A Little Ink Blot

There was a time when I ignored all the advice about committing to the daily discipline of writing. I could afford to ignore it. My life was so boring I loved to escape into my writing work. Rather than having trouble writing, I had to keep a careful watch over my mental state to make sure I was still taking care of household business. As each afternoon approached its end I would look up and find disaster had struck in the form of my three girls and all their toys. There never was enough time to cook and clean before DH came home. But that was because I was too bored and lazy to stop writing and do something.

Now, I find I am a month behind on my writing. My mind is a jumble of ideas and half proofed thoughts. Moments of creativity still jump out at me, but they usually find me behind the wheel of a delivery vehicle, or dialing the number to the 13th customer on the list for today, or pouring over dozens of little expense receipts. Even my doodles are taking the form of corporate by-laws, flow-charts for accounting ledgers and database structures, planning for cash-flow shortfalls. But I am not bored.

We are the entranced owners of a food manufacturing business. The work is routine. The same deadlines, taxes, accounting, inventory control, time management and employment activities apply to us as to any other business. Except that we are the manufacturers, not the retailers. That makes for some unique sets of business knowledge and practice. Some of those topics on which I am particulary weak and ignorant.

How do you price your product? Do you really add all your costs (cost of goods, labor, overhead, delivery charges) divide by the number of units and then multiply by 2 to get the wholesale price to charge your customers? I did hear that somewhere.

How do you find time to market your products with three pre-schoolers hanging onto your pants pockets? What happens when a key piece of equipment that you re-sell is no longer available to provide to your customers? How many weeks can you go without paying your suppliers? Is there a black-market for gasoline yet?

But these aren't the things I really want to be dreaming about all night long. I want my character development outlines back. I miss scene building and crisis-resolution optioning. Where did I bury my ideas notebook? How did this section of profit-loss analysis get into the middle of my devotional outlines sketchbook? Wasn't there something little Esther did today that I wanted to capture? No, it wasn't about donuts.

I wonder if there are any suggestions out there about being a disciplined writer and a business owner at the same time. Oh, and a mother of three, and a homeschooling Mom, and a gleaning volunteer, and a budding website developer.... Someone has to have written some sort of helpful advice for me, right? Like maybe those once despised advice articles? Hmmm, should I take time to find and read one? Or should I just go write something?

The best ideas seem to come my way in the middle of the afternoon. Usually like a flash flood when I am inconveniently separated from any writing instrument. Inspiration struck a dozen times today while I was at a funeral. A nice quiet place to jot down the odd thoughts, you think? Not while shushing the three year old on my lap. Nor while chasing 4 suddenly released locomotives in tennis shoes round and round the tables of old people noisily eating the reception meal. Not while pushing the grocery cart afterwards. Nor while accidentally napping with the yearling to the sounds of Toy Story. Not even while washing dishes after everyone else is asleep.

Now, at 1:30 am, I can finally sit down and write, and all the ideas are gone, washed away with the suds and scum of the day. I am so tired, I can hardly review the events of the day to capture the moments of inspiration still possibly stored in my mental RAM. Somewhere in there are some great points on a research topic Ted is persuing, and a few poignant comments on the psychological strategies of Motherhood, and a set of character studies to explore from the shoulders rubbed at the memorial service, and a new plot for a book about death.

Maybe it will all come back to me tomorrow.

There is a new and used books store for sale in Vancouver. Ted thinks my friend, Rachel, and I should go in together and buy it. If it would make money, I sure would be tempted.

A while ago, when Ted and I were dreaming up how we would write our lives if given the chance, we determined that Ted would have his Hot Dog Eatery (and bakery) and I would have a bookstore/publishing company next door. Between our two shops would be a "commons" area that would be attractive to teens, business people, families, and seniors to spend time in.

So when he saw the ad for this bookstore, he immediately thought of me. It turns out, my friend, Rachel, has been there, and liked it. She wouldn't say if she would like to work there, or own it. But she says it is in a great location. It has an espresso bar, and it also markets/sells online, and is a publishing company.

Would that be a place you'd come and visit?

My role as Home-Schoolmarm has led me down a wonderfully endless path of educational links on the www. There are so many free resources out there it is easy to build a great and full curriculum on a very tight budget. There are thousands of results in a searched for list of Free resources for Teachers, but almost all of the links lead to sites with free introductory material. After perusing and using 1% to 2% of a site's great content, access to the rest requires a $$ subscription.

Then there are great newsletters you can subscribe to. A whole bunch of them from this one company with content that can't afford to purchase off the newsstand. Their html email newsletters are beautiful imitations of their websites, complete with multitudinous advertisements in many forms. Their newsletter content is introductory tidbits of articles on their main sites. Link back to the webpage the content comes from and you get several hundred more words that end with a little form box that says something to the effect of "purchase a subscription to this magazine now to read the rest of this article."

Which brings me to my great idea. If they can do it, why can't I? All these "things" I write could be serialized like a magazine or "teaching resource" and I can offer them for free to the world on a cool CMS platform. Until the reader gets to page x (or paragraph n), then there will be a "per issue" fee or a "whole book" charge to continue. I think it is called "subscription management."

I am not married to the idea that I have to see my name on the spine of a bound volume in a B&M location. I would rather have feedback and trackable interest in what I produce. Like comments on a good (inciting) blog entry.

I really do like publishing on the web. And I like digital books. And I think I can do them better than anyone else (probably not, but my ideas are better than anything I've seen out there so far). If only my enthusiasm were an indication of a saleable possibility. My gut feeling has never been "in line" with popular opinion before this, but there's always a chance...

This question seems to pop up whenever an author is interviewed or a successful writer is mobbed by envious aspirants: What do you read and what authors have inspired you?

Now, I write as voraciously as I read. Right now I have 3 novels, 2 shorter stories, 2 screenplays and 8 articles in process now. Meanwhile, there are 4 books, my Bible and 2 magazines on my nightstand (I didn't count the ones in its drawers); 3 puzzle books, the Penguin History of America (British imprint) and Raising Your Spirited Child in the built-in magazine rack in our family bath; 2 web-programming tomes, trade magazines, a crochet and a knitting book in the spaces around my computer desk. All being devoured as I often as I catch a minute to rest in each location.

So, how can I distill the thousands of books I've read down to just a few with impact? Maybe, these to start with:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo, my alter ego and muse for more than 25 years. I read the Penguin paperback at age 10, and found out at age 35 that it was only 1/3 of the entire.
2. The entire Dune Series. MacroQuestions handled with MicroPrecision.
3. The Hobbit, LOTR and Silmarillion. Received as a Christmas gift at age 9, they inspired languages, alphabets, codes, coming of age stories and poetry through college.
4. Reading Christopher Tolkien's commentaries on JRRTolkien's entire process and development. Encouraging! I'm not as "off" as I think.
5. Works of Charles Dickens -- whether I could stand the stories or not, his descritpiveness in setting and character live and breathe.

Are there more? Oh, yes! Don't you have a list, too?