Be a Squirrel

 

Dear Lovely Reader:

I must apologize, first of all, for missing my essay slot two weeks ago. I was, as usual, experiencing technical difficulties, this time with my Google account. I'd changed my password . . . and that set off a chain of reactions that included my phone, my calendars, my contacts, and my email. Things are working again--but I don't feel totally secure. This has always been a seamless process in the past. We are told to regularly change our passwords, after all. But this time . . .

Anyway, much anguish later, and I'm back to work. I think I've finished formatting Strawberry Moon Mystery using the Atticus software. It was quite easy to manipulate, so the test will be how it works with KDP/Amazon. First, though, I want to print out a copy for my proofreader. And I still need to create the full print book cover. That was dependent on formatted pages, so this is the next step. 

So, I will give you both an essay AND a micro-fiction this week. 

***

BE A SQUIRREL

Last week I bought a large bag of bird seed. When I opened it, I almost wanted to dig into it myself. With nuts and seeds galore, it smelled like an earthy granola. It was pricey, too. But I wanted to attract the cardinals and bluejays and woodpeckers along with nuthatches, chickadees, and tufted titmice. 

It worked, but the bounty also attracted the bane of my Maine home existence, the gray squirrels. 

They are so fat, the three of them. I think they are a family: a mom and two grown babies. That's just the feeling I get watching their behavior. They hang upside down from the top of the feeder and feast on the nuts and seeds. 

When I tap the window, they stare at me. Then they go back to eating. If I go outside onto my porch, they may or may not scurry to the lilac tree. It's only when I approach that they will scamper across the lawn to one of several trees. 

Ten minutes later, they are back.

They are tenacious little buggers. 

Lately I've seen a lot of "let's get real about publishing" messaging on blogs and Substacks and podcasts. The general mood seems to be dour and/or resigned. The phrase, "It's okay to subsidize your writing with a day job" is EVERYWHERE. It's coming from agents. It's coming from editors. It's coming from book coaches. 

If I can't laugh about this, I will cry. 

Here's the thing: these people are not wrong. Publishing right now is harder than ever. The trades are tightening their belts. Everyone wants a Sure Thing. For every Taylor Jenkins Reid who hits the jackpot with an $8M/book deal there are countless small and indie and midlist authors begging for scraps from the pubs, desperately trying to carve out a niche in the market, or quietly quitting. 

So what are our choices? Simple. Quit or keep going. 

I've decided to be a squirrel. The market might tap on my window. The market might chase me away from the feeder. I'll scamper to my desk, write the next book or story, and I'll hop back over to the trough to pick up a seed or two. 

I've decided to let go of my expectations. 

By this I mean, I'm not even going to take outcomes into consideration any more. I won't EXPECT to make money on any project. I won't EXPECT, well, anything! 

I've built a lean system around me so I'm not spending a ton of money on my endeavors, probably less than some spend on hobbies like golfing, skiing, snowmobiling, or even fancy cooking! I spend much more on my reading hobby, aka books, than I do on my writing now. I'm a lean, mean, writing machine. A slow one, sure, but pared down to the basics, I think I can do this for the remainder of my days. 

If I gather a readership, wonderful. If I make a little back, lovely. But if I don't, that's okay. I'm gonna be a squirrel and keep reaching for those nuts, baby. 

***

Halloween Story--It's still okay to read one a couple weeks later. Hope you like it. 

Halloween Story

Eloise was the kind of woman who believed in fir swags and twinkle lights at Christmas, forsythia and lilac for spring, red-white-and-blue bunting on the 4th of July.

But for Halloween she went truly bonkers.

The entryway of her ground floor condominium elicited delighted exclamations from her neighbors’ children every year. She hung billowy white sheer curtains that floated eerily in the autumn breeze. She attached bat decals around the door to send shivers up the spine. She piled pumpkins in front of pots holding bare branches which she hung with little sachets of birdseed to attract the local crows whose dark, glossy feathers gleamed in the slanted sunlight of the season.

There was something ghostly about Eloise, herself. Her fair skin and silvery fair hair, her long, thin legs and arms, the ballerina flats that made no sound as she floated past the neighbor’s doors. Nobody knew much about her, other than she’d once been a dancer, maybe even famous, and now she lived quietly alone in their apartment complex in a small city north of Boston, a cold New England place in the winter months but spectacular in the fall with its brilliant foliage and clear blue skies.

One day nearing Halloween, Eloise replaced a bulb in the entryway light, and a crow thwapped from one of the branches and landed on her shoulder. He pecked at the shiny silver hoop in her ear. He whispered, “Suet and peanuts and pumpkinseedfloss; tell me your secrets of heartache and loss.”

Eloise turned a shade paler, if that was possible, and brushed the crow from her shoulder. ”I’ll give you your suets and your seeds,” she said. “But I keep my secrets. Be gone now.”

The next day, when Eloise placed a pot of glorious, deep red chrysanthemums near the front door, the crow landed on Eloise’s shoulder and whispered the same words. Eloise sighed and thought about her lost love, the ending of her career due to an injury, the death of her mother. She shook her head. “Go away. Those are my secrets to keep.”

