a rainy, loquacious, going-indie sort of Friday

A cold front is allegedly heading our way, Alaskan in nature, with the possibility of snow actually landing on the Silicon Valley floor.  I'll believe it when I see it, but I am taking precautionary measures, hauling all my spiders and various other potted flora inside for a few evenings.  If snow does reach my backyard, my plants will be safely hidden away.

(Heads-up; a long post, the sort I haven't written in ages!)

I've been under a cloak of sorts, taking Jay back to school on Monday, a road trip that turned to an overnight stay with the kids.  All are well, Thea in the middle of grad school applications, Bud trying to sort what happens after the classes are over, but an internship remains, and Jay in the thick of her freshman year, loving her anthropology classes, digging her plant science class, putting up with jazz appreciation.  I love jazz, but she's being a good sport, feeling her second term of college is suiting her.  So funny to see them all together, along with Thea's boyfriend Brian, their apartment like another extension of my house, only for college students.  When Jay and I arrived Monday night all I had to do was park my bum in a chair as Thea and Brian cooked pasta in white wine sauce with sausage and red peppers, Brian running out for more wine, as they made a huge portion to feed all of us.  He also had to get another bottle opener; they live between two households, his and hers, and I realized that my little children really aren't so little anymore.  Thea's twenty-two, will graduate from university in a few months, is pretty settled with her chap.  Bud will be twenty-one soon enough, done with college, trying to sort what happens next.  Even Jay, who is taller than her sister but just eighteen, has her own life, plans not exactly what Bob and I would choose, and I won't mention her new nose piercing other than to say at least it's not a tattoo...

Yes, my kids have moved out, moved on.  And I'm feeling that way too.  Not that I'm being left in the dust, only that things change, life isn't static.  Ideas evolve, and while on some issues I am pretty old school, there's room in the noggin' for fresh notions to stick, even to stir me to action.  Not the sort taken by Egyptians and Libyans, nothing that drastic.  I'm still drinking tea, faffing with stitching and crocheting, listening to plenty of tunes.  Taking far more snaps of the ocean than necessary, all that is firmly in place.  But other things have lodged themselves in my gray matter, and before I get too old to ponder new methods and intriguing manners, I'm going to enact a few alterations.  I'll still be watching my beloved pigskin and Wimbledon, eating the frozen yogurt (Which was imbibed after the pasta was consumed; I played frozen yogurt delivery service, eating my favourite tart berry and chocolate with my BFF after chatting with all my kids.  I spent so late a night at Dearheart's house Thea started poking me via texts, then when I came home I received a stern face and a wagging finger; "Where have you been?  Do you know what time it is young lady?"  And that it was after ten o'clock was a late night for me, but as usual, I'm digressing...).  I'll eat frozen yogurt until I'm dead or it winds up on some banned list, foods no longer considered for consumption.  And even then I'd probably still sneak a taste whenever possible.  But after ages of not thinking indie publishing was a road I would follow, I am feeling that is about the only way I want to go.

How does this occur, such changes in direction?  Egypt is a great example, for at the beginning of the year it seemed Hosni Mubarak was in firm command of power, no reason to assume anything would change.  Now, nearly the end of February, he's out, that nation on an unexplored path.  As for Libya, oh man, I won't hazard a guess, other than to give the people my support and prayers.  Maybe 2011 is just a year for massive alteration, sometimes awful as in Christchurch, not at all what anyone desires.  Sometimes it's beautiful, as in Egypt.  Sometimes it's so fraught with uncertainty; only time will tell what will happen in Libya, and I'm afraid it won't be as peaceful or bloodless as how Egyptians reclaimed their nation. 

Nothing so dramatic or drastic with my decision to pursue independent publication.  Self-publication yes yes, but that sounds like self-immolation, which I'm sure many writers, agents, publishers and editors would call it, and for a time, as that option began to present itself, I wasn't interested.  Too lazy I said to Bob, I didn't have enough ambition.  I barely promoted Drop The Gauntlet, but that was due to realizing as soon as I held it in my hands the quality of my writing wasn't...  Well, it wasn't that great.  Nothing against my publisher, not at all, only me.  I sought out publication for my very first novel without a CLUE, none, none whatsoever.  Just came back from the UK with a novel in tow, and like most Americans said to myself, "Well, I've got a product to sell, here I go!"  Now four years later, I smile at the naivety, the moxie, the ignorance.  I smile, then consider what I've learned since, so many things about writing, about what I want from being an author, about life.  And recently, Bob's cancer scare a part of this, I've decided that it's not about finagling an agent, a book deal, some traditional, recognized method of this business.  Of which it is, I won't pretend it's not.  Publishing is a business, but that's not the avenue I want to explore.

(Oh wow, this is going to be one of those long-winded posts, but I haven't written a behemoth in ages.) 

