One of my favorite comedians, Suzanne Westenhoefer, has a bit on her most recent album that I adore. She and the audience have grown quite chummy, and she confides in them that she doesn't always have such a perfect rapport with her listeners. For instance, in a very granola town in Oregon, she shared (much more entertainingly than I will here) the following anecdote:
Suzanne's partner is an animal lover. Suzanne, who is prone to asthmatic allergy attacks, is not. Once, when Suzanne's partner was recovering from surgery, Suzanne had to handle the animal chores that were usually her partner's domain. Including changing the kitty litter. As Suzanne reported, after a couple of days of that job, her thoughts began to run along the lines of "We don't need that *&#%ing cat."
Her current audience laughed. "Thank you," she said. "That would be an appropriate response." Apparently, the Oregon audience was horrified by what they saw as an implied threat to a poor, defenseless kitty. "Like I'm actually going to kill my cat," Suzanne said. "I'm not making a speech here, people! It's comedy!"
I found this delightful because it seemed like such a duh. Comedy is only funny if it's safely untrue -- though it does have to bear a close enough resemblance to reality that the audience can visit, without straining disbelief too much, the what-if universe that the comic has created.
That's a hard balance to strike. Jim Gaffigan, another favorite comedian of mine, achieves this by adopting a stage persona that is often ridiculously hostile. He'll mention things that people say, and then come back to them with a response that obviously no one would ever really utter -- but it's hilarious to imagine doing so. He brings up, for instance, how personally people take it when you haven't seen their favorite movie. "Wait a minute -- you haven't seen Good Fellas? What are you saying?" Gaffigan mimics an indignant acquaintance, and then answers in his own voice, "Apparently, I'm saying your sister's a w---e."
The reason that this is funny -- if you'll pardon me for indulging in the ultimate unfunniness of breaking down and analyzing humor -- is that Gaffigan's reaction is so extreme that it's reassuringly, over-the-top absurd. Obviously he's not running around really talking like this, for the simple reason that he wouldn't be running around doing anything for long if he mouthed off like that too much. And just as obviously, it wouldn't be funny if he really did talk like this in real off-stage life. It would border on scary. But his comic universe is a place where people get to say all the smart-alecky things that run through their minds. It's a fun place to visit.
I bring all this up because, though I've steered as clear as possible from the negative response to the list (more about that another time), I skimmed enough of it to see a recurring theme: namely, whoever wrote this piece is really defensive, bitter, and just plain mean.
It's sort of a compliment, if you squint. The fact that these readers believed that the voice I used for the list is my real one means that I wrote well enough to be thoroughly convincing.
I know I'm preaching to the saved here, but let it be said for the record: The list was a humor piece. I'm not making a speech. I don't hate non-homeschoolers who make innocent, well-intentioned remarks. I think your sister is a perfectly nice girl.
And I'm not bitter. Not that bitter, anyway. I couldn't be. Anyone who walked around in the state of perpetual snarl I crafted for the list would have exploded, imploded, or jumped off the nearest cliff years ago.
I spend a lot of time thinking about humor, comedy, and what makes funny funny. For years, I had a passionate amateur's interest in the subject; when my writing began to go pro, I realized that though I was often drawn to serious subjects, it was sometimes difficult for me to keep a straight face while addressing them. When I let go a bit and let my comic voice have a bit of play, I got a good response from editors and readers.
It was a humorous piece about homeschooling that started me down the path to writing the list. Home Education Magazine bought the article from me, and liked it enough to post it on their web site as well as including it in the print edition.
And I got fan letters. Real live actual readers wrote to tell me that they'd nailed my words to their wall as a reminder never to be afraid of being different.
That was exhilarating, amazing, humbling. In spite of all the rejection slips that had come my way (and would continue to come, as long as I had the energy to send my work out), I had evidence that I had something to offer readers. I love my loved ones by definition, but there's nothing like the praise of strangers to keep you going when the cold sets in.
That particular piece had been rejected more than once before I sent it to HEM. I learned a forcible lesson in not giving up. I'd known the writing was good, and yet I'd let the rejections get to me and sat on it for months before sending it out one last time and having it accepted by return mail.
I also learned, as I continued writing and submitting my work with renewed energy, that crafting humor is serious work. And the better you are at it, the less credit you get, because really good comic material sounds as if it just rolled off your tongue.
People who work hard in other fields also strive to make their accomplishments appear effortless. The difference is that everyone knows that an Olympic gymnast, ballet dancer, musician, or magician spent years practicing, training, and generally working his or her tuckus off to get to the point of achieving the amazing with a seemingly careless flicker of motion. But humor comes in the form of writing or talking, and pretty much all of us know how to do those. The idea that a lot of thought and planning may lie behind the words one reads or hears isn't intuitively obvious.
