My Qualms about Self-Publishing

I said I would share my reservations about self-publishing.

• My first reservation -- and I might as well get it out of the way -- traditional publishing feels more legitimate. Agents and publishers curate one's work and bestow the title of "author" and all its blessings unto the writer. The reputation of the publisher reflects upon the writer. Traditional publishing speaks of centers of commerce, big cities, a certain cachet. On the other hand, self-publishing feels to me like declaring oneself an author, hoping nobody puts an asterisk after it because it's not blessed by a publishing house. Do I need someone else to tell me I'm an author? Honestly, yes. It sounds stupid, but there it is. 

• My second reservation relates to the first -- I feel unsuited to self-promotion. There's a reason I didn't go into sales; in fact, professoring is the polar opposite to sales. As a professor, my work is judged on its scientific and factual merit, its rhetorical accuracy, and its readability -- not its saleability. I fear that promoting myself will consist of getting into people's faces and disturbing their regularly scheduled Facebook lives and begging them to read my book. I can't even bring myself to ask my Facebook friends to read my book, much less strangers. I tried putting one of my books on WattPad, and had a total of 21 readers, whereas much more poorly written items had thousands of readers.

•  My third reservation has to do with resources -- how much of my writing time will go into promoting my book? I have a full time career already, and I'm the sole earner in my family so retiring early isn't an option. I also have little money to put into promotion.

• My fourth reservation? I have no idea what to do for self-publishing past "Write, edit, find a cover, post on a platform". Someone suggested asking a published author to make a recommendation -- I am acquainted to one, and she didn't return my request.

What isn't a concern? Making money. I'm still not in this for the money (although it would be good to break even in terms of editing and promotional outlays). I want to be read; I want people to think my work is good. I'm not expecting a huge number of readers, especially as agents don't champion my work because they don't think they'll get a return on it.

I'm just really, really scared of self-publishing.

Playing Devil's Advocate to my Writing Career

Well, we survived the power outage yesterday, and the windchill now is only -18 F (-28 C).  We spent about 2 1/2 hours in candlelight and bundled up with hot tea (the stove still worked) in hand. We still had charge on our computers and internet from a backup power system for our modem and router.

So I'm still here, despite the cold, despite the fact that I got another rejection yesterday.

I'm still here, but I don't know what that means.

I think about giving up writing at times. I've slowed down considerably on the writing front to edit the backlog of what I've written, so it's harder to remember the thrill of writing new things. It's easier to examine my writing, find the places where I fell into mediocrity, and wonder if my work deserves to get published.

It's harder to remember the reasons I started writing -- because I felt I had something important to say -- and easier to consider the work, the hard work of writing and editing and querying -- with no guaranteed rewards.

It's harder to call myself a writer and easier to let it fade away and find another hobby.

I've given up things before -- I used to write songs. I used to be a singer-songwriter until I divorced my guitarist twenty-some years ago and couldn't perform my songs anymore. Those songs, almost twenty in number, still exist; I don't sing them anymore. I wrote a song a couple years ago with my friend Mary Shepherd -- it's a Christmas carol. I don't know what to do with it.

Giving up is not necessarily a bad thing. If the practice isn't worth the pain, if the resources put in do not yield rewards, the logical thing is not to continue putting time into something that's not working. To put more time or money into a fruitless pursuit or a junker car is called the sunk-cost fallacy, and like all fallacies, it is illogical.

I don't know that I'm going to give up writing, but I have to look at it as a viable option, and ask myself if it's still worth the time to me if I can't get traditionally published.

My feelings about self-publishing are worth their own essay.

aaaaand the power just went out.

I think that if I could pick the one time I would not want the power to go out, it would be on that morning when we have a negative 30 wind chill. Here I sit, writing in candlelight while the Internet battery backup allows me to still post. Then we have a wi-fi hotspot with at least a little more juice if we need it

We have a generator in case this lasts longer than an hour or two. That will give us heat and refrigeration at least. We will not freeze, but we may find ourselves a bit chilly.

This was not how I expected to spend this day off. Not at all. 

