this old essay

Writers really should have a show on cable TV along the lines of "This Old House" or some sort of HGTV program. I've come to believe the three most important things a writer can know about are structure, structure, and structure.
I finally wrote my article for my day job at the magazine about second careers. I had followed a couple of pointers that Dave Fryxell makes in his books, including digesting some of the interview notes I had taken by making a "road map" of them. After studying those maps, as well as drafting a map or blueprint (ok, an outline) of the final article, I got down to writing.
I didn't get lost 2/3 of the way through, which seems to be the point at which many a writer's freshly mown meadow lane turns into a twisting trail through the haunted forest. I had to do quite a bit of revising, and rearranged several of the sections, but the final product has a better, and more obvious, shape to it than many of the how-to/service type of articles I've written.
I also did quite a bit of pre-writing work on structure for the Echo humor column I knocked out this evening. It's not perfect, this first draft--in fact, I have a rather large dilemma concerning which direction to take the end of the column--but I have a pretty good idea of the two basic choices I have. Let's hope I take the road less unraveled. Whatever I choose, pre-structuring it has made it easier to retrace my steps and get back on track already.

one more cute baby pic

Think he likes the car seat? He has a VERY healthy set of lungs, by the way...
He got home from the hospital with no problems! :)
He's adorable. We're still in the "we can watch him sleep" phase...

a child is born

Scooter's daughter had her baby on Tuesday. His name is Austin. He is gorgeous!

Scooter is shining as a grandma and parent educator. She is in her element, advising, problem-solving, nurturing. I'm blessed to be able to be a part of this.

And Austin liked it when I sang bebop to him--a good sign! I sang the aforementioned "A Child is Born" and "Ornithology."

I'm very proud of my family right now.

a quick trip to music heaven

Scooter & I have been the cheap-date music queens the past two nights. We had taken a break from our Thursday night jazz haunt, Sacred Grounds Coffeehouse, but returned a few days ago. SG is held in the reception hall of a very progressive UCC church in Scottsdale. They bring in local and national jazz artists, charge people $5 a head to get in, and provide two hours of musical bliss, if you like good-old-fashioned, standards-and-originals, trio/quartet/small group kind of jazz. The show is a two-hour outreach program for the church, but it's entirely secular. The pastor (who usually sits in the back of the hall, notebook computer in his lap, working on his next book) usually says a few words about their Sunday morning experiential arts worship service (which also features jazz), but mostly people come to soak up the jazz. Oh, and the coffee's pretty good, too.
Last night we went to a tiny folk venue that's managed to survive for 18 years in the annex of a Quaker meeting. It's a building that's about 2/3 the size of our apartment. It's open Thursday-Sunday nights, is volunteer run, and features two jams a week, as well as two nights of local acts, as well as the occasional folk/world/etc. musician passing through. It's $3 a head to get in, and the treats and drinks are about a buck.
Last night there was an exceptionally good duo that played Celtic/Gypsy/Greek/Arabic music on guitar, violin and various ethnic instruments, and a local New-Agey sort of singer-songwriter with a soft, hypnotic voice. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Scooter & I have imagined ourselves performing at this microscopic venue, although I think we'll try the jams first. The fire code occupancy limit of the place says 49, but they'd have to be hanging from the rafters to get that many people in there. The stage is about the size of a dinner table, but the closeness of the quarters really does promote a "living room" atmosphere, and makes the all-acoustic rule doable.
Music places that are cheap, have new acts every week, and are non-smoking. That's my idea of heaven (or at least part of it.)

good titles and string cheese

On the bus today, I came up with the hottest title for an ongoing column I want to write on alternative paths to a career that doesn't feel like a prison sentence: "Bright Livelihood."
That title seemed so hot, in fact, that I just ran to Google to see if 1500 people had had the same idea. They didn't, so if there aren't rampant plagiarists reading my blog, I may have something here.
I realized it was time to start formulating a way to write freelance columns about career stuff--and non-standard career stuff at that--when every article idea I had at work revolved around vocation or second careers or how to tap your alumni connection to network successfully.
If it gets off the ground, Bright Livelihood will tell the stories of people who are doing what they want to do for a living--whether that means finding/creating their dream job, owning their own business or composing some portfolio of business/wage/volunteer jobs that make them outrageously happy. I'm sort of hoping that as a writer, I can tell their stories and provide a trail of breadcrumbs for the rest of us to follow.

***

In other news, I've been floating around the blogosphere a bit more recently and found a blog by a gentleman I used to read regularly during my Echo days. Darrell Grizzle is a gay Episcopalian who is also a Sufi healer and a licensed professional therapist. And a bear (big hairy chubby gay man, for the uninitiated). Definitely my kind of guy.
Anyway, Grizzle has a blog (oh, he writes, too) at wildfaith.blogspot.com called the Blog of the Grateful Bear. Today's entry quotes a great song from a group (presumably "religious" or "spiritual" in some way, I'm guessing) I've never heard of.

Grizzle writes:

"The new CD from The String Cheese Incident ("One Step Closer") opens with a prayer, 'Give Me the Love':

Give me the love I'd have, for all my enemies
Give me the love I'd have, for those I cannot please
Give me the love that knows
all the love there is
Give me the love that knows
all that love can give

That's all I ask of you
That's all I need from you
That's all I ask of you

From the sin that separates, and from the doubts
That have plagued my coming in and going out
May there be a bed of mercy, to lay my anger down
To fill the emptiness, where there is no sound
That's all I ask of you..."