I'm not complaining for one minute about my job, which I love and feel deeply lucky to have. I'm just mentioning some common basic misunderstandings about its nature.
The Wish List is a quick read that was years in the making, if you count percolation, pondering, and filing away things I'd heard, read, or thought in the course of my homeschooling career.
When you're writing a piece -- fiction, nonfiction, humor -- figuring out the tone is the first and most important job. It's also often the hardest. Sometimes you can have a very clear idea of exactly what kind of voice your writing should have for what you want to do with it; but once you're putting pen to paper, it just isn't there. You watch helplessly as each effort comes out all wrong. This is too sappy; this is too flip. This isn't what I meant at all -- and where did that come from? You feel like the little old lady who lived in a shoe, surrounded by out-of-control mental offspring. All the ideas that were so sweet and perfectly ordered while they were sitting in your head are now zipping merrily about, with no thought or worry about what you'd like them to do. Beating them all soundly and sending them to bed before they send you to Bedlam is a serious temptation.
Sometimes this disconnect between what you hoped or intended and what comes out is fruitful. You let the words do as they please, and end up with something better than a strict obedience to your carefully laid plans would have given you.
Sometimes you just learn to recognize a false start, or ten, or twenty; the whole day is one big erase and redraw, erase and redraw, and you try to convince yourself that this must qualify as healthful exercise on some level or other.
For once -- and that may be quite literally true, since I can't remember another piece where intent and result eloped before I could attempt the usual arranged marriage -- I didn't have to struggle with tone or content. I knew exactly what I was doing when I sat down to create the infamous List. Instead of a painful birth process, it was more like putting together a quilt for a doll's bed: I had some scraps of usable material left over from another project, and I knew just the little project I wanted to make with them.
The list format was freeing. There was no tedious outlining and laying out. I simply jumped in and started writing. Usually, that's only a good idea as a warm-up exercise, when you need to loosen up and get the ink flowing. You can end up with some usable material toward the end, but the beginning is generally worthless.
For this piece, another loosening-up exercise -- jotting down thoughts and ideas as they come your way -- was most of the writing process. I didn't have to hunt up quotations, or come up with illustrative anecdotes (or worry that I'd already used too many). All I needed were a couple of dozen items that wouldn't seem out of place on a bumper sticker or T-shirt. I worked in a feminist bookstore for years; I knew the drill.
The writing I do is usually positive, in the sense that whether I'm researching or turning inward for material, I'm hoping to find something new to offer my reader. Writing the list was, in the best possible sense, more like the self-appointed task of Frankenstein. I was working with the discarded, incomplete remains of a corpse. I needed to stitch the most usable fragments together -- never mind if the seams showed, this was never meant to pass for human anyway; it just needed to walk and breathe and speak a little. Could I get the blood flowing through the disjointed pieces, or had they been cold too long?
I can think of worse analogies for describing the pivotal piece of a Halloween baby magazine.
I don't remember doing much in the way of rearranging. Of course I had to mention the questions we hear the most early on; and there were a few items that had to go together and in a particular order. Other than that, the only really important issue was coming up with an ending that felt like an ending.
That was tough. Every other item on the list could just be itself. But the last one had to really read like the end of the conversation.
That last item is one that has actually showed some drift. Several blogs that reprinted the list otherwise accurately rephrased it, and only one acknowledged with square brackets that a change had been made.
It's a rude ending. But the whole list is rude, in the sense that it's completely inappropriate for polite conversation.
Several civilian readers, and I think a few homeschoolers, too, objected to that last item because it sounded as if I were saying that anyone who disagreed with me should just stop talking. That could only be the case if you accept the idea that the list is really me talking. As humor, that last bit is pretty much the only thing that works for the end of a bitter homeschooler's wish list. My alternatives were just stopping with a last item that didn't close the piece, or going all soft sister and writing something that a reasonable human being might utter. Either way, the piece would be seriously flawed.
Endings are hard. Every writer struggles with them. Some think that beginnings are more difficult, but I've always found shutting up trickier than starting to talk.
Maybe you noticed?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Why I Wrote The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List
It was a sunny summer day, and I felt great. I'd just finished a project I was passionate about. So often I'd read postings on homeschooling loops asking if there was anything written for family members who didn't really understand what homeschooling was and were taken aback by the fact that their own grown child had chosen such a strange path. I'd written and sold articles about homeschooling before; now I'd finished a whole book on the subject. A necessary and, I hoped, a good one.
