Tag: Life

Brace for the intensity of submitting your writing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If you’re not a booklover but still think your story would interest tons of readers, let me tell you, Forget it.

An editor can tell immediately when somebody’s manuscript is from a non-reader.

~*~

For other wannabes, the big test comes in submission of a manuscript. Typically, the first step is in approaching small literary journals, but be warned the rejection rate is steep. When I began, it ran to about 20 rejections for each piece accepted. And that went for just one of the three to five poems that went out in each submission. And that was for established, recognized poets.

Another place to start is as a contributor to a local newspaper, covering local public meetings and the like. At least your work will appear in print or the equivalent.

Still, when I was submitting poetry this way, I managed to get more than a thousand acceptances. I have deep gratitude for the devoted editors and publishers who encouraged me, back when. We need more, should you want to step up.

I think, too, of all of the envelopes, clean photocopies (once that was acceptable), postage stamps, time involved researching addresses. It got pricy.

When I was actively submitting to the journals, I could never predict who would accept what, no matter how long I’d known a publisher or how carefully I had examined the publication.

It was a quirky process, this exercise of seeking homes for personal work. The reactions of editors and readers is so idiosyncratic and varied that the same poem could be considered too intense, by one, and not raw and bloody enough, by another.

~*~

The bigger step came in trying to land full-book publication. More was at stake, considering the costs, especially in a marginal niche like poetry.

As for fiction?

Approaching literary agents was generally a black hole. Few even bothered to return the self-addressed stamped envelopes. Book publishers, ditto.

I had some nibbles, even so.

Even with a few non-literary manuscripts, I was repeatedly running full force into brick walls.

And then ebook opportunities came along. It still requires self-promotion in search of a readership. So here we are.

~*~

At this point in my life, I’m backing off from the cutting edge, wherever that is. Hate to admit I’m also out of the loop and haven’t kept up with literary journals. As for the hot celebrated novelists? I don’t recognize their names. Of course, they don’t recognize mine, either.

The real challenge for both of us is encouraging others to read as an essential part of human understanding. Since you’re reading this already, I’m assuming you’re already active in that commonwealth.

Stay the course, please!

Ten fears in an approaching hurricane

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Even this far north, we’ve had our moments. Among the things to consider:

  1. That it’s going it hit full force, or even with winds in excess of 70 mph and five or more inches of rain.
  2. Roof shingles blown away and/or leaking.
  3. Falling trees and branches.
  4. Flying objects. Things nobody thought to tie down, especially.
  5. Broken windows.
  6. Long power outages leading to loss of frozen and refrigerated food – meat, scallops, blueberries, homegrown chard, especially. Worse yet, the microwave won’t work.
  7. Basement flooding when the sump pump loses power. As for the furnace?
  8. Wet mattresses and books if the ceiling starts to “rain.”
  9. Isolation when the causeway floods.
  10. Just where we’re staying if ordered to evacuate.

Are they really vain expenditures?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Upon graduation from college, in my social-activist period, I wondered how American society could possibly afford High Art while so many went hungry and homeless – domestically as well as internationally. Then I began to see everywhere a desire for expressiveness – in every ghetto, the ghetto-blasters and Playboy, spreads, graffiti and blues bands. To say nothing of the influence of professional sport, to which nearly every ghetto youth seems to aspire. (And more than a few others.)

So opera and museums and other “Establishment” operations came to lose their exclusivity in my vision. Extravagant expenditures in those realms are overshadowed by big-league athletics sports for similar reasons and then by military budgets across much of the globe.

See how much each person needs to reach into the realms of thought and imagination – the spirit; anything less reduces our existence to nothing more than economics, impoverishing everyone in the society.

So I noted.

By the way, Versailles still offends me.

As for the clothes washer and dryer

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the original layouts for the upstairs, I thought a laundry room was pushing our limits. On the other hand, I didn’t want a washer and dryer in the bathroom, either. That just would have looked, well, utilitarian. Besides, keeping them separate would avert crowding when competing uses erupted.

So what would be wrong with keeping them downstairs?

That’s when the fact that we would have to carry our laundry up and down stairs was pointed out to me. They’re the bulk of our wash load.

OK, I relented and was willing to go see where the new plan would lead.

I had to admit that no longer having it in my bedroom and studio was going to come as a relief.

~*~

What I’m seeing now is how much this “luxury” really enhances our daily living, starting with the sheets and blankets storage.