Please give me that Love, indeed. What a blessing.

getting personal

We are having a Sunday afternoon brunch-feast. Scrambled eggs, decaf coffee, ham, the works. Given that it is past 4 now, this may also be our dinner.
Today has been a lovely example of the Spanish proverb, "How beautiful it is to do nothing, then rest afterwards." Actually, I've been stirring in the house, doing the usual Sunday chores, such as laundry. But I haven't had anywhere to go, and the lure of triple-digit temps is nonexistent, so Scooter and I are enjoying a day of cocooning.
This week, I've been dusting off an idea for writing work that has never seemed to quite die, despite my well-intentioned efforts to forget about it. Five years ago, Scooter & I sent the state 10 bucks to take out a trade name for a personal-history business. We renewed it recently.
Personal historians do the stuff that families used to do themselves in the old days: they interview people (often older adults) for a memoir, video biography, or other written/multimedia product that children/siblings/passers-by can enjoy. The advantage of having a stranger do this for you are that they do all the time-consuming dirty work, they help you edit out the boring parts, and are happy to hear your favorite story, since it's new to them.
I was journaling about the sorts of writing I love to do and I realized the reason I could never quite put this one in the trash bin was my love for helping others understand the essence of a person. It's what I like to do when I profile people, and it's what I look for when I'm picking quotes in a story that reveal character. Usually stories from someone's "real-life" are better than any hypothetical situation you could dream up to make a point.
So we'll see how this goes. I've done a lot of preliminary research beforehand. The trick is educating the people who might really like personal history help that such a thing exists, and is worth paying a professional to do (or help with).
I've also got a round of new query ideas simmering. Some of them play off some previous topics I worked on when I did trade magazines. Every trade mag needs stories about how to run a business, and they can be a lot of fun to customize to a particular industry. More on this later.
Dinner will soon be served. Must run!

hot, hotter, hottest

It's suck-the-breath-out-of-you hot these days in Phoenix, a special weather condition that requires temperatures of at least 111 degrees and less than 7 percent humidity. It's one of the few times a gentle breeze is less welcome than a dead calm.
It was a three-day week for me at work, which means I was busy (and no blogging entries when I got home at night). Lots of editing of stories for our "stockpile." Which we may be dipping into immediately, since we WILL be putting together a full-length issue in less than half the time we usually get, and putting it under one cover with a special section another unit is doing. At least that's the word for now. We'll see.
I sent off that query earlier in the week to the Hawaiian magazine. We'll see what response we get to that--"can I please write about this fellow you could easily send a local reporter to profile? I'm more interested in him than they are!" Which is true, but as an editor that might at least run through my mind. My guy could go visit them in person, and this girl in Arizona is going to rely on a phone interview. But, it's *her* pitch, so what do I do to not make it look like I "harvested" her idea? (Well, give her the assignment, obviously.)
Before I sent that off, I tried to open a CD of my clips from Echo that had previously made our old computer make bad scary scraping noises when I loaded it in the CD drive. It worked on the new PC, and I downloaded them all--no small feat, since I was at the magazine for 78 issues and I estimate I wrote at least 150 bylined articles for them. Not all of them are things I'd want to pass by an editor as proof of my writing acumen, but there are a variety of topics covered, and the PDFs look pretty nice. It's a major relief--that was a big chunk of my portfolio I couldn't access, except to go down to Echo's library and cart off more copies of "my" issues.
I've got a couple of ideas to play with today (play with stage precedes even research), and Scooter and I have some writing we want to do together. I think it'll be fun.

happy independence day

Well, just as soon as I said I was going to stay inside, a friend invited Scooter & I up to her house in Cave Creek. She had an awesome pool in the back and had planted strategically placed trees, so there was plenty of shade as we played in the pool all afternoon/evening. Despite the high being like 113 degrees, we had a blast, and not a lick of sunburn for any of us, which is quite miraculous.
Finished the column for Echo yesterday. I need to do some editing, but it's jelling. :)
Gotta go grill--my patriotic duty! :)
Have a great fourth!

book overdose

Well, it was bound to happen. Scooter and I had some money, so of course we went book shopping.
I found treasures like I couldn't believe. Both of the Dave Fryxell books on structure and research that I currently have checked out of the library (How to Write Fast [While Writing Well] and Structure and Flow) were there, as well as a semi-recent book on research shortcuts (written by a real live librarian, who ought to know), and a narrative nonfiction classic by Tracy Kidder, Soul of a New Machine. Kidder's book traces the creation of personal computers, and since it's narrative nonfiction, I expect it will read like a novel.
It seems odd to get excited about the books written about writing, but they are SOOO helpful right now. I always thought I was pretty good at organizing and structuring my work, but I have needed something to shake me out of my paralysis of analysis about it and try something different. And the research one...I got caught in that canyon between the old-school journalism of visit-the-reference-librarian-and-city-hall for facts, and the kids two and three years behind me who were schooled in how to surf the 'net QUICKLY for facts. I spent a lot of time at Echo fruitlessly Googling and calling it "research," and I want to learn how to use the Web to my advantage.
Also got a book out of the library about blogs and their influence on corporate news media in the new age of "citizen journalism." It's called We the Media. I'll probably report on it later.
Oh, speaking of blogging, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good website on Blogger's rights, if any of you get an inkling to publish something inflammatory or controversial. It's at www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/.
The EFF is sort of the civil libertarians of the World Wide Web and other electronic communications media. Very interesting.
Since I'm in Phoenix, I'm sure I'll spend much of my long weekend enjoying the invention of air conditioning. More blogs may emerge! :)