Writer at War – 3

“Mere Fiction”

On page 70 in The Art of War For Writers there’s a discussion about Herman Melville’s outlook when he wrote Moby Dick and Stephen King’s when he created ‘Salem’s Lot.  They both apparently decided to “go for it.”  The author says Melville was “pursuing a white whale of artistic vision.”  Stephen King wrote ‘Salem’s Lot at a time when he was a 23-year-old writer and Carrie had yet to come out.

I say more power to them for pursuing the books of their hearts and their artistic visions and for not writing “mere” fiction.  You may be wondering why more authors don’t do that because if they did, maybe there’d be more great books on the shelves.

It’s a bit of contradiction, isn’t it, that at writer’s conferences you will hear editors tell wanna-be writers to “write the book of your heart.”  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line used.  I’m old and jaded now, but there was a time when I was wide-eyed and innocent about the world of publishing and I actually believed those editors.  Frankly, those editors probably meant what they said.  They wanted writers to write the books of their hearts.  What they didn’t say was how hard it would be to get those books published. 

Want some more contradiction?  How about this?  “We want you to write a book of the heart.  Just…you know…figure out how to make it commercially viable.”

You want to get published?  The first rule is, don’t bother writing the book of your heart.  Write something’s that’s commercially viable.  If you manage to combine those two and do it well, congratulations.  You might become a best-selling author in record time.  Or…you might not.

Although I’ve never been under contract, never had a multi-book deal based on a partial or a pitch, I know authors who have.  Do you know what they’re told after they sell the first one or two books and they do well enough to get another contract?  Write more of the same.  Do not deviate from the path.  This is what sells.  The publisher doesn’t care if you’re tired of writing romantic paranormals and you want to try your hand at urban fantasy.  They’ve built you as a romantic paranormal author.  And there you shall remain.

Let’s say you’ve sold twelve or fifteen books and maybe you’ve quit your day job.  You’ve started to count on a certain level of income, whatever it may be, from your writing.  You can get a contract on a partial.  Why would you take a chance and write something entirely different?  Something your editor isn’t interested in and you may never sell.  Because it’s the book of your heart?  Seriously, how many authors in this situation do you think are going to do that?  How many of them have the time when they’re under contract?  I can’t really answer that but I’m going to take a wild guess and say not very many.

In fact, based on my limited research, do you know when an author writes a “book of the heart?”  When everything else dries up or they’re just so burnt out from writing whatever commercial trap they landed in.  When their contracts go bye-bye and their sales drop and their agent no longer answers their calls.  That’s when they decide to “go for it.”

The two examples of Melville and King basically prove my point.  King was still an unknown with no sales track record.  And Melville, actually, I don’t know where he was in his career, but wherever it was, he had no qualms (and possibly no family to support from his writing) about going for it.

Don’t take advice from me, because I’m not an example I’d recommend anyone follow.  Virtually nothing I produce or had published is hugely commercial.  Yet.  But I’m not dependent on my mere pittance of a writing income either.  Yet.  So I’ve always had the freedom of writing what I wanted to write and the uphill battle of trying to interest an agent or an editor in it and selling it. 

When you’re making your living as a writer, can you afford to take chances on a novel that may not sell because it’s too far out there?

Isn’t there something to be said for NOT making your living as a writer and NOT being dependent on your writing income to pay for groceries? Maybe those burdens are what kill creativity.

If you’re going to “go for it,” at least be realistic about what may follow.

Soul…Mates

I loved to find myself curled next to him.  It didn’t happen often, but when it did, ooh, it was the best feeling ever.  The truth is, we come from two different worlds, but when we touch, it’s like magic.  He’s black.  I’m white.  He’s long and lean.  I’m short and a bit fluffy, you might say.  He’s upscale, immersed in the world of business, stuck in stuffy conference rooms or behind a desk in a tiny office, uncomfortably confined and restrained.  I admire him, though.  He does his job and he does it well.

I, on the other hand, have much more freedom and room to breathe.  Even though I’m more what you might call working class, I stay active.  I’m constantly on the move.  There are days where I hit the ground running and I just don’t stop.

