Midway

Nobody wants things for you
They want things from you
Nobody flatters you
They want to be flattered by you
No better than a port
Being plugged for
Desired content
Put a social token behind your ear
And pull it out from the other
You're supposed to clap
Because they think they passed
Through your mind
As effortless as a pinball
Insert coin
Pull lever
You can practice
Giving them what they want
They'll never stay long
There is always a machine
Better than you
More willing to play along

Great Courses

I don’t know about many other PAW’s out there, but, you’ve either not had the finances to attend college out of high school (like me), didn’t have the encouragement to do so (like me), were outright discouraged in some ways (like me), attempted to attend college in your adult years (like me), and either failed out of life getting in the way or financial issues. Like me.

With the debt crisis, general economic instability, social decay, and all the horrible events occurring in the world today, it seems like arguing over the value of an education is going to take a back-burner to the more pressing issues we have right now.

Should it? Maybe. Shouldn’t it? Should education always stay in the forefront of conversations as the only way to combat hate, ignorance, and xenophobia? Yeah. But I don’t feel right telling families in mourning what their priorities should be when I don’t live their lives.

However, we will get around to education again. Either as a talking point for class divide, or financial stability.

What we need to decide, as a society, is the value of education. Is it going to be an elitist marker that is just another divide between classes? Or is it something that should be accessible to everyone, no matter their goal, career, or ambition?
Of course, I favor education for all. Housewife? What mother and home caregiver cannot benefit from education on chemistry and psychology. Simple chemistry helps so much with baking and cooking, I’m surprised Alton Brown hasn’t done Great Course lectures, because that’s basically what Good Eats was, the science of food.

Jump right to my PAW Brethren and Sistren. You Poor, Angry, Writers who have no recourse for a higher MFA that seems to be the only requirement for some people to put out their manifesto of crap fiction that gets recanted later by its own author.

But I digress.

So, for those of us who value education for its enriching of life in general, Great Courses and it’s lesser known companion on the shelf, The Modern Scholar, are invaluable.

For writers, there really isn’t any one direction I can point you. Go everywhere. There isn’t a subject that can’t be explored.

The problem being, these are expensive. However, the public library offers most of these.

I’m obsessed with music courses. Composers in many eras (I have one or two I fan-freak-out over), fundamentals, biographies, operas, symphonies, I can’t get enough. It’s chocolate cake.

For all the pressing of The Teaching Company and Modern Scholar I’m doing right now, it culminates to this. You can get knowledge, inspiration, doors to technique can be revealed, you can identify with brooding and eccentric famous people, enjoy the work and never look at it the same again. You can’t help but transfer that to every part of your life, especially your writing.

But there are three things that get me through tough times that I got directly from these studies.

The composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, teacher to Igor Stravinsky, said “Inspiration is the reward of persistence, not a haphazard dependence.”

Liszt only gave a shit what his cats thought.

And finally, Berlioz. Berlioz came from a family of non-musicians. He dropped out of school and did whatever he could to be in the music world. And only as he could afford them. He even got kicked out of the Library of Paris Conservatory while studying because he wasn’t a student (yet), even though he was there during public hours.

I haven’t even covered all the courses there are on literature…

By the way, is that book done yet?

The Slavery of Retail: No Personal Identity Allowed

When people complain about my recent (joyful) breakup with yet another retail employer, I don’t argue with them. But I try to explain. Everyone is understaffed and over-worked. They expect Mensa level application, Atlas force effort, and Roman fealty. And at the bargain basement price you thing they are passing on to you.

I don’t make excuses for bad workers, for people who don’t care to learn their job, or general apathy that is at best negligent and at worst prosecutable.

I blame the culture we’ve instilled into the concept of Retail.

Not just the “customer is always right” bullshit, or even “buyer beware.” Somehow, the business mentality of 80/20 has made Retail life insufferable.

For those not familiar with the 80/20, it’s called the Pareto Principle, or the Law of the Vital Few, which states approximately 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. Business…gurus, I can’t think of a better word for how they treat business, like a new-age religion, actually call the 80/20 Rule a way of life, a belief. Not the statistic that it is. Applied on the ground level, from a Retail Grunt’s position, it translates into “Give This Screaming Bitch Whatever She Wants.” This is done for many reasons. To stop the screaming, much like a little child. To make the customer happy, if it’s possible (please keep in mind that some people enter a retail establishment to buy unhappiness the same way people like to haggle for cars). There is the concept of over-compensation. Which has a jingle type word, a buzz word, that reeks of paperback shyster psychology. Whatever it is called, it is the idea that giving a customer too much will make them feel like they owe the business their patronage. So, 80% of the business’ problems are created by 20% of the customers, and making them over happy is the only way to avoid any trouble whatsoever.

