Does Your Cat Know You’re a Writer?

As I went outside around dawn, I heard a rustle in the brush, then deliberate footfalls moving away from me. Turning toward the sound, I quietly walked a few steps, listening. The crunches of leaves were close together…could be a javelina. But at this time of day, more likely deer.

There she was. She stared back at me so still, I had to blink to make sure the shape was not a clump of yuccas.

Hi Baby, I whispered, wanting to give our diminishing wildlife all the encouragement possible to visit often. I love you.

Mrs. Mule Deer indicated she wasn’t impressed, lowering her head and continuing to browse.

What do the animals around us think of us writers? What do they do that is similar to writing? Is it the poetry of their limpid eyes?

They certainly don’t afford us any greater respect than they proffer one another, the latter being a compliment.

That line of thought brought cats to mind. I don’t have a cat, but I’m sure if I did, it would sit in my warm office chair every moment I’m not sitting here, and transfer to my lap reluctantly, trading a sound surface for one that wiggles and leaps up without a moment’s notice.

Does your cat – or dog – respect your career?

Image by M Sudano from Pixabay

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Deep Words

There’s nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.  ~Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

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Words Alive

The Dickinson children;
Emily on the left.

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
~ ~ ~Emily Dickinson

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Washing Windows to See

The grapefruit is troubling me. The beautiful one the gentleman gave me Sunday for washing his windows. At first he held it toward me and gestured that I should come in and share it with him. “Peel it,” he said, pointing back and forth between us.

Recalling instructions that some residents would want to talk or press us into other service, I told him I couldn’t come in. (Besides, there were over 1000 windows to be washed. How long might that take?)

That’s when he insisted I take it.

Was that his only fruit? Was that a meal for him? Grapefruit have been over $1 each in the stores.

I read recently of a couple – in the same town as this man – who were overheard in the supermarket discussing produce. The man marveled “how wonderful” it would be to have a certain item. The woman reminded him they needed milk and couldn’t afford both. A teenage boy working in the produce department pulled a crushed fiver out of his pocket and pressed it into their hands. “Take it,” he said. “Buy that and enjoy it.”

Whenever I do eat that grapefruit, I’ll not halve it and spoon out the sections. No. I’ll peel it.

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Writing Mitzvah

A Mitzvah is the ultimate expression of how Judaism views religion. It’s not a specific time, place, or with a specific thing, when or where or with which one has a relationship with G-d. from Rabbi Dov Schochet


Sunday was Mitzvah Day in Northern Arizona, so proclaimed by Yavapai and Coconino counties as well as the City of Sedona where it was founded last year by Rabbi Alicia Magal – who lives walking distance from me – and Barbara Litrell, president of Keep Sedona Beautiful.

It was estimated over 300 participated, not all from our local town-opolis, but if they were, that would represent 2% of our Greater Sedona Area population of 13,000. That’s huge.

The team I was on all said, “We’ll do whatever needs to be done.” We were new to this. Thus assigned to wash windows and sliding doors for a low income project for elderly and disabled humanity in Cottonwood, Arizona. In about two hours, we washed approximately 100 windows or doors each.

No one I was with loved washing windows. Some of us hire professional window washers for our own windows. Our “good deed,” – to those of us who washed windows – included not picking something we loved to do. Not that any deliberately picked something we hated. But petting and combing a couple humane society cats for an hour isn’t the same running from building to building addressing the outsides of soiled windows not washed since this time last year.

Somehow this strange word miztvah became associated in my mind more than a decade ago with “doing a good deed that cannot be repaid.” Perhaps that was supposed to apply only to the deed at a Jewish funeral of crumbling a clod of dirt over an open grave. That person being sent away will not thank you.

I didn’t get why it was such a big deal to get in the line to crumble the dirt, letting it trickle down to the highly-varnished oak casket below. It seemed like protocol, and a very small act that was part of the deceased’s religion. It hardly left my hands dirty. “Cannot be repaid,” Ben’s words repeated in my head.

Still, I think of Mitzvah as the good deed that cannot be repaid. It doesn’t need to be connected to fun, or fellowship, though it may be. It doesn’t need to be connected to enjoyment, though it might. For me, it will probably always mean “pay it forward,” for you cannot repay me now.

I did accept a grapefruit from a gentleman. I love grapefruit, and those I’ve purchased lately haven’t been good. This one looked delicious. But that isn’t why I took it. I took it because the man needed to give it. So I accepted it as enthusiastically as I washed his sliding patio doors and windows. He needed to feel visible, important, part of commerce, perhaps even manly.

Like the other gentleman sitting in his porch rocker while I cleaned. I reached to shake his hand when I was finished. He refused. Until he could stand up – a difficulty that took a minute or two.

Oh no. Never shake the hand of a lady unless you stand. Maybe I’ll even get a hug.

