Tag: Writing

HOW DID THEY AFFORD IT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Viewing several documentaries on the writing life in Manhattan in the 1950s leaves me wondering just how anyone could afford it. Yes, the world was quite different then and, if we can believe their arguments, the written word was king the way it would no longer be by the late ’60s.

Still, it’s hard for me to believe that writing would have paid that much more in the era than it did when I entered the profession. How many plum magazine assignments were there, anyway? Or how many lucrative book advances?

The argument that rents were low, especially in Greenwich Village, is hard to believe for anyone who tried to find a decent place upstate in the early ’70s, as I did. Even for a full-time journalist working for Gannett, the best the pay would cover was a slum where a heavy rain would leak on my typewriter.

And that was without the heavy drinking that we’re told was required of the New York literary set, as well as the psychotherapy, sometimes daily. Plus the heavy smoking. Did I add, all the men wore suits and ties. (And all of the writers and editors, it was emphasized, were males. Women were employed as “fact checkers.”)

Still, when I run the numbers, they don’t add up. Can anyone tell me what I’m missing?

 

SLEEPING LATE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Back in my college years, I was definitely a night owl. Did much of my best work after midnight, in fact.

But my first job after graduation required me to be at the office no later than 6:30 in the morning most days – sometimes at 5 or 5:15. It was never easy, although I did find that a nap when I got home allowed me to socialize in the evenings.

Moving to the ashram, with its daily predawn meditation sessions, was no less grueling.

In the years after, though, there were many days when I could “sleep late” or “sleep in,” often till noon or so on a day off or when I didn’t have to be in the office till much later. Those were glorious.

When I remarried, however, a new tension arose: my wife is an early riser. No matter how late she turns in, she’s usually awake by 4. On top of it, I wound up going back to the second shift, which meant I’d make a serious effort to be in bed and asleep by 2 a.m. We could have been playing team-tag.

Now that I’m in what’s considered retirement, I’m pretty free to let my natural rhythm settle where it may, apart from mornings or nights when something’s scheduled. What’s surprising is how much I’m turning into an early bird rather than a night owl. I find the early hours conducive to clear thinking and writing – maybe I’ll even get back to meditating and exercising first thing in the morning.

It’s staying up late – even on choir rehearsal nights, with the long commute home afterward – that’s become the challenge.

Never would have expected this, believe me.

Now, if I can only get the power nap going in the early afternoon.

 

 

 

PAPER-FREE DIGITAL ANXIETIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Do we read less closely online than we do on paper?

Do pieces get lost in the email and social media deluge of new material? (With paper, are we more likely to revisit a piece and ponder it? More likely to use it a springboard for response or action?)

Do we keep things in our inbox or mailbox folders? Or do we delete most of them once they’re read? (Or do we scan them, rather than reading?) Or just save them, “for later”?

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling flooded. There seems to be way too little time to keep up, and my mind is feeling like a sieve. Now, we’re all on to the next …

GOING PAPERLESS, TO SOME DEGREE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

It’s been a little over a year since I went largely paperless, as the high-tech crowd would put it. Not entirely by choice, but rather because my printer died and the one we have for the household no longer interacts with any of our three laptops. So much for technology. Alas.

Yes, it can be an annoyance, especially when I have a choral score to print out or my wife’s found some great coupons. But we’ve found ways to cope.

When my printer went kaput, I was already finding that most poetry journals were accepting submissions only online, and that included the printed quarterlies. Keeping duplicate files of online and printout versions was troublesome and led to several embarrassing duplicate acceptances. So I decided to go to online-submissions only, and had only a few instances where I had to decline an opportunity.

Blogging, of course, has allowed me to move many pieces straight to the Internet without using paper, so that’s cleaned up a corner of my studio.

The big breakthrough was the ebook publishing with Smashwords. There’s no more need for multiple printed manuscript copies or files of postal correspondence to cope with. It’s so clean!

Not that the piles of paper don’t continue. Rather, they’re smaller these days. I’ll still pay my bills with a check, thank you, and there are always paper notes for consideration. Admittedly, I used to jest that sorting papers was one of my hobbies. In a way, it still is.

The fact is I love the feel and look of paper when it’s used well – fine stock and good typography, especially, along with masterful photography or illustration. And I still have a lot of that to sort through, to say nothing of all my years of journaling, which I’ve done with fountain pens for nearly two decades now. The old-fashioned fountain pens I ordered the same time I bought a PC that’s long been out of commission. The pens that dance in my hands, unlike this keyboard.

IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF TIME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

As a writer, I love taking a phrase and rolling it around, substituting one word or thought and seeing what happens.

With the Grimms’ fairy tale opening, “A long time ago, when wishes came true,” I began substituting “prayers” for “wishes” and realized many people seem to assume that prayers really did have more effect a long time ago – say back in the time of Moses or King David – than these days.

