Older Dog Wisdom: Tux 39 - Stockpiling Stuff

Tux was on a quest today. He was determined to find his oldest and most favorite toy, the pink, blue, and white plush ball. When he couldn't find it in the family room, he started going room to room, but it wasn’t in any of the rooms. He next checked his toy box - yes, he has a toy box although his toys seldom reside there. You can enter any room in the house and find at least two of his toys. Occasionally, his humans get tired of stepping on the plush squeeky toys and in a fit of pique, will gather them up and dump them in the toy box. He must, then, patiently pull each toy from the box and return it to its rightful place.

His plush ball was not in the room where he’d left it nor was it in his toy box. Stemming his rising tide of panic, Tux began looking in places where perhaps his sister Grace may have put it just to see him running around like a fool - she’d done it before. But it wasn’t on the stack of dog pillows in the corner of the family room nor was it on the beds. 

By now, he was well and truly in full panic mode. Where was his ball? 

You may ask what’s so special about this particular toy. He was given this toy as a “Welcome to the Family” gift the day he was brought home as a six-week-old sweet puppy. Yes, Tux has had this toy for 11 years. He has never ripped the squeaker out of it and it remains is in working order. It is his go-to toy when he’s stressed. Whenever I hear him squeaking a toy, I know he has his ball and is trying to become centered and at peace once again.

Every once in a while, the toy becomes dingy from too much loving and I’ll take it and throw it into the laundry basket while he’s outside. Today was no different, I noticed it was getting a little ripe and put it into the laundry basket thinking I’d do a load of laundry and have it back where I'd found it before he really had time to miss it. Alas, doing laundry was postponed, and now he wanted/needed his special toy, and the quest to find it continued.

I finally had retrieve Tux’s toy for him. When I handed it to him, I swear he glowered at me. My sweet boy had turned into angry dog. He is, as we speak, asleep with it lovingly held in his mouth as little snoring sounds emanate from him. 

It doesn’t take much to make Tux a happy camper - just an ancient plush toy and a nap.

Lesson Learned

Would that we humans were as easily pleased as Tux. However, we seem to need more than a nap and a toy to make us feel safe. We need things around us or as the late George Carlin said, we need “stuff.” 

Do we need all the stuff we stockpile? Do we really need all those books we keep just in case we run out of things to read? Never mind that we keep buying more books, and many of us have a Kindle and have dozens and dozens of books stored there, too. Now that winter is upon us - almost - I’m switching out summer clothes for winter clothes. As I put the summer clothes into their storage containers, I asked myself do I really need this many t-shirts? The answer was no. Did I set any aside for Goodwill? Absolutely not. I figure that, for this year at least, it was enough to admit I didn’t really need all those t-shirts. Maybe next spring, I’ll actually give a couple of the t-shirts to Goodwill.

While clothes are import, books seem to be my equivalent to Tux’s plush ball. When I’m stressed, I can sit and look at my crowded and overflowing bookshelves and feel the peace return. How could I possibly consider giving away any of them? So, like Tux, I have a stockpile of books, just in case.

What's in a Title?

If you’re like me, character names come easily. But book titles? Forget it. I struggle with a title throughout the writing process. There are some titles I hate from day one, yet can’t come up with another that’s any better. I had one book title that, in my mind, was so awful, I couldn’t bear to send it out to agents/publishers. It languished on a shelf. When I returned to it, I found that I liked manuscript as well as I had when I was writing it. I also found that I hated the title just as much as I had the first time I put it on the manuscript. I finally came up with a brilliant title while I was in Thailand last summer. I couldn’t wait to get home and give my poor manuscript a name.

Every once in a while, a title will come easily as in it was a no-brainer to name the book after the lead character. I had chosen a Native American name for my character and, when translated, I had the title for my book.

A Formula? An App?

I wish there were a formula I could use as in A+B=Title. Or, at least, an iPhone app. There’s neither a formula nor an app much to my chagrin. So I struggle on. With each story and book I write, I struggle.

Name the Book after the Writing is Done

Someone said that everyone should wait until the book is completed before naming it. I tried that. And it meant was that I fretted the entire time that I didn’t even have a working title for the book. It was as if I’d had a child and never bothered to come up with name for her.

