Opinions, Privacy issues, and Writing

I've written ever since I was eight, but didn't take it seriously until Ninth Grade and Mrs. VanAtta's English class -- I wrote poetry and people liked it!  After all, I spent most of Middle School relatively friendless -- didn't have any close buddies that I hung around with -- I spent a lot of time reading.  I was determined to be on the school newspaper in High School.

But when I got into High School, the school newspaper was dying. I don't remember all of the particulars anymore, but somehow I connected with an old friend from Elementary school who drifted away -- we were determined that I we needed a school paper.  Somehow, one or the other of us persuaded Mrs. Longanecker to be our advisor, and Sue found a few other people, and the local paper was persuaded to print the articles citywide.  The Wildcat Weekly was reborn.  We wrote articles, Mrs. Longanecker corrected them, and I learned, more or less, how to write for the newspaper.

After a year, I wanted to do more. Erma Bombeck, the humorist, was popular at the time, so I started a humor column under a pseudonym.  Not one person realized who wrote the column until the May before I graduated, and I heard, from my Dad, that even some of his coffee buddies got a laugh out of it. 

And then, in my Senior year, I wrote an opinion column.  After all this time, it doesn't make a difference what my opinion was; the principal hated it.  I got called to the Principal's office for the first time in my life, and the advisor, Barb Erickson (now Stutesman) got in trouble.  (I'm giving the principal a pass; it was his first year as Principal, and I suspect now he felt he had to show his authority.)

My first encounter with the power of opinions.

Fast forward twenty to thirty years:  I've worked at Huddlestun Lumber Company for twenty-five years, and at McLellan and Strohm Accounting for a little over ten years.  I'm grateful to both for hiring me and giving me a living.

But.

As a writer, it drives me nuts.  You see, we have customers at Huddlestun Lumber Company, and we have clients at McLellan and Strohm.  They are all very important.  In addition, there's an implied privacy at Huddlestun Lumber and a very strict privacy issue at McLellan and Strohm's, very similar to the medical world's HIPAA policy.  I like my jobs, and I refuse to embarrass either place.

I also have an opinion of various things that happen around town and the townships.  Can I express that opinion freely?  Not really.  I know that opinions will offend people -- clients and customers -- even when no offense is meant, and I don't want to do that.  And these are some very nice people.

If you look at my website, you'll see a series of columns about a fictional town named River Creek.   I wrote those over ten years ago, and this was my way of commenting about the city at that point.  I keep thinking about resurrecting it -- in fact, I'm planning to insert stories around these "articles."  But, here's my dilemma -- do I write about current things?  Do I dare? 

Is my life defined by being a bookkeeper or being a writer?

What do I choose?

Thoughts on reviews -- should I care?

I received my second review the other day on one of the Smashwords stories I put up -- "Second-Hand Princess." The reviewer, "Caite" said:

"A very muddled story, with a Princess who never acquires a name, a Prince with an unpronounceable one, and entirely too many typographical and grammatical errors to be readable. Lovely premise, poor execution. (review of free book)."

I've spent the last few days trying to decide what I thought of this review. It's not bad. My initial thought was to ignore it, but then I wondered: was she right? I think what worried me more was not the muddled story or the poor execution part -- that's opinion -- but the part about typographical and grammatical errors.

So tonight I ran the story through Microsoft Word's grammar and spelling corrector. Yes, she was right. I wouldn't call it unreadable, but I found at least two spelling errors, one of which wouldn't have been caught by spell check. I also replaced a number of periods with commas. *sigh*.

The rest is her opinion, although I'm still trying to figure out how the name "Aarach" is entirely unpronounceable. The name doesn't seem as hard as some I've seen, such as Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Naismith Vorkosigan." (I discovered I was pronouncing it wrong when I listened to the audio books.)

That's fine. While I would like other people to enjoy my stories -- that's why I put them out there -- I mostly enjoy writing them. And that's all that counts. In my opinion!

Grumpy, Sleepy, and more dwarves

There are those days when I feel like all of Disney's seven dwarves. I'm constantly Sleepy. And, when I'm sleepy, I'm Grumpy. Dopey is a given. Bashful, well, usually. With the allergies I have, I'm also Sneezy. Sometimes I'm Happy. Doc is a hard one -- well, I do stammer like Doc, especially when I'm Sleepy.

I guess I should be grateful I don't have a long white beard.

Yesterday I received an edit from one of my fanzine editors. That's always humbling. I look at the corrections and think, geez, I should have known that, I should have seen that, what was I thinking? Today, I received notice that one of my stories is a finalist in a fan story contest (Fan-Q awards at MediaWest*con), which is totally cool. Six years ago, I won had a story published in a professional anthology, and the editor changed one word. ONE word! Haven't sold anything since.

So my writing life is Grumpy, Happy, Grumpy, Happy. I love to write, but am I fooling myself with my talent or lack of talent?

I guess I keep writing and keep hoping that I hit gold again, and suffer through all the dwarves!

To Blog or not to Blog

I've been thinking a lot about Blogs lately. For those authors who actually have books to sell, I can see that they could be an invaluable marketing tool. For people like me, who has, so far, two whole stories up at smashwords.com (under L.J. Anderson), and one professionally published short story -- well, the whole blogging experience seems a bit like writing in a diary.

However, unlike a diary, a blog is in the public eye, even if nobody else actually looks at it. Some stranger across the country could be looking at what I happen to think, or, even worse, somebody living in my home town. Or my bosses. Which makes writing in a blog a bit -- dangerous. One of my jobs is in a local accounting firm, where, of course, privacy is a huge concern, the other is as a bookkeper in a local lumberyard. This means that writing anything about clients or customers is out, in a big way. I'm no fool.

It took me a while -- perhaps through tax season? -- that, golly, I can write about other things besides my jobs. I can try to talk about my third job -- still a hobby -- writing. I can write about things around town. I can write about travel. I can write about fandom. Ok, I know, this isn't an original idea.

But at least I'm writing. And that's the point, right? Even if nobody else reads this but me.