Because It's There

I am fascinated by Mt. Everest. When I read Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, I was riveted. Right now, on The Discovery Channel is a show called, Everest: Beyond the Limit. It's feeding my fascination for this mountain.

It isn't that I have (or ever had) any interest in climbing Everest. I did a lot of mountain climbing as a kid with my family and I was never that crazy about it. And these were just hikes in the Rockies, not technical climbing. I used to get a lot of blisters, so that probably colored my impressions of it. No, the fascination with Everest is more about the limits of being human. As a species, we're equipped for so little. No real defensive weapons. No fur. No big teeth. No gills. Yet there are very places on Earth that our feet haven't tread. Everest would have been a natural thing to avoid. The old "because it's there" philosophy is still in effect. People climb to challenge themselves. They push themselves beyond their limits (hence the title of the Discovery show) and some will make it to the top, others will fail, still others will die trying.

Perhaps it's the spectre of death that also adds to the fascination of Everest. This is never a guarantee that a person can climb the mountain and make it home alive. Over 200 people have died climbing Everest. And every year there continue to be hardy souls who desperately want to be among few who have made it.

So what things fascinate you? Things you have no intention of doing or seeing, but simply interest you as a spectator of sorts?

PublishAmerica: A Vanity Printer in Disguise

When it comes to bad publishers, the worst is PublishAmerica. One could write a book about how bad PA is and they'd probably agree to publish it. You see, they don't read the books they accept. If their daily quota hasn't been filled, they'll accept every manuscript that comes in. Their editing appears to be an automated spellcheck that includes so many misspellings as to make it almost comical. They are print on demand, or POD, and often their books will fall apart in your hands. This is especially egregious since their prices are far above market value -- paperbacks for $30 are common among PA books. They pay their authors $1.00 advance -- why that isn't a huge clue for writers I'll never know. The advance is the only guaranteed money you'll make on your book -- and royalties. Of course, they cheat the royalties, never paying for the true number of books sold.

And who gets those sales? The author. PA's business model isn't about selling books to the public. It's about selling books to its authors. In short, it's a vanity press that claims to be a "traditional publisher". I guess that dollar makes them think they're in that club. Authors are expected to do all of the marketing for their books. The titles are available on online stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but you'll rarely find them on the shelves in bookstores. If you do find one, you can bet that the author personally made that happen, usually at their own expense. PA encourages authors to buy copies of their own books. That's how PA makes its money. They have over 20,000 authors and the average sales per book is about 75. When you realize that 5,000 books sold is barely a success for a small publisher, then you can understand how impossible it is to have any success with a PA book.

When authors wake up and realize what PA is, they'll often try to get their rights back. PA's contract specifies that they own the rights to your book for 7 years. That's a long time to have your baby mistreated. When authors do get their rights back through arbitration or other means, PA keeps selling their books. With absolutely no legal rights to the material, and without paying even the paltry royalties they usually send, PA continues to illegally sell the books they don't own.

There is a lot of information about PA on the web. Predators and Editors has a good write-up with lots of links and Absolute Write has an entire forum for it in the Bewares and Background Checks area. If you've got a book out with PA and you're waking up to who your "publisher" really is, check out the forum asap.

It breaks my heart to read the stories of what's happened to people who fall for these various scams. Every one of them had the dream to be a published author and that's what these sharks feed on. They know that people will do almost anything to realize that dream.

If you want to break in and are looking for an agent or publisher and something comes along that seems fast and easy, that's a huge red flag. It's not a fast and easy dream. It's not about getting a lot for very little effort. To be a successful writer you have to work hard, pay your dues, learn every day, and maybe, just maybe, the real thing will come along. It's a myth that new writers can't get published. Every writer was new at some point. 20% of books that came out this year were from new writers. It's also a myth that new writers can't get an agent. Of course they can if they have a marketable book. That's the true key to success, you see. You have to write a really good book. And if that one doesn't sell, write a better one. Keep trying, keeep getting better and eventually you'll have a genuine agent and will get published by a real publisher. It's not fast and it's not easy, but it is achievable.

