What a loss. My longest friend (since we were babies) has succumbed to pop culture. “That is great u 2 have connected…as u r both such important part of my life.” Sent, of course, from her wireless blackberry.

I feel like an old fuddy-duddy. My editing hand wants to correct this ghastly insult to our language. I want to scold. But a lot of good it would do. One person can’t stem this tide that’s eroding our language, our sensibilities.

What is within my power is staying the course: keep verbs and nouns anchored together, keep letters from dropping out from under meaning.

When I taught school in a small Hispanic town, the kids’ spelling was inventive. This is the best way to put it. But with them I understood. Their parents spoke Spanish in the home. The kids were straddling two languages. And how do you spell that?

My friend has no such excuse. She’s taken to carrying around electronic devices that make complete sentences, conventional spelling cumbersome. She lives in a city. She’s in a hurry. By eliminating letters just how much time is she saving? Is there a calculation for that?

In terms of time, it takes my little brain a few moments to figure out what u r 2 means. So I guess these time-saving moments really depend on which side of the device you’re on.

I’m working with a new publishing company now; one I helped start. And I think this photo can be the metaphor for all of publishing these days. It’s taken on a whole new perspective.

What prompted me to write today was yesterday I had to reject our first submission. I felt terrible doing so because I know how much work goes into a manuscript. But you know what? I did something you just don’t see anymore. Not only did I read the ms. in a timely manner, but I responded.

Thirty years ago this was standard operating procedure. Publishers/editors/agents responded. And often with a critique. For free. All that has changed. Send your book off to a publisher today and it’s gone forever with no word. It’s so rare nowadays to hear from a publisher. Even the small presses.

Now, the “author houses” publishers will respond instantly, of course. They want money and don’t give a hoot about how it reads.

So that’s why I did what I did. I gave a thorough critique with suggestions for fixing it. The writer is pleased and is diligently reworking the ms. Cool.

In this day of instant books, I’d like to see a return to many of the old ways: not publishing everything that comes in, helping authors hone their books, and find a way to get some quality back into the literary world.

Typical. Those of us using Gmail have been waiting (make that dreading) the new and improved version. For months we kept getting notices that the upcoming changes would change our lives. Sure enough, the new version arrived in full force. With pages and pages of consumer complaints.

And indeed our lives have changed. For the worse.

Features that worked fine are now deleted. Features with no relevance to anything are now installed—with no way to disable them. For instance, one man on the help forum said he was fired because he sent his wife a complaint about work and his boss was cc’d without him knowing it. It came from a feature called “Consider adding…” and it does it for you. You don’t have to think at all.

Not good.

But I bet the program coding to redo Gmail was challenging and fun, and the geeks had a ball—those 21-year-old wonders. While clicking happily away in some esoteric trance-like state, they probably never considered how those clicks would translate in the real world.

For quite sometime Gmail obviously thought it was the next Facebook. Want to add So-n-so? Invite So-n-so to join Gmail. Like it’s a club rather than a means of communication. Let’s just have a simple email program that gets messages to people safely and sanely.

And stay tuned for my rant about the new Word.

 

 

I had such a good time designing my new book cover. Just loved the process. I had no idea what I was doing. But something must have known even six years ago. While interviewing an artist for an article, she showed me photos of some of her work.

You know that “ah-ha” moment when something clicks loud and clear? That’s what happened when I saw one of Elizabeth Sandia’s paintings. Years passed and we lost touch. I tracked her down and asked if I could get the rights to use the painting. We worked out a deal and I was ready to go.

Several friends of mine are book designers, specializing in covers. I had no idea what they went through until I began doing mine.

First, it was fun—once I got over the initial fear of embarking on something completely new. Second, I became overwhelmed with all the variations a cover can go through. This really scared me. Because how do you know? After awhile your own eyes can’t see a thing. Then one day I had a brilliant idea. (One of those ideas that’s really “duh!”). Why not go to a bookstore?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of books at my house and I’d looked at most. But I wanted to see what the latest trend was in cover design. I gave myself an assignment: Tour the store and only look at the books facing out from the shelves. I quickly saw that the cover parts—title, art, author—were in thirds. Or there abouts. I went home that night and repieced, recolored and redid the cover.

It wasn’t easy, though, getting all the parts to work and thankfully my design friends helped me through. Still, no matter what…Elizabeth’s painting makes it.

OK, this is weird. Some LinkedIn genie got into my email and sent out invitations to people to connect with me. What’s so interesting is many of them are people I’m no longer in touch with. Some I had a serious falling out with. Others the time had passed and we just moved on. Some don’t even remember me.

This whole social media stuff is getting out of hand. I’ve spent hours writing back and explaining. One woman said I made life hell for her and she doesn’t want to connect with “my system” at all. Hmmmm. All I can say is I quit working for her when she accused me of stealing her files. What?

It’s been an amazing trip into the past, to say the least. Like so many people these days I feel steeped in transition and connecting with these past icons is making me realize something.

It was rough getting through the emotional turmoil that ensued with some of these people. But you know what? Getting through only lets me know that I can get through again. In a bigger picture, though, whatever is in store for all of us, we’re all going to need each other. Can we put the petty things aside? That’s the question. It’s not if you want to join me on LinkedIn.