Hoped? No. I felt arrogantly sure that it was a fantastic book. I'd worked my hindquarters off creating this slim volume. I'd written and rewritten and read aloud and bored my nearest and dearest senseless. I'd solicited and received feedback from other homeschoolers every step of the way. I had even caught myself in errors and ruthlessly corrected them.
I brought a copy of the book to my local park day gathering. I said I wanted any feedback anyone cared to give.
What I really expected was that the homeschoolers I spent so much time with would read my book and have a good time. This was the group that liked my sense of humor; with them in mind, I'd written myself ragged figuring out the funniest ways of saying what needed saying to the friends and families of homeschoolers.
I did get a lot of laughs. If there's a better feeling than hearing others read your words and laugh out loud at them (assuming, of course, that you're a humor writer), I don't know what it is.
This day was supposed to be about making any necessary changes in my manuscript; really, for me at least, it was a celebration of completion and community. I basked in the day's sunshine and my friends' praise.
If I'd been listening, I'd have heard the karma police pulling into the driveway.
My comeuppance came from an unexpected source, because Nicole is about the sweetest person on the planet and would be horrified at the bare idea of dealing comeuppance to anyone higher on the moral number line than, say, Stalin. She never meant to give me such a wallop, and the only reason I'm announcing publicly that she did was that I needed it and am deeply grateful she was there for me.
Nicole has a terrific, wry British sense of humor. I love to make her laugh because she always gets this brief, wonderfully startled look on her face just before she doubles over -- what I think of as her "ooh, don't let the grownups hear that one" expression.
Today, though, I wasn't seeing her signature wide eyes. She smiled at a few of the one-liners that my friends tossed out from their brief inspections of my book, but her expression was clouded. When the others were finished thumbing through the book, she quietly picked it up and, with the excuse that her youngest daughter needed her nearby, went across the park to give my words a good going-over.
She returned to our picnic spot some thirty minutes later and put the book down again. She looked thoughtful and a little anxious.
"I don't mean," she began, "that it isn't well-written, because it's wonderful. As a homeschooler, I thought it was hilarious."
My heart sank. "But I think," she went on, "that if some of my relatives -- the ones who are really freaked out about the fact that I'm homeschooling -- read this, they'd really be put off by it."
She caught my expression, and her own went from concern to abject apology. I'm sure that I looked as if I'd taken one of those falls that makes you wonder if you'll ever remember how to breathe in again. I certainly felt as if I might not have reason to bother with such an exercise. I'd failed miserably at the very work I was supposed to be good at. If the best feeling is hearing your own words praised and enjoyed, the worst is being caught out in a blunder any first-year writing student would blush to make.
I'd said -- right there on the cover page, in the very title -- that this book was for friends and families of homeschoolers. But I hadn't written it with them in mind at all. I'd written a book that homeschoolers would love, a book full of all the things we think of saying to the civilian world in our frustration and exhaustion.
This wasn't a book homeschoolers could give to their bewildered grandparents. This was something they themselves could read and enjoy, but it wouldn't do a thing to foster real communication or understanding. It was little more than a bunch of smug pot-shots.
I'd been so interested in showing off how hilarious I could be when I put my pen to it that I'd let my ego get in the way of what the book was really supposed to be.
I remember feeling devastated. I think my practical side was relieved, too -- this was fixable. I know I was exhausted in advance, thinking of the work that needed doing. This was no quick little breeze-through, on the hunt for misplaced periods or missing commas. This would have to be a complete rewrite.
I sat down with the manuscript and read every word as if I were a rather imperious British dowager who's been presented with the news that her favorite niece has decided to teach her children at home. (Never mind that the book was written primarily for American readers. Nicole was the one who'd showed me where I needed to go, and she's British. So an English aunt it was.) I thought about that aunt long and hard, and realized that she was being so prickly, and frowning so much, because she cared. She was worried that someone she loved was making a mistake.
I thought about her. I made her a real person, one I loved and respected even if I didn't always find it easy to get along with her. I did everything I could to get behind her eyes, or at the very least be in the same room with her. I pretended that the book I was writing was words I had to say right to her face. And I rewrote the book -- not just page by page, or even paragraph by paragraph, but word by word.
Every sentence that might sting was ruthlessly plucked out. Every phrase that had been sharply funny was deleted and replaced with what I desperately hoped was warmth and reassurance. If I couldn't make that old aunt smile, I hoped to at least be able to soften the frown on her forehead a bit.
I finished the book in this spirit. I was humbled by the work. It wasn't what I was good at. I was more comfortable with my sassy, flippant side. But that wasn't what was needed here. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
I hope I did. I know I felt a deep relief when I finished. I'd done the writing that needed to be done rather than the writing Little Miss Me felt like doing.