Aren't your dreams worth the effort?

On Playing Games

If you know me, you already know this: I love playing games. Board games, computer games, video games, puzzles, you name it. Being very competitive, I play to win. This has lost me some game-playing partners in the past, as friends decide it's not fun to lose every single time. Although I could probably throw a game to keep a player interested, I am apparently incapable of thinking of this while a game is in progress.

When I was a kid, my family played a lot of games. We would have Tripoley night, where we'd all sit around the dining room table (not the kitchen table, where we had most of our meals, but the big "company is coming" dining room table) and play. I always got excited on Tripoley night because I loved the game, playing with my family, and feeling grown up enough to play with adults.

My mom loves playing games (Dad was more into sports than games, but he'd play sometimes, too). In January, she'll be 81 and has already pointed out that it means she won't be able to play all the games rated for ages 8-80. We're considering flaunting the rules, but agreed that she'll have to earn it. That said, I was talking to her yesterday and only after 25 minutes did I notice she was breathing a little differently. Turns out she'd been on her exercise bike the whole conversation. I was so impressed I gave her a six-month extension on the gaming age limit. Yeah, I'm that generous.

The extension is necessary because otherwise she wouldn't be able to play Rapidough with me. Rapidough is one of my favorite games. Made and sold in the UK, it's sort of like Pictionery with Play-Doh. You can play it with kids and adults and it's usually uproarious fun. Whichever team(s) loses has to remove a plug of Play-Doh. By the end, you can be playing with something the size of a pea and desperately trying to shape an oasis with it (yup, that's a real card – oasis).

For online games, I like to play on Pogo. Tons of great games on the site and they offer both a free and paid membership. With the free membership, you'll have ads, intermissions and about half the games available. Paid membership gets you an ad-free, intermission-free experience with all games available. A friend won us memberships last year (my lottery partner – she wins all the time) and I've had a blast playing the games, earning badges, playing in a league, etc. I have to be disciplined about the amount of time I spend on there, but for a quick 15 minute break, it's a blast.

My lottery-playing friend and I also enjoy playing adventure games together. We each get the game, then talk on the phone while we play, solving the puzzles together, figuring out where to go next, etc. She lives across the country, so we can't do it in person, but when she came to visit me we spent several hours playing a Nancy Drew adventure game and had an absolute blast.

One of the classic game-playing stories of my youth involved a rousing game of Jeopardy, the home version. My family still can't speak of it without gales of laughter.

Some people dismiss games as unproductive, time-wasting and trivial. Not me. Games are delightful, can be a perfect way to spend an evening with friends or family and almost always cause a lot of laughter. Laughing is one of the healthiest things you can do in life.

Aliens Are Dancing on the Milky Way

This is my one and only music video. The song is "Aliens Are Dancing On the Milky Way" and unfortunately, the sound quality isn't that great. This is a better audio version. The video was done the old-fashioned way -- drawing each frame in Appleworks and then putting it all together in iMovie. Okay, that doesn't sound all that old-fashioned, but what I meant was that I didn't use fancy computer imaging software. I just drew everything freehand.

I wrote the music about three years ago when I first discovered Garageband on my (at that time) new Mac. I adored the program as soon as I tried it. The song's musical bed is made with loops over which I created a melody and wrote some lyrics. I sang into the pinhole mic on my Mac (I've now got much better sound equipment) and had a blast. I love to sing, especially jazz, and Aliens is a salute to the novelty tunes many jazz singers used to perform.

I hope you enjoy it!

I Have An Idea...!

I decided to join a blog chain through Absolute Write because it sounded like fun. Each person writes a post inspired by the previous post. Samuel Tinianow's blog So You Majored in Creative Writing; Now What? is my jumping off point. He wrote about the misconceptions and delusions people have about writing as a career and he nailed that subject. It's astonishing how little people know, even those who wish to enter the field. He also talks about the fears people have that others will steal their ideas or manuscripts.

