Thursday - A Card, My Gift, and a Grant
Jan. 17th, 2008 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking that after mailing one final Christmas card last week, I'm pretty sure I'm done with Christmas for 2007. At least I am unless someone else who didn't a card complains, which is why I ended up mailing one more than two weeks after Christmas was over.
This last Christmas was a rushed affair, and I did my cards in a hurry. As I went through my address list, I got to the name of one of my father's neighbors and decided not to bother with them this year. Mrs. Isaacs is a little agoraphobic, and rarely ventures outside of her front yard; I haven't seen her in years. I can't tell you what Mr. Isaacs even looks like. I knew them as a child, but not very well. They are just the couple across the street and three houses down from my father's house. I couldn't recall if I even get a Christmas card back from them most years. I figured they wouldn't notice if they didn't get one from me this time around.
Mrs. Isaacs most certainly did notice, and she confronted my father about it as he took his daily walk past her house.
"Did you not send the Isaacs a Christmas Card this year?" my father called me up to ask. "Mrs. Isaacs came running up her driveway to me when I was on my walk this morning and let me know that she didn't get one. She know you sent them to some people, because Mrs. Wagner got one, with your newsletter and a picture of the baby in it."
I cringed. "I must have forgot, Dad. The 'I' section of my address book isn't very big, and I may have skipped it."
"Well, she's very upset and hurt about it. We old people look forward to that kind of thing, you know. She likes your newsletter and she likes getting the picture of the baby, so could you send her one?"
I promised I would, as late as it was. In it, I wrote a note of apology for my oversight, and promised not to let it happen again next year. This week I got a thank-you note from her, the first thank you note I have ever received for sending a Christmas card.
My father gets a lot of feedback on my Christmas cards and newsletters. My aunt Francis thinks they're funny, and she thinks my son looks very Swedish. The Scandinavian side of my family is very impressed with his Nordic looks, and takes credit for them, even though my husband's DNA shows up more in our son than my own does. Then there is the newsletter, which I write with the purpose of being funny, not informative. The highest compliment I can get at Christmas is when someone says, "Your newsletter made me choke on my eggnog! I spent Christmas Eve in the emergency room because of you."
"Your Aunt Jo told me she loved the poem you wrote about Leslie," he told me after chewing me out for neglecting Mrs. Isaacs. "She might even put it in the program for the funeral."
"Memorial Service," I correct him. "I'm supposed to read it there."
"Good. I look forward to hearing you. Everybody asks me why you don't write for a living, and I tell them I don't know. You're wasting your talent," he said. I've heard people joke about what it's like to have a Jewish mother, and I suspect it's not that much different than having a Swedish father. In certain cultures, parents tell you they love you by pointing out your all of your shortcomings. There is no you're special just the way you are coddling in these cultures. Instead, we get you could be something special, if only you applied yourself. I guess I didn't do a good job raising you, or you'd be more successful. I suppose it's my fault. I wish I knew where I went wrong, I really do. My family has lost the knowledge of how to speak the Swedish language, but sometime I will find someone who does speak it and ask if there is a Swedish equivalent to Oy, vey!, because I need something to say when my father gets on one of these tangents.
I reminded my father about the whole bills to pay thing, and how breaking into writing professionally means not being able to pay your bills for awhile.
"You can publish your own books now, though, at least that's what I hear," my father told me.
Well, yes, you can, and between what I write on the Internet and my poetry I have more than enough to fill a few books, but self publishing means self financing. With poetry (I have hundreds, maybe a thousand, of poems lying around), even the non-vanity type publishers expect you to pay for the publishing, and then if your work sells they take it from there. I reminded my father that I don't have any money coming in that isn't already spoken for. Then my Dad hit me with something I didn't expect or have an answer for.
"I've got money," he said. "I invest in stocks all the time. Sometimes I make my money back, and sometimes I don't. I guess this wouldn't be much different."
"Poetry is a very risky stock," I pointed out, "the odds of you making a return are next to zero."
"I'm willing to risk it," he said.
So I said I'd look into what it would take.
Because I said this, I suppose I have to.
I have no idea where to start.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
This last Christmas was a rushed affair, and I did my cards in a hurry. As I went through my address list, I got to the name of one of my father's neighbors and decided not to bother with them this year. Mrs. Isaacs is a little agoraphobic, and rarely ventures outside of her front yard; I haven't seen her in years. I can't tell you what Mr. Isaacs even looks like. I knew them as a child, but not very well. They are just the couple across the street and three houses down from my father's house. I couldn't recall if I even get a Christmas card back from them most years. I figured they wouldn't notice if they didn't get one from me this time around.