On the third day, Eloise carved a jack o’lantern, for it was All Hallow’s Eve. She stuck a candle in the grinning gourd as twilight fell. In the flickering glow, two black beady eyes glittered from behind the chrysanthemum pot. The crow cawed softly and whispered his demand for the third time.

A rush of feeling swept through Eloise, and she trembled with sorrow and loss. For a moment she was tempted to give the spirit what it wanted, for of course she knew the crow’s true nature. He craved her sadness and her tears. But then she heard the delighted laughter and chattering voices of the neighbor’s children. They ran to her front porch dressed as pirates and princesses and scarecrows and some cartoon characters she didn’t recognize.

Her heart lifted as they gathered at her doorstep. “Trick or treat!” they yelled in unison. Eloise laughed and the crow was so frightened, he flew away, never to return.

Have a Spooky Day!

XOXO Shelley Burbank

A Story Idea Developing in Real Time

As Recorded on a Facebook Post

by Shelley Burbank

One of the perennial questions readers ask authors is, "Where do you get your ideas?"

Well, the other day I accidentally recorded the exact moment when an idea--starting with a story title--occurred to me. Here's how it went: 

In past months, I've tried to wean myself off of Facebook and Instagram and had some success. However, as I'm in the end stages of revising my novella and the beginning stages of publishing and release it into the world, I'm back on the platforms a bit more because . . . that's where readers continue to be. 

As an experiment, I decided to ask readers a question about preferences regarding chapter headings. 

Post: Do you like numerical headings, ie. 1,2,3, etc. or catchy phrases? 

Commenter: Catchy phrases and numbers.

Shelley: Both??? Like 1. Call Me A Cabernet?

Note: I came up with that title on the spot, trying to think of something fun in the moment. Unfortunately--or fortunately--I ended up liking it. 

Shelley [A few seconds later]: I'm not drinking these days, but that's CUTE! I should use that sometime.

Note: Uh-oh. It's starting. 

Commenter: Yes! Or 1

                                    Call Me a Cabernet 

Shelley: Hmmmm. Much to consider. 

Shelley [looking at the title again]: Now I want to write an entire novella with that title. Damn. I don't need any more projects.

Shelley [now warming up, ideas flashing in brain]: It would be about a mid-life woman who makes a mess of things and decides to try out sobriety for thirty days and the wacky things that happen when she tried to avoid it. What could go wrong???

Note: I'm sorta laughing to myself and staring into space, imagining a scene or two, vague, vague.

Shelley [another flash goes off because I remember something I read on a Substack newsletter about appealing to agents/publishers by going the opposite of the expected.That would look like]: Or MAYBE I turn the story inside out and a sober-all-her-life good girl reaches middle age and decides to give DRINKING a try for 30 days, haha.

Shelley [Remembering her current WIP is waiting for revisions]: Okay, now you all see how my brain works in real time. Do not wish this on yourselves. I'm actually avoiding revision work.

***

A day later. 

Do you know what is now happening? I can't stop thinking about this story and how much I want to write it and how it would be a fun novella and oh, maybe a SERIES of novellas--all stories with a booze-themed title but not idealizing drinking because, you know, it's not healthy in any way for our bodies but the covers would be soooo cute! And what is going on in my MC's life that sets her off on this weird adventure? A dare? No, too trite. Something. Something...

I'll keep working it in my brain for a few weeks or months or years, but I'm trying to not do that anymore. Too much time and the ideas get stale. Also, I'll do a little "recon" and see who's used that title in the past. I'm sure someone has. It's too delicious. 

Meanwhile, I have about two chapters left in my novella revisions and can finally send it off to my beta readers and hopefully they won't have too much in the way of objections. 

I've been looking up how to self-publish on Amazon's KDP. Partly I don't want to do it that way and have considered other options. I could use it as a reader magnet, perhaps, and give it away free to people who have already signed up for or will sign up for my newsletter. But really, I think it's time for me to explore the wild world of indie publishing. I'd love to find an agent and score a Big Five publishing deal, but I'm not holding my breath. 

I've never even tried to go that route. The process seems both daunting and SLOOOOWWW. But maybe someday, if I write the right kind of story. Meanwhile, it's probably gonna be indie-pubbing for me. 

***

Anyway, I hope you found this entertaining and enlightening. Ideas just spring up out of nowhere, like the title, but then the brain latches onto something in the original idea and works at it, connects other information to it, expands it. It's like daydreaming, really. Anyone can do it. 

Writing, on the other hand, is the craft and discipline part. That's where writers are made, not in the ideas arena but in the craft arena. It's putting the sentences together and learning the right structure for a paragraph and making a ton of decisions about point of view, theme, narrative device, etc. 

Writing is a wonderful, challenging, fun, rewarding hobby and vocation. I'm not sure it's a great "job" these days, but for some, I guess, it does bring financial rewards, as well. I'm no longer holding on to any expectations in that regard, but if I were thirty years younger, maybe. For now, it's enough to have fun with it. 

Enjoy the remaining days of summer, all you lovely readers out there. You also make it fun.