I was relieved. But I was disappointed, too.
The things I'd written before were good, in their own way. They might not need saying in this particular book, but they'd made my friends laugh because they needed saying somewhere.
I put them aside. I worked on the book.
I got the idea for the magazine. I put almost everything aside and worked on that.
One night, when I was flipping through files, looking at the articles I had for the first issue and wondering what else I needed, I noticed a document whose title I didn't place right away. "Wish List"? What was this -- the books I wanted for Christmas?
It was something I'd been tossing around as an idea. Not wanting to lose everything I'd torn out of my book for friends and families of homeschoolers, I'd jotted down some of the sharper stuff, and a few other things besides. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it; it was too long for a T-shirt, too short for a book, and as for an article -- what editor was going to buy something like this? Too mean, too edgy. Surely they'd have to blunt it down a bit. And that would ruin the whole point.
But I was an editor now. I was working on the first issue of a magazine so outlandish that even people who supported it in theory weren't sure it could ever work in practice. I had a lot of perfectly good, practical, nuts and bolts articles. It would be nice, I thought, to have something short and funny to lighten things up a bit and fill a little space.
I sat down and started concentrating. Half a dozen sentences turned into a couple of dozen entries. I felt a little like the sorcerer's apprentice -- having worked so hard to get this started, I wasn't sure I could shut it off.
All the discipline and focus I'd turned on my book was now shining through a different lens. As warm and unthreatening as I'd aimed to be before, that was how sharp and no-holds-barred saucy I was pushing for now. Why not? The only people who would ever read this were homeschoolers -- and not many of those. I had maybe a couple of dozen subscribers at this point, and lucky to have them for a magazine that was a little more than theory but not quite vigorous enough to be an established fact.
Throwing myself into writing the list, really kicking up my heels and letting it be the sharpest writing it could be, felt a bit like using the real names of the people who worked at the college that had given my homeschooling friend so much grief about admitting her son as a full-time student. I worried for maybe a minute and a half. And then I thought in so many words, "What's the worst thing anyone can do? Make me more broke and obscure?"
This might just be the only chance I'd have to work from a position of that kind of strength -- the power of having nothing to lose.
Hoped? No. I felt arrogantly sure that it was a fantastic book. I'd worked my hindquarters off creating this slim volume. I'd written and rewritten and read aloud and bored my nearest and dearest senseless. I'd solicited and received feedback from other homeschoolers every step of the way. I had even caught myself in errors and ruthlessly corrected them.
I brought a copy of the book to my local park day gathering. I said I wanted any feedback anyone cared to give.
What I really expected was that the homeschoolers I spent so much time with would read my book and have a good time. This was the group that liked my sense of humor; with them in mind, I'd written myself ragged figuring out the funniest ways of saying what needed saying to the friends and families of homeschoolers.
I did get a lot of laughs. If there's a better feeling than hearing others read your words and laugh out loud at them (assuming, of course, that you're a humor writer), I don't know what it is.
This day was supposed to be about making any necessary changes in my manuscript; really, for me at least, it was a celebration of completion and community. I basked in the day's sunshine and my friends' praise.
If I'd been listening, I'd have heard the karma police pulling into the driveway.
My comeuppance came from an unexpected source, because Nicole is about the sweetest person on the planet and would be horrified at the bare idea of dealing comeuppance to anyone higher on the moral number line than, say, Stalin. She never meant to give me such a wallop, and the only reason I'm announcing publicly that she did was that I needed it and am deeply grateful she was there for me.
Nicole has a terrific, wry British sense of humor. I love to make her laugh because she always gets this brief, wonderfully startled look on her face just before she doubles over -- what I think of as her "ooh, don't let the grownups hear that one" expression.
Today, though, I wasn't seeing her signature wide eyes. She smiled at a few of the one-liners that my friends tossed out from their brief inspections of my book, but her expression was clouded. When the others were finished thumbing through the book, she quietly picked it up and, with the excuse that her youngest daughter needed her nearby, went across the park to give my words a good going-over.
She returned to our picnic spot some thirty minutes later and put the book down again. She looked thoughtful and a little anxious.
"I don't mean," she began, "that it isn't well-written, because it's wonderful. As a homeschooler, I thought it was hilarious."
My heart sank. "But I think," she went on, "that if some of my relatives -- the ones who are really freaked out about the fact that I'm homeschooling -- read this, they'd really be put off by it."