I've had my share of interesting encounters with writers, as well. The most aggravating, however, are the people who aren't writers, but have an idea. I don't know where the misconception comes from that ideas are on a par with the actual work of writing an entire project.

When I worked on a half hour comedy at Universal Studios, it was amazing how many people thought that might be their ticket into show biz. People would hear what I did and would immediately say, "I have this great idea for a sitcom. We should team up. I'll tell you the idea, you write it and we'll split it 50/50." What a sweet deal! That person gets to tell me a sentence (because the ideas were rarely more than a vague, general thought usually based on wherever they worked. "You should set a sitcom in this doctor's office! It's crazy here!") and I get to sweat and slave over writing an entire sitcom bible. (A bible can include a pilot episode, several ideas for future episodes, complete character work-ups, and so on.) Of course, there was always that fear that the Hollywood type (that would be little old Wisconsin-born me) would steal that magnificent one sentence idea and make millions. Despite this trepidation, they would usually tell me their idea anyway, even if I asked them not to. When you work on a TV show you really don't want people telling you ideas on the off chance there is an episode vaguely similar already in the works.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this is the assumption that I don't have the capacity to think up my own ideas! No, I need this clerk, waitress, long lost high school acquaintance, message board alias, or whomever to provide me with inspiration. It's rather like thinking of writers as typists. We don't have a clue what to do until someone else provides that crucial idea ("Here's a great idea for an episode: Have the main characters get locked in a freezer! That would be hilarious!" Yeah, loved it on "I Love Lucy" and nearly every sitcom since.)

It's not that I blame people for trying. Sometimes the ideas are good and they've fleshed them out. To those people I say, "Good idea. You should write it yourself." And when I invariably get, "I'm not good at writing. I want you to do it." I tell them that I have lots of ideas of my own and am not interested in writing theirs. I had a screenwriting professor who used to say, "Ideas are worth about a dime. The script is what brings in the real money." No one appears to want a deal where I get paid however many thousands for the script and I give the "idea man" ten cents from that paycheck. Go figure.

Bottom line is, if you have a good idea for a movie, TV show, book or any other piece of creative work, that's great. Just don't look for someone else to do all the work. You'll never see an opening credit on a movie that says, "Based on a Sentence Thought Up by Joe Jones".

Now, if only I can come up with an idea for tomorrow's blog entry...

The Absolute Write Blog Chain Participants:

Virginia Lee: I Ain't Dead Yet!
Playing With Words
A View from the Waterfront
A Thoughtful Life
Gillian Polack: Food history
So, You Majored in Creative Writing; Now what?
Life in the Middle
Finding Boddie; A Simple Way to Snort Your Breakfast
Kappa No He
awchain
Start clicking the links -- there are some wonderful blogs listed.

Some final thoughts on my series about fictional role models.

I had a lot of fun delving into my childhood memories, thinking about which characters made an impact on me. Most I discovered as a child, but there were some I came to later in life. We're never too old to learn from good examples. I discovered Wonder Woman comics in the 90s and that's when I 'met' Etta Candy. You may have noticed that her write-up was a bit different than the others (talking about girlhood role models and bondage in the same breath? Who is this weird blogger?). That's because I'd written that piece a couple of years ago for another publication but decided against sending it in. Rather than let it gather dust on the hard drive, I figured I'd pop it into this series because bondage aside, Etta is an extremely cool character and would be an excellent role model for a little girl with low self-esteem about weight or height or other societal constructs where one is deemed "lesser than" because of appearance.

Most of these highlighted characters had elements of fundamental archetypes. These enduring, almost mythical characters become part of our shared psyche. As mridu said in her comment on Mary Poppins, "These really are timeless and borderless role models." Two people on opposite sides of the globe and we share a love and admiration for these wonderful female characters who helped shape our lives.

There were a lot of names on my list that I didn't get to. I didn't want to wear out my welcome with this series. I figured one week's worth was enough. Everyone from the Bionic Woman (I'm old school and prefer the Jamie Summers of the 70s, but I'm giving the new series a chance) to Scarlett O'Hara (she had an impact on me as an teenager, but this series was about pre-teen heroes) to Cassie Sandsmark (for the modern pre-teen).