The Wind Chill

The temperature at this moment is -17 F (-22 C) with windchills of -32 F (-35.5 C). At this temperature, any exposed skin will develop frostbite in ten minutes. The US Postal Service suspends deliveries to save its workers from literally freezing to death and schools shut down. Outdoors could kill me today with very little effort, if I were to venture out and stay there.

I'm not sure why I got out of bed this morning. It's hard even thinking about moving, even in a blessedly warm house, with temperatures outside like that. It's bitterly cold outside, and my body wants to eat high-carb food, gain twenty pounds of fat, and hibernate for the winter.

I will do nothing of the sort. I have coffee to drink, blankets to swath myself in, books to edit. I have gardens to plan. I defy the chill, even though it frightens me with its potency outside. 

Dream or Let Go?

Sometimes I still dream of success.

To me, success in writing looks like:

1. Finding an agent
2. Getting a publishing contract
3. Having a readership and modest sales
4. Interacting with others on my blog

Given that I haven't achieved the first yet, and given that the other goals are probably dependent on that first goal. I don't know if I'm ever going to get there.

This is why I'm considering self-publishing, but I have so many questions about it, such as:

1. If you self-publish, will people always put a figurative asterisk by the word "author" after your name?
2. How do you get the word out about your novel?
3. If my novel doesn't get accepted by agents, is there really a chance that readers will gravitate to it in self-published format?
4. Can one get famous (ok, somewhat well-known) self-publishing?
5. Will I have to spend all my time promoting my book instead of writing?

These questions may be proof that I'm still dreaming and doing a lot of assuming. I'm assuming that my books are good enough to find a following rather than languishing on a virtual shelf somewhere, which is a lot to assume even if I get traditionally published.

My affirmation cards keep saying that I have great ideas, the time is not right, let go of expectations, to the point that the same cards keep showing up in readings.

Our American society says that we should hold on to our dreams. Buddhism, on the other hand, suggests attachment -- even to a dream -- causes unhappiness. Which shall I do -- hold on or let go?

I'm Not Feeling It

My writing life lately has been meh.

Current projects: finish re-re-re edit of Apocalypse (halfway done) so it can be dev edited. Add a couple thousand words to the dev edited Voyageurs so I can send it out for queries. Wait to see if any agents nibble on Prodigies (not good so far with rejections in the double digits). Flesh out idea for possible new novel, but I'm not feeling it.

That's pretty much the problem today -- I'm not feeling it. Whatever it is.

I have a Tarot deck, but it reads in terms of themes and affirmations rather than predictions. I don't trust predictions, because it's easy to insert wishful thinking and get disappointed. I read by shuffling the cards repeatedly and reading what falls out of the deck. My cards today: Hanged man (It's not time yet; surrender your expectations) and Page of Earth (undeniable evidence that hard work will pay off). Which seems ... contradictory.

Meh.

I suppose it could be the winter. It's hard to get inspired when everything outside appears the same uniform shade of grey, and going outside means braving the cold (Wednesday's windchills are predicted to be -40F/-40C) The earth is hibernating and so, it seems, is my brain.

So I'm looking for inspiration because I'm not feeling it. Anything you can send me for inspiration (honestly, I mean it -- you can comment on posts!) would be appreciated.

Welcome to My Winter Morning

Sunday morning, and Richard and I sit on the couch over coffee and Baroque music.


Our living room provides comfort with cream and burgundy and dark wood. Clutter from projects and plant catalogs litter the coffee table as garden planning helps us through the winter days. I sit on the couch next to Richard with a lap desk on my lap, tapping on the keys of a Microsoft Surface. Words come slowly today; maybe the coffee hasn't taken effect yet.

The beans that Richard roasted came from Malawi, and the coffee brews up rich and brown sugar sweet with a slight herbal note. Yo-Yo Ma plays Bach on cello over a set of old yet functional speakers.

Chucky, the big butterscotch-colored cat, races upstairs chasing an unseen sprite. Me-Me, grey tabby and white, regards us with her huge, wondrous green eyes. Snowy, pitch-black and ironically named, sits in front of the fake fireplace warming herself by electric heat. Girlie-Girl, calico patched, demands something. Richard shrugs his shoulders and tells the cat he has no idea what she wants.