I teased, “Oh you may not!” But I threw my arms around him before taking his right hand. I don’t like hugging strangers. I did it for him. And me. Because I needed to humble myself to his hand, his germs, his smells, his hug, his body. So it was for me. And it was good.

Do you write the thing no one will read…but you? Do you write when you will be misedited and misquoted? What do you write when you know a rejection letter will follow?

Must you get your hands dirty to speak your truth, from your heart? Do the uncomfortable. Ring doorbells and announce to partially present people that today is free window washing day, if they don’t mind please, thank you very much.

What is the good deed you do for yourself? Do you write when you’re too busy? Do you pour out your soul when you must write articles for business publications? Where do you closet your soul? Where do you comfort it, let it speak?

Wash your windows. Take a new view. Like the cat that stretched behind a newly-polished glass patio door and stepped forward, to join me on the porch before realizing the door was still closed but the view was better.

Perform a mitzvah for your soul. Do a good deed that reconnects you to your root. Like we used to say in religious school, at the end of each day. Mrs. Applegate would announce, “And now the Mitzvah.”

May the Lord watch
between me and thee
while we are absent
one from another.

What sustains your writing ‘reconnection,’ your absent part from your present part?

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Sustains Your Soul

I haven’t earned huge money from my writing. The fact that I’ve earned more than all the local writers I know (and there are many), except those who’ve won multi-book deals, keeps me going, seeking to earn a living and more.

Back “in the day,” when I wrote, edited and designed graphics for corporations (which always included marketing consulting), primarily in Los Angeles, I made a good living. I enjoyed the work. And occasionally I enjoyed the clients.

That, however, was not writing “to feed my soul.” Its purpose was to pay for my rent and car, and feed my body. Maybe some entertainment once a week or so.

My life partner and I made tremendous changes, both professionally and personally, when we moved to Sedona, Arizona, six years ago. She quit smoking. I quit prostituting myself for any online opportunity that promised money. She insisted. She wrote it on a Post-It note. Yellow. Still thumb-tacked to my office bulletin board:

The actual scribbled, now tattered, note that inspires me to share my scribbles and tatters with you.

The actual scribbled, now tattered, note that inspires me to share my scribbles and tatters with you.

SUSTAINS YOUR SOUL

It wasn’t a threat. It was a strong admonition.

Do what sustains your soul.
You will not be successful
(therefore I will never get to retire)
and you will not be happy
(therefore I will not be happy)
until you stop all other nonsense and do what feeds your soul.”

(How fortunate I am to have a partner who doesn’t just ‘support’ my inner self, but insists I also do another episode in the blog. Yes, I am truly blessed and thank God-Goddess-All-that-Is every single day for this wonderful person.)

What nourishes you?

I am not a proponent of doing what you love and ‘hoping’ the money will follow. If what you do is good, people will pay you for it. If you ask them. Or tell them. Or beg them. Bribery also works. (They won’t pay you if they don’t even know you’re doing it!)

Begging, borrowing and bribing without serving that which sustains you is greater foolishness.

I’m still learning this. I have many irons in the fire. Many interests. Forty-four domain names with one registrar, according to a call I received today. I keep pruning, trimming, adding, growing, pruning something else, adding something else – in that meandering human journey of following my heart. The best choices I’ve ever made have been the people I insisted on bringing into my life – or barging into their lives!

Now it’s the writing.

What shall I write? Do I care? I get to use words, and then delete them, edit them, refine them, learn to use better ones, blush over embarrassing ones I used before I knew what I know now, and dust myself off and go forward…writing again.

I like the keyboard. It took much practice to get over being distracted by the buzz of my IBM Selectric typewriter in the 70s. (I would turn it off while I thought, then turn it on and type quickly.) Now I cannot write by hand, because my thoughts flow in deep torrents and my pen is tied to the surface of the earth.

Admittedly, I’m still learning, following, meandering, thinking, praying, hoping, wishing, confiding, correcting, editing and writing, writing, writing.

What sustains your soul? Tell me.

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I Oughta Write a Book

82% of Americans plan to write a book someday.

–from a talk by Mark David Gerson on September 6, 2008.

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Rejection Wrinkles

A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by Madeleine L’Engle. Published in 1962, it went on to win a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, among others.

It was the first tome in L’Engle’s series of books about the Murry and O’Keefe families. (the foregoing facts from Wikipedia)

Who cares? Why is this relevant to anyone, most of all you?

Editors and agents hated it.

It was rejected 26 times in a two-year period. That’s more than a bottle of gin a month in rejection letters! It subsequently sold 8,000,000 copies and has seen 60 printings.

What do editors know? They judge your book before it has been gifted with a fine cover! (From there on out, it is judged by its cover; you know this is true!)

Everyone except perhaps your family has told you to persist as a writer. (Your family may have encouraged you to train for a “real” career. Understood.) This story shows why.

Acceptance may have to do with timing, headaches, cultural values or mores, personal tastes, closed-mindedness, craziness, pessimism, budgets, deadlines, closing time, marital problems, genius (yours) and myriad other events or attitudes.

