So much for the ivory tower

It’s October 2011, six and a half years since I filled that first yellow note pad page with what would become SECOND CHANCES. It was a few weeks before my 50th high school reunion and I was letting my thoughts drift off in that direction. Now, in some ways it feels like I’m returning to an even earlier incarnation, back to the rough and tumble world of business, where we spent our days selling whatever it was we had to sell. Long ago the Stanford University Business School had tried to convince me those efforts were somehow noble. I’m not sure that lesson stuck. In any case, I’ve been there and done that -- sometimes very well, sometimes not so well at all.

Then finally, with retirement, those constraints were removed. After stumbling around for a while I learned that I could move beyond that “business” foolishness. I had graduated from the “down and dirty” world of commerce to the pure and untainted ivory tower universe of creative writing. It had taken most of a lifetime, but I had moved beyond the profane pursuit of sales.

Except ------ having spent years creating these stories I realized I was facing a familiar dilemma. A couple years ago, in "Me and My Stories" (see sidebar), I explained how I, and any writer who conceives and gives birth to the characters that inhabit his or her stories, who nurtures their “becoming”, inevitably wants the best for the “friends” they have created. We want our creations to be seen, read, even judged. Anything but ignored. Here in the “minor leagues” of e-book writing who else will do that if not the author?

So here I am. For me step one in that process has been the new and improved website you are visiting right now. I owe daughter Amy for that. With the unanticipated promise of an e-book future for these Tanner stories, what began as a forum for serializing each book has been transformed into a sales tool, complete with overviews and excerpts, ways to help a potential buyer know what he or she might be buying. I expect this change, along with an expanded email update about the site, and a very modest venture into Facebook advertising, to be the extent of my expanded marketing efforts.

On one hand, a part of me shivers at the prospect of going so commercial. I thought I was escaping that. Still, another part is anxious to see where this grand experiment takes me. Will people read them? More importantly, after reading one, will they read a second? 

Thanks for checking in. And no matter how this turns out, I hope your retirement is as interesting as mine has become.

GS 

My Lord, a new posting

The last day or two I have reread the earlier entries on this blog, the last one posted more than two years ago. How’s that for consistency? It was an interesting process, stirring some feelings I’ll never forget, and others I scarcely remember. I do recall how bold it felt, taking my serialized stories to the internet for the first time. There was a website to be created and installments to post. For the first time in the course of a depressingly bland retirement I was really pumped.

 Yet, when those installments were up and running, who knew the stories were there, waiting to be read? It’s one thing to have your work go unread because prospective readers have looked it over and decided it’s not for them. I can deal with that. To be overlooked because no one knows you’re out there was somehow less satisfying. So I spread the word myself in a modest way, then reminded myself I would keep on telling my stories, whether or not anyone read them. That too, was less than satisfying.

Then in time it was on to the next step. I have some idea why I finally pushed for an e-book presence for these stories. And I know why I insisted that it happen on my own terms. That it ever came to pass was perhaps a matter of dumb luck more than anything else. But, however it happened, I am left with a new, more daunting version of the same old question. How do I let potential readers know we’re here, waiting to be read?

You can tell from earlier postings that it took me a while to get past my own self-consciousness about the stories I tell and the way I tell them. Thankfully I got over most of that. But it’s one thing to accept what I’m doing, but something else to brag about. (Isn’t that what marketing is?) So now I find myself planning a very modest Facebook ad campaign. Hopefully I’m prepared to accept the truth it may reveal. In a matter of weeks I may have more proof than ever, solid empirical evidence, that what I’m writing just doesn’t work for prospective readers. I don’t want to know that -- but I do.

I’m not a fan of long, rambling blogs. So I’ll keep this short, and be back here next week to explore what comes next. 

Thanks for reading,

GS 

Vacation time. The idea was a relaxing get away: time to think about something other than the normal stuff that fills our everyday lives. It’s been a welcome break, just the two of us. Morning fog may hide the surf when we look out from our balcony, yet most afternoons have been just right for long walks on the hard sand next to the breakers. It’s been everything a vacation should be.

Why then am I so easily drawn back to everyday thoughts, the ones I’d planned to leave back home? Of course, there’s no way to do that: to leave the ordinary behind. The mind matter we pack around is too much a part of us to be set aside.

I don’t know about you, but there are times I wish that mind full of stuff I drag along behind me wasn’t so heavy. Why couldn’t it be more logical, or in many cases, more worthy? There are parts of it I’d like to erase altogether, though I suppose those are the very things I’m meant to remember, to learn from, and hopefully avoid the next time

However, that reservoir of experience is also a source of raw material: uniquely personal elements from which to assemble a story. I sift through the overburden of life impressions that clutter my mind, looking for bits that illustrate an idea or make a point. I’ll be looking for pieces that fit together, like parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes it’s one of those rejected snippets, the ones I wish I could forget, that bubbles to the surface, ready to serve in a unexpected way. That happens even on vacation, surrounded by so many attractive diversions: her good company, hours of uncharted mind wandering, or a good book. (Interesting how Nuala O’Faolain allowed the embodiment of a long ago dream to find a home in her story.) Though there’s no computer on hand, I have a couple yellow writing pads to fill.