I light a candle, and the scent of sandalwood wafts to me. I drink my second cup of coffee and think about the seeds cold-stratifying in the refrigerator and other seeds in their packets waiting for the right time to be introduced to soil and water. It's winter outside, and the weather forecast says it will get even colder, but for now I sit in my warm house on a Sunday morning.

Buddy the Cat writes a guest column

Hey, I'm Buddy. I'm a cat, as you may have gathered from the title. Suspend your disbelief for a moment and accept that you're reading a furry creature's thoughts.

My people found me in their garage one day hanging out. Most people would be like, "Hey, there's a strange cat in our garage. Let's call Animal Control." My people put out a food dish instead, so I stuck with them, patrolling their yard for intruders and snacking on their food. I let them pet me, of course.

Then one day I cut myself on something in the garage, big cut at the base of my tail that looked like I tried to skin myself. No big deal; I'm an outdoor cat and we're tough. But my people caught me and loaded me up and took me to someone they called "the vet", who stuck me a few times and stitched up my tail. But then the vet said, "Keep him indoors for at least three-four days," and that's how I became an indoor cat.

Indoors is warm, but it comes with five other cats. I'll sit near them sometimes, but I'm not an overly emotional guy. The big cat likes to chase me around, but I set him straight, and now he respects my need for space.

It's nice living with my people. I still go outside sometimes, usually by making a break for it through the basement door before they can catch me. It's important that I guard the yard from miscreants, because my people don't know how to. It's up to me to take care of them.

Gotta go now. It's petting time.

The inertia of a warm bed

Right now in northwest Missouri, it's -8 degrees Fahrenheit (for the rest of the world, -22.2222 degrees Celsius).  In other words, it's very cold. My blankets are warm. There's a cat curled up with me. I don't want to leave this warm bed to go to work even though I will spend no more than a minute or so from doorstep to workplace in the cold.

In other words, I suffer from inertia -- a word which came from physics, meaning the inability of an object to change velocity or direction without a force acting upon it. In the human sense, it means the tendency to do nothing or stay unchanged (Wikipedia, 2019). I have to admit it's going to take a force acting upon me to move me out the door today.

What are the forces that move humans? To continue the physics metaphors, we can group these forces into pushes and pulls. In our case, pushes are the repelling factors that relate to necessity and adverse consequences if we don't leave the bed; pulls are the attracting consequences of getting out of bed.

So as I lie here in bed, I think about the pushes -- if I don't get out of bed, I don't meet my classes, my division chair gets mad, my students miss out on class material. I think about the pulls -- if I get out of bed, there's breakfast and coffee and people and time to write. We feel more satisfied by responding to pulls than to pushes -- it's more gratifying to make something of the day than to avoid disaster.

So I climb out of bed, disappointing my cat, and start my day, responding to the pulls more than to the pushes. It's going to be a good day.

Beyond the Naivete

When I first started writing, I felt the world needed to hear my story. Now I recognize the many thousands of stories out there and know not all will be heard.

I mistakenly believed my technical skills precluded the need for thorough editing; despite my considerable score on the SAT many, many years ago, I found that I not only needed to edit, but I needed an editor to point out the many places I made errors.

I believed my writing would rise above the other queries out there; however, I like so many others have not found an agent yet.

Optimism or arrogance, I do not know.  Naivete? Certainly. I do know what remains is that writing is a lot of hard work with no guarantee of return other than the satisfaction of creating.

I still have my dreams of being published, hopefully with a traditional publisher because I feel ill-equipped for self-promotion. I have my dreams of being read by others and being well-regarded, and I admit that I would love to sign books for readers. But those are dreams, and the reality is that I need to keep trying, keep improving, keep losing my arrogance if I'm to get published.

Self-doubt

I am re-editing Apocalypse, which originally was two novels until I realized the first novel would fit into the second one nicely. I intended this to be the next developmental edit until I got swamped with self-doubt during the editing:

Is the premise asking people to suspend disbelief too readily? Is the plot evolving too fast? Did I lose too much in the edit? Should I just give up writing?

