Blowing in the wind

In a writer's world, there are two kinds of readers: pre-publication and post-publication.

To a writer, each of them is vitally important. Without the pre-publication reader, there would be no book to read. And without the post-publication reader, a writer cannot make a living.

As a writer, you hope that you have a lot more post-publication readers than you do pre-publication readers. If you don't, then you probably need to find some new pre-publication readers.

The vast majority of people are post-publication readers. They see a book only in its final form. After it has been polished to perfection and wrapped up in a nice package.

A select few are pre-publication readers. They see a book in its rawest form. Word or .pdf documents of fledgling chapters come to them in their e-mail inbox, sent by insecure writers fishing for guidance or reassurance.

You might think that it would be better to be a post-publication reader than a pre-publication reader. They get only the best that the writer has to offer.

Or do they?

I started wondering about that after receiving an e-mail from one of my pre-production readers commenting on one of the chapters from the book I am currently working on.

Over the past couple of months, I have sent to this particular reader a total of eight chapters. Sometimes, a chapter at a time. Other times, a couple chapters. Or, as I did most recently, all eight chapters as one.

The difficulty for him, as a reader, is that each time I send him new material, it almost always means that I've changed something that he's previously read. In most cases, the changes are subtle. But in others, they are more obvious.

You see, the story is always developing, changing, evolving. That's what the post-publication readers never see. They don't see what went into a book. The pre-production reader, in contrast, gets a glimpse into the writer's mind as he is writing.

This past Sunday was a perfect autumn day in Chicago, clear and crisp, blustery winds blowing fallen leaves. The football Bears, clad in bright orange jerseys, turned Soldier Field into a pre-Halloween Monsters of the Midway party. It was the stuff of fiction.

And in a backyard in a southwest suburb of Chicago, the pages of the first eight chapters of my novel-in-progress took to the wind. Fluttering around with the leaves, as a father and his son laughingly chased after them. The pages were all recovered, only to discover that they were unnumbered and could not be pieced back together.

That's the story the reader told me, before he went on to tell me that he'd been disappointed with the initial version of chapter four that I had sent him. He found it to be clunky, overwrought, difficult to read – "cumbersome" was the word he used. Then he goes on to tell the writer how the latest revision of the chapter is, in his words, a "wonderful improvement." The potholes had been paved. The ride was a whole lot smoother. And the writer smiles.

The reader's story of my story being carried away in a gust of wind could serve as a metaphor for my writing. I struggle to maintain control of it. Oftentimes, it seems to get away from me and I find myself chasing after it. When I retrieve it, I try to piece it back together in a way that better reflects what had been in my mind all along. Sometimes, I succeed. Other times, I don't. When I don't, well that's what revisions and pre-production readers are for.

The way to better writing? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

The Kid in Me

The Kid is always looking for the kid I used to be. Always wanting him to come out to play.

Sometimes that kid in me is there. Out of the blue, he'll show up. He'll start singing silly novelty songs like "The Purple People Eater," "The Monster Mash," or "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini." Songs that the adult I am today had tucked away in the far recesses of my brain. Saving them up just so that The Kid could laugh at them, just like I did when I was a kid.

Other times, more frequent than I prefer to admit, that kid in me vanishes. I wonder where he goes. And if he’ll ever return.

A couple weeks ago, after I placed on The Kid’s head his Winnie the Pooh knit hat, he asked, “Why you no wear hat?”

“Why don’t I wear a hat?”

He looked up at me, eyes straining to see over the fold of the hat that covered his brows. “Uh-huh.”

His was a logical question. Why would I be imposing on him to wear a hat with ears on it if my own head didn't need one?

“Daddy doesn’t wear hats,” I told him, cringing even as I said it. The prosecution would jump all over my bare head.

“Why you no wear hats?”

“Why don’t I wear hats?” It was at this point in the interrogation that I’m pretty sure there was a short-circuit in my brain. Because when I knelt down, the words that came out were, “Daddy doesn’t like hats.”

I'd fallen into his carefully set trap. Oh, and here’s another confession, son: Daddy don’t like vegetables, either. And he’s not a particularly big fan of baths.

You could also see the monkeys churning inside that little head, trying to process it all.

“Why you no like hats, Daddy?”

The truth was, there was a time when I did like hats. When I was a kid, my Cubs baseball cap was pretty much sewn into my cranium. You couldn't pry it off of my head. Sometimes I even slept with it on. But as I got older and started to notice girls and what hats did to my stringy hair, well, the hat came off – and never went back on.

How do you explain that to a three-year-old? The answer, of course, is, you don’t. You change the subject. Or pretend that you didn’t hear the question. “Okay, we’ve got to go. Your mom’s waiting for us.”

A week later, another question. “What you be for Halloween?” He’d just been asked by a teacher at his daycare what he was going to be. At age three, he gets asked that a lot. At age forty-four, I don’t.

“I’m just going to be Daddy.”

He looked up at me, eyes straining to see over the fold of the hat that covered his brows. “No, what you going to be?” The hot lights shone down on me. Or was it just the sunlight?

“I’m not going to get dressed up.”