I like to think what we have in common outweighs our differences.  I mean, here we are, thrown together again.  Most of me is on top of him, as a matter of fact.  That’s just where I landed.  But he doesn’t seem to mind.  In fact, he hasn’t moved a muscle, even with my weight nudging uncomfortably into his.  That’s one of the things I love about him.  He accommodates me no matter what.

The rumbling beneath us is constant and almost comforting, sending heat our way, warming us from the outside in.  I’d like to cuddle closer, but I’m so languid now I can hardly move.  So I stay where I am and treasure our time together.

I don’t think he knows that when we’re apart, I fantasize about him.  I live for these haphazard moments when we’re thrown together, his warmth against mine.  It doesn’t last.  Not the heat.  Not us together.  Soon, I know we’ll be torn apart.  He’ll go his way, off with the one he belongs with, the one he’s committed to.  They’re a match.  He and I are not.  I know that, but each time he’s wrenched away from me, the pain is the same.

I, too, belong to another.  The place we reside is dark and we’re surrounded by others like us.  The light shines only for a brief time each day into our bleak world.  It’s the same for him. 

I wonder if he longs for me during those times we’re apart.  He’s never said and I certainly can’t ask him.  I like to believe he feels as I do, that in another time, another place, perhaps some day soon, we’ll escape the confines of this world and we’ll be together forever.

I hear the clank of the door beneath us.  The rumbling stops.  Sounds of activity and busy efficiency follow.  Dread builds inside me.  Does he sense my tension?  Is he afraid?  I can’t tell.  I only know my own sense of panic, my fear that soon we’ll be torn apart again, returned to our dark places, separate, surrounded but alone.

I cringe as the air around me is disturbed.  I shrink even further against him trying to protect him, to shield myself, but it’s too late.  He’s wrenched away, right out from under me as if he weighed almost nothing.  He doesn’t make a sound, but goes quietly as if he knows his fate is already sealed.  I watch as he’s efficiently rolled inside another just like himself.  He disappears.  I cry out but he doesn’t hear me.

And then it’s my turn.  I want to fight against the forces greater than myself.  I want to plead and beg for my freedom and for his.  The thoughts careen around wildly in my head.  Please just let us be together.  Please.

But it isn’t going to happen.  I know that.  I’m lifted, rolled, smothered by my previously absent mate, my cry for freedom muffled. 

Then I’m falling, falling, back into the darkness.  Even the cushion of others like me are no comfort.  There’s a slight rocking motion.  The light fades and then extinguishes completely.

I huddle inside myself, surrounded by my twin.  I can barely breathe, but I settle and I wait.  Because hope never dies.  I don’t know how.  I don’t know when.  But I know I’ll see him again.  One day.  Because we’re both part of the never-ending cycle known as laundry.

 ©2010 by Barbara Meyers

Two Hundred Words on My Hair

Needs to be washed.  Haven’t combed or brushed it this morning.  What’s the point when I’m not going anywhere and will get in the shower later?  I call the whitish gray streaks in the front highlights.  White highlights.  Why is all the white and gray in the front?  The back is still brown.  Or brownish.  Nothing interesting.  Just dishwatery brown.  Unremarkable. 

Why do I always feel like I need a haircut?  Because I have SO MUCH HAIR.  Thick.  Some waviness to it.  I’m always trying to calm it down.  When I get it cut I say, “thin it and trim it.”  I look good when I leave the salon.  But in a couple of weeks (how long has it been?  not even a month) I want to get it cut again. 

When I had blond highlights I told a male customer I got them because I was bored with my hair.  He said, “That’s not why.  You did it because you think it makes you look better.”  Like he’s an expert on anything about me.  Nope.  I think I was bored.  The highlights have long grown out and I haven’t had them done again.  I don’t think it matters.  I’m okay with my white highlights.  Sometimes I think they look good.  Just as good as the blond ones.  And they’re free. 