Any writers who read this will understand self-doubt, the plague of writers everywhere. Or is it?

If self-doubt becomes the cloud of negative self-talk with generalizations like "I can't write", "I'll never get the hang of it," and "my work sucks", self-doubt is a plague that should be banished along with overcooked green beans and day-long meetings. Cognitive distortions (overgeneralization, all or nothing thinking and name-calling in the example presented) provide no real information to help us improve and only serve to make us feel bad.

But there's healthy self-doubt, the part that helps us edit the self-indulgent pieces out of our writing, the ones that help us bridge gaps in plot, flesh out characters, and make our books better than we thought they could be.

May we only have good self-doubt.


******************
Today's weather (snow and ice) has left me with an unscheduled writing retreat at home. I'm not complaining at all.

For my cat Stinkerbelle

Stinky bit me in the nose last night.

Stinky -- Stinkerbelle in full --  earned her name as a kitten by crawling up my chest and sweetly punching me in the eye. Adopted as a feral kitten out from under a friend's porch, she hasn't mellowed in her fourteen years on earth.

Stinky has not come a long way since we adopted her. She chooses to stay upstairs, mingling only with our other five cats when wet food is served. She hogs the food and now rather resembles a soccer ball -- black and white and round. She hisses at the other cats, at us, at inanimate objects. She likes to have her back scritched -- until, suddenly, she doesn't, hence the bitten nose. All in all a disagreeable cat.

But Stinky will sit on the bed sometimes, close to my head, purring just out of the happiness of being near me. She will rub up against my hand ecstatically when I pet her and eventually bliss out into a cross-eyed state. She doesn't hate -- she just doesn't know what to do with herself. 

So we love Stinky in the way one loves their problem children. Awkward, unbeautiful, cranky, at times lashing out. She reminds me of me as a child -- roly poly and uncoordinated, unaware of how my intelligence put off people. I did not believe myself lovable, and told the school psychologist only the monsters were my friends.

I study Stinky and find my inner child, runny-nosed and crying, yet still worthy of love.

My Relationship with Coffee

I grew up with the same coffee served across the country in the 1970's and 1980's -- coffee in a can from the grocery store, left to oxidize once opened to the air, brewed in an automatic drip machine which made a weak, brown, bitter brew that I doctored with lots of cream and sugar as an adolescent.

I discovered real coffee late in high school, when I spent the weekend with my dad in the college town where he'd been assigned to install some electronics for AT&T. I was sixteen then; he took me to a coffeehouse called The Daily Grind, and we sat down to some coffee. I took one sip of that cup and decided two things: I would go to school at the University of Illinois, and I would drink more of that coffee. Both of those things would come to pass.

When I arrived at college, I had a yard-sale percolator and a can of Folgers among my belongings, but I quickly abandoned them for coffeehouse brew. One day, I realized that one could actually buy beans at the coffeehouse and take them home to brew. I bought some for myself and for my parents, and although my parents proclaimed my coffee "too strong", they appreciated the difference right before they went back to canned coffee from the store.

Once I left college 11 years later with a Ph.D., the coffee renaissance had begun. When I had started college, Champaign-Urbana had one coffeehouse; there were at least 5 when I left. Starbucks had not opened up the corporate coffee scene, but it was lurking in the wings. I ground my own coffee and brewed it in a press pot; this attention to detail (and deep, bold coffee) marked me as a coffee snob.

What the coffee renaissance really opened up, however, was home experimentation. Ways of brewing coffee thought previously lost -- cold toddy brew with its smoothness, the aforementioned French press coffee, moka's near-espresso richness, the fullness of vacuum pot coffee -- found their adoptees. Home coffee roasting --using everything from air poppers to expensive drum roasters -- appealed to the most experimental. Single-origin beans followed, and coffee drinkers became connoisseurs much like wine drinkers

Today, I drank a single-origin Malawi coffee that my husband roasted in the basement. It was as fresh as could be drunk; coffee is best if given a two-day rest after roasting. As precious as this sounds, the coffee beans are cheaper than those already roasted in the stores, and the nuances between coffees make each cup an exploration.