“Why?”

“Daddy doesn’t like costumes.”

You’d think that I’d learn from my prior mistakes, but, evidently, I don’t. There was a time in my life when I did like to wear costumes. Except for those cheap dime-store ones where snot would collect on the inside and the elastic would pinch the back of my head. But, again, that was when I was a kid.

Now the thought of dressing up in costume, well, it frightens me. But the reality is that the kid in me is still there, hiding behind the mask of an adult. Just waiting to jump out of a closet when The Kid least expects it.

Together we'll sing the lyrics from "Witch Doctor" that had been buried in my brain for over thirty years:

Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang

Walla walla , bing bang

Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang

Walla walla , bing bang.

And The Kid will smile.

The Table-Sitter

In baseball lingo, the lead-off hitter is commonly referred to as the table-setter. The one whose charge is to, well, set the table for the rest of the batters. It's his job to get on base, so that the other hitters can drive him home.

On a blustery Friday the 13th, the Chicago Writers Association held its first-ever reading event at The Book Cellar, in Chicago's trendy Lincoln Square neighborhood. Eight authors representing a mixture of fiction, non-fiction and poetry read from their works.

I was the one chosen to bat lead-off, to be the table-setter. At a little after 7 PM, I took a seat at a little table that had been set up for readers in the middle of the room, against a wall of books and magazines. Looking out from my vantage point, I noticed that every seat in the room was filled. Outside of the readings that I had done on my wedding day and at my book release party, this would be the largest crowd to which I'd ever read my words. The difference was, this time I didn't know most of the people to whom I would be reading.

Just about every night, I read to my son, age three. Even though the books I read are for kids, reading them out loud has made me more comfortable with hearing my voice when I read my own words. If you think about it, most people rarely, if ever, hear themselves read. When you read a book, ordinarily you don't speak the words. 

Now when I go out in public to read my own words, I put my mind in my son's bedroom, sitting on the floor, pillows plopped against his bed. That's the place where I was for the fifteen minutes when I was "on the stage" at The Book Cellar.

When I folded up the pieces of paper on which were the words to the first chapter of my novel-in-progress and placed them in my book, I felt pretty good about my readings. The reactions from the crowd were good. I got laughter and attentive quiet in all the right places.

Then something happened. The next author came up to replace me but didn't sit down. For fifteen minutes, she stood and read, her theatrical background clearly in evidence. She, not me, had set the table, as one author after another followed her lead and stood for their readings.

At one point, my dear wife commented, "You should have stood for your reading."

I nodded and gulped down the rest of my glass of Pinot Noir, realizing that I was not the table-setter for the night, but the table-sitter.

You can see all the other wonderful authors standing and yours truly sitting in this photo journal that I put together for the Chicago Writers Association's Web site.  

Takin' Care of Business

You get up every morning
From your 'larm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above
And people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty
And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed
Look at me I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day
And I'll be

Taking care of business (every day)
Taking care of business (every way)
I've been taking care of business (it's all mine)
Taking care of business and working overtime

~ lyrics from Bachman Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business"

Those lyrics are about the life of a musician, but they could just as well be about that of a writer. Or any artist for that matter.

Oftentimes I daydream of not having to wake up to that 'larm clock's warning. Then I go back to my day job.

Well, today I am takin' care of some book- and writing-related business, catching up on a few things that are going on or coming up, as I strive toward that goal of one day being self-employed.

• Mark your calendar. On Friday, October 13, I'll be joining seven of my friends from the Chicago Writers Association for a reading and book-signing event at the Book Cellar, 4736-38 North Lincoln Avenue, in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood. I'm penciled in to bat lead-off promptly at 7 PM and plan to read excerpts from both my published novel, Lost in the Ivy, as well as from my current novel-in-progress. Jen Wilding created this great promo flier (it's a .pdf, so you'll need Adobe Reader to open it) for the event. If you're a book lover, there's pretty much something for everyone: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Come by, get a glass of wine (yes, the Book Cellar sells vino!), and enjoy the readings of some local writing talent. It's got to be better than sitting at home all night watching a "Friday the 13th" movie marathon.
• Win a copy of Lost in the Ivy. MysteryAuthors.com is featuring Lost in the Ivy all this month. You can enter a contest to win a signed copy. There's no cost. All you have to do is send them an email. For full contest rules, check out their Web site.
• Library Project Update. Thanks to all those who've been assisting me with my Library Project. A little over a month ago I launched this project to get Lost in the Ivy in libraries. At the time, I wrote: "The best way to get your book read is to get it in the library. It's that simple. The Library Project is a simple idea aimed at achieving a simple, but worthwhile, goal: getting my book read and making it available to be read." Well, that simple goal is making modest headway. Two local libraries have ordered my book as a direct result of my Library Project. It's now in the stacks at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library (my friend Marybeth even checked it out!) and on order for acquisition at the Evanston Public Library.  The other places you can find it: Joliet Public Library; Chicagoland Underground Library;North Suburban Library District (Loves Park and Roscoe libraries); Cherry Valley Public Library District; Schaumburg Township District Library; Deerfield Public Library; and Wilmette Public Library. You can search the online catalogue of any of these libraries and you'll find my book. In some cases, there's even a picture of it. Check it out, literally.