Here’s the thing.  When “older” women color their hair it often looks unnatural. Your face, your body, your neck, your hands, everything else gives you away.  You’re old-er.  Perfectly blond or red or brunette hair sometimes doesn’t look quite right because you should be gray or white or a bit of both to match your face and your body.  We’ve seen those women overly nipped and tucked, dyed and Botoxed to an almost robotic appearance.  It’s downright creepy, isn’t it?  It freaks me out. 

Okay, it was more like 300 words.  And it wasn’t all about my hair.

This is a writing exercise idea from page 76 of The Art of War For Writers by James Scott Bell.  Except I didn’t edit it down.

The Schmooze Factor

Oh, my gosh!!  I’ve finally figured out why I’m not more successful as a writer/published author.  I SUCK at self-promotion, marketing, hype, networking and outright lying.  Writing a good or even a great book isn’t enough.  In fact, you don’t have to write a good or great book.  Write any old book.  Any way you want.  But as long as you know the right people, schmooze with other “successful” authors, get an in with an agent or editor, suck up to the publishing house marketing department, looks like we’ve got a bestseller on our hands.

I always thought my local newspaper had a love for self-published authors.  If you’re legitimately published, even through a small press, it’s like pulling teeth to get coverage in this newspaper.  Even to do that, apparently, you have to “know” somebody or your minor publishing success (where a publisher paid YOU for your book) is not news.

Today my husband began reading me the highlights about yet another local self-published author.  I got on my high-horse rant until I looked at the article.  This author wrote the article.  About himself and his self-published book.  Complete with a photo of him in an exotic locale.  Oh, I thought, that’s all I need to get newspaper coverage locally.  First I must self-publish a book.  Then visit the pyramids of Egypt or get a shot of myself climbing Mount Everest.  Then I write an article about my publishing “experience.”  Send it along with the photo and the cover of my book to the newspaper for their “Community” section.  And I’m a shoe-in. 

Oh, wait.  No, I’m not.  I haven’t sucked up to the editor.  I don’t even know the editor.  I need to network.  I need an introduction by a mutual friend.  I need to schmooze.  Heck.  I got excited for nothing.

This author also knew an extremely successful and well-known author who “reviewed the book and wrote a supportive blurb.”  I’m sure that didn’t hurt.

This author attended a conference where he was delighted to discover his writing was well received.  Yes, I’m sure it was…because there’s a strong possibility that he paid money to attend that conference.  Organizations often hold conferences to make money from those attending.  They’d like the attendees to return year after year.  That’s why submissions are often “well-received.”

He goes on to say that everyone who read the unpublished manuscript enjoyed it.  Did they? Did they really?  How much do you want to bet that the people who read it were his family and friends?  Even if they hated it, it’s unlikely they’d tell him so.  And evidently agents and advance/royalty-paying publishing houses didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else who read it did.

I shouldn’t mock such wide-eyed optimism and enthusiasm, should I?  Just call me old, cynical, jaded and jealous.  I was wide-eyed and optimistic about my future writing success, too.  A hundred or so rejections ago. 

I’m not wide-eyed and naïve, any more.  I have my eyes open and I think I have a pretty good handle on how the world of publishing works.  Lacking the schmooze factor will always detract from my career path.

I’ll always have an issue with self-publishing, too.  But if you can make it work, more power to you.   

(For those of you who don’t know, the term “self-publishing” means an author paid a publisher to get a book in print.   The publisher has no stake in the book’s success and makes its money from the the author’s initial payment and also from the author buying copies of his own books.  Eventually, usually after a certain number of books are sold, the books do become available through retail outlets.)

In a traditional publishing scenario, a publishing house pays the author an up-front monetary advance ranging from a few hundred to thousands of dollars and also pays the author a certain percentage of every book sold (royalties).  The author does not put up any money to get the book in print.

Happily Married?

I’ve just returned from the wedding of two twenty-somethings who, it was intimated by family members, had never kissed each other (or anyone else of the opposite sex for that matter) before the minister told the groom he could kiss his bride. 