I don't know if my relationship with coffee could get any better with this.

beans are cheaper

Becoming My Own Muse

What is the nature of a muse? A muse reaches into a creator's soul and pulls forth the creator's best work. As such, the muse is both the supporting angel and the demon lover, illustrated by the character of the Phantom in the musical Phantom of the Opera. Of course, all of this is in the mind of the creator; the muse himself might be a compelling person at the coffeehouse who asks about how the work in progress is doing and actually cares.

I had a muse once. Kind of a crazy thing, but he was an artistic type whose work appealed to me. And it didn't hurt that he was beautiful in an ethereal way. He inspired me with his verve and his persistence, and my mind went on flights of fantasy and ended up in very vivid stories.

I had to give him up eventually. The problem with flights of fantasy is that they make one beholden to the subject. I had given the fantasy so much of my thoughts that I craved something back, even if it's something as simple as recognition or support or friendship. Recognition, support, and friendship themselves feed creativity -- anyone who creates needs connection and support, for creating is hard, lonely work sometimes. The muse remains a muse by being there.

My muse never made the transition.

In reality, though, people -- even muses -- will always disappoint us. In reality, people will not always be there when we need them. They will not understand what we need if we ourselves can't articulate it. They can't read our minds. They may not be able to see our beauty.

This is why I need to become my own muse.

Is it possible? The nature of a muse is intrigue and unpredictability and challenge, love and danger. How does one give that to oneself?

The Beginnings of a Novel

The outline for the new book is going very slowly ...

Let me explain the general idea of the book. This is in the Archetype series, none of which has gone to developmental edit yet. A little background: Archetypes are near-immortal beings who are tasked with holding humanity's cultural memories. If the Archetype for an ethnicity dies, all of the people whose patterns they hold die, so that an entire ethnic group (and, more likely, a large group of people of mixed ethnicity that includes that group) die.  This is why Archetypes have been held apart from humans and each other.

My series covers the interactions between one particular renegade family (unique in that Archetypes don't generally have family bonds) and humans. The humans have their own uniqueness in that they have been gifted with abilities by (depending on who you ask) Gaia, the Maker of the Archetypes, God, or genetic enhancement.

The story I'm writing, tentatively called Gods' Seeds, involves two threads that will come together as the story develops. But here's a first attempt at synopsis:

The Council of the Oldest, the ruling body of the Archetypes, has announced that humans' genetic and cultural memories will be gradually divested back to their humans, as humans have been found fit to retain them. Meanwhile, a young woman on Earth named Leah Inhofer sees horrific visions of Archetypes battling each other, with thousands of human casualties resulting. The Archetypes grow restless, knowing that their reason for existence is being taken away, and they will take desperate measures to keep this from happening. The conflict draws battle lines between Archetype and Archetype, and Leah must find the strength to stand between the two -- or watch the decimation of humanity.

****

There's a lot of writing in-between this paragraph and a novel. There's character, there's subplots, there's relationships between characters. And there's a lot of words -- about 80,000 words on average. That's why I'm going to write an outline, to help me find my way through the plot of the novel.

Wish me luck, and let me know if you'd read this novel!

Dear Reader:

Dear Reader:

Thank you for reading this blog.

I know you as data -- what country hits come from. I know what posts are being read (but not who is reading what posts), and I know what times random people are posting. Here's what I know about my readers:

1) I have about thirty hits a day on average. About half of those are from the United States. The rest are from a variety of countries, with Germany holding second place. Other regulars have been from France, Canada, Ukraine, Portugal, and Unknown Region are the most regular.

2) Some of you find me through Facebook, which means I probably know you. Some of you find me from Twitter, and I don't know if I know you or not.  Some referring links are from bit.ly and IFTTT. I'd love to know how the IFTTT link works.

3) Some of you are probably bots. For example, I get about three hits a day from a web address that specializes in "web cam girls".  I don't follow those links anymore.