I’ve waited to name the book through the first draft, the second draft, and the third draft. All to no avail. Still no name, and the book was ready to go to my beta readers. I was reluctant to send the manuscript out with a title of “XYZ,” even to my betas.

So What’s the Answer?

I don’t have the answer. I don’t know that I’ll ever have the answer on how to find a title for a manuscript.

A Bit of Luck

As I sit writing, my mind occasionally wanders. Most of the time, I catch it before it can go too far off course. There are times, however, when I find myself wondering what I’m doing spending my time writing books that I can’t get an agent for much less get a publisher for it.

It has occurred to me to wonder how much luck has do with a writing career. An author is in the right place at the right time, an author meets a friend of a friend who just happens to be an agent/editor, or an author is selling his self-published book out of the trunk of his car and a passerby buys one, loves it, and sends it to friend in NYC who happens to be looking for just that kind of book, or the lucky writer who found an agent who saw some spark in his writing and took a chance by representing him and finding a publisher who also saw that spark.

Meanwhile, the majority of writers toil away perfecting their craft and diligently keeping their hopes alive with the occasional success stories being told around a virtual camp fire about some unknown writer hitting it big. I was thinking the other day that nearly every profession has stories of someone become an “overnight” success after being discovered. I think that’s why we continue to write with little real hope of reaching the top of the best seller lists. That’s not the reason we write, to hit the top of the best sellers list, but it is part of the dream, isn’t it?

Today, we writers read about how fast publishing is changing, from e-books to Amazon becoming a publisher to how the iPad is going to change the book world. How are we to know whether our writing will find a place in the new world of publishing? It’s a scary place out there for writers today. I have to hope that the new modality will be a boon to the writer who hasn’t yet written her best seller and who only needs a bit of luck to go from toiling writer to best selling author.

Copyrights and TBR Piles

Noah Webster had argued for a copyright law when his Grammatical Institute of the English Language (1783) was being pirated and he was being denied profits from his book. On May 31, 1790, the US Congress enacted the US Copyright law. President George Washington signed it into law also on May 31, 1790. The law gave authors the exclusive right to publish and sell books, charts, and maps for 14 years. The author was allowed to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years. The Act said that violators of the law “shall forfeit all and every copy . . . to the author . . . who shall forthwith destroy the same.” As for the offenders, they would “forfeit and pay the sum of fifty cents for every sheet” found in his possession. The copyright’s owner could also file a lawsuit in “any court of record in the United States . . . within one year . . . .”

Copyrights became available for drawings, models, paintings, and photographs in the 19th century. Musical rolls for player pianos were added to the list of items available for copyright in 1909. Since the 1970s, copyrights have become available for cable television, computer software, DVDs, MP3s, and tapes.

The lengths of the copyright have gotten longer. Until 1998, copyrights lasted for the duration of the author’s life plus an additional 50 years before going into the public domain. In 1998, however, the term of the copyright was extended for an additional 20 years.

Think how many books no longer fall within the protection of the copyright laws. There must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of books, within the public domain. With the advent of ereaders, obtaining copies of those public domain books has become easier leaving one to believe that there will always be a source of books to read. It occurred to me the other day, since they are in the public domain, i.e., no longer covered by a copyright, why are we paying for them? Probably to pay for the costs of converting the book to an ebook. One can but wonder how much it costs to convert the book. Be that as it may, you can always go to Google Books and try your luck there. For instance, I entered The Scarlet Letter, and the book was there in an easy-to-read format. As of October 2009, Google had scanned over 10 million public domain books, and created a world-wide controversy in doing so, apparently.

I can barely get to my TBR (to be read) piles, one on my ereader and one on my bookshelves. much less the hundreds of thousands of free books available to us. It is somehow comforting to know, though, that there will always be books for me to read even if I get super ambitious and read everything in my TBR piles. All I’d have to do then is to win the Lottery so I could buy more books or (not being inclined to holding my breath while the latter happens), I could return to Google Books and browse their library.

Do you have a TBR pile? I know, I know, doesn’t everyone? If you do, how many books do you have in your TBR pile? If you don’t, why don’t you?