Let's Get Crackin'

One should be very careful with books, and what's inside them for they have the power to change us."  From a #Novelicious' tweet.

A couple of months ago as I was leaving for a #Tony Robbins event I grabbed a novel to read on the plane. It was #Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers.

I had already read it twice but figured since I hadn’t achieved her eloquence, I would read it another time. I wanted to visit Scotland and smell the wild Thyme again. I wanted to follow Penelope Keeling through her life again. So I read it a third time. Love, lovely Pilcher.

And yesterday, I picked up one of Pilcher's older books. The opening line didn’t have it. It sounded ordinary in comparison to her writing I had just read. It was a revelation.

People do not spring to life fully formed, they develop, they hone their skills. That is what Pilchers’s Publisher told her, That she hadn’t delivered the goods yet. And so she asked what he wanted. “A big fat book for women. A good read. Something to get the teeth into. And something, above all, that tap into the life and the experiences of her generation.”

So she delivered the goods, and The Shell Seekers hit the New York Times best seller list.

Okay, let’s get crackin.’

If it’s in your blood, write.

Write your goddamned book now.” wrote Dave Eggers,

"The world awaits."

#writing #storytelling 

#writersblock pic.twitter.com/OmSJj087bW

Statisticians tell us that few people read anymore and that a non-fiction book might get 250 readers.

Do it anyway.

“Why do I care if I make a fool out of myself?” wrote Disney Imagineer Don Hahn “It’s called living, and while we are yet alive shouldn’t we do things that living people do? So embrace your inner idiot.”

Do it.

If you are worried about making a fool of yourself, watch a rerun of the 2017 Oscars—now that was embarrassing.

From The Shell Seekers:

Penelope’s daughter is speaking to the town vicar.

 “I don’t really understand why you should be so kind and accommodating. After all, we both know that my mother wasn’t a regular church-goer. She wasn’t ever very religious. And the idea of resurrection and afterlife she found very hard to swallow.”

 “I know that. Once we discussed it, but we came to no agreement.”

“I’m not ever certain that she believed in God.”

 Mr. Tillingham, still smiling, shook his head. Reached out his hand for the door handle of his car. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. She may not have believed in God, but I’m pretty certain God believed in her.”

Live long and prosper and I would love it if you would follow me.

Joyce

P.S. Today this blog has a mind of its own. the font will either yell at you or be so small you can't read it. See.

The Peacock and The Frog

Dear Writers,

Perhaps you can relate:

A long time ago I did a visualization to find my totem animal.

In my mind’s eye, I traveled down a path and stopped before bushes that rustled telling me that something was hiding within them. I coaxed, expecting to see some cute little furry animal, “You can come out now."

To my surprise, the animal that strutted out of the bushes was a peacock.

A male peacock in all his finery.

Fast forward: We bought a house in Riverside California. When my little daughter and I visited the empty house, I looked up through a clerestory window, and there on the roof was a peacock.

I figured it was an omen—my first encounter with my peacock.

We lived up a hill from a park, and he was a frequent visitor. From our roof, he could survey the countryside.

A few years later we bought property in Marcola Oregon, and upon visiting the property, what did we see?

A peacock!

 Later on, we would see him running with the wild turkeys.

And then last week I visited our new house, and looking out the bedroom window, what did I see on the fence?

 A peacock!

I couldn’t believe it. I was yelling for the dog to come see.

In the sleepy little town of Junction City Oregon, in the middle of winter, in a neighborhood, I never in my wildest dreams would think I would see a peacock, but I did.

Is this telling me something or what?

If I roll back the time to shortly after my first encounter with the visionary peacock, I visited the bushes again and asked the peacock, “Why do you stay hidden here in the bushes?”

“Because,” he answered, “Here I am the only peacock.”

It’s time for me to join the other peacocks.  In light of this, I am publishing my Island book on Kindle Select. Just a tad bit more editing and it's good to go. No peacocks in it.  It’s not about the peacock. The peacock is grace, vision, a kick in the pants to get with it. I don't know why he is associated with houses, perhaps because I have houses and writing mixed up with each representing significant potential.

I accept his visitation with gratitude.

We saw no peacocks during the year we spent in Hawaii. That year was a hiding-away place, not a be-seen place. It was a time of contemplation, of re-grouping, of finding oneself.

 The peacocks we saw on an earlier trip to Hawaii lived in a fabulous hotel, wandering in and out at will, meandering over expensive carpeting and roosting in the beams of the amazing foyer.  No hiding away for those peacocks—and they had a person to clean up after them.

I wonder what it would take to be the most read book on the month on Kindle. Most read books receive a bonus, and that's the reason I'm asking. I don’t believe it is as strange as seeing three peacocks associated with three new houses.

My book will be called The Frog’s Song. “The frog calls the rain that settles the dust for our journey.”

The Frog’s Song is about the voyage.  It’s about time away to contemplate, to learn that sequestering oneself off on some remote tropical island, living in the jungle off the grid, and down a mile and a half of lava encrusted road gives you time to find yourself.  Sometimes one must go off and regroup, and to learn to forge ahead. Pele called this little family of one husband, one daughter one seven-month –old grandson, two dogs and two cats, and one narrator, to the island, and then, in her wisdom, she kicked us off.

(And the Coqui frogs sang to us, and called the rain.)

P.S. About Kindle Select:

Kindle Select has done a tricky thing. They are paying authors for pages read, not for just having someone purchase the book. Authors of long books were complaining—they spent years writing, and then to be in competition with some little 99-page booklet didn’t seem fair. Thus Kindle Select is implementing the #pages-read policy.

Gone are the days when a writer can say, “It doesn’t matter if you read my book, just buy it.”