Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: July 2009

• Show Me the Money

  Posted at 12:07 am by kayewer, on July 26, 2009

  As I wrote in an earlier post, my writers group is going the self-publishing route to put an anthology of our works on the market.  We’ve been working at it since last year.  We have meetings regularly to discuss our feelings and fears about the project.  Somehow I don’t feel any better after I come out of one of these meetings.  We haven’t lost any more people (we have six participants), but of those remaining the burden of expenditures seems uncertain.  We will have to have a legal entity for our group to protect us all from the possibility of lawsuits.  If we want to print our own books, we will need hundreds of dollars in up-front costs.  Our group is determined to keep the rights to our work, but we haven’t tightened up our contributions or the filler since we started.

  It worries me that we aren’t taking this project in the right order or with the right expectations.  I went out and got a copy of Self-Publishing for Dummiesand one of two major books on the subject of self-publishing by Daniel Poynter (The Self-Publishing Manual, Volume II, since Volume I is not on the shelves at Borders right now), but the more I read these self-help guides, the more I feel we really aren’t ready.

  Anybody who expects to at least break even–if not make a profit–on their writing must have a solid base on which to build the product, and right now I don’t think we have it.

  So what do I do?  Do I voice my concerns and seem like the “bad guy” (or actually, girl) of the group?  Everybody else seems ready to go along and put some money down on the project, but in this economy I don’t feel I should spend a cent without some certainty behind my investment.  It’s the difference between putting money in stocks or Cd’s.  A CD is a guarantee of interest, while stock can deplete your principle.  At this point I feel that we are buying into some bad stocks.  I don’t mind if publishing takes time, but I don’t want to have a bad experience the first time at the OK publishing corral.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged anthology, self publish

• Traffic Kindergarten

  Posted at 12:28 am by kayewer, on July 19, 2009

  Last night, like quite a few others in the past years, I spent 50 minutes to go roughly ten miles on I-95 in Delaware.  There was no accident, and traffic normally runs smoothly on other days despite a two-lane exit project leading up to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  However, after many such nights of brake-tapping, I think I figured out what happens to tie up the line of northbound traffic.

  The vehicles entering I-95 come from the Delaware Turnpike exit and about four on-ramps from other major roads.  Two right lanes are designated for entering and lining up for the exit to the bridge, so sometimes the number of cars is greater than the traffic flow and the line slows down.

  What really slows it down more than necessary, however, are those drivers who either speed through the two left lanes or slip out of the two right lanes, move up to the “last chance” entrance point where the divider begins, then play innocent and convince other drivers waiting in line to let them slide in ahead of them.

  In kindergarten, this was called butting in line.  In adult life, it’s simply being a self-centered, careless jerk.

  The semis, thank goodness, stay in line and are very polite when drivers enter the lane from an artery.  They don’t tend to bully their way around, even though they certainly could considering their size.  Some of my fellow commuters, however, seem to feel they have a right to cut in front and, by proxy, extend the wait for the other honest folks who are waiting their turn.  If not for the line-jumpers, I think the wait would be a minimum of 10-15 minutes, but on a day like yesterday I spent 50 minutes getting to a bridge which normally takes 15.

  The alternative route would be to continue up I-95 to the Commodore Barry Bridge, but it is an extended drive north that few choose to take when the other bridge is so close and they can just jump the line to get home sooner.  There really should be a way to stop such practices, but I know the wonderful Delaware officers on those roads have enough on their hands already, so they shouldn’t have to play kindergarten playground monitor for adults who should know better.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged I-95, speeding, traffic

• What is Normal? What is Acceptable?

  Posted at 11:41 pm by kayewer, on July 11, 2009

  It’s a question we subconsciously put to ourselves and others every day.  We often want to know if something is normal.  Often the barometer used for measuring normalcy is the opinions of others, rather than a scientific fact, but we use what is quickly and readily available to us to measure what is normal or acceptable.

  Eating breakfast every morning is normal for me.  I always have the same breakfast during the week, and the changes I make on the weekends are the same, consistent variations  every weekend.  That, for me, is normal. Somebody may look at my breakfast, however, and deem it abnormal.  They may think I eat too many carbs or too much sugar, and they might be armed with an armful of books disputing my choice of breakfast.  On the other hand, they may eat bean sprouts for breakfast, which for me would be rather abnormal.

  I wear shoes with thicker soles when it rains, because I think it helps keep water from puddles out of my shoes.  The idea of wearing flip-flops in rainy weather would not be normal for me, and I can’t understand why anybody else would willingly walk around in flip-flops when it’s raining.  Rain water carries germs and bacteria, and people walking in flip-flops then carry that contamination into public places and into their own homes.  That, for me, would be pleasant.  Public places sometimes accept summer clothing choices which may not be in the best interest of other people, simply in hopes of receiving the offenders’ business.  Wearing flip-flops as footwear other than for beaches or swimming pools might be accepted as normal, but it may not be truly acceptable behavior everywhere.

  Churches are having issues about attendees wearing more casual attire when coming to services.  But then, sometimes congregants come in without having had breakfast, either.  What we accept as normal has been changing quite a bit lately.  Every day we ask ourselves what lines we will cross to get through another day, and it becomes harder to tighten the restrictions and easier to accept a new normalcy.

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• Killing With a Word?

  Posted at 11:33 pm by kayewer, on July 4, 2009

  The cyberbullying case of Lori Drew, the mother who posed as a boy on MySpace and was taken to court in the resulting suicide of her victim Megan Meier, is unique to be sure.  First, the bullies were the parents; second, the victim was apparently targeted because she may have been saying things about Drew’s own daughter online (I haven’t seen anything to indicate that any rumors were indeed spread, or that they merited the death of Megan); third, the victim committed suicide while the source of the despair that aided in the act was in another house and nowhere near her.

  A judge decided that the conviction on three misdemeanor counts (unauthorized access to MySpace which could have garnered a year in prison) was a sufficient sentence, because the jury could not come up with enough to garner any felony charges.  Also, a co-conspirator in the cyberbullying said nobody read the terms of the MySpace agreement, and the judge apparently felt that not reading those terms could not be an offense in itself.

  So what does a regular human being make of such a case, in which people can seemingly commit long-distance murder with impunity?

  I’ve mulled over this event from several sides, and only one truth has kept creeping up in my mind.  There is nothing of this earth that forces us to be loving human beings.  A parent does not have to love their children:  they can choose to beat them, starve them, force them to eat spinach, participate in beauty pageants or peewee football or sit in a dark basement for hours at a time.  Children don’t have to be nice to each other:  in fact, if I had a penny for everytime I have read about victims of bullying in school, I’d be bailing out Donald Trump today.

  On the other hand, there is also no rule that says a victim has to keep taking the abuse.  Unfortunately, when we beat the dog we shoot it when it strikes back, which shows just how barbaric we are.  We can dish it out, but we can’t take it.

  Let’s face it:  we support bullying, and we support a class system, and we support cruelty to others if it means less cruelty for us,  simply by letting it happen.

  I don’t have a negative word to say about Lori Drew:  she set out to do something and she succeeded, and a jury agreed.  I do feel deeply for Megan’s family, because even though we as a human race seem to support bullying, nobody deserves to be bullied to death.

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged cyberbully, Lori Drew

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