I am not Charles Dickens. I wish I were. I want to be a writer of wry humor, social commentary, and have an effect on the soul of the world I live in. The way he was. Heck, Dickens invented Christmas the way we do it now (with considerable help from department stores like Macy’s) by writing A Christmas Carol. But the chances for that are growing ever dimmer.
The small publisher with which I was associated, and who gave me a contract to publish Snow Babies, has died. The business folded while my novel was still in the editorial phase. PDMI Publishing was a worthy group of writers and entrepreneurs who in a different time might’ve gone far. I know by reading some of their works that they had talent. But between the ferocious grip of the mega publishers and the waves upon waves of self-published stuff on Amazon, real writers with talent are drowning in a sea of mediocrity and media indifference. Writers who succeed are the ones with the most luck or the most direct connections to the gate keepers. Profit is far more important than literary merit. You don’t really have to have talent any more. You don’t have to know what a split infinitive is or how to compose a compound sentence properly or how to spell. Shoot, you barely have to know how to write. Just write about sparkly teenage vampires falling in love with high school girls or sexual perverts who are into torture devices, and you can be a millionaire… if you can somehow luck out over the millions of wannabes writing the same exact crap.
There was a time when writing teachers and published authors were telling me that sooner or later good writing gets published. It was supposed to be inevitable. But that was a different time than now. Different rules for the game. I will have two published books with two different publishers. I-Universe published Catch a Falling Star. And Page Publishing will publish Magical Miss Morgan. But I paid both of those publishers to turn my books into published paper books with ISBN numbers and access to customers of Barnes and Noble and other outlets. But I don’t expect to earn the money back that I invested. Not while I’m still alive at least.
My I-Universe publishing experience was worth it. I spent a lot of money to get Catch a Falling Star published, but I got to work with real editors and advisers who had experience working for Knopf and Random House. They gave me a real evaluation of my work and taught me how the business of promoting the book was supposed to work. And the help that they gave me ended there. No advertising budget beyond what I could afford myself. I learned a lot for my money. But I had to come to terms with the fact that marketing was going to take more time and effort than I was physically capable of doing. I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor after all.
Page Publishing was a mistake. They were cheaper than I-Universe, but I am not getting anywhere near the value for my money. Instead of real editors reading and suggesting and modifying my work, I get nit-picky grammar Nazis who don’t even know as much about grammar as I do. They are only copy editing. And the last rewrite was me spending time changing all the incorrect changes they made back to the original text. They did not even tell me the name of the editor making the changes. I talked to the I-Universe editors over the phone and discussed changes in detail. Page gives me email copies to read over and fume about silently. They are no better than the vanity presses of old who were really no more than a re-typing and printing service.
So, from here on, I will only do the self-publishing options available through Amazon. I have no more money or energy to spend on the black hole of literary dreams.
I can’t help but be a writer, though. That part is genetic. I will continue to write and tell stories that I need to tell. I can’t help it. Not to do so will cause me to shrivel and die almost instantly. And I am only exaggerating just a little bit. Well, maybe a lot. But it is still true.
Whatever promises the future holds, I am not depending on them for my feelings of success, closure, and self-worth. The world as I have come to know it will always be a ridiculous stew-pot of ideas and ego and cow poop, and I am not so much giving up as stepping out of the stew. I wish to tell stories for the story’s sake. I have no delusions of becoming as wealthy as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. I will never be Charles Dickens. And I am okay with that.
Catch a Falling Star 
I Have No Idea
Yesterday I posted a weird picture that I haven’t used before and made myself cry gushers of tears again for the boy the picture is a portrait of. I suppose it is a catharsis I didn’t really need. I woke up today with a blistering headache to keep my perpetual backache company. Could that have been caused by the crying and the blues that ensued? Probably.
So, I have no idea for today. My brain hurts and my heart is burned out.
I checked Facebook where I had posted this quote from Malala ;
I wasn’t really prepared for controversy. I should’ve been. It is obvious from the guns versus books graphics that it would stir emotions in my liberal author and teacher friends, as well as my conservative cracker anti-Muslim friends.
My aunt, a former career teacher, responded first. She wrote, “Like the thought.” She was a great third grade teacher in Iowa for many years. She loved all kids then and still does today. I want to be like that in retirement too.
But the next response was from a former high school friend who voted for Trump and hates all the people the Republican Party orders him to hate.
“Sounds great like most sound bites. Much harder to explain and implement.” My friend, Ali Hassenbutter (not his real name, but this will make him angry as well as protect his actual identity), likes to take jabs at me for being a liberal, and the subtext here is that, even though I was a teacher for many years, I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to education. So, I answered him with some heartfelt teacher-ism.
“I had Egyptian and Lebanese and Arab students in my classes at Garland ISD. They are people just like us. You help them learn English. They make American friends. Americans learn that most Muslims are not terrorists. What’s so complicated about that? Unless you start slamming doors in their faces and treating them as less valuable than you are.” I admit to maybe being a bit snarky in that last line, but sometimes he gets my goat. (I know I should just let him have it. I have never liked my goat that much anyway. It smells bad.)
A fellow ESL teacher from Garland chimed in even though she doesn’t know Ali. “And these students added spice in our classroom… Just like they do in the USA.” She knows all the students I was referencing.
Then one of my other Belmond classmates who knows and probably detests us both as heathens added his words of wisdom, “The real concept here is that we are in fact ALL HUMAN.” See there? The Bible banger gets it. And I really appreciate when he steps in and tries to make peace. He’s somewhat nutty at times, but his new-found religion allows him to believe like I do that we should choose love over hate as our default response, even to terrorism.
But Ali comes back with; “It takes both approaches to this problem. But then there is Berkley as a shining example of education gone off the rail.” He’s at least trying to sound like he is listening to our comments, but then he pulls this old red hot chestnut out of the fireplace. He offers it like the opinion of the crazy, racist uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner.
“Yes, because it was the teachers’ fault at Berkley. That poor young racist agitator from Breitbart was supposed to have a peaceful forum for spewing his hateful mouth garbage at young liberal college students, and the college administrators who granted him that right didn’t bend over backwards far enough to prevent a violent reaction.” I know, sarcasm is the resort of the defeated. I should be championing love over hate and freedom of speech over my personal revulsion to Milo.
My teacher friend had this to add; “I understand the “right” instigated that incident.”
“Yes, but they wore masks to hide their identity. That makes them automatically liberals, doesn’t it? If I am able to follow Fox News Logic, anyway.” Sez I.
And so, there we stand, at the very beginning of a month-long Facebook love/hate debate. And I will lose. You can argue with brick walls and score more debate points than you can arguing anything political with Ali. And the frustrating thing is, he’s an ordinary decent human being and stand-up guy too. Not just a dismiss-able deplorable because he voted for Trump.
I have no ideas today. I have a headache. If I can’t defend Malala’s heroic logic, then I can’t even argue my way out of a bowl of chicken soup. Doomed to drown in chicken broth. At least I will die healthy at the bottom of that mixed metaphor. That should be worth a laugh.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, compassion, education, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, humor, Liberal ideas, politics, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as arguments about education, Facebook friends, Malala