I Am A Rock Star

I just thought you all should know: I am now a rockstar. I go to bed at 2:00am, sleep in a bunk on a bus, wake up at 10:00, eat lunch with the roadies, shower in a stadium locker room, hang out on the bus, sit in the musician's pit for the concert, and sign loads and loads of autographs.

Okay, everything I said there is true except the part about the autographs. There are other, not so glamorous, confessions:

- I had to pee for about two hours yesterday morning but it was so dark in the bus that I couldn't see anything, and I didn't know how to open the door at the end of the hall, so I held it. Finally, someone else woke up so I followed them. It was a sliding door.

- I thought I had really slept in the other morning because the clock above my bed said 11:25. I rolled out of my bunk feeling like a rock star. The clock was 2 1/2 hours fast. It was 8:55. Not exactly rock star.

- The first night I slept in these little bunks I kept forgetting there's only about 2 feet of head room. I sat up twice and stretched once. All three ended in collisions with the ceiling. Again, not exactly rock star.

- There's about ten buses outside the stadium. I tried to walk into the wrong one this morning. Not a rock star move. Fortunately it was locked.

- I showered in cold water this morning because apparently the Florida State locker room showers take about 8 minutes to warm up. The water started getting warm just as I finally rinsed off, gasping for breath and shuddering in the icy water. Perhaps if I was completely wasted this would have been a rock star way of shaking the hangover, but I wasn't. I was just impatient. And cold. Really, really cold.

So there it is. Two more days of rock star living and then I'm home.

Traveling With The Isaacs, and My 7th Favorite Book . . .

So right now I'm sitting in the bowels of a stadium, somewhere in Biloxi, Mississippi. Smells like it too. The Isaacs first show this week is a Gaither show here in town, but right now the stage is being assembled, seats are being put in place, and everyone is preparing for the show.

I am on the internet in the rather stinky dressing room, getting ready to go grab some lunch in the catering area.

Traveling on a bus was something new, but since I love sleeping in very dark places with some background noise (tires humming over asphalt), I slept great. Poor Maile . . . turns out the kids were up at all hours . . . I'll have some making up to do when I get home.

Tomorrow Tallahasee, the next day Tampa, and then flying home from there as long as this big storm doesn't drop two feet of snow on a BWI runway.

So, now is as good a time as any to tell you that my 7th favorite book is a novel by Wallace Stegner, one of the great American-west writers of all time. The book is called Crossing To Safety and tells the story of a young couple, just starting out. He is a professor, she is an expectant mother, and they move to the midwest, on their own, knowing no one.

It is a wonderful tale of friendship and of growing older. Stegner does a fascinating job exposing the issues that lie just under the surface between friends and spouses and relatives. His sometimes melancholy, sometimes humorous, and always insightful reflections on the "ordinary" lives of these characters is an enthralling read.

Highly recommended.

So now I'm off to find some food, and maybe get a shower, and then work with Lily Isaacs on her book, trying to tell it in as interesting and touching a way as Stegner could do (probably won't come close, but might as well aim high).

Happy Thursday.

Want To Get Published? The Perfect Query . . .

This morning I'm going to take a break from the whole television thing to talk a teeny tiny bit about writing.

I happen to know that some of you write because you come to my writer's workshop. Others of you write blogs or have talked to me about various pieces you are working on. Keep going! Keep working! Keep writing!

But at some point you will want to try to get your piece(s) published. It seems the one way to validate what we are doing. After all, there's something about writing that wants to be read.

The first step is almost always finding an agent. Some of the blogs I listed on this blog are those of literary agents - Chip McGregor and Rachelle Gardner (thanks to Bryan Allain of bryanallain.com for recommending these - and I still feel awful about missing our breakfast, and I didn't miss it because it was my turn to pay). These agent blogs provide great insight into what agents are looking for.

And the first thing they are always looking for is a good query letter.

A whosit?

A query letter. If you get a chance, check out this excellent summary on query letters from Writer's Digest.

And good luck.

http://writersdigest.com/article/basics-of-a-solid-3-paragraph-query/

The Fart Machine Hits the Road . . .

The first month without television has gone by rather fast. To think that we still have another eleven months is a bit daunting, but we'll take it one day at a time.

We've pretty much weaned the kids off of television without making an official rule about it - they watch the occasional movie on the tube. The main challenge is still to continually think about what is filling up the time that the tv used to occupy. Too often for me it's the internet - not much of an improved trade off. Trying to focus more on replacing what would normally be tv time with more productive or family oriented activities.

A few weeks ago someone asked what I think is a valid question . . . why do we consider reading "better" than watching television? Both are often done in relative solitude, both involve sitting still and not moving around or interacting with others, and both (sometimes) are done while eating. And there are plenty of crappy books out there that are just as escapist as television. So is reading 3.5 hours a day that much better for you than watching television for that same amount of time? I have my own opinion, but I'd be interested in hearing what yours would be.