But that also has me wondering about the depth of our wishes today. Are we too directed by advertising and material possessions to seek what’s truly desirable? The fairy tales and Holy Scripture, as I recall, have a lot to say on that account.

THIS SECRET SOCIETY OF READERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

One of the more baffling questions for just about any author, I suspect, is the one that asks, “Who are your readers?”

Yes, I know about genres and their core audiences – Chick Lit, aimed at unmarried females in their 20s; Romance, middle-age women; Sci-Fi, geeky males; Young Adult, well, it’s self-explanatory. I even know that commercial radio programmers could target their listenership to hit an average, say, of 24.7-year-old women in the office.

For a poet, though, or the novelist working outside common genres, this question becomes more problematic. I can imagine those I hope will find the work appealing, but the reactions often turn up elsewhere. I’m thinking of a writer who hoped her work would speak to her friends, only to hear them say, “I don’t read books,” as if it’s a badge of honor. (Oh, for shame!)

What that suggests is that rather than expecting a boffo bestseller, we writers might envision a much smaller-scale enterprise – connecting with readers one-on-one, as an underground understanding. Let it be private and personal, then. Our own quiet conversation.

Whether my Hippie Trails novels find their appeal more for those who lived through the era or among younger readers undergoing similar searching is still taking shape. I would hope both. But I am enjoying the feedback I’m receiving, from wherever.

It’s not the big-business Manhattan operation I once dreamed of or the San Francisco counterculture success, either. But here we are, connecting, in our own little underground society. Little do the others know what they’re missing now, do they?

BEWARE OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Reporters and editors live in dread of accidentally publishing a lewd expression. It’s not just the list of four-letter words themselves or the inevitable typographical errors. (You know, the embarrassing “pubic” for “public.”) The innocent double-meaning can be the worst. The famous “Colonel Screws guest at banquet” headline that went through five or six editions before getting caught. Or the caption for the Supreme Court justice about to climb the staircase to a second-floor dinner: “Justice Douglas prepares to mount women” instead of “mount stairs with women.”

As one of our colleagues would remind us, quoting one of his mentors, “It takes a dirty mind to put out a clean newspaper.”

(Oh, the stories we could tell.)

SCARF ‘ROUND THE NECK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

At the first college I attended, nearly all of the writers wore scarves. I don’t think it was a conscious decision to create a group identity, but the school, small as it was, had an excellent writing program. As a commuter campus, we wound up hanging out in what was called a cafeteria, not that I recall a real food line. But the round table (as a roundtable, at that) was open, and maybe the scarves were initially just a way of finding a circle of kindred spirits.

In a way, the strip of cloth may have served like those reminders of guilds and monastic orders of ancient times and their echo in modern clerical and academic vestments. We weren’t yet hippies, with all of their expressive sartorial flair, but it was on the horizon. Think of it as a badge of self-identity and distinction.

In the years since, as I’ve come to appreciate the way scarves can add a layer of comfort through a northern winter, I keep recalling that circle and our aspirations. A few went on to earn literary recognition, but some of the others were also immensely talented and yet have vanished from sight.

Come to think of it, so have many of my own favorite scarves – especially the ones my new stepdaughters latched onto when they came into the picture.

Any way I look at it, a scarf still beats a necktie as an item of apparel. Remind me to wear one next time I pose for the back-of-the-book jacket portrait.

Oh, here we are, back to those aspirations, aren’t we?

A FEW QUICK THOUGHTS ON THE LONG AND SHORT OF WRITING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As a writer, I love long pieces that allow a thorough investigation of a topic. Tell me the why and how of a situation, not just the final action.

The Wall Street Journal used to have those front-page, full-column “leaders” that jumped inside, often filling most of the inside page. These pieces actually telescoped a series of mini-stories into a comprehensive whole. How I admired those, even as I was being told to cut stories to much shorter length. (It often felt like reducing prime rib to hamburger.)

The longer stories, if well written and thoroughly researched, provided a sense of feasting, and I could point to research that showed some readers stayed around for those meaty offerings. I knew I had a feeling of getting my money’s worth after I’d savored one of those.

Not that I felt all stories should run long – I was also a big believer in running columns of briefs, in part to make room for the longer reports.

These thoughts return to me as I blog. In fact, I’m having a lot of fun “writing short” here at the Barn. You know, a couple of sentences and that’s it – especially with the photos.

For the longer efforts, though, I’ll point you to As Light Is Sown, Chicken Farmer I Still Love You, or the Orphan George Chronicles. Or to my novels. As I was saying …

THE INSPIRATION OF PICASSO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

There it was on a public television broadcast, a curator proclaiming that no other artist had made as many bad lithographs (and maybe other kinds of prints) as Picasso. But, came the rejoinder, no other artist had made so many of genius, either. The freedom of one was necessary to open the other.

I took the message to heart. Genius, of course, is another matter.