Month: October 2018

The Pros Know

/ Nancy Palmer / 2 Comments

I just listened to the audiobook Million Dollar Professionalism for the Writer Million-Dollar-Pro500
by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. Again. And I’m feeling an urge to reach out to all the new, new-ish, and aspiring writers I know. I want to tell them to pick this book up, and read or listen. And then do it again.

The first time through, I was occupied with things such as driving, not burning dinner, you know the drill. The second time I listened? I took notes.

Moesta (author, editor, and publisher) and Anderson (author of over 50 bestsellers) give straight talk about the real world of writing professionally. The book is liberally sprinkled with anecdotes, generally personal stories from the authors, often painfully at their own expense. They demonstrate how things can go terribly wrong in writing, in publishing, in personal interactions with others in your profession. And they advise how to avoid these hazards yourself. Topics range from personal presentation to making connections in the publishing world, how to handle professional and fan interactions, talent versus persistence, and other potential assets or pitfalls to the newcomer.

While Anderson and Moesta state that this information is largely the material assembled for a course they’ve taught repeatedly, it doesn’t come across as a classroom presentation. In fact, it reminds me of nothing so much as an involved conversation with respected industry pros: colleagues sharing stories over dinner, lingering over desert, swapping tales and giving advice to the newcomers.

Narrator Charles Kahlenberg’s avuncular reading furthers this feeling, making the book easy to listen to and absorb. Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this audiobook. But nobody made me stop halfway through the first listen and send Wordfire Press and Kevin J. Anderson a congratulatory note on their choice of narrators. Kahlenberg’s reading is expressive, conversational even. Yet it doesn’t detract from the important material the book is sharing.

I was impressed by the subtle positive messages of encouragement the authors included. There’s a danger when seasoned pros give “advice.” I know, I’ve fallen prey in the past to glib warnings, pronouncements of criteria for success. Pronouncements that made possibilities seem so unattainable that they were discouraging, rather than helpful. But Anderson and Moesta don’t do that. Instead, there is an assumption that OF COURSE you’re a writer. Of course you belong at the table with them, listening to the stories. Here’s what you do when the opportunities become available, when the anthology calls, when the publisher says yes. When you’re a guest at the convention. And at the award ceremony.

This implied success is contagious! And it’s attributed where it belongs: to the writer being professional, to getting the work done, to loving their job but respecting it too.

Million Dollar Professionalism for the Writer: highly recommended for the new, new-ish, or aspiring writer, or other creative professional who might be looking to jumpstart their career. To read now, and revisit.

 

 

A World in Itself

/ Nancy Palmer / 2 Comments

I wrote this as a comment in a metafilter thread. If you don’t know metafilter, you should. The topic was trees and plants we love.

 

I love the song we are singing today, the long slow tale of trees.

My first and best friend was an oak, and I grieve her still today. As a child, my fingers fit into the grooves of her bark. I spent hours discovering the lives hidden, making their home in her. Ants on their invisible highways. Caterpillars wondrous in their strangeness, moths well camouflaged discovered as hidden treasure, and once the glorious green of a luna stunning my eyes, a gift of beauty not meant for me but that I shared in nonetheless.

But that tree’s hours were long ago, in the way we humans measure time.

So today I celebrate the bloodberry, native here in this hot wet place. It flowers and fruits long, often at the same time. It grows fast, wild, abundant. Small leaves, small flowers, small fruit. Bees of many kinds crowd its blossoms. The tiny glowing red berries are just the size to feed baby birds, so many species will attend at once. The hawks are not much of a bother here, because the thin branches will not hold their weight, and the small leaves obscure birds who might otherwise be prey. After watching the wild mockingbirds harvest and feed their young, I gathered those same berries for orphans in my care, that they could know their native foods and have a better chance of surviving. I have seen ducks standing beneath it, gobbling every berry that can reach, and I have fallen into quiet laughter watching these ducks hop – hop! – to reach the brilliant sunstruck globes above them, and sometimes succeed.

It is not a tree. It is itself, a wiry and wild shrub, but I always feel there is a knowing in it. And when its children have escaped the flying ones and sprung up around their parent’s feet, I  have lovingly rehomed them, to spread this wonder. I have moved to a new home myself, and the scion of the bloodberry grows here alongside me. And I think we will be good friends.