Okay, so what sort of avenue do I want to travel?  An artsy-sort, I'm an artsy type.  The type that isn't worried about turning a buck, to which I thank my husband and his very stable place of employment.  But writing isn't about making money, not really.  Certainly not for me, not after spending the last four years honing a craft that has become more than a hobby, and while I call it a job, that's due to the time invested.  Recently Bob and I were a Nielsen family, you know, TV ratings.  Which is hilarious for how little TV we watch, but in the questionnaire Bob had give the hours we worked each week.  When he asked for mine, I smiled, calculating just how writing matters when broken down to blocks of time.  We settled on fifty hours a week, including weekend work, but sometimes it might go over that, rarely is it less.  Not all of that is actually typing at the computer, but when tied together, it's a substantial collection of minutes.  Minutes leading to hours to days, weeks, four years.  In the last four years I've written over thirty novels, a few novellas in there, but yes, a prolific author am I.  Prolific and not too shabby, and after the jokes that we can do what we want because our kids are out of the house and Bob doesn't have thyroid cancer, I look at my life and say well, what do I want to do with all these novels?  How many shall I query, see rejected, how long will I sit on them, how quiet will I remain?

That is really the point; how long will I remain silent? 

To be really obscure, which on occasion I am as well as writing posts that go on forever, let me just give this small anecdote, which pretty much sums up what turning indie means to me.  Brian Eno is a musical artist, a former member of Roxy Music.  After leaving Roxy Music after two albums, he recorded several in the mid-1970's, art-rock that hardly made a commercial dent.  One of those, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) was rerecorded in 2004 by Doug Hilsinger and Caroleen Beatty for the sole purpose of wishing to sing those songs, play those notes.  For art's sake, which when I thought about it a week or so ago really hit me.  I'd been reading blog entries teeming with the idea of indie publication, not to mention Julie Rose's wonderful debut novel The Pilgrim Glass released late last year.  Meanwhile I was querying, playing the game.  A game more like that of a lottery, especially for me, a genre-slut who frequently explores noncommercial subjects like disabilities, death, religion, sexuality.  I don't write to conventional wisdom, I spill whatever story pops into my head.  And there are plenty of them, and they sit in my computer and on a flash drive, unseen.  Now, if Brian Eno had sat on his music over thirty years ago, then Doug and Caroleen wouldn't never had made their version of Taking Tiger Mountain, a gorgeous piece of music that I listen to so thankful for its existence.  Art, it's art, and while I am NOT implying my writing is the same, it is.  Maybe not art in a wide sense, but certainly something I've poured myself into, heart brains body and soul.  Years ago few outlets existed to encourage individual creative endeavors, but one of the benefits of time's passage is new methods for communication.  No need for a printing press or copy machine in this age of e-books and POD.

A sense of liberty fills me, shedding the weight of Will this appeal, will I catch someone's attention?  And I had no idea of the heaviness of that burden.  Like taking the reins of one's life, like joking that now with Bob's clean bill of health we can plan some trips; we're heading to Alabama in April, yes, Alabama.  I want to set part of a novel there, and having never been to the South (I don't count our earlier sojourns to Florida), I'm so jazzed to think of investigating a part of this country not viewed.  Time, a precious commodity, as large a treasure as a gift proffered, which is my writing.  An enormous blessing, like the freedom Egyptians are relishing, one that Libyans are dying to comprehend.  For the last couple of years all I've been doing is writing, not thinking too far into the future.  But now, the future stands in front of me, not one I thought was waiting.  Instead a different landscape, one sort of cloudy as what I see out my windows, rain still falling.  But the hills are so green, striking, alive.  Screaming to be noticed, not to be ignored, missed.  Yes, in a few months those hills will sport a dead brown visage, but right now they are bright, lively, so stunning.  I have no idea what publishing is going to look like in five, ten years time.  But I want to step away from where it sits now, squeezed and aching.  I want to drop the shackles I willingly accepted, playing the query game.  I want to walk away from that and pursue a different course, an artsy, possibly flaky path, one that still carries a stigma of a frustrated resentful would-be author wanting to flog manuscripts that obviously didn't pass muster in the real world.

In the world of business; no, I don't want to pass muster in what traditional publishing deems right, successful, profitable.  I want to write my stories, publish them in a manner that is eco-friendly, won't add to the stacks of novels that sit in shops, taking up shelf space.  A small consideration, but one that needs attention.  Bob and I wandered through a new and used record store a few weeks ago, and the amount of product was amazing!  CD's and DVD's, albums and a few books, and what happens to all these items?  Perhaps a reason to keep my own output hushed; who needs another novel in print?  But as John Steinbeck said, "I guess there are never enough books."

Or even closer to my heart; "300 people living out in West Virginia have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within ya."  Jack and Meg White from This Protector.  I can't think of a better way to express it.  If I only reach three hundred people, in West Virginia or elsewhere, better that than the stillness that echoes now in a hard drive, a flash drive, in my head.  After all this yak-yakking, I guess there's really not much else to be said.

(Which is completely untrue, but enough for this post!)