I’ve long been a fan of having elbow space as part of my work area. For perspective, I recommend Richard Swenen’s 1992 bestseller, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.

The laundry room – and the slightly wider than normal hallway between it and the stairwell – reflect that thinking.

The laundry tub also fits into that idea of margin, with its deep bowl facilitating household and painting projects cleanup more easily than a bathtub does.

Add to that the ease of ironing.

There’s even thought of running a clothesline out from the window.

Frankly, I’m not so sure about that, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

Where are they now?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the hippie circles where I lived immediately after graduating from college, I remember visiting one couple’s apartment on the second floor of a former Victorian carriage house, not that it was in any way chic. They had one room that had benches or modest pews around the four walls, something I now see as resembling a Quaker meetinghouse interior.

Their reason was the small group they welcomed to study the works of Armenian mystic George Gurdjeff (c 1867-1949). He’s best known for his book, Meetings with Remarkable Men, published in 1963, describing his visits in remote mountains and deserts mostly, places he paid homage to eccentric and often aged holy men of varied stipes.

Looking back at my own life and people I’ve met, though, I’m not sure his were any more exceptional than many I’ve known. Maybe they were just a bit more eccentric.

It’s a thread running through most of my work, actually.

In my relocations around the country, I’ve lost touch with 99 percent of them, but do wonder how the rest of their lives unfolded.

Here’s a sampling.

  • High school classmates and other youths from our church.
  • Fellow commuters and faculty from the new Wright State University.
  • The other residents in my two dorms in Indiana, especially the ones who show up in Daffodil Uprising.
  • The other residents of the hippie farm in New York’s Southern Tier or my Hawley Street digs in town. See Pit-a-Pat High Jinks.
  • The yogis of the ashram and those who came as guests. (Yoga Bootcamp.)
  • Ex-lovers over the years. (Blue Rock, Braided Double-Cross, Long-Stem Roses in a Shattered Mirror.)
  • Colleagues from the public policy research institute at Indiana University. One of the leaders did go on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. As for the others?
  • Fellow poets and writers along my way.
  • Fellow journalists and other newspaper workers. I’ve come across a few and read of others, but mostly they, too, have faded from sight. Eight papers in all. (Hometown News.)
  • Quakers I’ve experienced in nine yearly meetings.
  • The staff as the media syndicate where I worked, plus newspaper editors in 14 states, back when I lived in Baltimore.
  • Mennonites and Brethren in Maryland.
  • Neighbors around the Jacuzzi at Yuppieville on the Hill, Granite State.
  • New England Contradancers in Greater Boston and across New Hampshire and southern Maine.
  • Greek Orthodox in Dover. (What’s Left.)
  • Voices in Revels Singers in Watertown outside Boston.

Trying to trace down even a few of them has been frustrating. Some have shown up in news reports that led me to them, fleetingly. Many of the women have taken their husband’s surname, which becomes a barrier. Facebook has led to some from my high school years, but beyond that I am surprised by the number of “friends” who are inactive at their profiles or other folks who have no online presence at all. And then there are ones I’ve come across at Find-a-Grave.

It’s been quite a cast in my zig-zag journey to here.

By and large, though, I’m seeing how short we’ve come in regard to the lofty goals we once professed. My heroes, especially.

~*~

That said, you can find the novels they inspired in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.

George Bernard Shaw wasn’t shy in sounding off on classical music

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The famed English playwright was also an esteemed music critic, though he wrote under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto, 1888 to 1889, before moving on to a more respectable newspaper for four years. There, he signed his reviews G.B.S.

For perspective, he was an ardent advocate of Richard Wagner, which put him in opposition to Johannes Brahms.

Here are some sharp notes.

