Challenge Continues

So today's "Build Your Writing Platform" challenge is to join Facebook. Well, yes, I have TWO accounts. I have my personal one which is private and for my friends and family. The other one is public and for anyone at all. So, my public one is:https://www.facebook.com/LeeAnnJacksonRhoden.
What I did finally do, is I completed the profile on my public page and actually started posting some pictures of what I've up to professionally. Looking forward to trying that again too.

You'd think with Little Man in school I'd have tons of time to do this sort of thing. But, there is just never enough time in the day....

Exciting Times

I know it is the middle of summer with the solstice and Independence Day behind us. We are looking at days becoming shorter, cooler and the next holiday is Labor Day which marks the end of summer. Yet, there is a lot of spring going on in my life right now. By spring I mean new beginnings and fresh starts.

First, Little Man has begun potty training. This is a new beginning for us. Soon I won't have diapers to change and he'll experience more independence. It's the end of babyhood, the end of intimacy between us. Soon, he'll be bathing himself and the personal barrio will be put up. We'll no longer be one the way only a mother and child can be. It is the spring of his boyhood and really the beginning of his life.

Second, the first round of self-edits are done on my novel Murder at the Primrose Inn and it is in the hands of my first readers. This is an unofficial edit. I'm using beta readers for many of the edits and a professional editor when it is as clean and interesting as it can get. I know that the manuscript is raw and just one step above a rough draft but the prospect of someone reading my work with a criticizing eye (which is different from a critical eye) makes me nauseous. This is the spring of my first novel. It is the beginning of it becoming the best it can be. Very soon it will not be just a hope or a dream, it will be real.

Finally, the really BEST news of all! My writer's group will be launching an e-magazine (an e-zine) in November of this year. It will be a literary magazine (duh, what else would it be) focusing on Georgia and South Carolina writers; published or unpublished. We have named our periodical Red Clay in honor of the southern soil and because words, like clay, must be molded into form. That's not my line, that's from one of our members, Tim. I liked it so I used it. It is the beginning of something new for us, a spring, well, a spring off anyway.

I Don't Sit at the Cool Table

Growing up we moved around a lot. We finally settled in a small town when I was in 4th grade. Seems early enough to settle in but it was one of those small towns where unless your parents were born there, and you were born there, then you just didn't quite fit in. It doesn't matter to an adult because adults have other concerns that take precedence to fitting in. To a kid, however, it can be consuming.

As a result of being an "outsider," I didn't get to sit at the cool table in school. I did have lots of friends that ranged across the strata of high school society. I had band friends (even though the extent of musical ability is to recognize that music is playing), geek friends (even though I wasn't quite as smart as they were), motor head friends (mostly because my brother was a motor head and they had awesome muscle cars), derelict friends (even though I had ambitions) and even a jock or two (mostly males needing the answers to Mr. Sullivan's English Lit. test). The cool kids, especially the cool girls, excluded me.

Life went on and I went to college, got married, got divorced, had success in several career paths, made a lot of good friends, owned my own home, bought several cars, got married again, moved around a bit, had a baby, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. In all that time, not being a cool girl didn't bother me or matter. Oddly, the social media phenomenon of Facebook has reconnected some of us as friends as adults.

Still, there lingers that background insecurity of not being quite good enough to be cool. This insecurity resurfaced the other day at my son's school when the cool moms were gathered in the parking lot. These are the moms with the coordinating jewelry and make-up. Their workout shoes match their cashmere hoodies and the piping on their yoga pants. They gather in the parking lot near their Escalades/Suburbans/Expeditions to arrange a Zumba/hot-yoga/pilates/mani-pedi/coffee get together. Our children are friends, but I am not cool enough. At least that's what it felt like when their conversation stopped until I'd passed by them.

Truth is, I've got a good 10 - 15 years on these gals and I don't fall into their generation. And even if I were to be invited to the Zumba/hot-yoga/pilates/mani-pedi/coffee get together I'd probably turn it down. Really? Zumba, hot-yoga, pilates? I can't do that anymore! I'm, um, over thirty-five! I'm not the mani-pedi type either. Coffee? Maybe. As long as it's not organic or low fat. Besides, my muscle car could put their SUV in the dust. Wanna have some real fun ladies? Let's hit the time track!

I know that these sub-surface insecurities have in some way driven me down certain paths or caused me to put I extra effort to try to be an over-achiever. That's not a bad thing. I have to wonder what childhood situations may have affected my characters' personalities and given them an underlying impetus to their actions as the adults I write about. Should I include a FULL biography, to include childhood, as part of their back stories? Does it matter in the end? And all of my characters are cool, even if I'm not.

Technology

I'm a reasonably intelligent person, however, dealing with Technology can leave me frustrated, short-tempered and near tears mired in insecurity and emotional abandonment. Yes, Technology has left me behind. I call it Technology because along with Earth, Fire, Wind and Water, it has become the fifth element.

I grew up in an age of rotary phones and televisions you had to manually change the channels on (that means turn the knob). I learned to type on a typewriter! Not even an electric one!! Microwave ovens didn't come out until I was in middle school. Our first "remote control" had a looooong cord that went from the controller to the VCR. The VCR was the size of a small car which was okay because the TV was a gigantic piece of furniture. We got our first computer when I was in high school. It actually used floppy discs. The big floppy ones! And you had to type in C:\\ as an opening statement. That's right, DOS! *gasp*

I was excited in 1988 to purchase my first home that was pre-wired for phones and cable in every room! And they were phone outlets - you plugged the phone cord in yourself! WOW! In 1995 I purchased my first microwave when my toaster oven died. And in 1998 I made the BIG leap. My father bought me a computer (the floppy discs were the hard 3" ones then) and I got my first cell phone! Let's just say that both devices were large. The "technology" to use these things was not very challenging either. It took very little time or emotional involvement to deal with them. Now the computers and phones are smaller and they are merging. There is something unholy about it.

This weekend I got my first "smart" phone. I was amazed at how deftly the young man with the tight jeans, man scarf and faux-hawk could caress the phone and manipulate it -  bringing up different screens, flip them around, open something new, go back and return it to the home page. I was lost and just wanted to play peek-a-boo with my toddler. Personally, I don't care what anyone under the age of 35 says, Technology is not simple or intuitive. It is mocking and manipulative. And I'm pretty sure it is male. I say this because my husband and two-year-old son have no problem with it.

An excerpt from this weekend:

Me: (angry) This @$!?&*% phone is broken. It froze.

Husband: What happened?

Me: (whining) I was trying to set up this app. I got to this page and pressed "next" but nothing happened.

Husband: Hmmm. Did you go back?

Me: It won't let me.

Husband: What are you doing now?

Me: (near tears) Pressing "next" again.

Husband: Why? It didn't work the first time.

Me: (having a nervous breakdown) Maybe it didn't understand. Maybe it didn't hear me. Maybe if I keep pressing the &*%$@?! button, it will finally work!

Long story short, it works now. I can answer the phone and send text messages on it and that's good for me right now.

Since we are updating our fixer-upper house, we are also updating the electrical things like outlets and switches. While we were putting these things in the cart, my husband starts to look at the complicated electrical things for the office we will be working on at some point. These things had USB ports, AV inputs and other outlets I've never SEEN before. So what's next? A "smart" house? Cars that drive themselves? Soylent Green?

My main character, Walter, is also not technologically savvy. He, like me, prefers to use the computer and phone as the tools they are and not as a way of life (head down, ear buds in, unconscious to the rest of the world). However, times are changing and Technology is here to stay (and manipulate us, and alter our world view). Since I am not up-to-date on these things, this is where I have to do research when characters show up who are technically skilled. So, if you see me in a puddle of tears, notebook open, pen in hand, standing in front of the Geek Squad counter being stared at by a young man with a man scarf and faux-hawk, I'm just doing research.

Friend Me

Technology and social media has made it possible for people from all over the world to connect with one another. It’s an amazing thing to be able to email, text, tweet, Facebook, Pinterest, instant message and let people know what you are doing and what you are interested in at the very moment you type it into your tech device. But the question that has been haunting me for several days is: are we really connected?

Initially, I was going to make a comment about Christmas cards in contrast to mass tweets/texts/emails. After all, it is that time of year. I was going to be a little snarky (love the word Allison!) and voice my opinion on how these methods of communication has made us lazy. After all, why put in the effort to individually let people know you care when you can just send a mass email? And by sending mass communications we have lost our individuality and become a collective and anonymous thus less important to one another. Really, when was the last time you sat down and wrote a letter to someone? And then I was going to bring it all back to the characters in my novel and their relationships to one another because I am writing a novel and I want people to read it when I’m done.

But in light of the horrible tragedy that took place on Friday the question of connectivity is even more important. Are we really connected? What we do with all our postings is outreach which is nothing more than marketing really. We are offering ourselves, our interests, our thoughts, our goings-on to the public at large. “Look at me! Look at me!” But do we ever really reach out? When was the last time you had a real conversation with a friend over coffee or lunch or sitting on a park bench? Or offered to help someone on a personal level?

We will eventually have the conversations about mental illness, gun control, community values, computer games and security procedures. That’s just great. But ask yourself why these things didn’t happen thirty years ago with the frequency they do now? What was different? What did we have then that we don’t have now? I suggest we had real connections with each other.

So this holiday season, while you are tweeting where you are eating your holiday feast and pinning the sweater your Great-aunt Fanny knitted for you, try to take some time to have a real conversation with an old friend or a new one.