Nearing 'The End' Once Again

I'm on vacation and taking a break from my novel, which is only about 30 pages away from "re-completion." I anticipate adding some more description in one of the last chapters; I was never pleased with it. But I believe that I'll have it done by dinner time tomorrow -- if not sooner. I've already started letting those few "early readers" know that they will be receiving copies soon. It's not quite like how I felt when I first typed "The End" a couple years ago, but I believe this time the book will be better than it was then. The next entry will acknowledge another goal reached!

Death Comes to the Ideal Children's Author

Now this sounds like a perfect life story for a writer -- if any life can be called perfect. Madeleine L'Engle died recently. She's most famous for writing A Wrinkle in Time.

The comment includes a comment that she believed that life experiences are subservient to subconscious and perhaps larger spiritual influences. Though the reporter seemed surprised by that revelation, I know many writers -- myself included -- who would agree with her.

"Why does anybody tell a story?" she once asked, even though she knew the answer.

"It does indeed have something to do with faith," she said, "faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."

I know that sounds all "New Agey" and trippy, dude, but I'd subscribe to what she said.

I wish I could have met her. I suspect she was a pleasant conversationalist, knowledgeable about many topics regardless of her formal training. She looks like she would have like to share time over a scotch and soda and tell a couple of off-color tales that seemed much racier in the telling than the words suggest.

Flying Cars, Teleportation, and eBooks

I'm a traditionalist, so the idea of reading a book on a small computer screen has no appeal to me. But that doesn't mean people won't test whether there's a market for an eBook reader. This New York Times story discusses the prospects of new products coming from Google and Amazon -- not actually saying much about the products themselves, but the prospects of them. For me, I love the light weight and flexibility of a regular book. I don't need to add any more weight or electricity into my life. But this article is worth at least taking a look at to keep up with where the technology is going -- whether it gets there or not.

The Writing Life of the "Successful" Author

The Boston Globe recently ran a story about author Leah Hager Cohen. It has become rare to find an article about someone who's basically a mid-list writer. By her own admission, Cohen is not making a lot of money writing both novels and nonfiction. She may have to start teaching to make ends meet, she said. Frankly, that doesn't sound so bad to me, but I'm sure she'd prefer to be able to write on her usual schedule. The article also describes what to me sounds like a dream relationship with an agent: the agent pushed her but was honest, perhaps also blunt.

This article is also another example of why it's important for newspapers -- especially major ones like the Globe -- to continue to cover writers and books. While there are tons of Web sites and blogs out there that talk about writers no one in the "mainstream" world has ever heard of, when a New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, or any of the other important U.S. newspapers include stories about authors other than Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, or any of the instantly recognizable, commercial writers, it helps all of us who aspire to get their works published and to believe there will be avenues of distribution for us too.

Keep writing, Ms. Cohen, and if you have to teach, then do it. Because that's one more way of developing writers and readers. Those kids will go off to college and talk about the quirky English teacher they had who had a few books published. The audience can keep growing one commuter at a time.