This is all well and good, I think.  Rare and special in this day and age, so certainly worth commenting upon.  However, I would hate for anyone to get the impression that purity prior to such a commitment is any guarantee of marital happiness.

I think the words “happily married” should never be used together, mostly because I don’t know anyone who is happily married.  I know people who appear to be happy, and some of them are married.  But “happily married” implies that you are happy in your marriage and happy to be married to your spouse.  In my experience, this is rarely true, no matter what you experienced before you got married.

Being a virgin on your wedding day is no guarantee of anything for your future, except, I suppose, it gives your spouse less of your past to be concerned about.  With nothing to compare it to, it might also be hard to find fault with your spouse’s lovemaking technique, either, although dissatisfaction is dissatisfaction no matter which way you slice it.

My own parents were appalled when I decided to marry outside the religious faith I’d been raised in.  In their generation and culture, it wasn’t done.  My mother converted to marry my father.  Somehow they believed a shared religious faith would guarantee or at least strengthen the bond of marriage.  I have to look no further than my own family of origin to discover this is simply not true.

What is true is that there are no guarantees for any of us.  As my wise father used to say, “You put in your nickel and you take your chances.”  If you are still married after twenty or thirty or fifty years, it doesn’t mean you’re happily married.  All it really means is that you didn’t get divorced.

As part of the guestbook for this couple we were asked to offer them advice.  I had none to offer.  Not the wisdom of age and experience.  I advised them to muddle through it like the rest of us.

My twenty-something daughter thought I should have more to offer than that.  In her opinion I’ve been successfully married for almost thirty years.  But does a “successful” relationship translate into a “happy” relationship?  It’s a long-term relationship.  That doesn’t necessarily make it either successful or happy.  Don’t we all know couples who seem miserable with each other but who go on year after year?  And no, I’m not implying I’m miserable.  Far from it actually.

I think I’m a relatively happy individual, but that’s a choice I make.  I guess what I should have advised that young couple is don’t depend on your spouse to make you happy or to keep you happy.  If you’re looking for your happiness in another person or even in your most significant adult relationship, I don’t think you’ll find it.

Happiness is something you create for yourself, even in the confines of a less than ideal marriage.  You can’t let marriage define who you are and what your outlook is going to be.  You have to define those things for yourself.  And so does your spouse.  Can you enhance another person’s life by being the best you you can be?  Of course.  But you can’t make someone else happy.  And the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.

I think it would be best if we struck “happily married” from our vernacular.  I’m happy.  I’m also married.  But those are two entirely different things.

ONE – Three

Someone I’ve supported or helped:

Hah!  They should change that to someone you think you supported or helped.  My brother, whom I’ll call Nick.  Oh, my gosh, when I think of the effort I made with him since childhood, the money I spent, the trips I made, the tears I cried.  And for what?

Nick and I were close growing up, although Nick had his moods where he could freeze me out and want nothing to do with me.  He was different as a child.  He loved to garden, he loved animals and he loved to read.  When I was 19, Nick came out to me.  He was gay.  I’m not sure at the time I had a clear idea of what that meant, but it explained his earlier years of depression, therapy and pharmaceutical intervention.  It explained my parents’ confusing silence and the dark cloud that seemed to hover over our house when I was in high school.

Nick moved to L.A., in the early 80’s where as I recall, he thought his “lifestyle” would be more accepted.  Within a couple of years he contracted HIV.  A couple of years after that he developed AIDS and became permanently disabled, living below the poverty line on government subsidies and the goodwill of his long-time companion.

I can’t count the number of hospitalizations, the prognoses of near death over the years, the countless phone calls where I was certain Nick was going to die.  Nor can I count the number of times Nick promised to make that cross country trip to visit me or my parents and then cancelled at the last minute.  But he always seemed able to travel with his companion to numerous exotic locales.