She caught my expression, and her own went from concern to abject apology. I'm sure that I looked as if I'd taken one of those falls that makes you wonder if you'll ever remember how to breathe in again. I certainly felt as if I might not have reason to bother with such an exercise. I'd failed miserably at the very work I was supposed to be good at. If the best feeling is hearing your own words praised and enjoyed, the worst is being caught out in a blunder any first-year writing student would blush to make.
I'd said -- right there on the cover page, in the very title -- that this book was for friends and families of homeschoolers. But I hadn't written it with them in mind at all. I'd written a book that homeschoolers would love, a book full of all the things we think of saying to the civilian world in our frustration and exhaustion.
This wasn't a book homeschoolers could give to their bewildered grandparents. This was something they themselves could read and enjoy, but it wouldn't do a thing to foster real communication or understanding. It was little more than a bunch of smug pot-shots.
I'd been so interested in showing off how hilarious I could be when I put my pen to it that I'd let my ego get in the way of what the book was really supposed to be.
I remember feeling devastated. I think my practical side was relieved, too -- this was fixable. I know I was exhausted in advance, thinking of the work that needed doing. This was no quick little breeze-through, on the hunt for misplaced periods or missing commas. This would have to be a complete rewrite.
I sat down with the manuscript and read every word as if I were a rather imperious British dowager who's been presented with the news that her favorite niece has decided to teach her children at home. (Never mind that the book was written primarily for American readers. Nicole was the one who'd showed me where I needed to go, and she's British. So an English aunt it was.) I thought about that aunt long and hard, and realized that she was being so prickly, and frowning so much, because she cared. She was worried that someone she loved was making a mistake.
I thought about her. I made her a real person, one I loved and respected even if I didn't always find it easy to get along with her. I did everything I could to get behind her eyes, or at the very least be in the same room with her. I pretended that the book I was writing was words I had to say right to her face. And I rewrote the book -- not just page by page, or even paragraph by paragraph, but word by word.
Every sentence that might sting was ruthlessly plucked out. Every phrase that had been sharply funny was deleted and replaced with what I desperately hoped was warmth and reassurance. If I couldn't make that old aunt smile, I hoped to at least be able to soften the frown on her forehead a bit.
I finished the book in this spirit. I was humbled by the work. It wasn't what I was good at. I was more comfortable with my sassy, flippant side. But that wasn't what was needed here. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
I hope I did. I know I felt a deep relief when I finished. I'd done the writing that needed to be done rather than the writing Little Miss Me felt like doing.
I was relieved. But I was disappointed, too.
The things I'd written before were good, in their own way. They might not need saying in this particular book, but they'd made my friends laugh because they needed saying somewhere.
I put them aside. I worked on the book.
I got the idea for the magazine. I put almost everything aside and worked on that.
One night, when I was flipping through files, looking at the articles I had for the first issue and wondering what else I needed, I noticed a document whose title I didn't place right away. "Wish List"? What was this -- the books I wanted for Christmas?
It was something I'd been tossing around as an idea. Not wanting to lose everything I'd torn out of my book for friends and families of homeschoolers, I'd jotted down some of the sharper stuff, and a few other things besides. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it; it was too long for a T-shirt, too short for a book, and as for an article -- what editor was going to buy something like this? Too mean, too edgy. Surely they'd have to blunt it down a bit. And that would ruin the whole point.
But I was an editor now. I was working on the first issue of a magazine so outlandish that even people who supported it in theory weren't sure it could ever work in practice. I had a lot of perfectly good, practical, nuts and bolts articles. It would be nice, I thought, to have something short and funny to lighten things up a bit and fill a little space.
I sat down and started concentrating. Half a dozen sentences turned into a couple of dozen entries. I felt a little like the sorcerer's apprentice -- having worked so hard to get this started, I wasn't sure I could shut it off.
All the discipline and focus I'd turned on my book was now shining through a different lens. As warm and unthreatening as I'd aimed to be before, that was how sharp and no-holds-barred saucy I was pushing for now. Why not? The only people who would ever read this were homeschoolers -- and not many of those. I had maybe a couple of dozen subscribers at this point, and lucky to have them for a magazine that was a little more than theory but not quite vigorous enough to be an established fact.
Throwing myself into writing the list, really kicking up my heels and letting it be the sharpest writing it could be, felt a bit like using the real names of the people who worked at the college that had given my homeschooling friend so much grief about admitting her son as a full-time student. I worried for maybe a minute and a half. And then I thought in so many words, "What's the worst thing anyone can do? Make me more broke and obscure?"
This might just be the only chance I'd have to work from a position of that kind of strength -- the power of having nothing to lose.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Pushing the envelopes.
