Snow on the Beach?
Looking out at lawns, decks and roofs frosted with snow for five days straight, I complained to my husband, "I thought we moved to the beach."
What could he say? The first time we visited the Oregon Coast in the winter, Feb. 1996, it snowed. Everybody said, "That never happens."
They lied.
As Grandma Rachel used to advise, never say never. It does snow here every few years, but even the old-timers can't remember a time when it snowed so much and the snow stayed on the ground so long. With high temperatures in the low 30s and lows in the high teens, nothing had a chance to defrost. Schools closed, programs were canceled, people huddled around their wood stoves. It was actually a blessing when the temperature went up into the 40s and the rain returned. By then, the pure white snow had turned to gunk and we were all ready to stop sliding around.
Aside from my geraniums dying again, we had no snow damage. However, we're still dealing with the previous big wind storms that scattered trees all over and knocked out power for days. We just got our new skylight put in to replace the one over the kitchen that cracked. Our new garage door is coming any day now to replace the one that is waterlogged and warped. Oh, and when Fred knocked the snow off the truck, it had a dead battery. Still, we are so fortunate that the few trees and limbs that came down fell away from our house.
Thank God the days are getting longer. Enough of this darkness. I'm impatient for spring. I'm not the only one. My silly daffodil bulbs are already poking out of the ground. Get back, you foolish things, the groundhog hasn't even rendered his opinion yet.
You can say one thing about Oregon coast weather: It's always interesting.
Two Books at Once?
Yes, I expected to be preparing for the publication of my
new book, Freelancing for Newspapers. Although the revisions
aren't done yet, the publicity team is working hard to promote
the book. I was amazed and delighted to find it listed at
amazon.com on Jan. 24. You can't order copies yet, but you
can sign up to be notified when the book is available. Very cool.
That makes four books of mine for sale on Amazon (although
you might have to look under just "Sue Lick" to find Azorean
Dreams, don't ask me why).
If you want to talk about the book or about newspapering in
general, check out my Freelancing for Newspapers blog at
What I didn't expect was to be spending my days revising
and reformatting Stories Grandma Never Told: Portuguese Women
in California for a new edition that should be out this spring. After eight years with Heyday Books, I'm self-publishing the new edition through my own Blue Hydrangea Productions with help from Rose Reed at Lazerquick. She and her crew have put together lots of great-looking books, and I like having control over the whole process. However, I was surprised when Rose directed me to buy a copy of Microsoft Word, learn how to use it, and be prepared for several weeks of intense work. You see, when she scanned the old pages, lots of words, punctuation and formatting disappeared. Plus the new books will be a slightly smaller format. So I have a lot of work to do.
I'm also trying to track down the 62 women I interviewed, some as long as 18 years ago, to find out whether they're still alive and what they're up to. That's a big job, too, but it's coming along. I'm amazed at how many people are still in the same place. The work is fascinating, and I'm relieved to discover I still like the book after all these years.
I expect to be doing a lot of book promotion events this spring and summer. Some people are shy about speeches and book-signings, but I love it. If you are in having me come to an event, contact me at suelick@casco.net.
Publication Update
I was pleased to learn that my article on taxes for writers, published in the April 2006 Writer's Digest, was selected to run in the annual Writer's Yearbook. Look for it on your newsstands or at writersdigest.com.
I'm still cranking out baby boomer articles for Northwest Senior News. This month my whole section is devoted to Doug Hoffman's fascinating trip to Saudi Arabia. Copies should be showing up in Lincoln County any day now. Next month features the new owners of South Beach Fitness, Rose and Gary Cummins and their yoga instructor Steve Davis. I just happen to be spending a lot of time there. Ask me to show you my muscles. They're somewhere under the flab.
And I continue to do my Everything But Writing column for The Scriptorium. The January column, still online for a few more days, talks about how freelance writers (and others who are self-employed) don't get sick leave and what to do when illness or injury makes it impossible to work. In the February column, I discuss some of the non-writing tasks I'm currently involved in and how the writing business includes many different jobs, all of them important and enjoyable.
That's quite enough boasting for one month. If you've got something to brag about, e-mail me at suelick@casco.net and I'll publish it in the newsletter. This me, me, me stuff is embarrassing. For 2007, let's make it about you, you, you.
No Classes This Term
Due to the above all-engrossing projects, I'm not teaching at the college this term, nor am I working with any online students at the moment. If you were considering taking a class from me, I suggest you wait until my book is finished, buy a copy and then we can talk about working together. By the time I finish these two books, I will be so much smarter!
Last month, I mentioned that some of my former students have formed a critique group that meets twice a month in Newport. I am told now that they do not have room for any new members at this point. They're a tight group, intent on hard work and honest critiques, and they want to keep it small.
