Halloween

 

Writers quotes -- Patricia Wrede

I have a couple of favorite sayings from author Patricia Wrede:

1 - Editors don't make house calls -- You've gotta send them out.

2. - Writers have three hats
First is the Writer hat
Secondly - the Editor hat
Thirdly - the business person's hat
The important thing is not to wear the Wrong Hat.  

When you are writing, keep that editor's hat off.  Only put it on when you are looking over what you wrote and are revising.  

And never, never wear your business person's hat when you write.

Of course she said it better, this is only a summary
She has said this many times, many ways. 

Ah - I've found a copy of one of her long lectures -- here's the beginning of it:

Patricia Wrede says:
"Writers have to wear many hats.  There's the Editor Hat, the Creative Artiste Hat, the Accounting and Finance Hat (often neglected, but really quite important, especially if one hopes to make a living from this), and so on. 

 A great many problems arise if one is wearing the wrong hat for the job."  (and so on)

We lived in a Colonial Stone Farmhouse

We inherited a colonial farmhouse (called The Cub Hill House - the area around it was named after it) from my husband's parents. The original huge amount of land around it that had been farmed for several centuries had been sold off for development in the 1930s and all was left was three acres and the farmhouse and surrounding buildings. His parents could only afford the house, some buildings plus 2 acres. Another person bought the falling down barn and turned the slightly more modern garage into their house. 

The house was a wreck, a real fixer-upper and when we moved in, we continued the fixing up. The house used a hand-dug well that often ran dry in the summertime until the 1980s when we finally connected to the city water lines. The reason his parents had never gotten city water was that the water lines didn't pass our house.  The development built on the Cub Hill house land, got city water the minute the houses were built. We didn't have access until a development was built on the wooded lot across the street.

The house had no inside heat.  So his parents used kerosine heaters, which produced a greasy deposit on everything.  And it could only get the temperature in the house up to about 50 degrees in the wintertime. (Winter temperatures go below freezing often in Maryland winters -- at least it used to.) Each room also had fireplaces.  (of course -- Colonial times that's the way they cooked and heated.)  So my husband and his brother also used them in their bedrooms  the wintertime. 

After we moved in, we helped fund electrical heat in the kitchen/ dining room and began using a wood stove to heat the living room - which brought the temperature up into the 70s. nice.   We still used individual portable electric heaters in our bedrooms.  

Shoveling out after snowstorms was still difficult because of the long driveway to reach the road.  My husband used a snowplow attachment to his heavy duty lawnmower (a Gravely) to do a lot of it, but we also had to do a lot of hand shoveling. 

Now you know why I moved to southern California to be with my girls after my husband died -- I just couldn't handle the upkeep of this property by myself. 

There's an article about this house on Wikipedia which is only halfway correct.  The original writer actually used a picture of a different house that was build down the road from the actual Cub Hill House and some of his information was wrong.  My husband corrected the entry several times, but the original writer kept changing it back.  Too Bad. 

It was declared a historical site some years ago.  Near that traffic speed sign is a plaque stating it. 

Writing advice from Will Smith

Smith, Will with Mark Manson. WILL. NY: Penguin Press, 2021.

Besides the fact that this is a really good read, there's great advice for writers here. See pages 268 to 270.

He begins with Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces; the basic theory of the Hero's Journey.  And then he breaks it down so it's easily understood and applies it to both historical storytelling and modern movies.  

You don't have to read Campbell's book; there's a shorter interpretation of it in Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey.  

You don't have to read Vogler's book because Will (and Mark) have it summarized down in those three pages. 

It's the path of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly; it is universal arc of transformation.

READ and LEARN.  

Did you do this?

 In the 1950s, we would put pennies on the track and come back later to collect the squashed pennies. 

In 2006, when I arrived at grad school on the train, I noticed a family waiting by the tracks. The didn't get on the train. Instead they waited until the train left and then gather up the squashed coins they had placed on the track. 

What do you know? Kids are still doing this. 

A surprise purchase

Headed to Office Depot for more printer paper yesterday. But decided to go the opposite direction to Staples because I remembered the Miramar Air Show (with the Blue Angels) was close to Home Depot. I thought I'd also try out some of the office chairs because I've always hated mine. 

For years I had used a secretary chair while my husband used an antique office chair. When I moved to the West Coast, I brought his office chair to use. However, it never fit me right; the arms were too high and I hated it. 

So, I tried the office chairs at Staples and they also had annoyingly high arms. But I found a comfortable office chair with no arms!!! Very tempting. Should I get it? (news note - I did) I'm sitting here typing in my so comfortable new office chair. 

Oh. Yes. I also bought more printer paper.  

Look for the Helpers

 An elderly man came into the library where I was working and asked for help finding his nephew's house. The Fallston library is not located in a town, It's in the middle of a field with a development behind it, so it was the only building he could see from the road. After a discussion with him, I realized that he really didn't know where he was or where he was going, but when he mentioned his son, I asked him if he knew his son's phone number. When I called his son, the son was shocked that his father had driven so far away - because he had Dementia. The son came to get him and guided him back to his own home. 

Even in his reduced mental ability, this man knew he could get help at a library

 Mr. Rogers always said, "Look for the helpers."  This man knew that he could get help at a library.