Writing As Work

Posted on 09/11/2024 by Grumpa Joe

The real work of writing is in the publication. That is why I love blogging. As a blogger, I can publish my work immediately in the blog kingdom or not, as I choose. Since I started in 2008, I have never restricted my posts. I received several messages asking permission to reblog my post in that time frame. And a couple of times, I was invited to join the communist party. That one made me nervous. What could I have said to make them want me to write for them? Recently, Facebook removed one of my posts because they felt I was trying to get likes. Hell yes, I’m trying to get likes!

As I said above, the real work is finding someone to help me publish my novel. In the last three weeks, I have spent numerous hours researching agencies and agents who are in business to help slugs like me. So far, these people are pretty specific about what they want to work on. The key word is genre. My story doesn’t fit into any of their particular genres. If you have a job that is called writing, you are supposed to know about these things when you begin putting the words down. If you wait until your story is complete and then try to squeeze into a genre it is even more work. You see, a real money making writer knows things like which genre sells and which don’t. If you want to see some ode in your til you will master the art of writing stories that fall into the highest selling genre even if you hate those kinds of tales. If you do what I did, you will struggle looking for an agent/publisher who will help you.

When I finished my book satisfactorily, I began searching for an agent by Googling literary agents. The very first hit I got came from Page Publishing. Excited, I dove into their website and started answering questions. The next day, I received a call from an agent. I returned the call and listened to his pitch. It sounded too good to be true. A voice in my head said, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

I Googled Page Publishing, and it is a legitimate company. They are what is called a vanity publisher. The agent kept calling me, and each time, I learned more about how they work. I sent them a copy of my manuscript and was notified within 24 hours that my book was marketable. WOW! That really got me excited. The hook was that they would help me after I sent a signed a contract along with a pile of money. Here are some of the things I learned: only 25% of manuscripts they receive get to this stage. I would get ten hard copy books as part of the deal. They print only when they get orders from book stores, and sellers. I would be assigned an immediate editor to work with me to get the book ready and to work out the details of advertisements, TV appearances, Podcasts, etc.

I had forty-five days to accept the offer. I can’t believe those days passed by so quickly, but they did. In that time, I was researching how to do things on my own by finding a Literary Agent. I always thought these guys were waiting in line for me to come along and would snatch me up at the first nibble on my bait. How wrong I was. There are hundreds of Literary Agencies throughout the world. All of them employ several agents whose job it is to find novels that will work in the system; work that fits the genres they like, stories that grab you by the short hairs and yank your emotions alive, etc. and, these people have to have time in their busy schedules to fit you in. It is overwhelming. I called my niece who is a published author. She directed me to a program called Query Tracker which I immediately got familiar with. That is what I am spending my time on now. I find agents who want to see work in Family Saga genre and then click on the form. I then, complete the form with my contact info, my biography, a query letter, a three to twenty page sample of the manuscript, a one page synopsis, and a pitch. Then I send it off into the either world and pray to get a bong or a hit.

To date, I have received five bongs, and the remainder continue to float in the ether world. I won’t hold my breath. In the meantime, I am thinking about new stories in genres that make money. The problem is that I keep inventing stories that I like but do not fit the genres that agents sell. It is back to blogging for me.

Filed under: Biography, Writer | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Facebook Has Gone Too Far

Posted on 22/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Facebook left a message that surprised the hell out of me, “We removed your post.”

Here is the reason:

“It looks like you tried to get likes, shares, or video views in a misleading way. This goes against our Community Standards on spam.”

SPAM

“We don’t allow people to use misleading links or content to trick people to visit or stay on, a website.”

Here is what I have to say to Facebook

Here is a copy of the content they took down which I posted on 16 October 2024

####################################################

Looking Like a Gnarly Mess

It is not even noon yet, and I am fighting off sleep. Most likely, it is because I have high blood sugar from eating too large a breakfast. Instead of falling into the urge to sleep, I am writing to keep my brain neurons firing. This morning, I awoke at 6:00 a.m. and returned to bed without falling back into a sound sleep. I finally got out of bed at 8:00 and dressed for my walk. The temperature this morning was 34 degrees, and the walk was brisk. I passed a section of shaded grass that was covered in frost. Although there was some light frost it was not what we call a killing frost. Killing frost occurs when the temp drops to 28-30 degrees. Many flowers we plant for color are tropical and will not survive that temperature. The plant stems freeze through and kill any chance of the plant recovering. Nevertheless this morning was a warning that winter is definitely on its way.