Writers on the Edge reorganizes
WOE, as we call it, is the organization that puts on the Nye Beach Writers Series in Newport. We also have been working with Lincoln County youth on various writing projects, including high school writing clubs, workshops and literary magazines. And technically, the coast chapter of Willamette Writers falls under the WOE nonprofit umbrella.
Recently WOE has been experiencing some woe in the form of officer burnout. Our exalted ruler Dorothy Mack has resigned her role as director after two years of amazing effort. Secretary Ed Cameron has resigned, and at least two other officers are planning to jump ship if they can find a safe place to get off. We could just dissolve the organization, but we're still doing good things. We have some grants to spend, and our last Nye Beach Writers event, featuring Kathleen Dean Moore, was SRO. We need new people with a little time and a lot of enthusiasm to join the board and keep WOE going. You don't have to be any kind of writing genius. You don't even have to be a writer. You do need to live within driving distance of Newport, Oregon. If you're interested, contact me at suelick@casco.net or Dorothy Mack, at dmack@newportnet.com.
Willamette Writers programs go on
While WOE totters, WW coast chapter continues--although we could use some new officers, too. This month Charles Goodrich will talk about essay writing. Next month memoirist Lenor Chappell will tell us how she turned her traumatic personal story into two terrific books and is now working on the movie version. We meet the second Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. at the Newport Library. If you're interested in a little pre-meeting socializing, join us for dinner at the Chowder Bowl at 5:00 to meet the speakers and have time for chowder and chitchat. Either be there by 5:00 or let me know you're coming so we can save you a seat.
Book report
Snow days are good for reading. Here are just a few of the books I enjoyed in January.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books, 2006. Billed as a memoir, this is more of an encyclopedic look at Middle America in the 1950s and '60s. It is also a tribute to Des Moines, Iowa, the way it used to be, before every big city in American became the same. Reviewers claim to have gotten lots of laughs from this book, but it didn't strike me that way. Maybe you have to be a guy to get the little-boy humor. But it's not all jokes. Chapters recalling the early days of atom bombs, the Cold War, and racial discrimination are quite serious and informative. Those of us who were children then have forgotten a great deal, and there was a lot that we didn't understand. The whole "Thunderbolt Kid" thing, Bryson's supposed superhero alter ego, doesn't work for me, perhaps because he doesn't follow it through very thoroughly, but overall, this book is an enjoyable read, like a trip back to Mayberry or Lake Wobegon.
The Shop on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber, MIRA Books, 2004. Here's another book where women who are strangers at the beginning band together, become friends, and change each other's lives. It's not great literature. It's full of clichés and the solutions to their problems are too easy, but this tale, woven around participants in a knitting class on Blossom Street, is easy to read and hard to put down. We have the shop owner, Lydia, who has survived two bouts of cancer and opens the shop to show that she's ready to embrace life. There's Alix, the punk with purple hair who brings a terrible past and a bad attitude and is knitting to work off community service time for a bogus drug bust. There's Carol, who desperately wants a baby and is sure that discovering the knitting class is a sign from God that her final in vitro attempt will succeed. And there's Jacqueline, a rich snob who hates her pregnant Southern Belle daughter-in-law, but agrees to knit a baby blanket as a sign that she's trying to be civil. Mix them in with various men and the story proceeds. Read it for fun. Macomber may not write great literature, but she sells a lot of books.
The Writer's and Photographer's Guide to Global Markets by Michael Sedge, Allworth Press, 1998. We Americans tend to forget that a whole world exists beyond our borders. As writers, that big world is also a huge market for our work. Thousands of English-language publications come out in other countries, and it's also possible to sell our work in translation. Photographs are universal. A writer can resell his work over and over again in different countries, even after all U.S. rights are used up. Sedge describes the international market and tells how to adapt and submit work worldwide. He gives lots of useful information, both about the writing and the business side (how many yen should you get per column inch?). The book has several appendices, including agencies, associations, reference materials and international e-mail addresses. Some of the references are out of date, but there's enough information to lead you to the current data.
Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent, Viking, 2006. Whoa. When you open this book, prepare to set everything aside until you finish it. This is such a gripping piece of nonfiction that you won't want to put it down. In order to get an inside view of the world of men, Vincent disguised herself as a man named Ned for 18 months. Here, she tells us what she discovered as a member of a bowling team, in a high-pressure sales job, dating, spending three weeks in a monastery, and attending a men's retreat. The book is eye-opening, well-written and suspenseful. We always worry that someone will see through her disguise, and gradually we begin to worry about what this double life is doing to the author. As a gay woman who had always been a tomboy, she thought it would be easy living as a man. It wasn't. In fact, she may never get over it. Fascinating and courageous.
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That's all for now. Happy Valentine's Day and
Presidents' Day. Keep warm. Spring is
almost here.
Hugs,
Sue
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