4)  I don't know WHO you are. I would love to know who you are. If you're a regular reader, you know I have said this before, because I mean it. I'm the sort of person who would not only like to sign autographs for readers someday, but chat with readers.


Please, if you know someone who would like this blog (writers, readers, my aunt Edna*) please amplify this and pass it on to them!


Love, Lauren

* I don't have an Aunt Edna.

Something to show you

I wish I had something new to show you -- a rough draft of a scene, a short story -- but I have been exiting and polishing for so long that I haven't written anything new ...


Wait! I could show you an edited, polished scene! This is the beginning of Prodigies, the book I currently have out in queries:

The Journey

       I peered out the window of the train as we sped toward the Krakow train station, and I understood why the Polish government chose Krakow as the site for the Prodigy Assembly. I noticed more history in the town than I saw in all of the United States. Old-looking churches with intricate, weathered facades nestled against modern buildings with brutally straight concrete lines barely softened by budding street trees. I felt the city as a breeze, but with a hint of sharp edges. Just like chamber music -- light and delicate until the cellos muscled in.

I held onto the architecture as something real because nothing else about this trip seemed to be. How likely was it that a high schooler would be offered an all-expenses trip to Poland to showcase her (and others') talents? If I thought about it hard, I would begin to doubt this adventure, so I turned myself back to sightseeing.

I worried on the train because of something my mentor Dr. DeWinter told me, that there were far fewer black people in Poland than in the US. The train bore this out -- as the only black person in my car, I noted a few curious stares. The train eased into the station; the sullen teen who had ignored me the whole trip started to stir, murmuring something in Polish as he tried to glance around me at the window.

"Tov Krakóv Goovneh?" he muttered in my direction, glancing over his sunglasses. I could barely figure out what the boy meant, so I reassured him that we arrived at Krakow Głowny. He wrinkled his nose at my answer but headed toward the train exit after shouldering his battered army backpack and his skateboard. Just another skater boi, posing as a jaded man past his teens.

I grabbed my suitcase and viola and followed him out of the train. Outside the station, I stared at the taxi line hoping to find a cabbie with just enough English to tell me how to get to my destination. As I dithered, I felt a breeze slip by as the skater blew past me and murmured, "Good luck" in English. Shithead.

A cab stopped before me, with a dark-haired, pale man behind the wheel.

"Palac Pugetow," I said as he jumped out and helped me load my luggage in the trunk.

The cabbie corrected me with an amused smile. "Palace Pugetov?"

"That's the one," I shrugged.

We climbed in the taxi.

"Do you know how to say 'hello' in Polski?" the cab driver asked.

"Isn't that 'dezien dobry?'" I ventured. That was how I'd pronounce 'Dzien dobry', anyhow.

"Close," he chuckled as we climbed into the car. His pronounciation sounded closer to 'jean dobry,' but not quite.

A whirlwind taxi ride later, the driver dropped me off at the offices of Palac Pugetow.  I realized that it wasn't so much a palace as a massive building of French Renaissance style like I'd learned about in history class. It stood tall and white with grey accents like a avant-garde wedding cake, surrounded by tall straight poplars marching in a row. I walked up the stairs into the main entrance, and spied a sign on one room labeled "Biuro Zarzadu". I grabbed my cell phone and plugged the words into my translation app and came up with "Management Office". Out of curiosity, I pressed the icon for the pronounciation in Polish, and it sounded like "byuro zarzandu" as pronounced by someone with marbles in his mouth. I knew I couldn't pronounce it that way, marbles or no marbles. So much for that goal of learning Polish.

I walked into Biuro Zarzadu without knocking. My mistake -- every person in the office stared at me from grey metal desks. I hoped they stared because I had done something gauche rather than the fact that I sported a brown complexion.

"Shim mocha sludgewich?" a middle-aged woman with incredibly pale skin and blonde hair smiled as she stepped up to the old wooden counter. I shook my head and glanced at the door.

"Oh, yes. American?" she asked, still smiling. "May I help you?"

"Oh, yes, thank you! My name is Grace Silverstein, and I'm looking for the prodigies  -- "

Again, the four people in the office -- three women and one man -- stared at me again. "Prodigies?" the helpful woman asked.

