SO YOU WROTE IT. NOW WHAT?

The time is always right for writing, and the first step in getting a book in print is to write it.  You can't print what you don't have, so first things first.  And so, you write your book.  Now what?  From personal experience I can tell you that your job as a writer is a long way from finished.  Getting it in print is easy enough in this day and age of self-publishing, and you can get that done free or with very little cost.  You can get your book on sale easy enough in a number of venues, but that doesn't mean much in terms of sales.  Just because it's there doesn't mean anyone is going to buy it.  I've got seven books for sale on Amazon at the moment, and so far, that's a waste of time.

Some of my books have sold locally, and the feedback has been good.  Most people who buy one book come back and get another . . . and another.  I'm learning something from that, which is:  you've got to work the market that offers to most promise.  Many of my books are about Texas, and that's where I live.  I get asked, "Is this book about Texas?"  Yes, I can tell them.  I always knew that my books of adventure would sell if I could get people started reading them.  Texans are big on Texas, and it's only natural they'd like to read about it.

I know several singers down here in the Lone Star State that make a very good living without ever leaving the state.  They don't need Nashville or L.A. or New York because they've tailored their music to fit Texas.  One of these performers could draw big crowds outside the state, but he seldom crosses state borders to do that.  He's working the audience he most appreciates . . . and they sure as hell appreciate him.  With a population of close to 25 million, three of the top ten largest cities in America, there's opportunity enough right here.  That's the reading audience I'm going after, and Texans do like to read, especially if you're writing about something they understand.

I write about contemporary cowboys, and there's is no state in the union with more of them than Texas.  I write about rural life, about common, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.  I write about the average guy's struggle for survival and about his occasional rise above the commonplace.  I write about the plight of the little guy, and I take shots at the power brokers and politicians and corporate businesses that screw things up for that little guy.  I'm a writer with a populist zeal, but I'm not a crusader or champion of virtuous causes.  I just tell it like it is (or how I see it) in terms of looking from the middle up . . . and down.  And I always try to find some humor in almost everything.  I'd rather leave the reader with a smile than in tears.  I'm a cautious optimist, a writer who likes to give the ordinary citizen something to feel good about.  And I'm all about Texas.

I don't mind, of course, if anyone else reads my books.  I recently found a review of one of my books online . . . being sold in Europe.  Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talking about.  Maybe I can export a little of Texas other places.  There's more to us, you know, than just bragging.

RETIREMENT NESTEGG? HUH?

I just read an article on a news website concerning seven ways you could easily blow your retirement nestegg.  My first thought was, "What nestegg?"  Exactly what audience do you think you're speaking to here, maybe ten percent of those who retire?  Are we talking white collar class retirement?  Doesn't matter 'cause most people who retire don't have a nestegg.  If they're lucky, they have a retirement system they paid into for many years and can draw monthly payments on that . . . and there's always the meager social security checks, if you paid into that.  But there's no savings account, or bonds, or stock holdings, or any sort of cash build-up for most folks.

But there's always the good advice about how to avoid having your retirment money sapped away, and of the seven ways to lose your money, I ran into several of them.  Don't have a house note, the article said.  Huh?  Most retired people still pay house payments, unless they dump their property upon retirement.  Don't support other folks, like your kids and grandkids.  Ah, duh.  Maybe the writer isn't old enough to know what that's like for older people with kids and grandkids.  Don't run up credit card debt.  Smart idea, but that's hard to avoid.  Don't drive cars that are expensive to repair, or cost lots of money to buy.  Another smart idea, but all cars are expensive to repair.  Again, sounds to me like the writer has never been there when it comes to aging.  Don't travel, too expensive.  Got it, and I don't do it.  Don't spend too much on your hobbies.  Sorry, already did that.

I could add lots of other things, especially for people who don't have nesteggs to fall back on.  Don't live above your means, meaning do some planning.  Don't retire to any place (state or city) where property taxes are outrageous.  Don't retire to places where rentals and property prices are out of sight.  Don't give away any money that's not absolutely necessary - charities, churches, relatives, or civic projects.  Old people are an easy target for these folks, so be aware of that.  And plan for taxes 'cause they're damn sure not going away when you retire and start getting old.  And finally, depending on your situational/conditional factors, think about another country as a place to retire.  Yeah, I know, you want to be close to your friends and kids and all that.  If you can live somewhere else for half what it costs to live here, it might be worth it. 

I met a man who didn't plan well for retirement.  He thought he was doing the right thing with investments, ended up losing it all, and was left with nothing to live on but social security, which was about $1,400 a month.  His wife, a school teacher, was still working, had about two more years to go before retirment, but she had not invested in a teacher retirement fund and would likewise receive only social security.  He moved to Ecuador where he could get along well on his S.S., and a couple of years later, she joined him there.  With about $2,800 a month to live on, they did very well.  They bought a nice condo and even opened a small books store, and ejoyed life . . . and had enough money left over to come back to the U.S. twice a year to visit kids and grandkids. 

Here in a small town in central Texas, that much money would only get me half way there in just being able to survive.  We have a nice house, good transportation, eat well, have hobbies, and it takes about $7,000.00 a month to live here.  And that's with  no savings and nothing left over . . . month to month.  Oh, how I'd love to bail out of here and join those retirees down in Ecuador or some other country where living expenses are much less.  Nothing about that scares me, and I entertain myself by doing research on various countries . . . but it will never happen.  I'm trapped by old age, too many obligations, and a craving to see my kids and grandkids more than twice a year.  I can afford to stay here and not live in poverty, even without a nestegg.  And I'm lucky . . . so far.

Whoever wrote the article about retirement offered good advice, but they sure don't know the realities of what it's like here in America.  Even good planning can't save you from economic woes in your old age.  I look around me and see most people my age still working, still trying to make enough money to keep the leeches satisfied and the wolves at bay.  And if you can't see yourself retired in this country on less than $5,000 a month, start thinking Ecuador, or Panama, or Costa Rica, or Malaysia, or wherever you can actually live and not just survive.  It's either that or the leeches and wolves, and they are always hungry.

HOW IMPORTANT ARE ROOTS?

Everyone knows that roots are important to plants of all kinds, but are they important to people?  Oh, I'd say very much so, and for the same reasons most plants can't survive without them.  Take a tree, for instance.  I've studied trees some and was amazed at how complex they are.  In fact, the tree might well be the most dynamic living thing on this planet, and we pretty much take them for granted.  That's stupid on our parts because we can't survive without them, and that's because they are a part of our roots system - that part we're unaware of. 

We usually think of roots as our family background, our social status, our homes and jobs and other things that provide our basis of security.  Foundation, that's the word we most think of when it comes to roots, and that should include our environment and not just our physical setting.  I won't go into all the scientific reassons we can't live without trees.  My expertise in that are is shallow, but it's deep enough for me to know they are part of our root system.  And we are much like the trees, even from a nutritional viewpoint.  Some tree have roots that reach deep into the earth to obtain the nutrition they need, but others have shallow roots.  Would it surprise you to know that many desert plants don't have deep roots?  Take the creosote plant, for example.  It has shallow roots that spread along the ground so that it can catch as much mositure as possible from the infrequent rains that fall.  In doing that, it pushes out other plants that would compete with it for the water or other nutrients.

We're very much like the creosote plant, that little desert bush, in that we do the same.  Most of us have shallow roots that spread, and since there's just so much space available, that means we're in competition with others to get what we need to survive.  To do more than survive, meaning we want to actually prosper, we need to spread more, and that means pushing someone else aside.  It's the way of nature, I suppose, that survival of the fittest thing.  I realize that's the way it is, but I still don't like it.  Perhaps we do prosper by controlling as much space as possible, taking what we need at other's expense, but does that really make us prosperous?

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.  If in time we don't learn to conserve, to take just what we need, we'll end up in a situation where there's nothing left for us.  We're doing that because people are a much worse blight on the earth than is that little creosote bush.  It's greedy to a point, but our greed doesn't seem to have a point where enough is enough.  Think about that, and then take a look at what's going on around you.  Better yet, walk out into the desert and find a nice healthy creosote bush.  It looks pretty good, but there's quite a bit of bare ground around it.  It's healthy for the time being but in time that bare ground around it could be its doom.  Say, for instance, a rancher comes along who wants to graze cattle there, and he thinks the creosote bush is his enemy.  He wants
grass, not an ugly little bush cows don't eat.  Get the point?

ALMOST COWBOY: MY JOURNEY INTO POETRY

I wrote my first poem in the fifth grade as part of a homework assignment, and my teacher entered it in a contest . . . and it won.  I was mortified.  Winning meant I had to get up in front of the entire school and receive it, and I sure didn't want that.  We're talking late forties here, mill village setting, and at a time when boys who wrote poetry were considered sissies.  I endured the humiliation but didn't write another poem until after I was past fifty years of age.

My second try at it was more enjoyable, and for a period of time (about ten years), I wrote a lot of poetry.  I studied it, practiced it, and got fairly good at it.  I went around to cowboy poetry gatherings and recited poetry, and I even went into a partnership with a friend to create a traveling road show of cowboy poets and singers.  That all ended when my partner died back in the late nineties, and I never performed again.  I didn't stop writing poetry altogether, but I slowed down a lot and turned my attention to prose writing.  And then lately I get this bright idea about publishing my poetry.  Yeah, real bright 'cause books of poetry are hard to sell.  But what the hell!  It's not like I'm selling a lot of anything, so I'm putting together a book called Almost Cowboy: My Journey Into Poetry.

Cowboy poetry, if you're not informed about it, is similar to the poetry of Robert Service.  It's standard meter and rhyme poetry, and usually isn't experimental in any way.  I broke that mold a long time ago, so my poetry doesn't qualify for standard cowboy poetry.  In fact, it might not qualify for being standard in regard to any genre of poetry.  You could stick a name tag on it, I suppose, but that's inconsequential to me.  It's almost cowboy, so that's what I call it.  Some of it is free verse, some is a mixture of free verse and rhymed, and some is experimental.  It is not intended for any particular audience, and there's no particular theme involved.  It's just a collection of poems I've written, along with some short prose and descriptions of how my journey took place.  Is it interesting?  Heck, I don't know.  Readers are always the judge of things like that.  Look me up under
Philip Martin Cawlfield or Cletus Duhon, the pen names I usually write under.  The new book will be
out in less than a month.

EMPATHY: THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING

I've seen where actors sometimes have problems shedding the skin of characters they've played on screen.  They get too involved with a character, then have trouble shedding that skin when it's time to go back to real life.  As a writer, I understand that.  Sometimes you get more than involved because the character skin you wear fits tight and is hard to shed.  Perhaps you use a pseudoymn, a pen name, and you assume that character while you write.  It's more than just a change of names; it's a change of personality to a certain degree.  And then there's the character in the book, or perhaps several characters, you have a hard time with.  Maybe you don't like the character, the bad guy, but he's important to the plot, and you've got to stick with him.  And you need to understand him.  I've known about this empathy problem for a long time because I've gone through months of depression after finishing a book, or I've been angry for a while.  The reverse of that can be true: you could come out of it feeling good, even enlightened and euphoric for a while.

As of late I've been working on a book about my father.  He died over 30 years ago, but he left behind a lot of unpublished poems, stories, little bons mots that I thought were worth a life of their own in print.  I gathered together some information and started digging through it.  At the outset I planned on doing a book of collected poems and short prose without much in the way of annotation, but that wasn't possible.  For the book to be interesting, engaging, and worth the effort, it would require some history of the man . . . and some of my observations about him.  That mean doing some research because I didn't know a lot about his background.

He was born and raised in the eastern Oregon town of Burns.  I'd been there once as a seven year old, and didn't remember much.  I didn't know either of my paternal grandparents because they were either dead or near death when I was born.  I knew a few of my uncles and aunts because they had visited with us, and I knew only one of my first cousins.  Worst of all, I didn't really know my own father.  I grew up in a house with him, knew a lot about his personal life, but I didn't really know him until I read his stories and poems.  In doing that, I got to know the man quite a bit better, and there's a problem with that.  I buried him in 1983 but mostly in a haze of confusion and grief . . . and then I went on with life and worked hard at not thinking about it.  And now, I'm faced with having to bury him again, and this time wide-eyed and knowing what was lost.

The upside of all this is an awakening of who I am and where I came from.  I'm on the one hand sad and depressed, but my head is full of images of my father as a youngter, young adult, and until I got to know him as a father.  I'm piecing together his story, and through his own words, I got inside his head a little.  I never read his poetry before, and I should have.  We all say in print things we sometimes can't say in person.  I should've read it before, but better late than never.  I'll get back to being me before long, but at the present I'm still dealing with images - those pictures of the mind that can damn sure hold your attention for a while.  And even though it's a bit troubling, I don't mind at all.

IT'S THAT SEASON AGAIN!