Still, I traveled to L.A. several times to visit Nick.  I sent him cards and letters and gifts and money.  I played the role of the loving, supportive sister for years and years and years, never realizing how one-sided our relationship was until Nick came to live with me a couple of years ago.  That experience made me see Nick for what he was.  After a few months he left.  By then he’d taken all I had left to give.  Words were spoken between us that all the apologies in the world can’t erase.  I had my goodwill thrown back in my face by someone perfectly content to wallow in his own misery.  I learned my lesson and developed my new favorite motto.  “I’m done.”

What Nick taught me is that a one-sided relationship is really no relationship.  In a healthy relationship of any sort there’s give and take, and you are constantly “refueled” so to speak by the other person giving back to you.  But when all you do is give and the other individual either can’t or won’t give back, eventually you’re drawing on an empty tank.  You’ve got nothing left to give.  That’s where I ended up. 

My wise father used to quote, “The road to hell, having been paved with good intentions is now ready for travel.”  I never realized how true those words were.  My good intentions, “helping” my brother, destroyed the illusion of a relationship I once thought existed.  Maybe that’s a good thing.  I was pouring myself into something until I’d drained the last drop of goodwill I had toward Nick.  I have nothing left to give him except civility.

You may think you’re helping someone, even a member of your own family, but often what you’re doing is teaching them not to be responsible for themselves.  Nick never seemed able to take up the reins of his own life.  That isn’t helpful to him.  I wish I’d realized that sooner.

Writer At War – 2

For Christmas I received the book THE ART OF WAR FOR WRITERS by James Scott Bell.  Fiction writing strategies, tactics, and exercises. 

Below is my reaction to Phyliss Whitney’s statement regarding rejection, disappointment and discouragement as quoted on Page 14:

I expect my work to be rejected.  Not because I don’t think it’s any good.  On the contrary, I do think it’s good.  I write the kind of books I would love to read.  I think my characters are pretty memorable.

When the Samhain editor told me she wanted to buy A MONTH FROM MIAMI I e-mailed her back basically asking her if she was sure.  I wondered at the time if she even knew what she was doing because she said she loved it.  I’d never heard that from an editor before.  Turns out she’s a fantastic editor who did nothing but improve my book without forcing me to change much of anything.  Do you have any idea what a thrill it is for a writer to see the book she wrote in print?

A well-respected editor at a traditional New York publisher recently rejected the first book in my screwball urban fantasy series even though she said she’d really like to buy it.  When she was with a smaller house, she could take chances on something like this.  But as part of a bigger house, she had less editorial control and couldn’t. 

Was I bummed?  You betcha.  Because I’d researched her and I thought she’d be the perfect editor for this series and she seemed really interested and enthusiastic about it.  But it wasn’t meant to be.  If she’d made me an offer, I’d probably have had a heart attack.

You have to be realistic because everyone is writing these days.  Everyone with a computer, everyone with any tiny iota of talent, has decided to write books.  And a lot of those books slip through the very big cracks in the publishing world and get published.  I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it.  There’s a lot of mediocrity in the publishing world.  There’s nothing I can do about that.  But it doesn’t prevent me from writing the best book I am capable of at the moment and submitting it.

You might think there’s a lot of genius involved in writing fiction, but if that were true, it doesn’t explain why there’s so much writing that just isn’t that good.  Unless there’s a new definition of genius of which I’m not aware.

So, while I may not be exactly crushed by the next rejection, I’ll also be pleasantly surprised by the next acceptance.

Writer At War

For Christmas I received the book THE ART OF WAR FOR WRITERS by James Scott Bell.  Fiction writing strategies, tactics, and exercises.  Mmmhmm.  We’ll see.

As a general rule, I avoid purchasing “how to” writing books, my theory being that those who can do and those who can’t supposedly teach.  And why should I line someone else’s pockets with my hard-earned money so they can tell me how to write fiction with no track record of doing it successfully themselves?

But since this book was a gift by a well-meaning writer friend, I’m glad to have it and have begun reading it.  The exercise on Page 13 says to write “down your honest reactions to the following statements:

“I decided that I would continue to write as long as I lived, even if I never sold one thing, because that was what I wanted out of my life.”