Just finished tonight's pile of mags to send out first thing tomorrow. Would like very much to know why no one, including alleged nearest and dearest, saw fit to tell me until yesterday afternoon that there is a cute little bottle with a cute little sponge fitted on the top that people who have to seal billions of envelopes can use in lieu of (in my case) kitchen sponge and old plastic bowl with picture of Mickey Mouse and tiny puddle of water within. When settling down to work each evening, have had to balance and arrange everything just right in my tiny little living room to ensure that bowl never had remotest chance of tipping and spilling what doesn't seem like much water until and unless it hits coffee table or already-icky apartment-grade carpet or (please please no) pile of magazines waiting patiently to be sent on adventures.
I bought how many boxes of envelopes that day at Staples? And did even one Staples employee see fit to mention little spongey-bottle? Politely make sure I either had one or knew such a possibility existed?
At that, I was feeling extra brilliant about earmarking a brand new sponge for dampening purposes, rather than risking the inevitable paper cut on my tongue. (Can't even type that without shuddering.)
Am all out of envelopes. Will have to get more tomorrow.
Maybe someday I'll have some advertisers and can afford those envelopes that have a self-sticking flap. You just pull off an adorable little strip of paper and you're ready for business. They cost something like three times the normal, ordinary, boring, tedious ones I use now.
How come they cost so much more? We used to have to lick postage stamps. Then they became peel-offable. The price of postage didn't suddenly skyrocket at this development.
Did it?
Tired. Going to bed.
I bought how many boxes of envelopes that day at Staples? And did even one Staples employee see fit to mention little spongey-bottle? Politely make sure I either had one or knew such a possibility existed?
At that, I was feeling extra brilliant about earmarking a brand new sponge for dampening purposes, rather than risking the inevitable paper cut on my tongue. (Can't even type that without shuddering.)
Am all out of envelopes. Will have to get more tomorrow.
Maybe someday I'll have some advertisers and can afford those envelopes that have a self-sticking flap. You just pull off an adorable little strip of paper and you're ready for business. They cost something like three times the normal, ordinary, boring, tedious ones I use now.
How come they cost so much more? We used to have to lick postage stamps. Then they became peel-offable. The price of postage didn't suddenly skyrocket at this development.
Did it?
Tired. Going to bed.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Since you handled that last one so well...
Just wanted to hit everyone up for some feedback to yet another burning question before I wander out to hit the next batch of envelopes waiting to be filled.
The comments here have been wonderful: insightful, witty, thought-provoking, gratifying.
Except that one guy. He's hard to miss.
He didn't have the class to send his words directly to me, but instead posted them publicly, after an entry on this blog that had nothing to do with what he was talking about.
I really thought that hate mail would be more fun than this.
I haven't yet had a hateful letter about the magazine itself. A couple of individual articles have received some negative feedback; otherwise, so far I'm in danger of being spoiled by the kindness of strangers. I thought that there would be some who would be offended by the very idea of a non-religious homeschooling publication. Instead I've received many kind words, in private emails and on this blog, from people who may differ from me in terms of spiritual belief but who like what they've seen of the magazine and encourage my endeavor.
So the note from the nut threw me a bit. I get copies in my email of whatever's posted here, and I know that the last thing I should do is publicly admit to being bothered by something that was obviously meant to be upsetting. But, yes, the unabashed hostility took me aback.
The woman who said she thought one of my articles bashed a particular religion wrote in civil language and brought up a point worth discussing. This guy was just being a jerk.
(Plus, okay, I'm so starved for time these days, between homeschooling, editing, writing, and trying to keep the homestead reasonably allergen-free that I'm seethingly jealous of anyone who has the time to write stupid, mean, petty words to someone he's never even met, when here I have lovely aunts and cousins who haven't heard a word from me in what seems like decades now.)
I'm still figuring out the ins and outs of this computer world. I don't mind having negative comments here, because I want to be big enough to have this place be an honest reflection of what people really think, even if that's less than flattering. But I also don't like the idea of people having to see offensive language here when they stop by. I'm torn between feeling Stalinesque if I delete the comment, and being a party to perpetuating ickiness if I do. If he'd written the same sentiments without the obscenities, I don't think I'd be worrying about this at all. But if I took out the bad words, I'd be saying he said something that he didn't -- and that's abhorrent to me, as a writer and an editor. I think it's got to be all or nothing.
Dumb thing to be fretting about, probably, but perspective is the first thing to go when exhaustion sets in.
Your thoughts?
The comments here have been wonderful: insightful, witty, thought-provoking, gratifying.
Except that one guy. He's hard to miss.
He didn't have the class to send his words directly to me, but instead posted them publicly, after an entry on this blog that had nothing to do with what he was talking about.