Stay tuned this week as I hit the road with The Isaacs (www.theisaacs.com) from Wednesday to Sunday. Touring with this bluegrass/country gospel music band comes as Lily Isaacs and I try to wrap up the first draft of her book. I am looking forward to this completely new experience of traveling in a bus from Nashville, TN to Bradenton, FL, watching them perform in some shows along the way.

So make sure you check out the blog later in the week. I'm taking my remote fart machine along on the bus (you can hide the small speaker under a pillow or strategically placed prop and then hit the button from the other side of the bus, emitting a rather realistic sounding fart) - should be lots of fun . . .

Hopefully I won't be hitch hiking back.

Help me remember the name of an old show . . .

So this morning when Abra got up at 6:30 I was thinking about when I was a kid and how I would get up early to watch cartoons (she doesn't get up early to watch cartoons - she's only two - she pretty much just gets up early to let us know that she is still in charge of this place).

I started thinking back to all of my old favorites: Smurfs, Gummy Bears (bouncing here and there and everywhere), Snorks, Muppet Babies and on and on and on. Those were the days! I turned on the tv (last year) on a Saturday and was so unimpressed with todays Saturday morning options.

So what are the great Saturday morning cartoons that you remember? The old classics?

One last question for this special Saturday blog post - there was a show I watched as a kid on Saturday mornings, not a cartoon, and it came on early. I'm thinking 7:00am. It was about a kid who had a computer (very outlandish back in the early 80s) and he somehow made contact with a girl in a space ship that left earth sometime in the future. Not sure that all their astrophysics theory was spot on, but it was entertaining. Anyway, I mentioned this show to Maile once and she had no idea what I was talking about. Does anyone remember this show? Can anyone tell me what it was called? (I know, that's two questions. Be nice, it's a Saturday).

To all you stay-at-home moms and dads out there . . .

Yesterday, Thursday, I got all angelic and decided to give my wife a way overdue, much deserved day off. She could do whatever she wanted, go wherever she wanted, as long as she could get back to occasionally feed Sam (he is still breastfeeding, and contrary to what Gaylord Faulker might think, you cannot milk anything with nipples).

And to all you stay-at-home folks out there, I have to say - it is much easier giving up television when you are not home all day. There were multiple times throughout the day when I thought to myself, I need some mindless activity just to get through this hour. Or, I need to have something that my children will stare at for a bit while I gather my wits. So to all of you stay-at-home's, first of all, you provide an invaluable service to the next generation - please take pride in what you do!

Second of all, feel free to watch television without guilt.

But there were also moments of strange peace during my stay-at-home day.

For instance, feeding Sam yoghurt. He has just started eating solids (actually, semi-solids), so his eating technique can be rather slow. He tends to close his mouth in the middle of the spoon, sending stuff everywhere. His hands always want to get involved, and in an unproductive way. He also still thinks that food is best taken in by sucking, so sometimes, instead of taking the spoon (no sporks in this house) into his mouth, he'll try to suck everything off the spoon.

Slow process.

But about halfway through this little jug of yoghurt (took about fifteen minutes), I realized: I have no where else to be right now, so why not be right here? I told Sam to take as long as he wanted, be as sloppy as he wanted. I told him I was just going to chill and I'd be there to give him a bite whenever he was ready.

He seemed to take advantage of this.

But as I settled into this state of slowness, I thought to myself that television does not encourage slowness. Television is all about the 15 or 30 second commercial: BAM BAM BAM. The thirty minute program. BAM. Instant entertainment, movies on demand, news 24 hours a day.

Take a deep breath this weekend. Slow down. Do something that takes forever, and forget about the time your wasting.

And have a great Friday.

Book #8 on my list of favorite novels of all time is . . .

A man pulls up to a traffic light - it's red, and he waits for the signal to change, but it never does because as he is sitting there, waiting, his eyes are taken over by a strange white blindness.

Jose Saramago's book "Blindness" opens with this scene, but the situation only continues to get worse as more and more people in the city go blind. Soon the officials begin isolating those struck blind, hoping that if it is contagious they can stop the spread.

Soon the main characters of the book find themselves quarantined in an old asylum. Food is left for them in the yard, but there are no guards to oversee them, no doctors to help them in their blindness, and the conditions in the asylum quickly begin to deteriorate.

Two camps form - one, led by a lifelong blind man (since he is used to the lack of eyesight he now rules the newly blind) is corrupt and violent, stealing the food and terrorizing the inmates. The other group is led by a woman - for some reason, she never lost her vision.

"Blindness" is very much a Lord of the Flies involving adults - take away all of these luxuries that we currently live with (sight, excess food, comfort, clothing, etc): how would we behave? Would we become animals? Or is there something about us that is different, something that makes us human?

And, perhaps most importantly, how would we see the world, each other, our lives, if all of us were blind? Fighting, Saramago contends, is always a form of blindness . . .

Happy Reading!