                                                –George Bernau

“Your reaction”

George is a lot like me.  Or a lot like I used to be.  For a long time I never cared if I sold my work.  But in the back of my mind I always expected that eventually I would.  I wrote for years before I sold anything.  Then I sold something else.  And then several years later, something else. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I like selling my work.  I like seeing it in print and sharing it.  I’m happy to receive the dribbles of money that come my way.  But money was never the driving force behind my writing.

However, there came a point in time when I looked at all the unsold manuscripts that lined my shelves and wondered why, if I wasn’t going to try to sell them, was I writing them?  No one else was seeing them.  Was I writing for my own enjoyment or what?

That’s when I seriously sat down and started sending out a manuscript I originally wrote in 1998 entitled A MONTH FROM MIAMI.  Samhain Publishing bought it and released it as an e-Book in 2008 and in print in 2009.

That encouraged me.  If I could fix and sell that old manuscript, could I fix and sell the others?  In between creating new work, I revise the old stuff.  I send them out because I want to sell them.  I think I’m at the point now where I’m getting closer and closer to more sales.  It’s become a matter of hitting the right editor with the right work at the right time.  So…good luck to me in doing that.

But at the same time, if I never sold another thing, would I keep writing?  Yes, of course, because if I give up, then assuredly I won’t sell anything else.  You have to keep writing and sending stuff out.  Just because one thing doesn’t sell, that doesn’t mean the next one won’t. 

No more writing guarantees no more sales.

ONE – Two

“In my life so far…”

Now we’re moving on to discussing differences I’ve made in someone else’s life starting with someone I’ve taught or mentored.  Again I find these questions almost impossible to answer because you could be teaching someone something without realizing it.  This book is basically asking what impact have you made on the people you’ve come into contact with (literally thousands, right?) and the impact you’ve made on the world.

About ten years ago when I naively believed I could make a difference in someone’s life through actual time and effort, I volunteered to mentor a teenage girl through a program set up with the juvenile justice system.  In fact, she ended up living with me for a year and a half.  I’ll call her Darby.  I loved Darby.  I saw a lot of me in her.  At her age (13 when we met) I’d have loved to have an adult take an interest in me, encourage me, talk to me.  I don’t think Darby cared one way or another.  She lived in a trailer park with a single mother who’d never been married to her father.  A father who was married to someone else and who she had no contact with and who lived hundreds of miles away.  I can’t recall now why Darby was in trouble to begin with.  Shoplifting, maybe.

Every week I picked her up and took her out.  To lunch.  To a movie.  I can’t say she ever really opened up to me.  Maybe she found me too bullying or aggressive or inquisitive when I tried to reach her.

Then I didn’t hear from her and I found out she was in juvenile detention for domestic violence against her mother.  When her mother refused to appear in court and take custody of her, Darby was sent to a homeless shelter a few days before Christmas.

Saying this situation appalled me would be an understatement.  What kind of parent allows their child to spend Christmas in a homeless shelter when it isn’t necessary?  In fact, her mother wanted to relinquish her parental rights and give Darby to the state.  Darby was 15 at the time.

With her mother’s permission, I got Darby out of the shelter and brought her home with me.  I had only one goal: that Darby wouldn’t spend Christmas in a shelter surrounded by strangers thinking no one cared and no one wanted her.  She ended up staying for a year and a half.  I spent hours on the phone with the various powers that be and in court with her.  I turned my family upside down for her, rearranged my household, bent over backwards to give her what I thought she needed.

Did it make a difference?  I don’t think so.  Eventually, she and I played out a version of the same scenario she had with her mother.  Pushed to my limit, I sent her back to her mom.  I did what I could and so did the rest of my family, especially my husband, and I don’t think it made a damn bit of difference in her life.

Darby used to say “everyone gives up on me.”  My belief is, if that is so, it’s because Darby gave up on herself.  If I’d seen any significant change in Darby’s behavior or attitude in all that time our experience might have ended differently.

I’ve seen Darby a couple of times since then.  Once when she stopped by maybe a year later to tell me that for her 18^th birthday her mother kicked her out.  Darby had moved in with a boyfriend and his mother.  Through the grapevine I later heard Darby was pregnant and the boyfriend was in jail.  I got an invitation to a baby shower which I did not attend and I heard she lost that baby.

