Hey folks, I was able to get that writing presentation shortened from an hour-and-a-half to thirty minutes so I could upload it to YT. It’s super wonky due to edits, but it’s the best I could do with my limited resources. Enjoy!
Tag: Nonfiction
Food No One Will Eat
I can eat all the food, don’t worry.
Oh, wait, are we talking about cooking? Mmmmm, yeah, so I don’t really cook. I mean, I try, don’t get me wrong, I try really hard. Especially at Thanksgiving. But you really never know what you’re going to get when I’m in the kitchen.
Over the last few years I’ve managed to perfect a homemade macaroni and cheese recipe that my family now claims isn’t any good. I can brine and rotisserie a turkey like nobody’s business. I make Libby’s pumpkin pies without crust so we don’t have to deal with gluten and I don’t have to try and make a gluten free crust that doesn’t burn or taste like cardboard. I make a dish of yams with oranges that is so decadent we sometimes have it at other times of the year to remind us we’re alive.
And for your average evening meal I make an InstaPot white chicken chili that no one wants to eat because it took so many trials to perfect it.
What I’m saying is, I’ll gladly hire someone to do our cooking for us as soon as I can afford to do so.
Monthly Book Talk Video: Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt
Thompson Falls Public Library invited me to do a brief video on one of the books I read last month. “It’s like book club, but virtual, and shorter.” This is the first in the virtual video series and is on Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. Have you read Breaking Clean? If so, what do you think about it?
Need more book recommendations? Check out my monthly column Whatcha Readin’ at The Sanders County Ledger. And stay tuned for more virtual videos.
Sprinkle Time
Growing up in cities and suburbia, I never really knew my neighbors unless they had kids that went to school with me. There was no one to borrow a cup of sugar from or to sip lemonade on the porch with. And no one seemed upset by it.
It wasn’t until I bought my first house at 31 years old that I began to make an effort to know my neighbors. There was the elderly Scottish lady on one side of me who owned a Scotty dog, as though she had a sense of humor, which I would later find out she did not. There was the brilliant and retired woman a few doors down who chain-smoked some lesser known brand of cigarettes, Pall Mall maybe, drank Bud Light (and only Bud Light), and walked the entire neighborhood every day waving hello as she went and occasionally inviting me down to hers for a 5pm night cap.
That was it.
At 31 years old I knew two neighbors, and that for the first time in my life.
It wasn’t until I moved to a small town (1,500 people) in the mountains that I started knowing not just my neighbors but everybody. In a town that small everyone knows everyone in the space of a few months, a handful of library visits, a trip or two to the local watering hole.
I began to learn all about what it really means to live in a community. I volunteered with multiple organizations, swallowed my fear with a shot of whiskey and performed in the local melodrama to raise money for local scholarships, and co-created a garden tour to raise funds for the school garden.
It turns out that being in a community takes quite a bit more time than you’d think. It’s rarely about borrowing a cup of sugar and usually about giving up several nights a week to organize and strategize and make something magical happen.
I used to think being a good neighbor meant keeping the weeds and the music down, keeping the grass mowed and the garbage cans put away. And that’s certainly a fair part of it. Especially in the city and suburbs, there’s an art to being a visually good neighbor.
Now though, I think being a good neighbor is more about recognizing how we’re all connected, finding ways to help, doing what you can for the people around you so they can do for the people around them, and so on.
We talk a lot about paying it forward at the Drive Thru line, and while I’m a huge fan of that too (sprinkle kindness everywhere), I think there’s so much more to being a good neighbor. For me, being a good neighbor means offering your time (sometimes that’s all we have to offer). It means showing up to help pick the apples when they come ripe, lending an ear, and bringing a hot meal during a tough time.
It’s our time that we need to find a way to sprinkle everywhere.
Counting Failure
Daily writing prompt
What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.
In all my reading, I kept coming across the same ratio, ten to one (10:1). Sometimes it was stated differently, but the math always worked out the same. For every ten rejections, you get one acceptance. Or: for every ten failures, you get one success.
This is why I created the #100RejectionsChallenge. The idea being that if I (or you or anybody) can submit to 100 publications, we will get 90 rejections, and 10 acceptances.
I want those ten acceptances, those ten publications.
There are probably several ways to go about this, but I’ve chosen to send one piece to one publisher at a time (non-simultaneous submission). It’s easier for me to track, it keeps the piece in front of me every few weeks so I can tweak it before sending it off again, and it just feels right. Asking someone to give me their time and then telling them I’ve already published the piece somewhere else doesn’t sit right with me.
Currently I have 35 pieces out for submissions. I’ve collected eight (8) rejections and one (1) acceptance. I started submitting pieces on June 4th and it is currently October 5th. So four months of submitting has only landed me nine responses so far. And while there are five publications I ought to hear back from this month, it is clearly a slow process.
For many, eight rejections with only one accepting is failure. For me, it’s a massive win. I got the acceptance when I only have five rejections (or something like that) so I thought I was beating the 10:1 ratio big time. I had a moment where I envisioned that I was simply a better writer than every other writer under the sun, and my goodness how terrifying!
