I am in the middle of enjoying the eclipse, and I would like to say that we are the ONLY people on our street out there watching. I do see plenty of television lights in the windows of the homes around us, however. Therefore, I have just renamed our avenue "Stupid Street." I told the cat this, and he seemed slightly amused.

Back out to the cold ...

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

--Billy Collins

This is pretty cool, so I thought I'd put the link here. I was directed there through the Freelance Switch site:

20 Resources for Freelancers from TutorialBlog

Hooray for New York City and the underused semicolon!

"Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location"
by Sam Roberts

As I have not put up a photo recently ... and as Lost is back and Desmond was just on ...




Is it wrong to think Jesus is hot??

I was directed to the post "Calling All Editors" in Publishers Weekly.

She asks "Whose responsibility is it these days to make sure that books don’t provide incorrect information?" I think it's everyone's. We can't all catch everything, and that is why there are different people for different tasks.

There should be people working on the manuscript before it even gets to the copyeditor, for things such as basic content, permissions issues, development, major consistencies. Then the copyeditor should fact-check (by which I mean a reasonable search to ensure proper nouns, facts, etc., are right, not read an essay to learn about the topic), fix grammar and spelling, watch the characters. The proofreader (if publishers hire them these days, which some do not, and if not means in my opinion that they are willing to accept formatting errors and typos) should catch all inconsistencies from MS to typesetting.

And hey, if reviewers catch things, then great! While they are pointing out these errors, maybe they should also send a note to the production dept. of that publisher and encourage them to increase their salaries so that good CEs and proofreaders would be willing to sign on. And if that error-filled work came from in-house, well, bonne chance!

The copyeditor can't be the fountain of knowledge on French beetle reproduction. The proofreader isn't hired to be a grammar goddess. The developmental editor probably won't check throughtout for consistency in hyphenation. If all could do one, I'd be out of a job.

I was sitting at the computer earlier, with the manuscript for my children's book project in front of me as I surfed the net looking for various poems to blog about later, when my doorbell rang. Typically the only person who rings my doorbell in the middle of the afternoon is the FedEx man, so I waited for him to leave the package, but then it rang again. I answered the door and had a very nice chat for a few minutes with two sisters of the Church of Latter-day Saints, and then I carried their literature inside.

Being the kind of person who analyzes every single thing for meaning, my first thought was that God was telling me (using a zenlike bell wake-up call) that I was once again using my precious work time on things other than work and I must refocus on the children's book. Then I realized that I had just met two disciples of the Lord in my yellow stars-and-moon pajama bottoms and my ragged fleecy top, and I decided that God was actually telling me to go take a shower and get dressed in some real clothes, for goodness' sake.

So I showered and dressed and dried my hair and enjoyed the lavender scent wafting around as I settled back in front of my children's book project ... and the doorbell rang.

I opened the door to see my postal carrier waving hello as she crossed the street back to her truck, and I see a wide blue box on the porch. I picked up the box, brought it in, opened it, and found it to be a Valentine's gift from my hubby. A Pajama-Gram.

Yes, he bought me pajamas.

Wouldn't you know that the bottoms are blue with yellow stars and moons ... !!

Oh, that God. What a sense of humor.

I absolutely hate to do it, but I had to ask a PE for a daylong extension on a project that is rather large. Instead of uploading it on Friday afternoon, I will finish it on the weekend and upload it so she has it first thing Monday morning. The difference in her receiving it on time or later will amount only to 2 or 3 hours in her work life, so in essence I will not be terribly late. It's just the principle of the thing. I hate hate hate returning projects even a minute late (just like apparently I hate saying no to taking an assignment).

The only reason I don't feel completely bad is that the same client had given me two other projects with short deadlines at the same time I have been working on finishing this project, so since it is their own work that made it difficult for me to finish this larger project, it's understandable to need the weekend, at least I think so.

If any freelancers out there read this blog, how do you feel about being late and handle it when you absolutely need more time?

You go, Eric Wilson!

For years and years I have honored my sad side (I like how he calls it "sweet sorrow") and told many a person in my life how it's an important part of my creative side, how so many creative works would never have come to pass if authors, painters, artists, musicians had "fixed" their sadness and worked to be happy more often. Like Wilson, I am also not for people living through clinical depression, but I wouldn't change the way I see things for the world. My emotions feed my poetry, my singing, my coming-together romance novel, and if that adds something melancholy, so be it.

I think this could come together with my U-shaped curve to bring on some serious creative writing! Let's hope so.

The Science of Fairy Tales

I adore science, of course, but this article is just too much. I hate to get all Fox Mulder on his ass, but Chris Gorski writes, "Suspend your imagination for a moment"!! Hey, why don't you just ask me to burn my Robin Hood book collection in the street, delete all my poetry, and run over my Beauty and the Beast DVD??

No, seriously, I don't mean to rank on Chris. He is the messenger, and the message of brown hair being stronger than blond is rather good to know. (Brunettes rock.)

For a fair back-and-forth, I must quote our favorite team:

Mulder: I've seen too many things not to believe.
Scully: I've seen things too, but there are answers to be found now. We have hope that there's a place to start. That's what I believe.
Mulder: You put such faith in your science, Scully, but . . . the things I've seen, science provides no place to start.
Scully: Nothing happens in contradiction to nature; only in contradiction to what we know of it. So that's a place to start. That's where the hope is.

It's only Tuesday and already I've had to get out the chocolate-chip cookies to keep me going. Not a lot of sleep last night. I had the dog show on while working, and then I dreamed that our cat turned into a miniature schnauzer, beard and all. Wishful thinking? You tell me.

Okay, something strange is going on ...

I just started editing a romance manuscript that I felt would be similar in style to a book I edited a while ago, so I am using the style sheet template from that previous book and updating it as I go on this new romance.

I get to the name of a California restaurant and I check the name (I'm not familiar with it because I am an east coast gal, of course) and I go to type it on the style sheet, and then I see that it is already on the sheet from the last book, and it was on the exact same MS page number as the last book.

SPOOKY!!!

Once again I have taken on a number of really good projects that are going to overlap, and once again I have booked up every last free second of my life so that over the next three weeks I will not be able to do much else but (a) work, (b) eat, (c) watch Lost, (d) work out, and (e) sleep. In that order. It is very doable as long as I get up early, stay on task, and stick to my breakdown of each project.

I will manage to keep a long-scheduled lunch date with a very good friend and fellow freelancer, but I'm afraid I'll have to postpone another afternoon out. I hate to do it, but these schedules are way too tight for me to leave the house during the day for the next couple weeks.

Today I spoke to a mortgage broker for an informal review of possible scenarios. We are doing okay, but with tax season coming and after hearing the real numbers involved in affording a decent home around here these days, I am grateful for all the freelancing I have. Perhaps when I am exhaused next week I won't feel like an Einstein for having booked myself silly, but right now I am grateful.

Favorite new song and video!!!!

New Soul -- Yael Naim

[Doesn't hurt that I heard it first on the Mac commercial!]

Here's a Canadian freelance writer's piece on working from home.

Telecommuting by Paul Lima

It's nice to get our neighbor's view.

Saw this today on my travels. How great! And just what I was thinking!!!