I really thought that hate mail would be more fun than this.
I haven't yet had a hateful letter about the magazine itself. A couple of individual articles have received some negative feedback; otherwise, so far I'm in danger of being spoiled by the kindness of strangers. I thought that there would be some who would be offended by the very idea of a non-religious homeschooling publication. Instead I've received many kind words, in private emails and on this blog, from people who may differ from me in terms of spiritual belief but who like what they've seen of the magazine and encourage my endeavor.
So the note from the nut threw me a bit. I get copies in my email of whatever's posted here, and I know that the last thing I should do is publicly admit to being bothered by something that was obviously meant to be upsetting. But, yes, the unabashed hostility took me aback.
The woman who said she thought one of my articles bashed a particular religion wrote in civil language and brought up a point worth discussing. This guy was just being a jerk.
(Plus, okay, I'm so starved for time these days, between homeschooling, editing, writing, and trying to keep the homestead reasonably allergen-free that I'm seethingly jealous of anyone who has the time to write stupid, mean, petty words to someone he's never even met, when here I have lovely aunts and cousins who haven't heard a word from me in what seems like decades now.)
I'm still figuring out the ins and outs of this computer world. I don't mind having negative comments here, because I want to be big enough to have this place be an honest reflection of what people really think, even if that's less than flattering. But I also don't like the idea of people having to see offensive language here when they stop by. I'm torn between feeling Stalinesque if I delete the comment, and being a party to perpetuating ickiness if I do. If he'd written the same sentiments without the obscenities, I don't think I'd be worrying about this at all. But if I took out the bad words, I'd be saying he said something that he didn't -- and that's abhorrent to me, as a writer and an editor. I think it's got to be all or nothing.
Dumb thing to be fretting about, probably, but perspective is the first thing to go when exhaustion sets in.
Your thoughts?
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
So, when you say "no religion bashing," do you mean...
Got my first "Cancel my subscription" letter. Well, technically, the letter-writer hadn't subscribed to SHM. She ordered one issue, and wanted to let me know why she wouldn't be asking for any more.
In my editorial, she said, I had specifically stated that I wouldn't engage in religion bashing. And then, just a few pages later, I did exactly that.
I really don't know if she's correct or not. Obviously I didn't think so at the time I was writing the piece in question. Now I'm not sure. I'm short of sleep and time and all those other things that help one achieve a certain quietness of spirit so necessary to real perspective.
SHM has a column called "Here We Go Again..." It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like -- bad news about homeschooling. When I put the word out that such a column would exist, one of the first responses I received was from a homeschooler named Lucy, who told me about an episode of an HBO program that I've heard of, but have never seen. So far as I can gather, the show's about a man who's a member of a splinter Mormon group, his three wives, and their children.
Here's what I say in the column:
-----
In an episode that aired this summer, one of the wives, Nikki, decides to homeschool her son.
Homeschooler Lucy, who gave me a very detailed report of the episode, stressed that "there were several plots going on at the same time, and this brief mention of homeschooling was only one aspect of the story line." Which makes it all the more impressive that the writers managed to make homeschooling look so appalling in such a small space of time and plot.
First, homeschooling was an impulsive, poorly-thought-out decision on the part of Nikki, who did it entirely for religious reasons. Weird religious reasons, naturally. The Catholic school her son has been attending is, well, just too Catholic. And apparently public school wouldn't even be an option. Because -- well, you know how those wacky homeschoolers are. They're all about keeping their kids locked away from anything they disagree with.
Nikki decides right there at the school that she's going to homeschool her son. She grabs him by the arm and, as Lucy put it, "off they run out of the parking lot as though they're fleeing somewhere." Of course they are. They're fleeing the real world! The authorities! Life as we know it! That's what homeschoolers do!
Just to give the air of looming secrecy surrounding Nikki's decision to homeschool some added linger, Nikki doesn't tell her husband about her decision.
When next we see him, the son in question is shown sitting at the kitchen table in his school uniform. Nikki protests that he doesn't have to wear it -- "That's the fun part of homeschooling!" Implying, as Lucy pointed out, that we all sit around in our pajamas all day. ("Well, okay," Lucy conceded immediately after, "...but not EVERY day!") The boy insists that he likes to wear his uniform. Is anybody but me really depressed at the idea that we're apparently supposed to cheer at a gesture of autonomy and a symbolic lunge at independence that consists of dressing just like all those other kids who are going to sit learning exactly the same thing at exactly the same time?
