More Lust!

My second story is available.

Moved to Tears

I went to a dinner party tonight, and my host greeted me by saying that I looked great. He noticed I'd lost some weight, and that was polite and flattering. He served me the drink of my choice and talked to me about the sauce he'd spent days cooking and the saffron his friends had brought him, smuggled and mislabeled, from Iran. He showed me around his house, including an office I absolutely loved--it was lined with shelves full of books I had read or wanted to read.

And he moved me to tears by giving me his Modern Library copy of The Philosophy of Spinoza, whom he described as "the rare Catholic atheist," because he thought I would find it interesting.

The first time he met me, I was in a short, tight, knit dress, fuck-me boots, and porn star eyeliner, and we were both drinking heavily, but he remembered more of my smart-assed half-philosophical bullshit than I remember saying. And tonight, with a used book that he said he probably hadn't written in too much, he showed that he truly respected the "me" that *I* value--the part that my body carries around.

I needed that, and sadly, even hand knits can't convey to him how much it meant to me. But I will read the book and put it on my shelf next to The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker, the other volume that someone gave to the most real version of me.

Becoming a Writer (or Not)

Him: What do you do?
Me: I write.
Him: Wow, you're a writer?
Me: No, I write.

Thanks to a few clicks on Amazon, I can even say I'm published, but am I a writer?

If you use the cheerleader definition, I write, so I'm a writer. Even when I want to quit, I still find myself composing in my head, so it has become a part of me. I know that my writing is better than average. I also realize that I could really use a skilled editor to tell me where to tighten and where to flesh out. I have three works-in-progress that could eventually be traditionally publishable novels, and I have four short stories and a memoir that are suitable for ebooks. All of them have more literary merit than some of the crap that you can buy.

But for most people, the real question is whether I can declare myself a paid professional writer. I used to joke that my goal for writing was to earn $17.34, the amount of my summer electric bill, so that I would be a writer by Stephen King's definition of being able to pay the utility bill with my income. My more ambitious hope was to earn enough to pay for a bimonthly house cleaner so that I could justify sitting at my computer instead of cleaning.

Unfortunately, what I can't do is self-promote, which makes the whole "indie author" thing somewhere between problematic and entirely fruitless. At $0.35 a shot, even if all of my family and friends bought my short story, I still wouldn't quite clear King's hurdle, and I have been steadily alienating everyone I've ever known, which clearly wasn't a long list to begin with. Over a couple of years, I got a small, fiercely loyal Twitter following, but my mental illness is running amok, and even 140 characters between virtual people in my phone is more personal interaction that I can stand. Without friends or social media, there is no practical way to advertise or create a following for my scribblings.

So lowering the goalposts yet again, I will continue to write books and upload files. They will be there on Amazon, gathering virtual dust, published, unpurchased, and unread, but if someone happens to ask, I can always say, "Yes, they're available on Kindle. I can send you the link."

Son of a Bitch

Of course, I uploaded the story and then found half a dozen typos. And something's goofy and I can't upload a corrected version right now. 

Aaaaarg!

A Momentous Day

Appropriately, the contractors were banging away upstairs and the kids were screaming and fighting with each other when I uploaded my first short story to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program.

It should be available within 12 hours, and I hope a little sooner, so that it can be said to be published on the same day as the release of the crappy 50 Shades of Grey movie. I consider it counterpoint.

So now Phase 3, profit?

Fear of Rising

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book called Fear of Falling, in which she describes the American middle class and its psychological peculiarities, which she argues stem from anxiety about dropping down into the lower class.

I was born into a family transitioning out of the working class, then I was educated beyond my caste. Now 40, I'm fairly sure that I'll never quite feel at ease here in the upper middle class. Case in point, we're having our master bathroom remodeled, and it freaks me out.

First, I lived in rented apartments until I was 28, so remodeling was never a thing I experienced. You got what you got when you picked the apartment, and that was it. If something broke, you called the landlord. End of story. And because it was never an option, I never gave thought to tile choices, cabinet doors, metal fixture finishes, accent trim, any of that. The most I ever imagined changing was paint color. It's not that I am indifferent to these elements. I hate the bathroom as it stands, but now I have to choose all that shit from scratch while knowing almost nothing about it, beyond what I don't like. Eek!

Second, there are...people in my house...working for me. WTF is that all about? People don't work for me, I work for people, right? In the deepest part of my mind, I'm still convinced I'm going to end my days as a Genius Waitress at a truck stop. Being the White Lady in charge doesn't sit well with me.

Thankfully, they are people we know through people, so nobody has called me Mrs. Cordova or ma'am. That would send me running straight for the booze and/or Klonopin. And yes, please, feel comfortable enough to tell me about your teen-years cannabis-enduced meditations on 1800s construction techniques. This, I get. It makes me feel at home.

And when they're done, I'll have a bathroom I like...that doesn't have water damage from the current leaky shower, emerald green counter tops, peeling linoleum, a mildew-prone jacuzzi tub, or cardboard cabinets.

So yay!

Now in the mean time where's that box of wine?

Fits and Starts

The first 15% of a creative project, any project, is exhilarating. The next 65% can be solidly satisfying. The final 20%...sucks. With knitting, I call it the "This Damn Sweater Stage," when I stop knitting to measure the piece over and over again, as if remeasuring will magically make the infernal thing as long as it needs to be.

This should be a year for finishing things, including the dozens of incomplete knitting projects carefully packed in plastic boxes and at least some part of the three unfinished novels and four short stories that are carefully saved in folders and backed up in the cloud.