Spreading the Word

It's hard enough to write a book but it's even harder to try to promote it. Very successful writers have agents and publishers who do that work for them but for people like me, with a small publisher like Oolichan, it's not easy. That's why it's a wonderful thing to have a friend like Frances (Materfamilias) who has a splendid blog with a great many followers.

I've never been a fan of social media but, when I see the effect that someone like Frances can have in connecting with many people and sharing her enthusiasm about what she is reading, writing and thinking, I realize I have to shift my attitude. Which means I am going to try to learn something about social media and see if I can make something of my own sporadic blogging attempts. At least I will try to write more frequently.

Frances is a wonderful writer and I was moved and encouraged by her card to me:

The book is wonderful -- I'm already halfway through now and you're right -- there is much in it to alleviate the tears. Most of all, a great big love story, and then the lashings of humour, your examination of words, the literary references, the various geographies. It's very rich for such a small book. I marvel most at how much work it must have taken to rein in emotions while giving your reader enough detail to make your wisdom on bereavement convincing. Platitudes wouldn't work, obviously, but neither would overwhelming your reader with the raw personal. Managing to keep that tone, the intimacy of a letter to Mike, knowing we're reading over your shoulder, that must have been tough, technically and emotionally.

Read the whole post here:

http://materfamiliasknits.blogspot.ca/2018/04/a-memoir-of-love-and-grief-bereavement.html

Isn't she a wonderful writer? I'm very grateful for her kind words and for the response from her many readers. She is an inspiration and her blog is well with following.

The last time I looked there were 35 comments on this post, with many people indicating that they were ordering the book because of what Frances wrote.

It's been an eye-opener. And a heart-opener. And that's why I am making a commitment to work on this blog.

Thank you, Frances.

Once there were Words

Words have always been a great solace to me. I am moved by sentences like Anthony Doerr’s Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Just the phrase “sounds ribbon in shoals” is a thrill to me. Even a single word – P.K. Page’s choice of the word catafalque in her phrase the tall eventual catafalque -- brings me delight.

 

Between words and silence, there is nonsense. Like most families, we had our own language which contained baby talk or verbal blunders that stuck simply because we liked the sound. Eedie go me, a small child’s instruction that her babysitter should not attempt to change her diapers, expressed a desire to be set free. Geeba, the ubiquitous cry we seemed to hear at the dog park, perhaps related to the many dogs named Sheba, became our word for foolish people. A childhood friend of mine came up with the evocative words wallen and smeedmut to describe her moods of melancholy and frustration, terms I still use. I can’t remember the source for our word mimpering, but it seemed a good description for a particular kind of idle meandering. Often we would mimper away an entire afternoon. Nonsense has its place.

Sometimes there are no words to capture our feelings and we fall silent: Silence is deep as Eternity, Thomas Carlyle said, speech is shallow as Time. Silence is the other side of a love of language, and too can speak to us.

Illiteracy is another matter. A local business uses its road sign to display jokes that are often clever if not profound. Recently it featured this riddle: How do you get two whales in a car? Start in England and drive west. Of course you have to be able to read in order to get the joke, and many won’t, as illiteracy is on the rise. It helps if you read it out loud.

Nowadays, videos have replaced written instructions. Pictures have replaced words. The world leader most frequently in the news these days is often nonverbal: he avoids verbs in favour of one-word verdicts: sad, bad, lies.

We speak in hyperbole of awesome restaurants, amazing journeys. Slushy, feel-good words and  phrases like “It’s a journey” and “I want to honour your experience” replace precise language. Order a cappuccino and your server will say, “Awesome!” Words, if they are used at all, are tossed about with little regard for their meaning.

Nowadays, words fail us. Or we fail them. Now we communicate through emoticons, acronyms, numerals and verbal grunts. We can only wonder about where this rough beast that is, now, slouching towards us will take us.

Another year - April 2018

Another year. Another year and 4 months. Another failed resolution. BUT another new resolution as well.

 

From now on I will keep up this blog. I will add new information, post events, enter into discussions, and rant regularly. I will start by posting an old rant and continue by writing new ones.

 

Here goes…