Mrs. Isaacs most certainly did notice, and she confronted my father about it as he took his daily walk past her house.
"Did you not send the Isaacs a Christmas Card this year?" my father called me up to ask. "Mrs. Isaacs came running up her driveway to me when I was on my walk this morning and let me know that she didn't get one. She know you sent them to some people, because Mrs. Wagner got one, with your newsletter and a picture of the baby in it."
I cringed. "I must have forgot, Dad. The 'I' section of my address book isn't very big, and I may have skipped it."
"Well, she's very upset and hurt about it. We old people look forward to that kind of thing, you know. She likes your newsletter and she likes getting the picture of the baby, so could you send her one?"
I promised I would, as late as it was. In it, I wrote a note of apology for my oversight, and promised not to let it happen again next year. This week I got a thank-you note from her, the first thank you note I have ever received for sending a Christmas card.
My father gets a lot of feedback on my Christmas cards and newsletters. My aunt Francis thinks they're funny, and she thinks my son looks very Swedish. The Scandinavian side of my family is very impressed with his Nordic looks, and takes credit for them, even though my husband's DNA shows up more in our son than my own does. Then there is the newsletter, which I write with the purpose of being funny, not informative. The highest compliment I can get at Christmas is when someone says, "Your newsletter made me choke on my eggnog! I spent Christmas Eve in the emergency room because of you."
"Your Aunt Jo told me she loved the poem you wrote about Leslie," he told me after chewing me out for neglecting Mrs. Isaacs. "She might even put it in the program for the funeral."
"Memorial Service," I correct him. "I'm supposed to read it there."
"Good. I look forward to hearing you. Everybody asks me why you don't write for a living, and I tell them I don't know. You're wasting your talent," he said. I've heard people joke about what it's like to have a Jewish mother, and I suspect it's not that much different than having a Swedish father. In certain cultures, parents tell you they love you by pointing out your all of your shortcomings. There is no you're special just the way you are coddling in these cultures. Instead, we get you could be something special, if only you applied yourself. I guess I didn't do a good job raising you, or you'd be more successful. I suppose it's my fault. I wish I knew where I went wrong, I really do. My family has lost the knowledge of how to speak the Swedish language, but sometime I will find someone who does speak it and ask if there is a Swedish equivalent to Oy, vey!, because I need something to say when my father gets on one of these tangents.
I reminded my father about the whole bills to pay thing, and how breaking into writing professionally means not being able to pay your bills for awhile.
"You can publish your own books now, though, at least that's what I hear," my father told me.
Well, yes, you can, and between what I write on the Internet and my poetry I have more than enough to fill a few books, but self publishing means self financing. With poetry (I have hundreds, maybe a thousand, of poems lying around), even the non-vanity type publishers expect you to pay for the publishing, and then if your work sells they take it from there. I reminded my father that I don't have any money coming in that isn't already spoken for. Then my Dad hit me with something I didn't expect or have an answer for.
"I've got money," he said. "I invest in stocks all the time. Sometimes I make my money back, and sometimes I don't. I guess this wouldn't be much different."
"Poetry is a very risky stock," I pointed out, "the odds of you making a return are next to zero."
"I'm willing to risk it," he said.
So I said I'd look into what it would take.
Because I said this, I suppose I have to.
I have no idea where to start.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
http://www.lulu.com/
Date: 2008-01-17 09:34 pm (UTC)Re: http://www.lulu.com/
Date: 2008-01-17 10:37 pm (UTC)you get exactly what you pay for
Date: 2008-01-17 10:47 pm (UTC)anything free
Date: 2008-01-17 10:54 pm (UTC)Re: anything free
Date: 2008-01-17 11:03 pm (UTC)I've seen self-published works, and always find myself thinking, "Boy, this person could have used and editor and some good advice."
no subject
Date: 2008-01-19 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 12:58 am (UTC)And I looked at freedict.com and the Swedish translation for 'frustrate' is omintetgöra. That's about the closest I could think of. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-19 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-19 02:42 am (UTC)I wouldn't want my book affect anyone so.
I've no inclination to self publish. If I wanted to make a digital creation, I already have one here in this journal.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-18 02:46 am (UTC)If you live in a different area than you grew up in, you can double your odds :)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-19 02:44 am (UTC)Does anyone punctuation read them, I wonder?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-19 11:16 pm (UTC)OMG!OMG!OMG! Pick Me! Pick Me!
Date: 2008-01-22 03:33 pm (UTC)Listen, lemme chat with hermes_wade and maybe together we can all make this happen. He's an editor and I've got a good sense of layout. I REALLY wanna do that Carney/Death book! I swear, your Dad could recoup his expenses in one night at Numbers alone!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 03:55 pm (UTC)