And customers know this. Instead of getting a problem fixed, or a right wronged, most retail interactions have become a used car lot sales haggle to keep the customer from trying to get over and get more than you, an employee, are allowed to give.

This obviously is not everyone. But I’ve got something to say about the 80% soon enough.

Now, this 20% will say and do anything. I haven’t decided if they don’t think about employees as humans out of conditioning, or if it’s some sort of subconscious let-go that they know it’s basically an adult Showbiz ball-pit and they can get what they want, quite literally.

The 80% are comprised of people who just like to look down on you. Throw their money on the counter like you’re a fucking whore. Tell you “I can tell how much you hate your job, it’s quite apparent.” Let their kids piss on the floor. The theft alone is staggering. And of all the more examples I could go into, this part lead to this: you have to take it.
In a retail job, you are at the bottom of the food chain. One “you’re fired” away from homelessness, maybe two steps away from hanging out with Homeless Jesus on the street corner. The customer may wield this knowledge like a child with a hammer.

But it’s your bosses that know they hold your marionette strings.

While all that bullshit, bullying, pandering, bowing and scraping, ass-sucking, and general fur smoothing happens on the public side of the counter, no one thinks about what happens on the business side of the counter.

I’ve recently been liberated from a company that doesn’t hire security, even though it’s standard in their certain sector of Retail. Product is allowed to expire, because there simply isn’t enough hands to rotate product. If you get a good boss, you are damned lucky. Because a bad boss will ruin the business, put you in a foul mood, and generally be a hardass about what they will or won’t let you do to get the interaction completed.

Here’s something that’s actually happened. A District Manager came in. I thought we sprayed for those, but we must have skipped the Orkin Man’s appointment.

I was going through a lot of personal shit. My best friend was going through a lot of personal shit that necessitated my desire to send flowers to a minor’s funeral. Relation were in town, and I was too ashamed for them to see how tiny my apartment is. So, not a year and a half after shit I have to still deal with, I had to dodge family, buy funeral flowers, and then I got to go to work to be yelled at by addicts, dodge physical assault of vagrants, hope this is the day we don’t get robbed. And the District Manager said to me, “you need to smile more.”

She had a trainee with her. Or someone, I don’t know who. I’m looking at this fucking manager, thinking about all this shit that is none of her business that’s going on in my life. Her roadie got it. The look on my face made a very concerned look on hers. I have a feeling if she had her say, the conversation would have gone differently. But it wasn’t a conversation. This manager spent the whole time talking. It was a one-sided speechifying event.

Not once did anyone ask why I wasn’t smiling, if unhappiness like reads on the face like that, it has a good reason to be there. No one cared.

We work with an epileptic. I didn’t know it for the longest time. One day, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her doing what I could only describe as an amateur pirouette. My honest first thought was, “wow, I’ve never seen her that joyful before.” And went about my business. Not five seconds later, the gossip train rolled right into my station. Watching, no one said anything to her. Just talked about her. After she left for the day, I said as loud as I could, “You know, if I happen to come to work with no pants and tell you my father is Sergeant Pepper, PLEASE ask me if I’m okay. You have my permission.”

Oh, yeah, this happened in a pharmacy. Where a Doctorate holder, two to four kids in school to be nurses, and people who have worked pharmacy for years decided to gossip instead of ask if their comrade with a medical condition is okay. The whole thing made me fucking sick. If I had known she had a small (rather elegant looking, I’ll give her that) episode, I would have just said, “you okay?” and she could have decided to take a break or communicate she was fine. But at least someone would have fucking cared.

So Retail allows you no personal identity. The demands corporations make are increasingly dehumanizing, and it effects the attitudes of those in minor positions of authority, and that’s how you get that poor, miserable, broken and unfeeling person behind that counter that could care less if you got your Vess soda on sale or not.

Food for Thought.

Resources: May Haul

I used to watch those YouTube videos of people and their monthly acquisitions. They are entertaining, even gotten some reading suggestions from them. But without internet service, this isn’t something I can keep up on.
However, I did manage to make a guilty pleasure trip to the thrift store and picked up a few great examples of treasures people throw away.
First, I got a Biology textbook. I’m a sucker for a 25 cent textbook. Plus, there is just something about reading a textbook for pleasure that makes it so much more interesting. I got what appear to be a series of three books on business. Those “Who Moved My Cheese” type books. Two are a set, one about their theory of business, the other a “fable” on how they implemented it. The third is about customer interaction. Normally, I don’t find these good reads. They are informative and fascinating. And expensive. I’m not sure if that qualifies as irony or not. But I got them for a song.
In my opinion, you can’t have too many copies of classics. Especially if you really love it. You need a “beater” copy. I have a nice leather-bound works of Shakespeare. That never leaves the shelf. Over time I have accumulated paperback works that get dog-eared, spine-cracked, highlighter marked, pencil notated, and otherwise abused so I can refer to and enjoy these works. So I have another version of Great Expectations. I also picked up The Great Gatsby. This I did not enjoy upon first read. However, after listening to lectures on it, and seeing the recent film (Baz Lurhmann was made to make that movie, by the way, it’s going to define that novel for our generation), I am intrigued to read it again. To see what I can glean out of it.
Then I got two of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 3 and 4. If it’s popular, and I can get it cheap, then I can try it on, see what the fuss is about, take a writer’s eye to it.
These last four are what made the trip worthwhile.
When picking out books like this, you have to stay sharp. Especially in a thrift store. People are more likely to toss books on how to write college papers, essays, legal terminology, MLA or other styles, you get the idea. So, I read the table of contents for relevance and interest.
Writing About Literature by Janet E. Gardner (2009) caught my eye because it’s about writing about writing critically and analytically, along with the works being used. The table of contents’ last entry is “Literary Criticism and Literary Theory.” Sold.
The Structure of Literature: A Guide for Teachers by R. F. Beauchamp (1969) is all about how to deconstruct and extract from great works. This book is so old, it has a Library of Congress Catalog Card Number.  Beauchamp organized several essays by others about teaching different aspects of writing. Plot, style, setting, thirteen total. Simple, succinct, and relevant. Sold.
Punctuate It Right! By Harry Shaw (1963) has an ISBN number. It meticulously goes through each punctuation mark and circumstance of their use. Dated, but looking through it, not much has changed. Except the wheel of metal letter arms striking a ribbon are now pixilated. Sold.
Profiles of Modern American Authors by Bernard Dekle (1969) surprised me. When I opened it up to look at the date of publication, I saw it was printed in Japan. It also has a Library of Congress Catalog Card Number and a Standard Book Number. It even says “Printed in Japan” at the end of the page. What attracted me to this was the 29 author entries, citing an excerpt of their work, and giving them a picture of their life at the time of that work. This book was meant to educate Japanese, either studying English or Literature, in an overview of American Authors. SOLD. Once in a while, you find really cool stuff like this, books that surprise you for their purpose or reach.
That was my Thrift Store Education on this trip. I’m excited to pick these up in earnest, and see what opinion or theory or point of view that I had not considered awaits me.
Any one in any given discipline knows you never stop being a student.

Are You Working?

Writing isn’t all “ass in chair” time. That’s great work, if you can get it. Not having that, how do you justify all that…other time…

Those people with their groups and guilds and monetarily gifted household breadwinners have support, physically and emotionally, when they need Motivation and Inspiration to keep working.

I got to come home three hours early and write one day, and we were worried that little gift would cost us. We know we are operating without Time or Money, regardless of Motivation and Inspiration. So, without Time or Money, one still has to declare one’s identity as a writer.

Don’t do that.

I mean, I hate to sound negative. Artists supporting art and artists are for another time.

It’s almost like Writer is a new order of sub-human, a fucking bum that’s floats in poverty like a river, stabbing at shore until they invade a dock and mooch off of people with real jobs. It doesn’t matter what you do. This is how you will be seen. Some things that have actually happened: I’ve had people laugh in my face and walk away. The ever-present wild animal horn-lock statement, “have you been published.” The ones that hurt the worst came from close to home, if not directly from home. “Why isn’t your book done yet? You must just sit there and stare at the screen. Anyone can write a book.” Direct quote. I’ve had the word “artist” spit at me with such venom because I wouldn’t sell my book instantly. I let someone use one of my stories for their college course. They didn’t have to do their final, and I would have actual feedback. Which I never got. Instead they told me they were meant to be a writer, they had a dream that told them so.

So don’t bother telling anyone. I’m lucky that my spouse has been constantly supportive.

But I only said “writer” once at the place I’m working at. I never mentioned it again, and I don’t talk about it. When I say work, they think I mean laundry, and I don’t have to see the looks on faces of people who built their lives on shore instead of braved the waters.

Now you have to have a Social Identity. For lack of interaction I get in real life, I have to work for it online. One of two things will happen: you either have to prove you have a potential fan base to an agent, or you are going to have to do all the PR work yourself. Remember when writers wrote book after book? Can’t do that anymore. You have to parade. Either an agent or the e-publisher is going to rely on me to sell myself. I gotta be the pimp and the trick. And that takes Time. Also takes Money if the service is any good.

So, you Tweet. Face the Book. Blog, as you can clearly see exhibited here for your consumption. And there’s a million more fucking ways to show off online. Seems like there is a new one every time I log on. It would take another person to add Pintrest, Vine, YouTube Vlog…It’s a full time job to support the identity of a writer online. Who the fuck am I going to pay when I’m considering doing Tarot readings for extra cash?