If you’re out-of-step on any of them, your carefully-crafted script could be overlooked. My proof is the anecdote above, many more like it, and the plethora of very poorly written books that somehow make it to number 1 on Amazon.com.

Rejection is just a wrinkle. Deal with it.

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Bath Tissue Blues

Bath tissue has been bugging me lately. I’ve written previously about bath tissue pricing. I was at Wal-Mart considering whether to buy 12 double rolls which equaled 24 single rolls, or 24 double rolls equivalent to 48 single rolls, when scanning for package pricing, there was this interloper of 18 roll packs. Even if 18 = 36, how do you compare that to 24 or 48 without carrying a pocket calculator?

I go for soft. (Notice we no longer have colored tissue which might work evil on our bottom(less) parts with their #4 or #3 or #unknown dyes?)

I tried extra strong (absorbent – whatever) but it seemed to be too thick for our 30-year old pipes to enjoy, never mind the 30-year old septic system. So I switched. From something I really loved but could find at only a few outlets, to something lighter, thinner, that had an all-too-cute motto involving slightly more-than-middle-aged men performing unseemly acts in supermarkets, or woolly bears doing things in the woods that one cannot smell if indeed no one is “there.”

Last shopping trip, the 48 aka 24 aka 12 pack rolls were either unavailable or not on sale. We opted for the 24 = 24 pack. The plastic packaging was just as large as, or larger than, the other; but presumably the same amount of relief-producing soft stuff was inside.

Till I opened it yesterday morning. Six four-packs inside. Each four-pack was slightly smaller than a Coleman camping pillow. More like an airline pillow. Good lower back support on a long car trip. By the time I’d wrenched the contents out of the second layer of plastic wrap, they were squashed. A little flat. Smaller still.

I loaded the tiny little roll onto the bathroom dispenser, trying to ignore its pathetic insignificance. All seemed well. Everyone (both of us) was able to use the little professionals’ facilities and go along to work. Since I work at home, I noticed its diminishing presence every couple hours. By 3:00, it was gone. Over. Finis!

Unlock and reload.

How do they manipulate the numbers, because they print square inches and possibly even cubic inches on every pack? I’m sure I never used a whole double roll in one day (at least not since “my friend” stopped visiting years ago).

My eye was glued to the replenishment supply. How long would it last? Till bedtime? Till morning?

Today is our second day with two rolls on the hook per day. With only one person home most of the day. OK. I confess. I. drink. water. But not that much. Just enough to keep two lumberjacks alive.

I haven’t done the math. But there’s no way these two little potato-sized rolls equate to one of the gargantuan 12 = 24 rolls we usually use. The 12 = 36 rolls are not even in the running. Eighteen? I’m still mad at Wal-Mart about that. Stores should make it easy to comparison shop. It’s not like they can let you use the product and report how much is necessary “per serving.” But they could at least say “this equals that” or “this is an aberration; buy the one you’re used to.”

Most of all, I’m disturbed I’ve spent two days thinking about how quickly a roll or two of kiss-ass paper disappears. Is this weird?

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Pet Peeves & Writing

Pet peeves are the easiest writing subjects, because we have strong emotions around things that annoy us.

A big one for me is discourtesy. For example, looking for a parking place in a residential neighborhood, you notice all the driveways seem to be about two car lengths apart — and have two cars parked there. At last up ahead you see one car and think you’ve found a spot, only to draw near and realize the driver parked smack in the middle of what could have been two available spaces.

Or you’re waiting at an intersection to pull out into traffic. The wait is long. Finally only one car is  coming from your left. Wait, wait, wait–then it turns right into the street you’re waiting on. Had the driver used a turn signal, you could have pulled out and been half a mile down the road by now.

I generally think of others around me. If I’m standing on the sidewalk and people are approaching, I move over to give them room to pass. When stashing my shopping cart while browsing a department, I push it off to the side, out of the aisles.

The problem with being a courtesy freak is that it’s inherently bad form to express pique over another’s thoughtlessness. How courteous is that?

I received an email yesterday from Neale Donald Walsch who put this beautifully:

It is not necessary for you to report everyone’s mistakes to them,
much less to give them corrections.

I appreciated the reminder. I knew it. And I knew I needed to give it more consideration. So I looked it up again today and am writing about it.

His email went on to say:

You would not welcome someone else pointing out
your own misstep, or less-than-totally-efficient approach
to something. Why point it out to them? Do you see it as
your duty in life to make sure that all goes the way you
think it ‘should’?

Maybe it’s the teacher in me. I think by pointing out to a member of a minority that voting to discriminate against other minorities is not only illogical, but also wrong, that he or she will say “Ah, I see your point. I want inclusion and equal rights in society, so I should vote that others can have them, too.”

Now what’s wrong with expecting that?

Image by Gisela Merkuur from Pixabay

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