"The Minister of Culture invited me here?" I breathed.

A beat, then another, and then "Oh, yes, I'm pretty sure you'll find them at the Second World offices, down the hall, third door to the right."

As I thanked them and walked out, I felt a prickle at the back of my neck.

Luckily, I found the Second World offices, behind an austere door on which a polished bronze sign read "Druga Swiatowy Renasans" with a masterful male hand holding up a globe. When I looked closely, I saw a star-shaped cufflink at the wrist. Shades of Soviet Realism, I thought, remembering a lecture on Russian history sprinkled with art. My translate app yielded a translation of "Second World Renaissance", which meant I arrived at the right place. This time I knocked on the door --

A frazzled woman with curly black hair, dark eyes, and a black dress that flattered her white skin answered my knock. "Oh," she gushed in accented English, "you must be Grace Silverstein, yes? I am Dominika Vojchik, and -- Nastka, not right now, I'm busy talking to the young lady!" A dark-haired child of about nine who tugged on her mother's arm ran into the other room, and Dominika led me there, to a small waiting room.

If these were the prodigies, there weren't too many of them. As I glanced around an opulent sitting room, all dark antiques and dark red upholstery and Oriental rugs, I saw the aforementioned Nastka with her long, coal-black hair and a dress like Dominika's; a worn-looking blonde woman with curly-headed twins who sat in their chairs wide-eyed; and an Asian woman sitting next to a black-haired young boy who tapped at a smartphone. I assumed she watched over her son..

Dominika stood in the middle of the room and raised her voice, speaking in English. "Hello, I am Dominika Vojchik, and I am the coordinator of the Prodigy Project, where we wish to develop friendship between our countries through cultural exchanges. We have a -- uh, small program right now, as you can see, but we thought that we would expand it if our initial forays succeeded." She punctuated her speech with sharp hand gestures; the blonde woman whispered to her children, presumably to translate.

I waited for introductions --

"So, I would like to show you around the place, which has an amazing amount of history ... "

We stood and stretched and followed Dominika out of the room. I looked at the mother of the two blonde children. Her eyes darted around at the sitting room, the rest of us, and particularly at Dominika.

"The Puget family originally came from France, hence the name Puget -- " which Dominika pronounced in the French manner as she walked us down interminable halls with carpets, dark wainscoting against pale cream walls, and doors, many doors. "In the 1800's, Benedict Joseph de Puget became a member of the Polish nobility and the family settled down in Poland to do business. The Palace was designed by Joseph Kwiatowski for Baron Konstanty de Puget and built in 1874-5 in the Parisian Neo-Renaissance style." I suspected that Dominika read off the plaque next to her to get the history, but I couldn't read the Polish on the plaque.

The Asian boy jostled up next to me and whispered, "The current name of this place is the 'Donimirksi Palace Pugetov Business Center'. Less impressive." Just as quickly, he slipped away to stand by his -- mother? Chaperone?

"I will now show you to your rooms --You will stay in private suites in this building on the next floor. We assigned each of you and your families a suite; your luggage has been placed there. I will pick you up at 1700 to discuss the assembly tomorrow night."

Thankfully, I located the elevators.

I sat on the bed in my airy white-on-white rooms, staring through the bedroom door to a sitting room that looked just like the photo on the brochure I had received.

At least the room fulfilled my expectations. Not so the shaky appearance of this assembly I had been invited to.

Nobody had met me at the airport. I myself figured out, with help from a conductor, which train I needed to take. The black-haired woman with the staccato hand gestures appeared to be our lone host. And we hadn't been allowed to introduce ourselves. I had never seen such a disorganized event in my life, and I hoped that our orientation fared better.

Then I heard a knock on the door. I freaked out -- I don't know why, just the strangeness of the situation. I decided to ignore the messenger until they gave their name and purpose -- and then they did exactly that: "Please, I'd like to talk with you. It's Luitgard Krause."