I don’t mind the storms. They force me away from the computer to a slower world. When the lightning begins, I shut down, unplug. Use a UPS, people say. But I’ve lost two computers that were attached to surge protectors. And if anyone thinks a UPS will withstand a direct hit from lightning, they’ve never lived around lightning.

Dark heavy clouds come rolling in, usually from the north. Sometimes it takes hours for the buildup. And sometimes they let loose with amazing force. Other times they roll on by. You never know. And once in awhile you get a treat.

The other day out of nowhere—the skies were clear!—came a zig-zag of lightning. The sun was shining and it started raining. Ah, northern New Mexico. It lasted all of five minutes.

As I said, I don’t mind the storms. I always shut down and then watch the display out my living room window. I don’t mind the slowness. Computers are partly responsible for the way life seems to keep accelerating. They are getting faster, we’re tied to them so we can’t help keeping up. Any excuse to unplug is welcome.

I learned Margaret died when her brother emailed me. The last word from Margaret—around Christmas—was the cancer was in remission and she was feeling fine. Relieved. Loving to be alive. Steve phoned and told me when the cancer returned, Margaret chose no more treatments. The pain from them wasn’t worth it. She died at home.

I’ve known Steve and Margaret since we were kids. Our mothers were best friends in Jr. High. It took a morning of sitting on a rock in the forest behind my house to understand the importance of Margaret. We didn’t know each other well, but I always liked her. She was five years older and I watched her carefully. I finally realized that every decision she made, I chose the opposite.

It’s odd how we form our lives and I didn’t know Margaret had figured so prominently. She was a guide of opposites. She entered the growing-up phases earlier and I watched her go boy crazy, marry at 19; she smoked, never learned to drive, had one child. I didn’t do these.

In high school I was more in love with my horse and sheep than with boys. I caught Margaret’s flower bouquet at her wedding and didn’t marry until years later. I never smoked. Didn’t want children. I learned to drive. Wanting a life that was clearly my own, I didn’t understand the decisions I made along the way to have that–and all because of Margaret.

I just hope when my time comes I will do one thing: copy Margaret’s bravery.

You know what’s happening? I’m writing blogs nearly every day—in a notebook. Writing is such a tactile experience that something is dreadfully lost in the translation from writing spirit to computer. And I’ve been skipping the computer part.

Oh sure, I still write articles, press releases and a thousand emails a day, it seems, on the computer. But this isn’t close-to-the-bone, moving from the ground up kind of writing. When I write now, I want it to be special, a personal treat. It becomes alone time.

A real need these days is to feel valued. I know I’m appreciated in some circles, but this doesn’t count. Not really. Because the kind of value I’m talking about lives under the skin. How do I feel about myself? Am I walking with integrity? Do I have arrogance in check? Is there a cause for this low esteem?

You can’t really answer these questions staying in front of a computer. Maybe I’ll start a slow writing movement, and for the same reason the slow food movement started. Writing at the computer is the equivalent of eating out all the time. There isn’t any time to—well, instead of smelling the roses–tasting the kale.

More and more when I write, I want to taste the kale. I want that earthiness of holding a pencil and giving myself pause to feel my thoughts converge. I want the experience of being with myself when I write. I want to slow down enough—to just be.

Just look at this typewriter, found in a nearby old dumping area. Remember the days when we not only used manual typewriters but wrote with pencils and pens? Actually, I still do. I love using pencils when I’m editing, making to-do lists and writing poems. There is something so basic and earthy about pencils.

I was so disappointed in England when a pencil factory was closed the day I was in a small village. At least we got to drive by and watch a graphite mining operation.

Technology has completely transformed the world of writing. At least how we get things out of our heads. I was in the fourth grade when I typed my first story on a typewriter, one that looked exactly like this. Well, in its hey-day anyway.

 

There’s a franticness right now. Have you felt it? Daily my inbox gets jammed with email offers to join this webinar, join this online class, sign up for the one-and-only essential book. They all tout ‘best practices’ (the latest buzz phrase) for getting publicity.

Of course this is going to grab any author’s attention. Writing a book is easy compared to marketing it. And with this craze of needing that 15-minute fame, it’s definitely worth trying to get people to put up big bucks for a class.

This was the cleverest online marketing training course. You’d learn everything from fast-pacing through Facebook to tweaking on Twitter. It all sounded good. Until…in exchange for learning ways to find reader groups, you’d work for six months for free helping the guy market his online marketing course, the very course you signed up for.

Then the other day an even better class showed up for social media. The bottom line? $2,500 for 16 weeks.

My question: Why are people so desperate for celebrity status that they’ll pay good money to get it?

Years ago while searching for a publicist for my book Journaling for Women, I found a woman with a list of top stars. Her fee? Why, only $600 an hour.  Topping her list was a famous New Age author, one I find amazingly boring, his work poorly written with nothing new to say. But he obviously comes from money. He leaped on the scene, catapulting to instant fame out of nowhere—all because he could afford to pay someone to tell the world how great he was.

I truly hope that the Internet crawl will put this kind of frantic marketing to rest and just start finding authors who have more things to say than they have money.