  1. “Hell is full of musical amateurs.”
  2. “A man who can tolerate Bach and Scarlatti on a modern piano can tolerate anything.” (He was the first converts to the original instruments camp of early music.)
  3. “Nine times out of ten, when a prima donna thinks that I am being thrilled by her vibrant tones, I am simply wrestling with an impulse to spring on stage and say ‘My dear young lady, pray don’t. Your voice is not a nail, to be driven into my head.’”
  4. “There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.”
  5. He did concede some points. “Mind, I do not deny that the Requiem is a solid piece of music manufacture. You feel at once that it could only have come from the establishment of a first-class undertaker.”
  6. He redefined the scope of the job, saying “I purposely vulgarized musical criticism, which was refined and academic to the point of being unreadable and often nonsensical,” or more to the point, “I believed that I could make musical criticism readable even by the deaf.” To wit:
  7. “Handel is not a mere composer in England: he is an institution. What is more, he is a sacred institution. … Every three years there is a Handel Festival, at which his oratorios are performed by four thousand executants, collected from all the choirs in England. The effect is horrible; and everyone declares it sublime. … If I were a member of the House of Commons, I would propose a law making it a capital offence to perform an oratorio by Handel with more than 80 performers in the chorus and orchestra, allowing 48 singers and 32 instrumentalists.” He was way ahead of his time on the size issue.
  8. Many of the musical affectations of the time drew his fire. Regarding one imposed on a Mozart aria, he commented, “The effect of this suburban grace can be realized by anyone who will take the trouble to whistle ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ with the last note displaced an octave.”
  9. To him, a “poor performance was a personal insult to be treated accordingly.”
  10. Still, stridently avoiding pale cliché, he did praise those who surpassed his standards. Describing one singer, he wrote, “I was consoled by a human caress after an angelic discourse.”

Fitting me like a glove

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I posted a year ago, this would be the first time I’ve had a tailor-made personal space. How heavenly! Look at those two windows higher up on the wall, allowing for shelving below and cross-circulation of air in the warmer months in addition to natural light.

Roughly 12-by-14 feet, including the closet and writing corner, much of it would be taken up with a very comfy double-sized bed, but the room was also intended to enclose my 200-plus journals, rows of LPs and CDs, a turntable and Bose stereo, hundreds of books, plus clothing, filing cabinets, and a writing corner. Hey, I’ve been downsizing.

The room is isolated, tucked away from everything, unlike the previous space where I could keep an eye on passers-by on the street and deliveries to the back door, the entry that got 98 percent of our use. I could even see the deer in our yard. The new room, in contrast, feels more like a treehouse, even with that double-sash window that displays a corner of the ocean and all of its changes.

~*~

My bedroom is the smallest of the four, but it fits me like the proverbial glove. If I sometimes think of it as being like a treehouse, that was something I never had as a kid, though I did climb often to the top of the elm in our back yard. I can nearly clamber to its tippy top in my sleep, almost 70 years later, hundreds of miles to the east.

In our renovations, the room is also envisioned as a place for my continuing downsizing, a consideration for my heirs who have no interest in my journals, manuscripts, recorded music, clothing, or ancestral snapshots and formal photographs. I don’t want to burden them with any of that. Still, despite my previous efforts, there’s so much I still need to sort through in my remaining time. Back to those journals, manuscripts, recordings, clothes, and photos. Some of that labor may even lead to future posts here.

Back when we moved into our Dover house, the one with the red barn in New Hampshire, I needed tons of space for my literary projects – everything was on paper. Not so now, especially after so much of that paper is now available to readers in digital publication.

What we did with the wall between mine and the front bedroom is especially delightful. Originally, the space was supposed to be divided between the two bedrooms, but then she who must be obeyed ceded it all to me, except for the space overhead. Her reason was that this was the wall where she decided her bed should go, and the bed would have obstructed the closet. OK, then.

Gee, I had been thinking about what might go up my side of the space. Instead, I have a bit of upper wall, which makes me wonder what might be displayed there instead. My Far West cow skull, perchance? Or a moose antler rack from around here?

My proudest part of my upstairs quarters is the writing center carved out of what would have been closet, up against an outside window. Here I can see a corner of the harbor and yet also have so much at hand overhead.

~*~

The back two bedrooms – mine and the one we’re designating as guest room – are largely square in their floorplan but were to have a signature charred beam running upward along the exterior wall, a reminder of the 1886 downtown fire that charred our rafters but didn’t get further than that. For us, these are also reminders of a chimney fire or two that the house also survived. For the most part, the rooms are mirror images of each other, except for differences in the wall that has the closets. More on that in a later post or two.

When it came time for the drywall to go up, we yielded on preserving that detail and instead went for an unbroken wall, mostly because of the expense of the labor needed to execute the details. Alas.

~*~

In the renovations, my room took priority because so much stuff from where we were dwelling downstairs had to move up to make room for ongoing work as it shifted to the first floor.

Besides, I was tiring of trying to sleep and write in the same chamber as the clothes washer and its noise. That future dining room was getting very crowded. We would need it as a staging area for the next stages of renovation.