'm a pro-porn feminist.
17. I like sparkly stuff.
18. If I've had previous lives, one was as a rabbi on the Lower East Side involved in the early 20th century labor movement. The other was as a fat sullen blonde French woman, living in a small town.
19. One of my books-in-progress, I've been working on on-and-off for 22 years.
20. I'm tres lefty in my politics.
21. Once a week, I get together with a friend and speak bad French for half an hour.
22. I was head junior varsity cheerleader at NHHS in 1963 and decided I wasn't cut out for management.
23. For a mild and civilized person, I'm uncommonly in touch with my more primitive and murderous side.
24. I'm either a chatty show-off introvert or an extrovert who needs hours alone almost every day.
25. I could talk about myself all day!

How about you? Add your own 25 in the comments. It's a very interesting exercise. I have just tagged you. That includes you, Julie Tomlin, and Toby Bloomberg, and Richard Krawiec, and Karen Tam. And especially you who are my regular companions here.



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Bold Money Management in Tough Times

Lately I've been wondering if it's better for all of us if I cut back and spend as little as possible, or continue spending as usual, or do what I can of next year's Christmas shopping now in order to spur the woeful economy. So far my own income has held steady in these trying times, so it's not a matter of having to decide between food and prescriptions, the situation that many are encountering.

Of course my decision is quite small-scale, but if everyone who could made an extra purchase or two now, it seems to me the economy would be quite stimulated.

So far,though, I've instinctively been cutting back. Most everyone seems to be doing the same thing, whether from need or caution. Not sure that's the best approach. Certainly it's not the boldest approach.

What do you think?






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A Sip of Bold Action

Today's little spark of inspiration comes from a milk carton. This morning as I took the chocolate Silk soymilk out of the fridge, I noted the advice on the side: "Take A Sip Forward," a sentence that, by the way, is trademarked.

The idea is that drinking soy milk is "one small step toward living at your best." The carton also told me to laugh, eat chocolate, and get exercise. But what struck me is the idea of progress measured in sips.

I've heard it said to people wanting to lose weight that "everything you put in your mouth counts."

The reverse of that is that each small good thing that any of us do, in any area of life,counts. Small actions that are creative, generous, courageous, add up and ripple outward.





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Persistence and a Technological Triumph

Allow me to crow. After two and three quarters hours of fiddling, husband Bob and I have succeeded in getting wireless to work at our house on my laptop. We've never even been able to use a cellphone here. We're in the woods and apparently hard for signal to find.

This miraculous computing capability was accomplished with a little AT&T gizmo that installed its own software. So far the process is dreadfully slow, but still it allows me to tap out a few lines, just short of midnight, by standing at an upstairs window with the machine held up in the air to the spot that gets enough signal. May sound clumsy, but just remember the Wright Brothers' first flights were pretty clunky too. Maybe tomorrow I'll be on the roof with this thing, or up a tree. At any rate, I'm thrilled with tonight's progress.





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Start A Business

When I was a kid, my mother used to drop pieces of advice on me as they happened to occur to her. One day, she said, somewhat out-of-the-blue: Never buy a business; you'll come out much better if you start your own.

I did do exactly that, when I was twenty-two and started freelancing full-time. Now, decades later I've discovered a series of books aimed at people wanting to start various highly specific businesses.

I stumbled onto Entrepreneur Magazine's Startup Series when I saw their book on blogging: Start Your Own Blogging Business, which is quite good, very thorough and detailed. The previous publications page showed 36 other books,

Start Your Own Bar and Tavern

Start Your Own Import/Export Business

Start Your Own Medical Claims Billing Service

or Car Wash, or Gift Basket Service, or Growing and Selling Herbs and Herbal Products, and so on.

If you're thinking about starting a business, do check the Startup Series to see if your specialty is included. I felt a spark of interest in starting something just from looking at the list.





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Boldly on Hold

Seems to me that though there's a lot of scrambling going on in these difficult economic days, in some sense the country is on hold. Lots of decisions, actions, expenditures have been delayed. (Yesterday a writer told me about her novel, which was close to sold in October. A well-known editor at a major house loved it, needed only a committee's expected approval, said it could take as much as a week. The writer is still waiting. Her agent says it's going to happen but not soon because, "Things are a mess here.")

This brought to mind a question: how does one best handle being on hold? A lot of that depends on money of course: whether, primarily, to focus on writing another novel or on finding a job bagging groceries. However, there's a psychological part of the response that is also important. It's a question of keeping on with what's important anyway.

