Well, the memoirs are started. I have the title, front matter, an intro and 3 (almost) pages of early memories. At this rate, it'll be quite a while, but life may change. The last six months, it seems like every time I think "Ah, now I've got the time" or "Ah, now I've got the cash" I don't. The title is Not Always Well Spent. I don't remember where I first heard that phrase, but for quite a while now it has struck me as a good summary.
The subtitle has been trickier; I've thought of several and waffled between them. No way to tell yet how it may come out. Currently it's "A memoir of a life when America was at its peak." I'm not sure; it may be a little too political to describe me, or at least this memoir as I currently conceive it. I do feel that it describes the times themselves quite well, though. Tonight I'm leaning towards "A life at the front of the Baby Boom", or maybe "A Boomer's life." We'll see. I do like subtitles on non-fiction works, so this work will have one.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
And the New Age begins
Okay, "New Age" is overstating it. It's a new phase in a continuing life. I've taken to calling myself "semi-retired." I'm no longer looking for a full-time job. In fact I don't even want one any more. I'm hoping for a 2/5 part-time reference job to come open at Dayton Metro Library, and with that I would consider myself set indefinitely. Of course only God knows how long I will be able to work, and He is keeping that datum confidential. That's cool. But my hope is to be actively working until age 70, give or take a couple of years. If I can do that, working 20-30 hours a week, I'll have time for plenty of fun stuff.
My idea of fun stuff has changed lately, though. 8 or 10 years ago, I thought in terms of progamming - making games, web sites, that sort of thing. But after the layoff, when I took some web programming courses at Sinclair, I realized that I don't have enough of what Betty calls "design sense." Then I went to Library school and completed my Master of Library and Information Science degree. (Man, I LOVE writing the whole thing out like that!) I am now a Master! But in the course of that coursework, I found out something new - I can write!
This is not exactly new. In my undergraduate work, especially at Miami U. when I was doing mostly Common Curriculum courses, I wrote some stuff I was rather proud of. I sometimes wonder if any of it survives in our attic. If not it may be just as well; memory tends to put a brighter polish on things than they had on their own. But I didn't love the process of writing. At least part of this was deadline pressure. I had to turn in some stuff that I knew would be better with a few more days to work on it. Later at Wright State, when I had free electives to choose, I went for either science or philosophy, not English.
Looking back, I wonder how much difference it would have made if I had had modern technology. I particularly remember a paper at Miami on Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale. As I was near the end, I realized that Chaucer had slipped in an excuse for the Pardoner's bad behavior, and used that for a conclusion. Going back to moderate my castigation of his hypocrisy would have meant retyping the whole essay. So I got (justifiably) taken off for changing directions so abruptly at the end. With a word processor, I might have had the time to correct things. But that was the days of typewriters - once you type it, buddy, there it sits. Correcting a sentence meant correcting a page. And adding a sentence meant retyping everything that came after it.
So when I finally started on a for-real master's degree, I was worried. Sure, I could write better than almost any computer geek I knew, but that's a really low standard. A large majority of them may be smart, even ingenious, where logic and technology are concerned, but very few can put together a coherent sentence. Going in to Library school, knowing that most of the students were liberal arts majors, especially English and History, I was afraid of being in over my head. When Prof. Boon told me that she liked my writing, I was stunned.
So three things have combined to change my attitude toward writing. Having graduated, I can write without deadlines. Technology has made editing and polishing much easier and faster. And most important, someone who knows writing thinks that I can write well! So I'm planning to spend a fair amount of my new free time in writing. I just started my memoirs; that always seems like an easy way in to writing. Write what you know, they all say. More to come, God willing.
My idea of fun stuff has changed lately, though. 8 or 10 years ago, I thought in terms of progamming - making games, web sites, that sort of thing. But after the layoff, when I took some web programming courses at Sinclair, I realized that I don't have enough of what Betty calls "design sense." Then I went to Library school and completed my Master of Library and Information Science degree. (Man, I LOVE writing the whole thing out like that!) I am now a Master! But in the course of that coursework, I found out something new - I can write!
This is not exactly new. In my undergraduate work, especially at Miami U. when I was doing mostly Common Curriculum courses, I wrote some stuff I was rather proud of. I sometimes wonder if any of it survives in our attic. If not it may be just as well; memory tends to put a brighter polish on things than they had on their own. But I didn't love the process of writing. At least part of this was deadline pressure. I had to turn in some stuff that I knew would be better with a few more days to work on it. Later at Wright State, when I had free electives to choose, I went for either science or philosophy, not English.
Looking back, I wonder how much difference it would have made if I had had modern technology. I particularly remember a paper at Miami on Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale. As I was near the end, I realized that Chaucer had slipped in an excuse for the Pardoner's bad behavior, and used that for a conclusion. Going back to moderate my castigation of his hypocrisy would have meant retyping the whole essay. So I got (justifiably) taken off for changing directions so abruptly at the end. With a word processor, I might have had the time to correct things. But that was the days of typewriters - once you type it, buddy, there it sits. Correcting a sentence meant correcting a page. And adding a sentence meant retyping everything that came after it.
So when I finally started on a for-real master's degree, I was worried. Sure, I could write better than almost any computer geek I knew, but that's a really low standard. A large majority of them may be smart, even ingenious, where logic and technology are concerned, but very few can put together a coherent sentence. Going in to Library school, knowing that most of the students were liberal arts majors, especially English and History, I was afraid of being in over my head. When Prof. Boon told me that she liked my writing, I was stunned.
So three things have combined to change my attitude toward writing. Having graduated, I can write without deadlines. Technology has made editing and polishing much easier and faster. And most important, someone who knows writing thinks that I can write well! So I'm planning to spend a fair amount of my new free time in writing. I just started my memoirs; that always seems like an easy way in to writing. Write what you know, they all say. More to come, God willing.
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