What An Agent Wants

You go for that sequel, Shelagh, if that's what you want.

When I lived in MN, I had the good fortune to meet a young man who was in high school, and he desperately wanted to be a barber. The only drawback was he had cerebral palsy. He was so physically afflicted that he could barely walk and only at a shuffle, and he shook so badly that he had a difficult time feeding himself. I can’t say he suffered from the affliction, because he didn’t let anything deter him from his goal. He was determined to not only be a barber, but he wanted his own shop.

He and his parents lived outside of our little town and they didn’t have a lot of money, but they helped him buy calves and he raised them himself, working summers and during the brutal winters to care for them, then he’d sell them at the fair. By the time he graduated high school, he had enough money to go to barber school. Not only did he get his license, but when I left MN, he had started an apprentice with the town barber. And, he had customers, or patrons, I believe he called them.

I didn’t watch him cut hair, but I heard he was amazingly steady. And I bet by now, he has his own shop.

I wanted to do an article on him, got the editor's enthusiastic okay, but he nixed the idea. He didn't want to be perceived as different. In his eyes, he was like everyone else, he simply had a little difficulty to overcome.

This young man had an unlikely dream, worked toward it, and would let no one deter him from his goals. He’s truly an inspiration.

Brenda will make it to the top of the mountain. So will Shelagh and Domenic. I will sit by the fire in the lodge down below and call 911 if one of you should happen to tumble. Provided the porter brings a phone to my chair, of course. For this I will accept a measly 3 percent of the gross when your names are up in lights.
Actually you have as good a shot at it as anyone if that's what you want. Some will so why not you?

I would have made it--but I won't try--I am leaving space for you, three. I will stay with Dick and listen to his stories.

I will have more fun than you will
Hurry up--time is wasting.

Instead of talking about it--how about doing it?

Brenda that sounds a lot like an artist I wrote about in Outdoor Indiana magazine. He earned a scholarship to a leading art school, then broke his neck in a diving accident a few weeks before starting school. He was left with no feeling in his hands, arms, etc. He worked at it until he was good enough to paint duck stamps and commercials for McDonald's and other advertisers. His painting of birds and animals have amazing detail. We bought one of his paintings of an old barn with a deer standing nearby.
He does this with no feeling in his fingers. He doesn't know it if he drops his brush. If he knocks over his desk lamp he'd be unaware except for the sound. His name is Ken Bucklew and I believe he is now on the internet.
As much as I admire the young barber, I probably won't visit his shop for a shave. I've never had a barbershop shave, of course.

I just Googled Ken Bucklew and there is a lot about him on the Internet, including a blog I had forgotten I had written.

Would it not be wonderful if we had the powers. There is not a person on this message board that would not be famous if I has the magic.


Magic is really what it takes, you know. Write words that connect to heart so the reader imagines they have thought those words...magic. Write beautiful, lyrical words that sing their song for them...magic.

I believe in magic.

Love,
Betty

Shelagh wrote:

The nature of this crisis is actually fairly simple. Writers can
only publish what book publishers are willing to buy from them. And
book publishers, in turn, can only publish what bookstores are
willing to buy.

That's what this guy calls a crisis? Bookstores sell what people buy. The "crisis" is that people aren't buying the garbage this guy is writing! LOL!

Shelagh, no way am I reading that debate. I did briefly glance at it and laughed at how the same people have been saying the same stuff since 2005. Poor Christine N. Maybe if she put all that effort into writing stuff she could sell, she wouldn't be stuck so long with Samhain (which is about one step above PA).

Dear LC,
Why are you so caustic. I do not think that everyone here has their head up their butt in a blind delusion. The common thing that unites us all is learning about this industry, what to do, how to put our words on paper so some person with the power will even glance our way. Not everyone is a textbook writer. Not everyone writes this or that kind of stuff. It is not easy to find a blanket that will cover us all or a formula that will help each and every one.

We have all heard how it cannot be done. Tell us all how to do it.