For three days I’ve been filling pages with words that offer the promise of a new story. As always, it’s a casual, almost haphazard process: following an idea where it leads me, hurrying along, trying to keep up. There’s no need to spend time finding the exact words or perfect metaphors. The purpose is to capture the story as it arrives, knowing that whole paragraphs, sometimes whole scenes, will eventually be discarded or reworked beyond recognition.

For me, that first draft is a time for absorbing the feel of what the story is becoming. The ideas can come so fast that good ones, at least I think they were, escape before I can put them on paper. It’s easy to get sidetracked. If I pause to tweak a sentence before moving on, by the time I return to the story line I may have lost the stream of consciousness, that progression of ideas that I hoped would be my story. Other times I’ll try to hold a thought that just interrupted the sentence or paragraph I’m finishing. I’ll promise to return to it in a few seconds. By then, of course, it’s gone, lost forever.

Finally, it all comes down to the one question that matters most. Is there really a worthwhile story lurking in all those pages of scribbled notes? How many weeks, one time months, have I spent stalking an idea that led nowhere: a story that had no reason to be told?

I take all those bumps in the road as signs that after five years I remain a late life beginner: having my fun, stretching my mind, getting my kicks by stringing words and ideas together on paper. Then, taking advantage of today’s incredible technology, I send the results off into cyberspace, to either vanish forever, or be intercepted by a curious mind that I hope will find meaning in the words. It seems to me a fascinating concept. I launch my stories into space, never knowing whom, if anyone, will read them. And even at the cost of a disrupted vacation, I count myself fortunate for the chance to do that.

Anyway, if you’re reading this you can tell that;  1) I’ve had too much vacation time on my hands, and  2) I’ve cleaned it up enough to post once I get back to a computer. 

GS

This afternoon I posted Installment #36, the last of Maybe This Time. My first complete story has seen the light of day. It’s been an interesting process: dissecting into bite sized pieces what had been conceived as a whole. Sometimes that was a challenge, parceling out half a scene, hoping it would stand alone, at least until the arrival of the next installment.

Perhaps I’ve learned how to do that better. In any case, after a short vacation, during which I’ll make every effort to leave the stories behind for a few days, I’ll be back in mid-September with the next story.

In the meantime, I’d like to encourage some feedback from you readers. It turns out there are quite a few of you. Certainly more than I had expected. I would love to hear your opinions, pro or con, about MAYBE THIS TIME. The COMMENTS link at the end of each posting is a simple, painless way to do that.

Finally, as I noted in the introduction to #36, these stories will remain here on the site, always available. If you know someone who might enjoy reading about Carl and Jack, Maria and Cynthia, please pass the word about Tanner-Stories. It’s easy to access, and the price is right.

 With that, please join us on September 16th for GOING HOME.

GS

Beyond the compelling desire to be telling my stories, and the dubious assumption that someone is reading them, this project of mine has come to include the somewhat befuddling process of creating a website, posting regular installments, and spreading the word that Tanner-Stories exists.

For a guy who sometimes struggles to open his email it’s all part of a late life education, with a new learning experience at every turn. Although I haven’t always appreciated it, I’m still learning to value what pushes me beyond my comfort zone. At my age, it’s so easy to settle back for a slow, comfortable ride home. Why should I settled for that?

Chances are your way home won't include creating fanciful tales of silly old guys looking to find that feeling one more time. But there’s no reason it can’t offer the possibility of some other way, your way, of expressing what you’ve gained over the course of a lifetime. That can happen in a woodworking shop, at a painting easel or computer terminal, or with a ball on yarn in your lap. In whatever form your inspiration arrives, why hold back? What are you saving yourself for? I happen to be a Dr. Wayne Dyer fan. I know that not everyone is. But when he says "don't die with your music still inside you" I take that to be sound advice.

Finally, if you’re as lucky as I am, you can make it a family affair. What better pay back for all those orthodontist bills? While our son’s computer schooling answers my equipment and systems questions, the daughter’s internet expertise, skills a prestigious university pays her a salary to use, provides the website design and maintenance.

And from the very beginning my Editor-in-Chief (heavy on the Chief) has served as editor and proofreader, acting like the English teacher she used to be. She’s the one who finds the typos, and reminds me that no self respecting heroine would let that rotten scoundrel off so easily, that the lady I’ve created must make him pay for his foibles and failures. That kind of knowing seems to be a female thing.

So, whatever possibility, whatever adventure, captures your imagination, take a chance. Give yourself to it. It's your own involvement that makes the effort worthwhile, not someone else’s judgment of its value,  or their appraisal of its success or failure.

GS