Update on Monday, October 16, 2006 at 09:00PM by Randy Richardson

An update to the Library Project Update: Two more libraries either have Lost in the Ivy in their collection or on order. My book is now in the Skokie Public Library and on order at the Oak Park Public Library. That makes it four libraries that have either added or are working to add my book to their collection since I started this project. In total, ten libraries now have Lost in the Ivy on their shelves and two have it on order for acquistion. Now my hometown, Evanston, has it on order and the two surrounding suburban libraries, Wilmette and Skokie, have it available right now to be checked out. So I can take my son to any of the neighborhood libraries and point out to him my book. How cool is that?

Tooning In: Scooby-Doo and the Father-Son Connection

A long time ago, in a place not so far from where I am right now, both geographically and mentally, I was a kid. And when I was a kid, I did kid things. A few of my favorite kid things were tossing the ball against the house, cracking open packs of baseball cards and pestering my little sister. I was, quite obviously, easily entertained.

Like most kids, I was also hooked on TV. Long before satellite or even cable TV, the choices were few. In my house, there were six channels. Imagine a world without the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network. That is the one in which I grew up in. Yes, kids, a world like that actually existed. I see them shuddering right now, at the very thought of such an empty world.

What we did have were Saturday morning cartoons. After five days with your homeroom teacher, nothing was better than curling up in front of the TV and watching three hours straight of nothing but cartoons. This was Kid Time. I can't help but feel that kids today, spoiled by being able to watch cartoons 24/7, are, somehow, missing out on one of the true treasures of childhood – a special time that was just theirs. That, to me, is what Saturday mornings were.

By 1969, I was seven years old and already an established cartoon connoisseur. That year, man walked on the moon for the first time. However, much like today, a war in a faraway land divided America.

A scene from "What a Night for a Knight", the first episode of Scooby-Doo, Where are You! It was on a Saturday morning of that year, September 13 to be exact, that Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! made its CBS network debut with its first episode, "What a Night for a Knight."

At age seven, I didn't fully comprehend war, and I guess that adding thirty-seven years to my life hasn't changed that much. Cartoons were so much better than the real world outside my doors. Grown-ups don't always get that.

In 2002, Jamie Malanowski of the New York Times commented, "[Scooby-Doo's] mysteries are not very mysterious, and the humor is hardly humorous." You have to wonder if Jamie Malanowksi bypassed childhood and went straight to grown-up.

I suppose that purely from a grown-up perspective, Scooby-Doo is, well, rather immature. Isn't that the reason we, as kids, enjoyed watching it so much? We liked the idea that there was no situation Scooby wouldn't put himself in, just for one more Scooby Snack. And wasn't there a certain comfort in knowing that there really were no ghosts or monsters in the world, and that when the Mystery Inc. team pulled off the mask at the end of each episode, there was always a person (albeit, in cartoon form) behind it.

Before I became a parent, I spent a lot of time in front of the Boob Tube, watching mostly mindless programming. There's nothing wrong with that, we, as adults, need escapes from reality now and then.

When I became a parent, time became more precious to me. Something in my life had to give if I was going to continue to be a working father – and a writer. That's when I turned off television in my life, and I was surprised to find that I really didn't miss it.

At some point in my child's early development, a little before age one, I suppose, Mommy and Daddy began to realize that the TV set could, on occasion, temporarily fill the need of babysitter, so that we could actually get things done around the house, like bathing, cleaning and eating. At first, there were Baby Einstein videos. Then came the Wiggles and Thomas the Tank Engine. Next were the Little Einsteins and Dora the Explorer. As our child grew older, he wanted more and more – and, oftentimes, he wanted a parent to sit and watch with him.

So, for the second time in my life, I had reached a point where the bulk of my TV-viewing was in the form of programming aimed at kids, or cartoons. The difference being that now, watching them as an adult, I didn't find them in the least bit entertaining. Baby Einstein videos bored me. The Wiggles and Thomas made me squirm. The Little Einsteins and Dora annoyed me.

One day at the neighborhood video store, The Kid and I were browsing through the kids section, as we ordinarily do, and he picked up A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, one of the many incarnations of the Scooby-Doo mystery series.

The Pup series came after my time as a kid. The series follows the same format as the original series, the only difference being that the Mystery Inc. team – Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne – are all kids. You see them before they, well, grew up. Watching it with the mini version of me was kind of like being in an alternate universe, where there is you as a kid and you as a grown-up.

The Kid, like me thirty-seven years ago, has become a Scoobaholic. He can't seem to get enough of Scooby-Doo and his gang. He even makes Scooby-inspired jokes. When I tell him I don't want to do something, he says, "How 'bout for a Scooby Snack?"

The other day, the two of us, together, watched that very first Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode, "What a Night for a Knight." I don't recall whether my father watched it with me back in 1969. My guess is that he didn't, but I like to think that he did, and that there really is an alternate universe where there are no ghosts or monsters.