Love,
Betty

Betty, caustic about what? The Harvard guy who wrote the article about how book superstores have caused a crisis in the industry? His whole piece was based on, IMO, faulty logic. Booksuperstores respond to what people want to buy. The crisis is that he can't sell what they want to read.

Caustic about the debate? I was actually sympathizing with Shelagh. How pathetic that the same people are at AW crying about PA since 2005, saying the same thing again...and again...and again... and look at their own achievement. If all I could do was a book with Samhain, I sure as hell wouldn't be spending half my waking hours complaining about a random publisher that obviously works for a lot of people (yk, ones who DON'T post at AW).

Dear LC,

I am sorry if I have mis interpreted your post. I was not talking about PA at all. I do not post at AW and that is because I do not need the grief.

I do not understand why a person cannot sell what someone wants to read. It makes no sense to me.

I read your posts and I always feel you have your back up. I do not know why that should be but I get that feeling that you consider you are better. You may be. I have yet to read anything you have written or know where to find anything you have written or where to buy any book you have published or even who the publisher is.

Love,
Betty

Perhaps I should add, what your name is.

Sorry, I don't mean to come across as having my back up. I must come across that way, though, as I'm often accused of it, lol. Oh well. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.

I don't smile very often. I am very introspective and show my emotions on my sleeve. If I am happy, I'm smiling. Otherwise, I'm not.

People I work with often think I am unhappy about something. Just because I'm not smiling does not mean I'm unhappy. I'm just not smiling happy. I put a mirror by my phone to smile into when I answer it; otherwise, people on the phone might think I'm a grouch.

I know it bothers people. When I married a widower with sons 7 and 11, they told me later that they thought I was angry at them all the time because I didn't smile. Their mother always smiled, even when she was sick and dying.

When I am ill, I'm less than not smiling. I am unbearable to myself and anyone else nearby. When I am ill, put me in a corner and leave me alone.

When I go to the gym, the trainers say, "smile." Why does it matter to them? I'm there for health reasons; it isn't fun.

The point of this is that I am trying to smile more because otherwise when I become old, my face will be in a permanent frown if I don't smile it up more. So, I'm trying. I really am trying. Truth is, I'm happy as a lark quite often; but I smile inside. I have to let it reflect on the outside.

dkchristi wrote:

The point of this is that I am trying to smile more because otherwise when I become old, my face will be in a permanent frown if I don't smile it up more.

But that's where Botox and Juvederm come in. lol

I'm probably allergic. Besides, I read somewhere to "smile and the whole world smiles with you; frown and you frown alone...."

I have people like the man with cerebral palsy and wanted to be a barber in my own family.

My granddaughter, the one in the anthology, spent a couple of hours today editing my Cabin Journals, this year's Christmas gift for family and friends. She put the font up to 16 and read about an inch from the screen. She weighed a pound and a half when she was born. In a few weeks she is entering college and taking one of those many creative writing courses, art and a freshman orientation program. And like the man you spoke of Brenda, she wants to be like everyone else, not different, but has dreams, realistic ones and big ones.

The biggest reader in my family is my seventeen-year-old autistic grandson. When he comes to visit we go to a used book store. Last time he picked out fifty books. His father said he would have read them all in a few weeks.

I do not understand why we were supposed to be negative about Dominic's post about PA. There are many assumptions made and I saw nothing wrong with his post, except, as Ann said, some have done well.

Carol

Carol,

You misssed a circus. To boill it down--Brenda, Domenic and Shelagh will have best selling books.

You can join them or wait with Dick and me at the bottom of the mountain.

I had begun the climb, but, I lost my editor. Without an editor there is no hope.

Shelagh’s post by David Kornhaber, “Read Between the Lines,” reminded me of another personal synchronicity. You see, I’ve been thinking about Matthew Arnold lately – I even mentioned him in response to one of Sue’s threads

Quote :

A brief perusal of the books most prominently on display in almost any major bookstore --from the latest Danielle Steele bestseller to the most recent celebrity "confession"--can erase any doubt that we currently are, like Arnold was, living in an era with "masses of a common sort of literature.”