Once in my early pre-email years of freelancing, I had a few days when I didn't have enough money to buy stamps. I just kept writing the letters, so I'd have them ready to send, when I got hold of the stamps. It was only letters, and it was only a few days, so no big deal. But now, we face something like that situation nationwide, and I think it's important that we keep on with our important work, even while on hold.

And maybe there are ways that being boldly on hold can offer something new and useful to the process. I also remember a screenwriter talking about how upbeat and productive she was during a writer's strike of many months. She had a sense of freedom, because she knew the phone wasn't going to ring, knew already that she wasn't going to sell anything today; and so she worried less and felt free to concentrate on her work.



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ORGANIZING FOR THE CREATIVE PERSON

My friend Sabine was helping a mutual friend overhaul the inside of her house. They'd been hard at it all morning and then met me for lunch (I, who had merely been sitting at a computer.) Their dust-stirring industry was inspiring to hear about.

Sabine had learned a lot of her techniques, she said, from Organizing for the Creative Person: Right-Brain Styles for Conquering Clutter, Mastering Time, and Reaching Your Goals by Dorothy Lehmkuhl and Dolores Cotter Lamping.

My first reaction: what a persuasive title. It begins by flattering the reader: I may be a heap, but I'm an imaginative one. The flattery sticks because there's truth to it, for most anyone who would pick it up. (Aside: another book that did that welcome-to-the-book gesture well was first published in Europe with the title Prisoners of Childhood. It went on to succeed in this country under the title Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. What a difference a few words can make.)

Anyway, back to my point. I've found some good stuff here:

*you don't have to get rid of a particular objet, just find a place for it
*a pile of papers is a pile of unmade decisions (get BOLD and make those decisions)
*if you're intensely engaged in doing something you value, you're an instant success (this can be helpful for writers who ask themselves: will it sell? will it be good? am I wasting my time?)
*little bits of regular effort add up; regularly set a timer for 15 minutes and spend that long on one troublesome problem

And I haven't even finished reading it; my husband got hold of it, which is just fine with me. If we both did a bit of straightening, there's no telling what treasures we might find. (I found five lost items just yesterday: earring, purple jacket, camel pin, checkbook, and a notebook.) More on camel pin another day.

Happy organizing, you bold and creative person. Do feel free to report results here.



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Chasing Updike

My one meeting, some years ago, with my hero John Updike involved a very small bit of boldness, which turned out well in its modest way. It took place not long after my first novel Revelation had come out. I wrote about the incident at the time for a Research Triangle newspaper. I'm "the local novelist" of the story. Here it is, in memory of an extraordinary writer who died last week:


Author Mobbed, Politely

The afternoon book signing had been underway for twenty-five minutes, and the line was now stretched, more than two hundred strong, from the deep recesses of Duke's Gothic Bookshop across the wide traffic area inside the Bryan Student Center.

Seated in the back of the store was the focus of this throng, John Updike, signing copies of his books.

As the line moved slowly into the store, a local novelist, proud author of one published book, arrived to take her place in the waiting crowd. Ten minutes passed before the line appeared to move at all.

People waited quietly, many of them reading. The line inched forward as Updike fans continued to arrive, some with big sacks of his books. The local novelist carried in her stack a copy of her own book to give to her longtime hero. She and Updike were inextricably linked, she knew: Her own writing had been compared with his in many of her book's reviews.

An hour passed. People began to check their watches more often. The glass doors of the store were still several feet away.

A store official came out and warned: He probably won't get to you. More than one hundred remained, politely refusing to hear any such thing.

The local novelist did make it through the doors. Updike was in clear view now, his famous beak of a nose and his great pile of silver hair. Then, as those nearest watched, Updike stood up and left, vanished out the back door.

The local novelist turned to find that behind her was an equally disappointed local poet who had brought a volume of his own to offer as a gift.

The crowd broke for dinner, then reassembled later in front of Page Auditorium, to wait an hour to get good seats for the reading.

Updike read and talked to a crowded house. He was witty, hyperintelligent, genuine--everything that the assembled body had come to hear. Then he finished and left the stage. Again the chance to meet him had passed--until one student raced up onto the stage and back into the wings and was quickly followed by dozens more.

Good-humoredly, Updike started signing books again. Again the line moved slowly. Finally the local novelist stood before the long-awaited Updike--just as a student official interrupted, saying, "I'm sorry. We have to clear the stage."

