WordSisters

Tag: Writing

  • Anything I’d Recognize?

    Writing paid part of my tuition and living expenses in both high school and college. Stringer work, editing school publications, working in media relations, internships, freelancing. I stepped out of journalism school into local newspaper work then the wild world of advertising before settling into corporate communications.

    Now, a retiree from the briefcase world, I would love to have some years back from when creative writing took second, third or fourth place behind big obligations. There have been successes, some brilliant like being a part of a regional Emmy award-winning team, Midwest book awards, C-Span Book TV. Maybe there could have been more.

    When Joe Tachovsky and I wrote 40 Thieves on Saipan, folks who discovered I was co-writing a World War II history book had many questions. Some would follow me to share personal stories about uncles or grandparents who served in the war. I handed out business cards like a realtor at an active open house.

    Response is less enthusiastic about freelance work and falls dramatically into the same interest zone of talking about high school dance competitions in a gathering of day traders when I share that I write contemporary fiction. “Anything I’d recognize” is a standard response or its companion “Would my wife recognize your books?” If lucky, someone asks how you think up your stories and a brief conversation opens. 

    It’s probably fair.  Social media, family, sports, travel take a lot of time. Bumping into a writer is kind of like listening to a bar band. If they don’t know how to play your favorite song, you disengage. 

    Anonymity isn’t limited to B list writers. Years ago, I stood next to a crowd growing around a hotel counter at a major conference. Voices were rising as news spread that the staff did not recognize Nikki Giovanni when she attempted to check in without a reservation. Giovanni, who died in 2024, was one of the world’s best-known African American poets and someone who spoke out on social issues. But chances are mixed that that reservationist was one of the 50% of Americans who read at least one book a year and even more minute that she was in the 12% who read poetry.

    Some days a writer may as well talk with their characters, cause few other people are paying attention. But I wouldn’t stop working just because of that. 

  • Spiders, Jeans and Apples

    Daylight now plays secondary to darkness. Not the awesome state of Dec. 21, but the gradual nibbling away of four minutes a day of sunlight. That doesn’t sound like a big bite of time until added up and you’re twenty-eight minutes behind the game in taking a walk, taking pictures of the last of summer’s flowers or merely reading without a lamp. 

    Temperatures are also supposed to be heading to lower numbers. The boys will wear shorts until their friends pull out sweats or long jeans. It’s all relative. In March sixty degrees suggests that a sweater can stay in the car or at home. In October someone will pull out a jacket and hat, maybe even gloves, when leaving for work. Spiders find their way into the house, spinning webs where no one wants to see a creepy critter hanging. The hummingbirds are gone, but the geese increase in number, pooping everywhere and honking at ungodly hours.

    Since the pandemic, things have changed. Or maybe it’s my age. Instead of planning a fall and winter wardrobe, I found new black pants, a pair of jeans, a new sweater, and comfortable shoes. A writer’s life is simple without office mates remembering that you’ve worn the same long black turtleneck for a few years. 

    Open the windows for cool sleeping. Bake apple crisp or apple pie or apple cake. Celebrate the passing of mosquitos when walking the old dog. If it wasn’t for November 5, this could be the best time of the year.

  • Saying Goodbye to My Books

    In preparation for a someday move, I’ve been parting with my books. Hundreds of them over the past three years. Most have been collecting dust for decades (I bought my house in 1989), while others are recent additions. Some are quick reads I started and finished while drinking a cup of coffee, while others took me more than a year to make my way through.

    Many are still on my “to read” list while others have been read and reread, by me and by the family and friends I’ve shared them with. Some were gifts, though most were bought by me at local bookstores or while traveling.

    One reason I have so many books is because the upstairs of my house, which once belonged to the owners of a local used bookstore, is a 45- by 15-foot half-story lined with—no surprise—bookshelves, 150 linear feet of them, plus three standalone bookcases.

    Although I’ve loved owning my books, some of which date back to my years as a college English major, now that I’m on Medicare and beginning to think of moving, it’s time to let them go.

    But parting isn’t easy, in large part because I still treasure the stories they told, the memories they hold and the lessons they taught. There are books about saints that I read while in Catholic grade school, and books about the sea I read while in Florida on family vacations. There are books I used to motivate myself, and others I turned to for solace after the deaths of my parents.

    There’s a shelf of books that include autographs from people I admire and heartfelt messages from people who love me. There’s even one shelf dedicated to books written by people I know, and whom you may know as well: Marly Cornell, Kate DiCamillo and Cathy Madison to name a few. Plus, books by Natalie Goldberg, Mary Carroll Moore and others from whom I’ve taken a Loft class or gotten to know because of a writing workshop.        

    Just seeing the books brings back a flood of memories of the books themselves—the characters, the settings, the twists and turns of their plots—as well as where I was when I read them: while packed in the car with my parents and four younger sisters on our way to Florida for a family vacation, while taking college English classes, while flying to China, while spending a month on a Panama beach, while sitting bedside during my father’s final hours.

    Others such as How to Forgive When You Don’t Know How and Living Proof: Telling Your Story to Make a Difference home in on my desire to be a better person and to advocate for causes I care about.

    And, no surprise to anyone who knows me, there are also dozens of self-help books, many of which inspired me to write my own book, What Do You Really Want? How to Set a Goal and Go for It, A Guide for Teens.

    While I’ve treasured all my books, I’ve recently begun sending them back out into the world. I’ve donated hundreds to Rain Taxi, a local non-profit that sponsors the annual Twin Cities Book Festival, which includes a book sale. I’ve also put dozens in the Little Free Library down the street.

    Still others I’ve passed on to family and friends whom I hope will enjoy them—or learn as much from them—as I have. They range from true crime to travel guides, from books by (and about) artists to how-to books on everything from fishing and stargazing to tying knots and learning Spanish.

    And because I now do most of my reading on my phone thanks to the Kindle and audiobooks I borrow from the Hennepin County Library, my shelves are becoming empty.

    Thankfully I have one thing that will keep my book memories alive: the annual “books I’ve read” lists. I truly treasure these lists and the many fond memories they prompt of the nearly 2,000 books I’ve read since I started keeping track back in 1982.

    As author Italo Calvino has written, “Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life.” And although there are now far fewer books in my house than there were in the past, I hope you will always be able to see the important place they hold in my life.