The trees on my street are finally turning colors but holding their leaves. In another two weeks, most trees and flowering shrubs will be void of foliage. There is one tree, however, which holds its leaves until mid to late November. The Bradford pear will be loaded with deep green leaves and then one day you awaken to a perfect circle of yellow leaves on the ground under a bare tree. This past summer, my pear tree suffered some serious damage when a violent gust of wind broke off two four inch branches and dropped them onto the patio. The shape of the tree is now seriously lopsided. One side is in the shade of a few mighty poplars growing to the west and there is no growth on that side of the pear leaving it flat. The opposite side has been pruned by the wind leaving ugly jagged spikes of wood jutting out of the trunk. My decision is to remove the tree and let the light back into the garden. At the same time, I’ll have an apple tree removed from the front of the house. It has outlived its prettiness. The past two springs it has not had a colorful bloom of pink flowers and the leaves were sparse all summer. The trunk and branches are rough leaving it looking like a gnarly mess of twigs suspended in mid air. The tree was planted too close to the house so I am constantly pruning branches away from the roofing shingles. This pruning has also forced the tree to form into an awkward unsightly shape. I rather like the red-pink-lavender flames coming off burning apple logs.

I protested and demanded to be reconsidered. I don’t think FaceBook’s AI algorithm is ready for prime time. And if it is, they are violating my right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the USA. Or, they are racist because I chose to use Nat King Cole’s version of the song “Autumn Leaves.” Or they are upset that I downloaded a YouTube video. Whatever the reason, here is to you FaceBook. Stick the removal up your ass.

Filed under: Biography, Conservative | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

Looking Like a Gnarly Mess

Posted on 16/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

It is not even noon yet, and I am fighting off sleep. Most likely, it is because I have high blood sugar from eating too large a breakfast. Instead of falling into the urge to sleep, I am writing to keep my brain neurons firing. This morning, I awoke at 6:00 a.m. and returned to bed without falling back into a sound sleep. I finally got out of bed at 8:00 and dressed for my walk. The temperature this morning was 34 degrees, and the walk was brisk. I passed a section of shaded grass that was covered in frost. Although there was some light frost it was not what we call a killing frost. Killing frost occurs when the temp drops to 28-30 degrees. Many flowers we plant for color are tropical and will not survive that temperature. The plant stems freeze through and kill any chance of the plant recovering. Nevertheless this morning was a warning that winter is definitely on its way.

The trees on my street are finally turning colors but holding their leaves. In another two weeks, most trees and flowering shrubs will be void of foliage. There is one tree, however, which holds its leaves until mid to late November. The Bradford pear will be loaded with deep green leaves and then one day you awaken to a perfect circle of yellow leaves on the ground under a bare tree. This past summer, my pear tree suffered some serious damage when a violent gust of wind broke off two four inch branches and dropped them onto the patio. The shape of the tree is now seriously lopsided. One side is in the shade of a few mighty poplars growing to the west and there is no growth on that side of the pear leaving it flat. The opposite side has been pruned by the wind leaving ugly jagged spikes of wood jutting out of the trunk. My decision is to remove the tree and let the light back into the garden. At the same time, I’ll have an apple tree removed from the front of the house. It has outlived its prettiness. The past two springs it has not had a colorful bloom of pink flowers and the leaves were sparse all summer. The trunk and branches are rough leaving it looking like a gnarly mess of twigs suspended in mid air. The tree was planted too close to the house so I am constantly pruning branches away from the roofing shingles. This pruning has also forced the tree to form into an awkward unsightly shape. I rather like the red-pink-lavender flames coming off burning apple logs.

Filed under: Biography, Garden | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Traffic and Me

Posted on 08/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Since 2006, Americans have bought over 105 million cars. However, since Covid, sales have dropped to one-third of what they were in 2006. The average number of vehicles per year is over six million. I assume that they are all still on the road and working. My numbers will be low because a significant number of used vehicles are still running and will run for many years to come. We have over four million miles of roads; at times, we experience gridlock and wish we had more. The point I am making is that there are over 25 cars per mile on every road in the country. At first that sounds like a low number, but my guess is that twenty years ago we only had 12 cars per mile. As the years progress and the reliability of cars is improved, more and more of them will strike out and be on the roads.

As a personal observation, as I walk around the neighborhood, I see an increase in the number of cars people park in front of their homes. In one example, I have seen one house with two cars in the garage and four more on the driveway. As families grow, so does their need for transport grow. It is not unusual for families with several high-school-age kids to provide a car for each. Several cars in a family lighten the burden of transporting them to sporting and club events by providing each child with his own transportation appliance. They do the same with cell phones using the argument that the parent wants the child to report his extracurricular activities. What this does is create a new “rush hour.” There was always the morning and the evening rush, now we have the mid-afternoon rush created by teachers and students leaving school. The traffic never seems to end or lighten.