Then a few more rejections flowed in and I was so relieved. Isn’t that odd?
The only thing we’re guaranteed of failing is everything we don’t try.
The opportunity to chase your dreams is a privilege, it’s a gift, and it’s a challenge.
I hope you take it up.
Eep
My library has offered to give me a window display space as part of my Montana Arts Council Montana Artrepreneur Program Certification requirement…in exchange for giving a talk about writing…eep!
So me, myself, and I will be giving a presentation and holding a discussion on writing at my local library next month…eep!
I’ve got my slide deck ready and my notes printed to make sure I don’t skip anything. I’ve got a handout ready to go and a note to remind myself to bring pens with me in case anyone actually shows up and wants to do the five-minute timed writing prompt. I’ve secured an awesome publication opportunity for the people who DO attend and want to write. I’ve ordered bookmarks to give away and I have my business cards. And I’ve started the process of putting it out there to my community online and on my website.
I figure this is all good training…right? For when my book comes out and I have to *gulp* go to an event. Or if I end up self-publishing and need to do all the things…eep!
I’m trying really hard to pretend I’m okay with all of this while my little introverted heart thumps in my throat and my stomach clenches and my Fitbit congratulates me on another great workout even though I haven’t done a thing.
It’ll be fine…I know it’ll be fine…and it’s a month away…it’s fine…I’m fine.
Anyhow, if you happen to be in Montana on October 25, 2023 and want to meet me, I’ll be at the Thompson Falls Public Library at 1:00pm sweating through my shirt. Come say hi! Check out the event on Facebook.
Learning to Can Eludes Me
At one point I had the full home canning kit. The one everyone seems to have at some point in their life, the one that clutters the thrift store shelves for years until it comes back around to being in vogue, or until a pandemic hits. Needless to say, my kit was in pristine condition. All the pieces had been washed, dried, and loving put away for future use. A future which never came, at least, not for me. Not then.
We’ve been living in this new-to-us house for over two years now. There is no home canning set in the cabinets. I was gifted with a bounty of apples and pears though, wondering whatever to do with them all. Wishing that canning kit was in the cabinets while also recognizing it was perhaps not quite the time to start learning, with the fruit already waiting to be used.
A quick Google search said all I needed for pear sauce (think applesauce with pears) was a pot, a splash of lemon juice, and a blender or mixer; three things I happen to have on hand. And so I learned to make pear sauce. All was poured into quart sized freezer bags and frozen. All was cleaned up and put away. All took much longer than I’d have anticipated and tasted much better than anything I’ve ever tasted before.
Perhaps next year, I’ll be ready to can rather than bag. Perhaps.
Wim Hof in My Shower
This idea of soaking in an ice bath, of taking a Polar Plunge, of standing in a cold shower for as long as you can stand it has me obsessed. I read every book I can find on Wim Hof, a fascinating man who believed we all ought to be naked and freezing to enjoy our best health (yes, I’m condensing rather brutally and with a touch of snark). Outwardly, I let the obsession go, inwardly, I’m trying to convince myself to take a cold shower.
It comes up again when Brandon Carter writes a blog about cold showers, a blog I can’t find now but that may still exist in the internet ether. And because I’m a great believer in the Universe putting before you what you need, I pay attention. Clearly, there’s something to this cold shower thing I’m supposed to be tuning in to.
When I begin my new exercise routine of using an elliptical every day for thirty minutes, I come off the machine bright red in the face, soaked in sweat, and so hot. All the hormones of a forty-four year old woman who’s done nothing but sit in front of a computer and type for four months are clashing inside me and producing some alarming results.
I’ll never stop sweating, I imagine, and it becomes the perfect opportunity to take a cold shower. I start the water at a lukewarm temp that will actually entice me in rather than keep me out. I slowly turn the knob cooler as I finish washing hair, then a touch cooler as I finish soaping up, a touch cooler for a final rinse.
It’s not an ice bath, it’s not Wim Hof in my shower, but I’m getting there. And it’s not as horrific as I’d imagined, although I am still waiting for all those fabulous health benefits to become obvious.
Not a Runner
I saw an ad for a Wonder Woman run with a puffy blue jacket the participants get for running. It had the WW logo on it and I wanted it. “I could be a runner!” I thought to myself, before remembering that I am not a runner.
I’ve tried running multiple times in my life, always for fitness, never for pleasure. Still, I hold out for the experience of the runner’s high. All I ever get is a red face, a lot of sweat, sore shins. The image of myself as a runner persists, somehow.
The first time I gave up running was right after my brother had seen me running and told me he never knew I was a runner. Me neither, cause I’m not, I thought to myself. What I said out loud was something like, “why not? Anyone can run.” He took up running shortly after and just as quickly stopped. Our genetics bringing us closer than ever, two people who love an idea of ourselves but finally accept who we are.
It seems I only ever discover myself through what I am not. I am not a runner. I am not a veterinarian, a slam performance poet, or a finance person. I am not a Californian.
Perhaps I am a memoirist. That is my current attempt. May we always be attempting to discover who we are, even if it’s by discovering who we are not.
Sunday Dutro, Author - Official Site 