The local novelist, about to miss out the second time, was suddenly wild-eyed. She shoved her book at the surprised Updike with both hands. "Here," she said. "This is a present. I wrote this."

Updike stared for a moment and blinked. "Follow me," he said.

"Keep your place in line," he called out to the whole crowd, "and follow me."

Single file then, Pied Piper-style, he led several dozen people in a circuitous route, out through the wings, down the flight of steps, out of the auditorium, across a stretch of campus, back into the student center. The line followed him faithfully as he searched for a place to sit.

Then the line waited again. Updike signed more books. He accepted the book, finally, from the local novelist, who forgot to mention their intertwined fates. He accepted the volume of verse from the poet. At 10 p.m. the crowd dispersed for the last time, six hours after it had begun to form. Fans of a different sort might have rioted. But for these New Yorker-reading groupies, gathered to honor a novelist of marriage, manners, and morals, a ruckus like that never would have done.





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Self-Doubt in the Great

Recently, in discussing the writer's self-doubt in the comments with writer Greta, I speculated that even my hero the recently passed John Updike probably had such moments.

In one of the tributes to Updike in The New Yorker since, I found proof of this. In a letter to novelist E.L. Doctorow, Updike wrote that as a young man he was busily unfolding his own stories with techniques learned from others (which, may I say, he utterly transformed.) But, writing one day in his later years, he said: "now I am almost paralyzed by thinking of the great number of contemporary writers who know things I don’t know and can do things I can’t."

Doctorow's comment: "The self doubt of this prodigious talent moved the hell out of me."

But he wasn't paralyzed. He kept writing and publishing. He kept at it, in spite of any wobbles.

(Tomorrow: a piece I wrote years ago about my one encounter with Updike.)



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Getting Up the Nerve to Be Genuine

I've just come from my friend Laurel's 70th birthday brunch, held by the members of her Thursday afternoon writer's class/group, which I have been a member of for 26 years.

In advance of the day, we put together a small album in which we each had six pages to use as we wish to express our appreciation to her. As I said in this book, these kinds of productions make me nervous. Too much untempered emotion, I suppose. But I got into it. We all did. She was overwhelmed. It was very satisfying for everyone involved.

Regularly and easily expressing emotion of the warm fuzzy kind-- for me that would be truly bold. What takes courage is so different for each of us. I tell myself that when I see someone go bonkers over a spider.




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The Importance of Sweating the Small Stuff

Response to my Wednesday's post about dealing with a Blue Cross coverage malfunction leads me to impassionedly say more.

The ideas a couple of people expressed -- which I welcome! -- include the view that others are worse off, I shouldn't sweat the small stuff, and that I think about what Gandhi would do .

Yes, there are people horrifically worse off. My difficulty is minor. I agree.

And that is why it's important for me to speak and act. I do a disservice to many if I take the easier route and become one more person who doesn't go to the trouble of protesting when a big company doesn't do right by an individual.

It's only the well-off who can afford to blow off the loss of $200. And only the well-off can afford to say, "This won't do. It has to stop." If I, with my advantages, look the other way (which is so tempting) I will have failed myself. And failed anyone else whom my taking action might have helped.

About Gandhi. I think of him often. He's the guy who said it's each person's responsibility to refuse to cooperate in his own oppression. Noncooperation was his chief alternative to violence. And he dealt with the little injustices (problems with salt) as well as the large. Little things ignored grow large, particularly as they multiply across a population.

My philosophy for myself is: sweat and don't fret. I write instead of fretting. Gandhi's version of that is to do the work full tilt and don't hang your peace of mind on the results. (And of course: breathe!)

I welcome and encourage your further thoughts here on this.





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My Little Health Insurance Hell: Part Two

So after my first efforts failed, I (boldly) talked with a Blue Cross rep by phone who kindly told me the name of a drugstore where I could get a vaccination that would be covered.

The next day I went to the drugstore. They give the anti-shingles shots, but said my insurance wouldn't cover it. I reported that I'd been told to come there specifically. The pharmacy man said Blue Cross is telling people that they can get the shots there, with coverage, but that BC hadn't yet given the store the infrastructure and info needed to do it.

He said people are coming to that store on a daily basis, expecting to get the vaccine with Blue Cross coverage, and then not being able to get that.

So, fuming in my car in the mall parking lot, I (boldly) called Blue Cross again and was told that all the info I'd received on the previous day about the drugstore was incorrect.

Now seethingly considering my next (bold) action.



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Problem Solving

Lately I've been feeling indomitable in the matter of solving the kinds of little problems that often I'm tempted to let sit a few days. Like dealing with getting an acknowledgment of purchase for an order I'd just cancelled. Or finding someone to give me a vaccination in the manner that my insurance company requires. All those paperwork-y, this-is-not-what-we-agreed-on, 800-number type things.

And I've rediscovered (for the millionth time) that solving one such problem, even if the outcome isn't ideal, makes the next little project easier.

So I Googled "solving small problems" to see what others had to say. Some results, which I heartily endorse:


"Get control of the office by solving little problems quickly. Don't let little issues now turn into bigger ones later. Tackle them immediately for a sense of control."

"But avoiding them can leave you feeling like you have little control and that just adds to stress. ... Feeling capable of solving little problems builds the inner confidence to move on to life's bigger ones - and it and can serve you well in times of stress."

"Make it a goal to have at least one new idea everyday; this will get you to be more creative. Create your own mathematical or physical problems and try to solve them. Get in the habit of solving little problems all day, for instance finding the quickest way around town...."

Note: I don't need to create any more mathematical or physical problems. I'll bet you also have enough on hand to open up the creative channels and add muscle to your solving ability.




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Dealing Boldly With Blue Cross

Oboy. Health insurance Catch-22,000.

Here's what I emailed to my friend Angela Friday when this happened:

"I ordered the $200 serum for the shingles vaccine after checking to see that it was covered. When I went to get it to take to my doc, the pharm. said they hadn't covered it because it had to be ordered by the doctor from the serum company not by prescription to be picked up by the patient.

So I left it at the drugstore and went to my doc's and they called BCBS and said our patients always get it at the drugstore. (According to the nurse,) BC said, well, that's changed now.

My doc's office continues to work on it.

So irksome. Driving around Cary all afternoon for nought. My mother had her shingles shot scheduled and woke up with shingles on the morning she was to get the shot. Bob pointed out to me that at least I wasn't dealing with insurance at the same time I was terribly sick. (Like Obama's mother. He has talked a lot about her spending her last months upset about insurance.)

Thank you for allowing me to vent."

Update: So this morning my doc called and said she doesn't order serum through her office. She did kindly offer to administer the shot at no charge, once I get the serum.

I have to pay the drugstore, because after having been told by BC that my policy covered it, I agreed to. (I'm not going to claim that my own policy toward paying bills has changed to not paying them, or now includes a disclaimer that says I don't have to if I don't want to.)

And now to discover my appeals possibilities, with BC BS and the Department of Insurance person.

I don't like this. And it's not right. Am all over it. (Meaning "in action," not "recovered.") Will keep you posted.





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The Courage to Face the Times' Crossword Puzzle

Major bold move of this weekend so far: I bought a new crossword puzzle book, having done all I could with the last one. The ones I currently go for are the New York Times easy-to-hard collections. I once threw away an unfinished one that was all Sunday Times crosswords. (Times puzzles are easiest on Monday and get harder all week.)

Perhaps you are thinking that this doesn't seem like a bold move. But being a not-so-serious cruciverbalist can be humbling. It's like getting an achievement test score every day, when you took the test on not enough sleep.

I've been dabbling at it on and off for years and I've gotten somewhat better at it--can pretty well whip through Monday through Wednesday. And I remember the time when Monday was a test. Recently I read about a fellow who won't do the Mon-Wed puzzles because they're simply too easy for him to be engaging. I fancy myself fairly clever and well-read and up on cultural references (weak on rivers and athletes) but I may never get to that league.

Still,last night I sharpened my pencil once again. And there's little that's so delicious as a good pencil and a clean puzzle.



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Between Semesters

Looks like I'm finished with a large writing project. There may be a few more details, but probably not much more than that.

I like the weightless feeling that getting something done gives me. On the other hand, this was extremely interesting: revising a book on a topic that fascinates me. I'll miss it.

But I haven't arrived at that mood yet: still in the weightless period, making calls I'd put off making, spending a little more time on my novel, doing smaller critiques, not rushing back from lunch, and feeling pleasantly open to surprises.

My horoscope today on Daily Om : "Feelings of boldness and a sense of self-assurance are your likely companions as you walk through life today." Yes, indeed!





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