I recently read a book titled City Limits, Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways.‘

The author argued that while we approve of cities widening their roads and adding capacity to allow traffic to flow more smoothly through the town, this only works for a short time. As more people become aware of the faster ride home, they flock to the new road, which becomes jammed as severely as the old one did. On top of that, the area of property taken to make the wide road displaces people and fosters more homelessness. Ultimately, the argument heads toward the need for more public transportation.

One of my recollections of boyhood concerns public transport. In the early fifties, Chicago had a large, well-run public transport system. We were only two blocks from a trolley stop, and walking to the stop was never a problem. As a young boy, I could hop on the trolley, drop my nickel into the box, and ask for a transfer. The transfer was good for several hours; with it, I could traverse the city from north to south and east to west.

The trolleys took their power from overhead electrical wires, thus avoiding any pollution. The trolleys called Red Rockets were painted red and yellow. Most had entry at the front next to the motorman, and longer trolleys had an additional portal two-thirds the way back, often supervised by a second conductor. As time progressed and we evolved the trolleys were replaced by the Green Hornets. They were the same functionally, but were faster, had more comfortable seats, and more hand holds for people that had to stand. I recall reading about a couple of horrible trolley collisions with vehicles and fires which caused many deaths. The cry for safer transport evolved into another type of vehicle that did not use tracks. The idea was that these bus like vehicles could avoid collisions easier because they were not restricted to the tracks. They were, however powered by electricity routed through the same overhead wires. Another leap in evolution came when the electric driven buses were replaced by diesel powered ones. The ugly, overhead wires were stripped from the routes and replaced by the black smoke of the diesels. All along, the price of a ride kept growing and the number of busses running were diminished to the point where it was faster to walk to where you were going. It was certainly faster to drive. After WWII the availability of personal cars boomed and the need for public transport kept shrinking. It has never disappeared but the practicality of running a system in 2024 like the one we had in 1945 is severely limited.

The future of public transportation will evolve into self-driving electric modules that come to your home and drive you to your destination. The highways will be rebuilt to become transport paths with electrical pickups that the modules will use for power. Traffic will be computer-monitored and controlled.

Although drone technology sounds great, they will not be practical for commuting. Imagine as many drones in the air headed for the same place as there are cars today.

I will never live long enough to see that evolution in service. Instead, I will live constantly complaining about awful traffic and over-crowded roads.

Filed under: Biography, Book Review, family | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

I Pray I Am Wrong

Posted on 04/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

So many pundits give us their reasons for why Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are ahead of each other. My personal feelings will be revealed later. This week, I watched the Vice Presidential debate and saw the polished young lawyer JD Vance overcome the moderators’ attempts to rattle him as Vance destroyed his opponent Walz with finesse and pure logic. The days following were loaded with excitement by the right-wingers who were anti-Kamala. The right wingers unanimously proclaimed that the totally unreal Kamala had lost points in the debate. Pundit after pundit proclaim her reluctance to engage with the public and her in ability to effect any argument that is not pre-written and pre-memorized. Her inability to engage spontaneously and extemporaneously will be her downfall.

I am skeptical about the whole spectacle. Even though she is a moron, that she has lost her debates, that she doesn’t engage with the press, and she speaks words that seem to be incoherently put together, she will win this election. There is only one way Donald Trump can win. He must win by a landslide so great that the clever democrats cannot sneak enough illegally garnered votes to overcome the numbers, and they cannot themselves deny that they lost.

Why do I feel this way? It is simple. Kamala Harris is a feminine copy of Obama. They have too many things like each other not to win. I watch interviews of the man on the street asking questions of people about Kamala, and their responses are senseless. They like her smile, they like the way she talks with her hands, they like the way she speaks. . . . Most of the respondents are young, very young. They see her as a needed change in leadership. They fail to recognize, however that she shows no signs of leadership what so ever.

The latest news bit I watched was Kamala addressing people affected by the hurricane. They watched their houses wash down a flooded river, their possessions gone with them, and their vehicles smashed and piled into trees and posts. They have nothing left: no clothes, no housing, no food, no water, no help from Uncle, and Kamala so powerfully proclaims that the Federal Government will give them each $750. “You heartless bitch” is all I could say to myself. If you had leadership skill the size of a mustard seed, you would have said “I will go to Congress and beg for money to help you rebuild.”

Even after this stupid disastrous $750 dollar slap in the face she will win. All I can say is that I pray I am wrong, because if she does win we will all regret it. All I will have left is to say “I told you so,” as I watch inflation rise, and my retirement fund shrinks daily because of the money the democrats will spend on stupid things.

Filed under: Biography, economy, politics | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »