I was given notice this week.
Of my five-year blogging anniversary.
My mind automatically flew backward five years ago, when I lived in the SF Bay area, creating stories for the writing classes I taught, spending hours writing chapters for my novels, and stuffing it all in computer files and sagging file drawers.
And then my nephew arrived. Continue reading
I’m not a statistician. I’m not a mathematician, nor even a magician.
I’m a writer, which does take more magic than math. Yet, Word Press (my blog server) sent me the stats for my most popular posts the past couple of years. I’m going to use those post headings in this tiny tale (below), and see if you can guess which was the #1 post for Roughwighting.
Sex and food seem to be the driving force to draw in a reader. I’m not so happy about this, but facts are facts, and stats are stats.
So, I’m setting aside the novel that I’ve been spending days, weeks, months on, and moving to a new set of characters. They all have big feet, particularly the main male character, and he only eats one meal a day: Spaghetti. Continue reading
Thank you for following me. But, um, are you following ALL of me? Every single last bit?
In other words, do you see me the way I want you to see me? 
Do you see the real me? The one with all my bells and whistles, with my form just right, my hem straight, my colors matching, the headlines bold and brilliant?
You can only answer yes, honestly, if you click on me.
Or more precisely, if you click on the title of my post when you receive it in your Inbox every Friday.
If you don’t click, but read my post as it arrives to you in e-mail form, you’re not seeing the real me! You’re seeing an outline, a draft, a ghostly form of my true intention.
So PLEASE, click on the title (like the one above that says “Please Click”) and enter the world of Roughwighting the way I intend you to see it. Full of background baby-blues and a white landscape for a differently colored font each post. Photos that pitch perfectly to the right or left of a phrase that I want to focus on. Quotes that are highlighted and indented “just so” – just so my reader, YOU, gets the gist of what I’m flashing about this beautiful absurd disturbing chaotic and incredible life of ours.
The way I’m meant to be viewed…
Please click on the title of my post each week. I promise, you’ll enjoy the benefits of color and pizazz. And, if you’re in the mood, you can read further down the blog post to see the replies of the brave, brilliant souls who have the courage to comment and (hopefully) commend.
Clickingly yours,
Roughwighter
Dear Reader of Roughwighting, you were expecting to see Pam, weren’t you? You were anticipating reading one of her delicious stories, weren’t you?SURPRISE!
We are playing a fun little game today. It’s called The Great Blogging Switcheroo.
(We made up that name.)
She is blogging over at my site, Lake Superior Spirit.
And I am blogging over here at Roughwighting.
You know, a blogging exchange. Instead of engaging one another’s services as formal “Guest Bloggers,” we decided to do the big switcheroo, which ultimately accomplishes the same thing.
The view from here.
Ooops, I’ve been rude. We haven’t been properly introduced.
My name is Kathy and I blog from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My husband and I dwell in the midst of a very large forest that stretches, well, a couple hundred miles in every direction. It’s interrupted by a few small towns, but mostly our neighbors are bears, raccoons, bald eagles and lake trout. (OK, our real neighbors have something like twelve kids, no kidding, so we’re really not as isolated as I like to pretend.)
Our house in winter.
I call the small house we built about thirty years ago our “Little House in the Big Woods.” OK, I read too much Laura Wilder Ingalls in childhood. Strangely enough, I just discovered that my best childhood friend synchronistically calls her house her “Little House on the Prairie.” Weird, huh?
My husband and I birthed two children-of-the-woods and they’ve both moved to the Big Cities on opposite ends of the country, one in San Diego and the other in New York City. They’ve both recently adopted kittens, making us cat grandparents. We haven’t met the grandkitties yet, although we hear weekly updates.
Over at my blog Pam wrote a really cool story, so I spent all night pondering what really cool story to tell you. Of course, nothing came to mind. What kind of cool stories happen in the woods?
Ah ha! It hit somewhere as the coyotes yipped up the road.
I’ll tell you about the Caveman who used to live on our property. (OK, let’s not squabble. The Caveman didn’t actually live on our 23 acres. But he lived next door on the original 100-acre plot, in the same place where the twelve Catholic children live.)
Some of our neighbors.
I had forgotten about the Caveman until last week. The Tomato Lady (that’s what she calls herself because she once gave us tomatoes from her home in Illinois) vacations on the other side of the twelve children, just up the road, in a modern-day camper. She emailed my husband at the local newspaper where he works and begged, “Is it really an urban legend? Did a caveman really live on our property?”
Barry assured her it was a RURAL legend, but she insisted it was an URBAN legend, as she heard it in our town of 1,500 people.
But, lo and behold, it isn’t legend at all. A modern-day caveman actually lived here during the 1970’s.
Where’s that caveman?
The caveman dug about an 8 X 8 foot hole into the south side of a ravine, and placed a log over the roof. He put wood slabs over the log pole, some plastic and a couple feet of dirt. You crawled in through an igloo-like hole. You could barely stand up inside the cave. Two rusty bed spring frames provided sleeping quarters.
(We know it’s true. The remnants of the cave still existed in 1980 when we bought our property. We gawked in amazement.)
He lived in his cave for several years with a woman named Chrissy. She is a jolly free spirit. I once sold lentils and soybeans with her at the local food co-op. The caveman was a Navy Veteran who arrived here after service to “live off the land.” He used to drive an old junk truck to town. Unfortunately, his vehicle didn’t feature brakes, so he would park it at the top of the hill by the hospital and walk down into town. He also walked barefoot in summer, so rural legends say.
Thank you, dear reader, for reading this Great Blogging Switcheroo. Now, do scurry over to my blog (click on the underlined words ‘my blog’ to suddenly appear at http://upwoods.wordpress.com/) where your regularly-scheduled-writer is sitting awaiting your arrival. If you introduce yourself in the comments here, I would love to shake your virtual hand.
(I stumbled upon Lake Superior Spirit over a year ago and always look forward to Kathy’s insightful, sometimes mystical, always stimulating blog about life out in her neck of the woods. She and I live in such different environments, and yet we find many commonalities in our posts about our “flashes of life.” Thanks for visiting with her here in Roughwighting.)
That’s the question I suddenly ask myself after I’ve been on hold for 13 minutes. Thirteen minutes with a faceless woman who spells my name wrong, three times. Who can’t find my order for 6 minutes (see above re misspelling), and who does not make me feel confident that the order, once placed, will be correct.
And what am I ordering?
Faceless woman.
Bookmarks. Customized bookmarks that feature my book and links to my book as well as my blog.Now, see where I’m leading?
Who wastes their time on faceless people after creating a bookmark for hours (oh yes, it took me a total of over 8 hours in front of the computer cursing, screaming, pulling out my hair and scaring the dog) while the ‘easy to use’ website crashed, burped, blinked, and generally made my life hell as I chose colors, downloaded my book cover, and then added text.
Scared dog – see him rolling his eyes at me?
Self-involved people, that’s who waste their time on these frustrating tasks. I never ever considered myself one of those people who think only of themselves – those kind of self-important people who are clueless about the world around them.
But. Gulp. Have I just described writers?
We sit in a room by ourselves and make up people, imaginary people with whom we use up (some would say waste) a lot of our time and energy.
We join our friends at a café but our eyes glaze over during the intense conversations about….life…. while in our heads we plot the next chapter in our imaginary characters’ lives.
We create blogs that talk about ourselves, and our writing, and our characters, so that everyone will know about our work when we publish. (Thank you, Karen Elliott for featuring my “A Brave New World” post on your Word Shark blog today!)
SEE??
We go on Facebook and post ‘Buy my book!” or “Like me and my blog and my newest publication.”
We spend our time marketing our books and stories, creating bookmarks and accepting invitations to women’s groups and book clubs, and library workshops to talk about ourselves, and our writing and our books and…
Oh dear.
Writers must have big egos!
I sit back in my chair as the faceless lady takes my credit card number, and I realize I’m a self-involved, heartless soul, despite my years of parent-ing and wife-ing and attempting to be a good sister and daughter and meditating peace and good will to all.
But perhaps those of us with a passion, those of us who believe in what we do, whether it be writing fiction or skiing down a mountain or collecting antique cars or hitting a small ball on a long stretch of hilly grass, perhaps we all stroke our egos to allow ourselves to believe (and to encourage others to believe) in what we do.
And what, exactly, do we do?
We make up people – but in doing so, we help ourselves and our readers to understand life just a fraction better. To understand what makes us humans work (or not work) in the scheme of this confusing universe.
So really (my big ego says) we writers are quite important.
Perhaps I should have ordered 200, instead of 100, bookmarks… 🙂