Don't know who Cassie Sandsmark is? You probably can see the similarity between our last names. Cassie is a character in the DC Universe who became Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl has a long and storied history, but she's always been associated with Wonder Woman. Sometimes it's difficult to explain the relationship (especially since Wonder Girl began as simply Wonder Woman in her youth). Cassie is the daughter of Helena Sandsmark and the neice of... well, me.

When John Byrne took over the Wonder Woman comic book, he created the Sandsmark family as supporting players. Originally, he had an Italian name in mind. I was talking to him on IM and joked, "Where are all the Scandinavian characters in comics? We get Thor and that's it?" I was just playing with him, but he decided on the spot to name Cassie and Helena after me. "You'll be Cassie's aunt," he said. The comic fangirl in me went a bit giddy at the thought of my name being a part of comics history, especially when Cassie became Wonder Girl. In one of those bizarre life coincidences, I had the nickname "Channa, the Wonder Girl" decades before Cassie was created. It, too, was just a joke. If you say "Joanna" in a fast, plaintive voice, it sort of sounds like "Channa". My friends tagged me with 'Wonder Girl' because it seemed to fit the name. Had nothing to do with the towel pinned around my neck, I promise.

Funny how sometimes life goes full circle, isn't it? I started reading comic books and Nancy Drew books, and watching amazing movies like The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins when I was very young. They spoke to me then and they still speak to me now. I have a deep and abiding love for these fictional characters and I hope I have lived my life in a way that would make them proud (if, in fact, they were real. I do understand the difference, I promise). There are hosts of real role models, living or passed, that deserve all the plaudits we can give them. For me, the person who holds the title at the top of that list is my mother. If I am half the person she is, I'll be more than happy. But for a book, movie and TV lover, well, there's nothing quite like finding that special character who shows us our own potential.

I hope you enjoyed the series.

Fictional Role Models, Part Seven: LOIS LANE

From the title of her comic book, one might think Lois Lane's only claim to fame was her being Superman's Girlfriend. That tag was emblazoned on every cover, giving her an identity based only on the man she loved. But Lois Lane was so much more. She was a star reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. She would do almost anything to get a story. She was single, attractive, made good money, had a great career, and although she was head over heels in love with Superman, she never defined herself in so limited a manner.

Lois was a liberated, hard-working woman who was courageous to a fault, dug deep for her stories, and wasn't afraid to show the world her intelligence (except when something caused her to have a giant, outsized brain. That was always a bit embarrassing). She was considered on a par with her male counterpart at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent (he of the glasses and red cape sticking out of his shirt tail). They would often fight for stories and despite Clark's obvious advantages, Lois would hold her own.

Her biggest downfall was how desperately she wanted to marry Superman. Time after time she would plot ways to ensnare the Man of Steel, only to lose him in the end. Did some of her methods border on the ridiculous? Oh, yeah, one could say that. But dangit, at least she was imaginative!

It wasn't that Superman was the only man in her life, either. She fell in love at the drop of a hat, sometimes, and had more than her share of admirers. Naturally, something always went terribly wrong, but despite tears and a broken heart she was always fine by the next issue. Heck, she was over it in the next story in the same book. That's resilience!

In the 70's, Lois got a lot hipper and more "relevant". She changed herself into a black woman to experience prejudice (look for revisit of that issue in the coming weeks in my other blog, (Comic Books Revisited), marched in protest, wore clothes with fringe – she was a mod, contemporary chick who was far out and right on and 100% groovy. Dig it?

I absolutely adored reading Lois Lane comics when I was a little girl. She had no superpowers and yet she was fearless, wore her heart on her sleeve, was smart and had her own career. Wowzers, what's not to love? Surely one can ignore the occasional insect body and giant brain when there's so much else to admire.

This concludes my weeklong tribute to fictional role models. Tomorrow, I'll give some final thoughts and then I'll move on to other topics.