That sounds a lot like the current criticism of the “common sort of literature” found in places like PA and Lulu as well as the numerous ebook publications – a “common sort of literature” available to the masses. That was indeed a major concern of Matthew Arnold.

I’d like to back up a little, call it a bit of backstory, to Arnold’s childhood and youth. He attended Rugby School for a couple of reasons, one, it had a lot of prestige, and, two, his father Tom Arnold, was the school’s headmaster. Matthew loved his father, and wanted to please him, but Arnold, Sr. was too enamored of another student, an older boy named Arthur Hugh Clough. The headmaster consistently praised the older student’s work, saying he held more promise than any Rugby student for a long time before, and probably after. Surprisingly, or maybe not, the younger Arnold and Clough became fast friends. They both aspired to become great poets. They both went on to Balliol College, Oxford, where they were close friends and classmates.

The big movement of the time was the “high church” movement led by John Henry Newman. Clough followed it for a time, but eventually rejected it. Arnold attended a few lectures, but was more appalled by it than supportive. It became a part of the contention between the two “friends.” The biggest problem between them had to do with the writing of poetry. Arnold had very specific ideas concerning the forms and themes that poetry ought to uphold. The problem was, though, as I mentioned in my response to Sue, was that when Arnold actually let go and wrote poetry, “from his heart,” as we might say today, the poems did not do what they were supposed to do. He found himself writing things in a style and with a theme that he did not approve of, at least not in his “mind.”

So Arnold stopped writing poetry for much of his career, taking it up again later, interestingly enough, after the death of his father.

In the meantime, he became a critic, writing essays like "The Art of Poetry," and the type of poetry he was most critical of was that of his long time “friend,” Arthur Hugh Clough. Clough had come to realize he could not follow the tenets of the church of England. He wrote poetry that supported his beliefs, and in forms that were often new and innovative.

Clough’s work was so new and innovative that the critics, including Arnold, disdained his work, and Clough died unrecognized," liter-arily," at a relatively early age.

I first came across these two poets during a course in Victorian Poetry, and my oral final exam for the course was a look at Clough’s work, with an eye to his relationship with Arnold. I do not remember which contemporary critic dared to disagree with Arnold, but I do remember that he stated that the day would come, in another hundred years or so, when Arthur Hugh Clough would be recognized as the most clearly prophetic voice of his time. And at the time I took that course, about 30 years ago, the poetry of Clough was experiencing a rebirth. One of his more popular “little” poems, “The Latest Decalogue” can be found here:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-latest-decalogue/

I found an interesting corollary as I was researching this project. One of Arnold’s better known poems was called “Dover Beach.” In it he decried the “loss of faith” of the people of England, metaphorically describing a tide that ebbed, but never returned to the full, saying that England’s faith was in the same position.

About the same time, Clough wrote a poem called “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth,” which can be found here:

http://www.bartleby.com/101/741.html


Take a careful look at the third stanza which directly contradicts the image in Arnold’s “Dover Beach,.” Here is Arnold’s image:

“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”

And here is the entire poem, “Dover Beach”:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dover-beach/

Compare the image to Clough’s:

“For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.”


Hmm. It sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it. Kind of like where were are with literature today.


BTW, I earned an "A" on my exam.
Ann

Brenda Hill wrote:

We are. I can walk into any major bookstore and the shelves are loaded with books of every genre.

I'm sorry life hasn't turned out the way you wanted, Alice. My mother had a similar experience.

Thank you, Brenda, You are growing on me.

"All things work together for good."

Betty Fasig wrote:

L.C.
I have yet to read anything you have written or know where to find anything you have written or where to buy any book you have published or even who the publisher is.

If the avatars LC has used in the past are any guide, I would guess that the books are fashion/art related or manufacturing/interior design.

Don't worry about smiling, DK. I always figure a person is up to something if they are smiling. I once heard a wise old city editor say, "I never trust a man who smiles too much."

.

It wouldn't be giving much away to say the area you work in.

Hey Shelagh, I"ll PM you (if I can figure out how, lol).

Try clicking on the pm icon below my post: