Not to re-visit the days of when we were moving last fall, but moving sucks. I mean, the moving itself sucks, but, worse than that, the process of buying a house sucks. One of the things I said somewhat frequently while we were in the house hunting stage was "why can't we just buy a house online?" I was somewhat serious about that, too. I mean, you can buy virtually everything online. You can even buy a car online. Why not a house?
Don't get me wrong, I understand why you can't buy a house online, but I don't like it. When we had to get a new car, I wanted to want to buy that online, too, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. A car is expensive enough that I wanted to "feel" the car before deciding on it. We did look at options online, but, in the end, we went down to the dealership and checked out the cars and test drove and all of that stuff. I can't imagine, in that sense, actually buying a house online. I'd need to go "feel" it, too.
Except the process of looking for a house is so horrid, there should be some kind of process for it online! There just should be.
A few months ago, while watching a period show with my wife, she said something along the lines of "I bet those are Sears catalog homes" about a neighborhood in the show. I had to pause the show and say "what?" Then, after she explained, I had to say "what the heck!"
Because, see, before there was the Internet, you could buy your home online. Okay, so not online, but from a catalog. Seriously. Sears offered houses, HOUSES, in their famous Sears catalog.
We all know about the Sears catalog, right? Who, growing up in the 70s and 80s, didn't await the Sears catalog with great anticipation every winter so s/he could sit down with it and circle all the toys s/he wanted for Christmas? That's what I though. Maybe some kids still do that? I kind of doubt it. I only know that my kids don't because we don't get the Sears catalog nor do we shop very often at Sears (which I'm sure is a part of why Sears is having... issues... these days). But we USED to love the Sears catalog and "window" shopping in it. Back before the days of the Internet changed all of that.
At any rate, back in the day, specifically the days between 1908 and 1940, you could order a house from Sears' Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans. To make it even more amazing, the price for a house was as low as $650! Yes, less than $1000! And the most expensive plan was only $2500! At least, in 1908, those were the prices. Yeah, so you had to own a piece of land to put the house on, but, oh my gosh, you could just flip through a CATALOG and pick out the floor plan you liked best and order your house. They'd deliver it right to your non-existent doorstep, pre-assembled and ready to be put together. Mostly, you could even do it yourself with friends and relatives much like an old-fashioned barn raising. This Is Amazing! And I want it to come back.
Okay, so it may have to wait until we start colonizing other planets and there is, once again, plenty of land available for cheap for people to build on, but, still, this is such an amazing thing!
As great as I think it is to be able to order your house from a catalog, to be able to pick a floor plan and choose your bits and pieces to fit that floor plan, customize that floor plan into something that is you; I don't think it's such a great idea in writing. Not that it can't be done successfully. Plenty of people do it: write by formula. Plenty of people enjoy reading it, too. I just don't enjoy it. It can be kind of interesting to see how people make the formula their own, but, in the end, I generally feel like "I've been in this house before." Unless you've done some pretty spectacular job at customization, it gets a little boring wandering through the same old floor plan over and over again.
Honestly, I feel that way about houses, too. If I could, I would design the general layout of my house myself. The thing I want out of a house is not something you can buy anywhere today (but that's a different topic). There is no existing layout for what I want. It's not the big house in the woods kind of thing. Or the big house on the hill. Or any of the "big house" ideas that most people have about big houses. It's so much not that that my wife was actually surprised by what I want out of a house. I want the same kind of thing out of my writing. I don't think I'm there, yet, but I am working on it. I think, based on the number of people who have said things like "that's not what I expected (but in a good way)" about my book, The House on the Corner, I'm getting there, but I'm not all the way there.
Still, the idea of being able to order a house online is awesome. Until I have the resources to design my own house, I'm all for the idea of the catalog house!
[Oh, and just to mention it, Sears wasn't the only company that sold catalog houses, just the most well known.]
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Editing Your Life
As I may have mentioned, we moved. Moving is a strange process. It starts out all nice and polite, but, in the end, it always gets ugly. Sometimes violent. It starts out as the army recruiter, all smiles and handshakes, and turns into the drill sergeant, all push-ups in the rain and mud.
And it did rain, too. I spent the last day unloading the truck in a nice drizzle.
In the beginning, the most important items are carefully boxed and moved in an orderly fashion from one dwelling to the other. The big things, not in size necessarily, but the things you can't live without. And I'm not talking toiletries here (because you can go out and buy a new toothbrush); I'm talking about the things that give your life meaning. The things where the value isn't always obvious to an outsider. During this process, you actively choose to cut some things loose. Things that, at one time, held meaning for you but no longer do. You pick it up, examine it, remember what it was to you, and decide to let it go. At first, this process is kind of enjoyable. Looking back over your life and making decisions about where to take it.
And there are, also, just the big things. The furniture. Beds. Which things go. Which things get tossed because "I always hated that table." Which things get replaced. And you move on down from there.
We have so many books. Some of them were still boxed up from the last move, and that was 8 years ago. Sorting through the books is a somewhat arduous process, but we just can't keep them all (as much as I would probably like to). We ended up with something like four big bags of books to trade in at the used book store and who knows how many that we donated (because they were either hardback (so the used book store wouldn't take them) or of a type that the used book store wouldn't be interested in), but it was more than what we're going to trade. And, still, we have sooo many books (and nowhere to put them (I imagine we're going to have even more boxes of books sitting around until our next move)). [Don't even ask me how many copies of the various Harry Potter books we had laying around. It was obscene. I -think- we have it cut down to one set of hardbacks, now.]
And don't get me started on the toys. Only the girls in the family are any good at letting go of those things. Even things that haven't been played with in years. But, to quote Tom from The House on the Corner, "Just because I haven't played with a toy in a few months doesn't mean I don't want it." And that's how my boys feel about their stuff, even if it has been years and even if it's trash. Yes, the older one, the one that's in high school, collects pieces of trash. As he puts it, "It's cool trash, Dad." We just won't tell him how much I threw away during this move, okay.
But the hardest things are the things we don't really want to get rid of but feel it's for the best. I have, well, had, this jacket. My best friend in college gave it to me. While we were in college. Yes, that makes the coat more than 15 years old. I loved it. Not because it was a great coat but because my friend gave it to me. He gave it to me because all I ever wore was this flimsy, red windbreaker. At the time (which is not the case, now), I was not often inclined to being cold, and, generally, the windbreaker was enough. But he felt like I should be more prepared for cold weather (and rightly so), so he bought me a coat for Christmas one year. After 15 years, it was falling apart. Literally. I couldn't risk washing it anymore, because it couldn't take it. And, being much more inclined to being cold these last few years, it no longer did the job of keeping me warm which was compounded by the fact that it had become much too large for me. No, not because it got bigger but because I've shrunk. Not gotten shorter, either. So I held it up, and my wife, who has been telling me for years that I should move on to a new coat, said, "You can keep it if you want it." And I wanted to. I told her I wanted to. But it wasn't useful anymore. In fact, it was just taking up space, even if it wasn't a whole lot of space. I realized it was time for it to go even though I did love it, and I made a final walk with it out to the dumpster, just me and the coat, and tossed it in. Yes, I'll miss that old coat, but, really, it no longer did the job for which it was intended and only had any meaning to me.
At the very end comes the "panic packing."* You know, when you're running out of time to get out of the old place and the remaining things, although sometimes necessary items, are unimportant items. They could be replaced, but you just don't want to have to replace everything. At some point in there, my wife said to me, "We're at the point where anything that's not obviously trash is a keep," meaning just throw it into the closest box and it can be sorted later, and I said, "No, we're at the point where anything that isn't obviously a keep is trash." She laughed, but it was true.
Somewhere in between throwing out my jacket and the panic packing, I realized that the whole moving thing is like editing your manuscript. You start out by identifying the really important aspects and mark them as "keep." You go on to the pieces that support or make sense out of your overall work and mark them as "keep." Sometimes, you find some bit that you love or, even, really love, and realize that it actually doesn't serve any purpose and gets in the way of the story for other people. Because, really, when I wore my old, beloved coat, I looked somewhat homeless, and that's not the look you want when you're hanging out in the school playground waiting for your kids or, even, at the grocery store. Likewise, you don't want things in your writing that are distracting from your story just because you love it. In the end, you're slashing words left and right. You're doing searches for "really" and taking them all out, and, when you get really desperate, you're doing searches for "ly" and blasting every adverb you find.
Of course, when you get over to the new place, you realize you threw away some things you hadn't intended to. Or, for some, you threw them away on purpose because you needed a new and better one. So you start filling in the gaps. Some of those gaps will be adverbs. Because, you know, they're really not as evil as everyone says they are.
At any rate, what you hope for is a cleaner manuscript with a clearer purpose. Just like with moving. A cleaner, less cluttered home with a clearer purpose for the future. I can't even begin to convey to you how much trash we threw out. It starts with a full dumpster of stuff from our apartment and goes on from there.
Of course, going through everything, I realized that I live as a plotter. My wife is more of a pantser. I evaluate things as I go, so the things I have at the end are mostly things I want to keep. I do want to keep a lot, though, unfortunately. It makes decisions about what to get rid of much more difficult. My wife stores things up to go through later, so the tossing out becomes relatively easy for her. I could probably go into this in more detail, but it's really only a side thought, and I don't want to get punched by my wife.
So... here we are with a newly edited life. Not that we're through with the process. It's just the first pass, so to speak. There are still toys to deal with. They just don't all fit. It's like having too many words. Somehow, we have to get those toys down to the designated word count despite the protests of our boys. Not that I'm really one to have much respect for word count limitations. I believe in telling the story the way it needs to be told and to heck with the word count. That's sort of how we should live our lives, too. Not that we should clutter it up, but to heck with the limitations that others want to impose on us. Only you can live your life, and you should live it the way you want to do it (you know, as long as you're not infringing on someone else). And, if you're a writer, it's your book. Write your story the way you want it to be. Make it the story you want to read, because, in the end, that's all you can do with any certainty.
* Panic packing is a term my wife says she coined. I can't dispute this as the only other people I've heard use it are friends of hers whom she says got it from her.
And it did rain, too. I spent the last day unloading the truck in a nice drizzle.
In the beginning, the most important items are carefully boxed and moved in an orderly fashion from one dwelling to the other. The big things, not in size necessarily, but the things you can't live without. And I'm not talking toiletries here (because you can go out and buy a new toothbrush); I'm talking about the things that give your life meaning. The things where the value isn't always obvious to an outsider. During this process, you actively choose to cut some things loose. Things that, at one time, held meaning for you but no longer do. You pick it up, examine it, remember what it was to you, and decide to let it go. At first, this process is kind of enjoyable. Looking back over your life and making decisions about where to take it.
And there are, also, just the big things. The furniture. Beds. Which things go. Which things get tossed because "I always hated that table." Which things get replaced. And you move on down from there.
We have so many books. Some of them were still boxed up from the last move, and that was 8 years ago. Sorting through the books is a somewhat arduous process, but we just can't keep them all (as much as I would probably like to). We ended up with something like four big bags of books to trade in at the used book store and who knows how many that we donated (because they were either hardback (so the used book store wouldn't take them) or of a type that the used book store wouldn't be interested in), but it was more than what we're going to trade. And, still, we have sooo many books (and nowhere to put them (I imagine we're going to have even more boxes of books sitting around until our next move)). [Don't even ask me how many copies of the various Harry Potter books we had laying around. It was obscene. I -think- we have it cut down to one set of hardbacks, now.]
And don't get me started on the toys. Only the girls in the family are any good at letting go of those things. Even things that haven't been played with in years. But, to quote Tom from The House on the Corner, "Just because I haven't played with a toy in a few months doesn't mean I don't want it." And that's how my boys feel about their stuff, even if it has been years and even if it's trash. Yes, the older one, the one that's in high school, collects pieces of trash. As he puts it, "It's cool trash, Dad." We just won't tell him how much I threw away during this move, okay.
But the hardest things are the things we don't really want to get rid of but feel it's for the best. I have, well, had, this jacket. My best friend in college gave it to me. While we were in college. Yes, that makes the coat more than 15 years old. I loved it. Not because it was a great coat but because my friend gave it to me. He gave it to me because all I ever wore was this flimsy, red windbreaker. At the time (which is not the case, now), I was not often inclined to being cold, and, generally, the windbreaker was enough. But he felt like I should be more prepared for cold weather (and rightly so), so he bought me a coat for Christmas one year. After 15 years, it was falling apart. Literally. I couldn't risk washing it anymore, because it couldn't take it. And, being much more inclined to being cold these last few years, it no longer did the job of keeping me warm which was compounded by the fact that it had become much too large for me. No, not because it got bigger but because I've shrunk. Not gotten shorter, either. So I held it up, and my wife, who has been telling me for years that I should move on to a new coat, said, "You can keep it if you want it." And I wanted to. I told her I wanted to. But it wasn't useful anymore. In fact, it was just taking up space, even if it wasn't a whole lot of space. I realized it was time for it to go even though I did love it, and I made a final walk with it out to the dumpster, just me and the coat, and tossed it in. Yes, I'll miss that old coat, but, really, it no longer did the job for which it was intended and only had any meaning to me.
At the very end comes the "panic packing."* You know, when you're running out of time to get out of the old place and the remaining things, although sometimes necessary items, are unimportant items. They could be replaced, but you just don't want to have to replace everything. At some point in there, my wife said to me, "We're at the point where anything that's not obviously trash is a keep," meaning just throw it into the closest box and it can be sorted later, and I said, "No, we're at the point where anything that isn't obviously a keep is trash." She laughed, but it was true.
Somewhere in between throwing out my jacket and the panic packing, I realized that the whole moving thing is like editing your manuscript. You start out by identifying the really important aspects and mark them as "keep." You go on to the pieces that support or make sense out of your overall work and mark them as "keep." Sometimes, you find some bit that you love or, even, really love, and realize that it actually doesn't serve any purpose and gets in the way of the story for other people. Because, really, when I wore my old, beloved coat, I looked somewhat homeless, and that's not the look you want when you're hanging out in the school playground waiting for your kids or, even, at the grocery store. Likewise, you don't want things in your writing that are distracting from your story just because you love it. In the end, you're slashing words left and right. You're doing searches for "really" and taking them all out, and, when you get really desperate, you're doing searches for "ly" and blasting every adverb you find.
Of course, when you get over to the new place, you realize you threw away some things you hadn't intended to. Or, for some, you threw them away on purpose because you needed a new and better one. So you start filling in the gaps. Some of those gaps will be adverbs. Because, you know, they're really not as evil as everyone says they are.
At any rate, what you hope for is a cleaner manuscript with a clearer purpose. Just like with moving. A cleaner, less cluttered home with a clearer purpose for the future. I can't even begin to convey to you how much trash we threw out. It starts with a full dumpster of stuff from our apartment and goes on from there.
Of course, going through everything, I realized that I live as a plotter. My wife is more of a pantser. I evaluate things as I go, so the things I have at the end are mostly things I want to keep. I do want to keep a lot, though, unfortunately. It makes decisions about what to get rid of much more difficult. My wife stores things up to go through later, so the tossing out becomes relatively easy for her. I could probably go into this in more detail, but it's really only a side thought, and I don't want to get punched by my wife.
So... here we are with a newly edited life. Not that we're through with the process. It's just the first pass, so to speak. There are still toys to deal with. They just don't all fit. It's like having too many words. Somehow, we have to get those toys down to the designated word count despite the protests of our boys. Not that I'm really one to have much respect for word count limitations. I believe in telling the story the way it needs to be told and to heck with the word count. That's sort of how we should live our lives, too. Not that we should clutter it up, but to heck with the limitations that others want to impose on us. Only you can live your life, and you should live it the way you want to do it (you know, as long as you're not infringing on someone else). And, if you're a writer, it's your book. Write your story the way you want it to be. Make it the story you want to read, because, in the end, that's all you can do with any certainty.