About a year ago, completely out of the blue, she walked into the Starbucks where I work.  She’d been laid off her job at a restaurant and was collecting unemployment.  She was still living with the boyfriend and his mother and she had a little blond, blue-eyed boy.  She introduced me as her mentor to the boyfriend’s mother.

Frankly, you’d want to think of a mentor as someone whose example you’d want to follow, someone who can help you be all that you can be.  Darby introducing me as such when I failed miserably in that role, is not something I find at all flattering.

Darby had/has so much potential.  I wanted her to use it, to see what she could do and be.  Instead I think she chose the example set for her by her mother long before I met her.

But who knows?  I didn’t stay in touch with Darby so perhaps she’s accomplished great things in her life by now or one day will.

My husband always says we got Darby too late.  Maybe he’s right.

I comfort myself with the thought that my original goal was that she not spend Christmas in a homeless shelter.  In that, at least, I succeeded.

ONE – One

By the time the book ONE was marked down from $10.95 to $4.99 at the Starbucks after-Christmas sale, I decided to buy it using my 30% discount which means it cost me a little over $3.  Frankly, we had a stack of these books left, so I guess it’s not worth $10.95, or even $4.99 to a lot of our customers to delve too deeply into their life’s purpose.

I bought the book as a hoot.  This is the kind of stuff I sometimes mock, especially when it’s sold in a Starbucks.  I figure it’s simply more of the hokey corporate, liberal, let’s-make-a-difference propaganda. 

For example, this past year Starbucks reconfigured their computer system so that a receipt isn’t automatically generated for every credit card sale.  The cashier is given the option of asking the customer whether or not they want their receipt.  Since the marjority of our customers don’t want a receipt we’re saving trees, right?

I refer to declining a receipt as “saving a leaf on a tree.”  Yesterday a customer laughed and said, “Yes, but look at the amount of cardboard in the box you’re giving me to house the one cupcake I bought.”  I agreed and then also noted his coffee is served in a paper cup with a cardboard sleeve.  You see where this is going.  It’s ridiculous propaganda that we care about the environment and the amount of paper we use and waste we generate.  Although we have started recycling milk jugs.  As with most endeavors, some effort is better than none.

Perhaps this book is printed on recycled paper?

ONE is filled with inspirational quotes and anecdotes about how one person can make a difference  Also included are questions for the reader to answer.  That’s why I bought it.  Because I find blogging a challenge and I’m always looking for something to spur my blogging juices.  Even if it’s something like this.

There’s a big heading a few pages in entitled “Ask Yourself:”

Followed by questions:  “Who Am I?”  “Why Am I Here?”  “What Am I Doing For Others?”

You think these’d be easy to answer wouldn’t you, if you’ve exceeded the half-century mark in your life and then some.

How do you answer “Who Am I?”

A female.  A U.S. citizen.  Married.  Mother of two.  Fiction writer.  Deep thinker.  Starbucks barista. 

At the moment, that’s all I can think of.  Does that tell you who I am?  Does it sum me up?

“Why Am I Here?”

Because God put me here.  That one was pretty easy.

“What Am I Doing For Others?”

Who knows?  You could be doing great things for others without even knowing it.  You really can’t gauge your impact on the people you come into contact with every day, even your own family members.  Take working at Starbucks for example.  It’s considered by many to be a lowly job.  But most people probably wouldn’t get that there’s more to working there than serving coffee.  It’s interaction.  Stopping into Starbucks is the highlight of some people’s day.  It might be the only interaction they have with another human being.  I might be the only person who smiles at them and asks how they are or listens to them for a few minutes.

I made my husband breakfast this morning.  There.  I did something for someone else. 

I think God puts you where he wants you to be and we all have the opportunity to minister to others wherever we are.  You don’t need a church or an altar.  A cup of coffee and a friendly greeting might suffice.

You could be ministering to someone every day and not even know it.