No, I'm not talking about hunting season, or basketball season. or any season related to sports . . . unless you consider taxation a sport.  I've come to the conclusion that government may well think of it as sport.  Somewhere out there in some city hall, courthouse, state capitol, or Washington, there's a plan at work to hunt you down and attack you where it hurts the worse . . . in the pocket.  Got extra money?  Forget that, Uncle Sam and all his little brothers and cousins are coming for it.  Maybe they've already been taking it from you throughout the year, but this is the season for catching the ones they didn't get before, like me.  I'm a hunted man.

Government at all levels has figured out ways of getting in your pocket that span the spectrum of possibilities.  They take money from what you earn, take it from what you spend, and they take it from what you spent it on.  I earn money, they take a chunk.  I buy a car, they take a chunk again (lots of chunks, actually), and then because it's parked in my driveway and belongs to me, they take another chunk.  I buy a house, they take big chunks each year, and this is the tax that infuriates me the most.  All taxes are levies on life.  Government figured out what you need the most to live, and because staying alive, or survival, is almost instinctive with people, they go after what you must have in order to do that - your income, what you spend (sales tax, excise, etc.), and your property.  In other words, they tax the essentials, and a home is essential.  I view that as as a bad tax, one that should be done away with. 

So, the last day of this month I'll march down to the tax collection office and give them about $1,300.00, and that's just the first payment.  If you're a senior citizen here in Texas you get a break in that they'll let you spread payments over a six months period.  Otherwise, I'd have to come up with the entire amount, which my wife will have to do to pay property tax on her business.  Between the two of us, we'll give the county about four grand this month.  And while I'm paying off the remaining property tax on the house, income tax will come due in a couple of months, and we'll have to come up with several thousand more for that.  And you know what?  It ain't that bad a deal, not compared to what many other Americans are paying.  It puts us in a bit of a bind for a while, but it can be managed.  That's the good news.  The bad news is:  THE SEASON ON TAXPAYERS COMES AROUND EVERY YEAR.

THE LOST ART OF HANDWRITING

I could easily fill a book with criticisms of the American educational system, but lots of people already have.  Not long ago I read a blog written by a lady living in France.  She wrote mostly of the adjustments she had to make when her husband moved the family to Nice where he took employment.  She went from southern California to that part of France, amd has been there for some seven years now.  After some difficult adjustments, she has come to love living there.  The most troublesome adjustment came when their three kids enrolled in school . . . and couldn't do the work required of them at the same grade level they were in out in California.  In fact, each of them was set back several grades due to poor performance.  This could have been for a number of reasons, but the family had to find a school tailor made for English speaking kids.  It was easier, and not just because the language barrier as no longer a problem.  Their system is more demanding than ours . . . and better.

Her blogs didn't come as any surprise to me.  As a former college professor, I'm well aware of what the public school product is capable of.  Colleges used to be the cream separator of education in America, but that's no longer the case.  You work with what you have these days, and it's not beneficial to the system to send home too many rejects from higher education.  In short, we've lowered our standards by a considerable margin.  One thing you notice right off in teaching is that kids can't write.  They can't express themselves well enough to do well on essay type tests, and most professors I know gave up on written tests.  Part of the reason for that is the handwriting problem.  College students often can't write fast enough to get much said on an essay test, and even if they can, the grader can't read it.  Handwriting in this day and age is awful.  Is that a new problem?  Apparently not, but it seems to be worse than it was years back.

My father was a highly educated man.  Since he'd done clerical work in the miliary, he could make an old typewriter rattle like and old Ford truck.  He bragged of being able to type sixty words a minute, but he couldn't write.  My mother, on the other hand, had beautiful handwriting, as did most women I've known who came out of her generation.  It seems that bad handwriting is somewhat of a man thing.  Anyway, I'm doing a book of my father's poetry and journalistic endeavors, and the most troublesome thing I've run into is reading what he wrote out by hand.  In fact, I'll have to give up on including some things because I can't find it in type.  He knew he couldn't write, often apologized for it.

I've always had a decent handwriting style, but as I grow older, it gets worse.  I've noticed that even my signatures on checks don't look the same, but there's an excuse for that.  These old hands have suffered some abuse over the years, and now they're stiff.  But I can still write some, and I can type up a storm.  Some modern conveniences are helpful to old codgers like me, but I still need to practice more with my handwriting.

By the way, the book is called Gathering Ground, and it will be out in a few months.  I knew my dad's handwriting wasn't good, but I didn't know how good his poetry was.  And, I knew he was an enthralling conversationalist, but I didn't know he was such a good storyteller.  A book that should've been in print forty years ago is finally coming to life, and I'm pleased with it.  Keep an eye out for it on Amazon.