* Panic packing is a term my wife says she coined. I can't dispute this as the only other people I've heard use it are friends of hers whom she says got it from her.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
September: The Hot and the Cold
Theoretically, autumn begins in September. Temperatures begin to cool, leaves fall from the trees, a certain ineffable crispness suffuses the air. Although we've had a few days that were unmistakably full of "fall," we've also had our hottest days of the year this September. Full on summer hitting 100 degrees. Not that I'm complaining about the weather, they've been dealing with worse heat in Texas and other parts of the south all summer.
As I mentioned in my last post, we're moving, and that's definitely a cold moment. I, now, really understand why we, culturally, are no longer nomadic. Moving sucks! It really just does. I can just imagine cavemen back in the day trying to decide which prized skull they were going to drag along with them to the next location, because they could only carry one. Or mothers trying to motivate their young children to "just come on!" It makes perfect sense to me that we all settled down and quit following herds of beasts around.
Not that I didn't already know that moving sucks, but it's one of those things that you put out of your mind when you're not actually in the midst of it.
As for the house, the drama with the banks at the beginning of September was cold, nay, frigid, but getting the house was definitely HOT! Painting it was... cold. We're still not finished with that, because we lost a weekend to the bank time suck, but we're having to put off the rest till after we get all of our stuff moved over. Cold cold cold.
The lack of writing this month due to the move is definitely cold. You know when you pull on a rubber band? That tension that forms... that's what it feels like inside me, at the moment. I want to get back to Brother's Keeper, but I just don't have any time for it, right now.
As for The House on the Corner, although it technically came out in August, it was close enough to September that I'm going to give it a September hot. The sales, on the other hand, have been oh, so so so cold. Between the Nook and the Kindle, I have a total of 6 sales, much less than I had hoped for. I'm actually above that on the sales for the physical book, although most of those have been hand-to-hand purchases as opposed to online purchases. I definitely have a lot to learn about this whole marketing thing.
However, I did get my first review! Definitely a HOT! You can read it here, and you should! If you've been thinking about buying but have just been waiting to see the feedback on it from other people, here you go. Also, there is an additional short review for it here if you scroll down to it.
Well, I suppose that's about it. And, really, all I have time for. Back to packing go I!
As I mentioned in my last post, we're moving, and that's definitely a cold moment. I, now, really understand why we, culturally, are no longer nomadic. Moving sucks! It really just does. I can just imagine cavemen back in the day trying to decide which prized skull they were going to drag along with them to the next location, because they could only carry one. Or mothers trying to motivate their young children to "just come on!" It makes perfect sense to me that we all settled down and quit following herds of beasts around.
Not that I didn't already know that moving sucks, but it's one of those things that you put out of your mind when you're not actually in the midst of it.
As for the house, the drama with the banks at the beginning of September was cold, nay, frigid, but getting the house was definitely HOT! Painting it was... cold. We're still not finished with that, because we lost a weekend to the bank time suck, but we're having to put off the rest till after we get all of our stuff moved over. Cold cold cold.
The lack of writing this month due to the move is definitely cold. You know when you pull on a rubber band? That tension that forms... that's what it feels like inside me, at the moment. I want to get back to Brother's Keeper, but I just don't have any time for it, right now.
As for The House on the Corner, although it technically came out in August, it was close enough to September that I'm going to give it a September hot. The sales, on the other hand, have been oh, so so so cold. Between the Nook and the Kindle, I have a total of 6 sales, much less than I had hoped for. I'm actually above that on the sales for the physical book, although most of those have been hand-to-hand purchases as opposed to online purchases. I definitely have a lot to learn about this whole marketing thing.
However, I did get my first review! Definitely a HOT! You can read it here, and you should! If you've been thinking about buying but have just been waiting to see the feedback on it from other people, here you go. Also, there is an additional short review for it here if you scroll down to it.
Well, I suppose that's about it. And, really, all I have time for. Back to packing go I!
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