I opened the door to the blonde woman and her two cherubic tots. I let them in to the sitting room, where the mother -- Luitgard -- sat in the overstuffed chair and her children, who were no more than seven, sat on the floor next to her. "This is Erwin, my son, and Mitzi, my daughter." Erwin eyed me up and down sternly, then relaxed. Mitzi nodded at her mother, and walked up to me. "What's your name? You have pretty hair."

 "Why thank you, Mitzi. My name is Grace Silverstein."

"Are you one of them?" asked Erwin from his perch in the chair; Luitgard bent over to shush him.

"One of whom?" I asked him just as I heard another knock on the door. Erwin shook his head, suddenly pale.

"May I come in?" I recognized Dominika's voice and accent. Then she let herself in to my locked room.

My spine prickled and I felt lightheaded. Dominika had access to my room? Why? I spied a chair I could move in front of the door at night.

I couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness.

About Snowstorms

We're supposed to get snow, maybe a lot of snow, this weekend.

Now that forecasting weather has advanced as a science, our preliminary forecasts have mentioned anywhere from 0 to 23 inches. I'm not kidding -- although that was on Monday, and weather models get more accurate closer to the event. The latest models appear to predict 1-4 inches, but it's only Wednesday and it's early days yet for a Friday storm.

How people deal with the snow in the US depends on where they're from. In southern states, one inch of snow will shut everything down because it's such a rare occurrence that cities and state highway departments have no snow plows.  In the Midwest, if we see someone stuck in a driveway, we go help push them out. Before a major snowstorm (and what constitutes "major" depends on whether one is a Northerner or a Southerner), people stock up on toilet paper and milk.

Talking about snow is a bonding experience. People discuss how much expected snowfall, preparations, and (at the college level) hopes that school will be canceled the next day.

It looks like school won't be canceled this time, but the forecast could always change. It's early days yet for a Friday storm.

A writing prompt

I woke up early (4:45 AM) and sat at my computer waiting for inspiration to strike.

It hasn't.

What's a writer to do? Write, of course! Here lies the value of writing prompts. These exercises limber up your mind by providing a no-pressure idea for you to write about. By no-pressure, I mean that you're not writing on your manuscript, you're not going to screw up your manuscript if you do poorly -- it's pure writing without motive.

So, my prompt for this morning: talk about a missed opportunity:

This is a true story. I learned this story when I was growing up. Children being what they are, my classmates started calling me "garbage truck" because my last name -- Leach -- was emblazoned on the front of the hopper of all the garbage trucks in town. I lamented to Dad, "I'm not related to the garbage trucks, am I?" He laughed and told me this story:

My grandfather, when he was fifteen, was sent off to work that summer. His father gave him two choices: work with his one uncle on the farm, or work with his other uncle, a bachelor who owned a factory. Grandpa chose the farm.

Had he chosen the factory, he may well have been taken in by the bachelor uncle to succeed him in the firm. As it was, the bachelor uncle died with no successor. However, you can find his name on garbage trucks everywhere -- the factory now makes hoppers for garbage trucks. This, my father said, is why we're not rich.

****
I already had this story, sure, but it popped up because of the prompt and not vice versa, Prompts might provoke an old story to tell, or might lead you to the kind of impromptu writing that becomes a story.

Happy writing!

Just Write

I can't get my thoughts to coalesce.

I've tried three times to write on topics -- the beginning of the semester, growing older, expecting more from people -- and the topics keep winding around in circles until I don't know what the topic is anymore.

It could be because I haven't had my coffee yet, I suppose.

Ever have one of those days? "There's something ... bothering me ... but I can't for the life of me figure out what." It's that sort of feeling. There's an elusive topic, something my heart needs to write about, but I don't know what it is and my brain's having none of it.

Now I have my coffee -- home-roasted and fresh-ground, so you can feel jealous of me -- and I'm still not sure what the topic is.

The ideas to write aren't always there. At five in the morning, I'm not always there, either.

The idea, though, is to write and keep writing. Even if the words aren't flowing, even if you don't know if you're making any sense, keep writing. Keep your pen ready, keep your fingers warmed up. Write something.

You'll have to go back and edit it anyhow.