Somewhere, in the middle of all that shit, you write. Find your process, your voice, style, technique. Craft the frame work, POV, symbolism, realistic dialogue, relatable prose, and new ways to describe the oldest sins. Right?

Sure you have. Now you have research to do. Your character’s career is a plot point. What’s the time frame, because that determines what the building looks like, what the people look and act like, what’s available, how they will react, the historical background…you get the idea. Apply that list to everything in that character’s life, and then to the other character’s. You won’t use it all. You can’t. Because now you have to decide what to leave out for the reader to fill in.

There will be times when you have to not write, when you have to think, brainstorm, turn on some music and Rafiki your way into the world that you see so clearly, so it can come out of your hands as words.

Pens and pencils and notebooks. You have to have them on you. At all times is best. Except if your job doesn’t allow for that kind of thing. But if you can, great. If you can’t…make a note on something somehow or it’s gone.

Sometimes you have to distract yourself. You’ve completed a draft and gone cross-eyed. You’ve just spent ten hours in one seat because all the planets aligned and you hammered out right along with the outline. Looked at so much research that you don’t know anything else right now, but can describe the entire history of…wherever.

Oh, you know you have to be reading, like, everyday, right?

Why isn’t that book done?

Resources

People gravitate, like the stuff of stars they are made of, to what they desire. A middle manager may have a wood workshop, a nurse might have collected as Wilton baking tools and bake her ass off. Cashiers collect historical war books, you get the point.

Even though I spent my youth writing, when I entered the Economic Destiny of the Blue Collar Work Force, I wrote off (haha) the idea that I could write as an adult with any real result. This was my life, as was my mother’s and her mother’s. Work, sleep, whatever you do after your shift, well, that’s just a bonus.

I collected books. At first just a few authors. Then I went through a non-fiction phase and collected those. During that time, a book on the craft of writing had crept in. I don’t know how, or when. But that’s when I started collecting books about writing.

Still, writing was a pipe dream. Work, sleep, clean. Work, sleep, watch a movie. Work, sleep, go to a friend’s house. Work, sleep, read, read, read.

In retrospect, I was writing the whole time. A financial attempt at college, articles and website reviews, little stories, plots and outlines for books. I had never actually stopped using. I just told myself I had. Somehow, I managed to hide it from myself.

Then the bottom fell out. As it did for just about everyone else at the start of the Recession/Working Depression.

Well, this was my chance. I found an angle on a popular theme, and it carved a novel out of my flesh.

From accounting and data, I went to retail. I hadn’t had a standing job for over a decade. But when it comes to work, I’m very Winston Zeddmore, “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” Thanks to whatever or whoever you want to blame, part-time work was all I could get.

A dump truck of shit hit my little life fan, but that’s for another time.

During this time, I had given myself over to Literature as my Lord and Savior.

And I knew no one would help me but me.

So, how do you school yourself in Creative Writing? How do you earn a Faux MFA? How do you teach yourself if you don’t already know?

Those writing books were getting redundant. Like fitness magazines that recommend squats every other month, yoga magazines that feature another wealthy couples unused space into their ashram after the one they visited in India.

Fuck, I’ve only eaten at an actual Indian restaurant once or twice. I’ll probably never make it to India.

I reasoned that there are a few ways to get to the honey ye desire.

Shakespeare. “Classics.” Pulitzer Prize Winners.

That’s where I started.

The public library is okay. Unless you are at a branch office, which has the most recent remodel and “consumer friendly” updates. I used my library card for little else than Great Courses. Those things are expensive. Because they are so fucking good! I already owned a few and bought one for a friend, but the library opened the flood gate of subjects. If I had to recommend just a few for the purpose of this discourse, I would say “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music,” “Reading and Understanding Shakespeare,” and “Books That Have Made History.” (this last title is much longer.) But, please, don’t limit to these three. Great Courses could run a for-profit library on their own.

Chain bookstores are pricey, Amazon isn’t much cheaper, even if you can catch a deal. This is especially true of popular, current classics, and perennial classics. Having constant demand, their price remains constant, too.

However, there is an untapped well, even in the Culture Desert, where people just discard treasure.

Thrift stores.

I’ve gotten more non-fiction, Shakespeare analysis, Cliff Notes, Spark Notes, classic novels, collected works, and textbooks from thrift shops than anywhere else.

Are they dated? Sure. Just like the book of analytical essays on Hamlet that actually had something to say without involving actor’s names. What people throw away. Plato, Hobbes, Erasmus, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, issues of Psychology Today, on and on.

Where do you go when nobody knows your name?

Your private library, where books are less than a quarter each.

And it’s Paradise.