Nikki, clearly having no real idea of what "homeschooling" means except that it must be stirring up some school-type stuff at home, asks him what one plus one is; and then, when her obviously bored son, much too bright for such skimpy intellectual fare, answers correctly, she ups the ante by asking, "What about one plus two?" Great! Homeschoolers are unprepared, not nearly as bright as their own children, and don't have the education or training that "real" teachers do.
The son is so unhappy with the situation that he runs away. When his parents find him, they put him back in the Catholic school. Hooray for happy endings -- he's back where he belongs, in a real learning environment!
Yes, it's absolutely true that this is one television program, and a drama to boot. Unlike, say, CBS' wonderfully balanced and factual reports a few years back on homeschooling's "dark side," this show is fiction. So what's the big deal? There are plenty of television shows in which public schools and their students and teachers are shown in a less than flattering light.
Sure -- but the vast majority of viewers have attended public schools. These people aren't going to be basing their idea of what public school really is on what they see on TV, because they have plenty of other sources of information about it. Homeschooling is getting more and more common, but it's still comparatively rare, and plenty of people already have the idea that it's all about keeping our kids at home.
And it's all about religion. And not even nice normal religion, but creepy culty stuff.
Thanks, HBO.
-----
Here's the response I received from the reader in question:
“I teach at a homeschooling charter K - 12 school, plus my daughter homeschools her kids. I thought this would be the perfect magazine to have at the front desk of the school for parents to pick up and read, and also give my daughter some new ideas for homeschooling. However I will not be able to give the magazine to either the school or my daughter. Why? Because the first issue is highly insulting to Mormons, and both the director of the school and my daughter are Mormons.
“Although you state in "Half Done" that there will be no religion bashing, you do just that in "Here We Go Again." For example, on p.10, after explaining that the movie is about a Mormon man and his family, you say "......Nikki, who [homeschooled] entirely for religious reasons. Weird religious reasons, naturally." Later in the article, "And it's all about religion. And not even nice normal religion, but creepy culty stuff."
“Wouldn't you be insulted by that if you were Mormon? Don't put me in the position of having to defend that faith, because I am not of that persuasion, but I was shocked that you would stoop to bashing Mormons after declaring that this magazine wasn't going to do that.”
So: Am I guilty?
In my own defense, I would like to point out that describing this show as being about "a Mormon and his family" is, I think, misleading. His family consists of three wives. In my reply to the woman who wrote to me, I pointed out that I thought any Mormons who read my column would be too upset at HBO presenting this group as "Mormon" to have any annoyance left for me. The Mormons I hung out with -- and yes, as a matter of fact, I used to do just that: my big teenage rebellion gesture was joining the church for a few years, stopping just short of baptism and spending hours attending services every Sunday -- wouldn't even admit that polygamy used to be part of the early church. They certainly don't approve of such behavior now, let alone participate in it. I was rather surprised that the writer, whose own daughter is a Mormon, didn't know this.
I wasn't describing Mormonism as "creepy culty stuff," because this show isn't about mainstream Mormonism. It's about some guy with three wives. Sorry, but my description of that setup as creepy stands.
I said something along these lines to the woman who wrote to me. She replied that I might be correct, but someone who didn't know the facts of Mormonism would think that I was sneering at Mormons.
So: did I bash?
In my editorial, she said, I had specifically stated that I wouldn't engage in religion bashing. And then, just a few pages later, I did exactly that.
I really don't know if she's correct or not. Obviously I didn't think so at the time I was writing the piece in question. Now I'm not sure. I'm short of sleep and time and all those other things that help one achieve a certain quietness of spirit so necessary to real perspective.
SHM has a column called "Here We Go Again..." It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like -- bad news about homeschooling. When I put the word out that such a column would exist, one of the first responses I received was from a homeschooler named Lucy, who told me about an episode of an HBO program that I've heard of, but have never seen. So far as I can gather, the show's about a man who's a member of a splinter Mormon group, his three wives, and their children.
Here's what I say in the column:
-----
In an episode that aired this summer, one of the wives, Nikki, decides to homeschool her son.
Homeschooler Lucy, who gave me a very detailed report of the episode, stressed that "there were several plots going on at the same time, and this brief mention of homeschooling was only one aspect of the story line." Which makes it all the more impressive that the writers managed to make homeschooling look so appalling in such a small space of time and plot.
First, homeschooling was an impulsive, poorly-thought-out decision on the part of Nikki, who did it entirely for religious reasons. Weird religious reasons, naturally. The Catholic school her son has been attending is, well, just too Catholic. And apparently public school wouldn't even be an option. Because -- well, you know how those wacky homeschoolers are. They're all about keeping their kids locked away from anything they disagree with.
Nikki decides right there at the school that she's going to homeschool her son. She grabs him by the arm and, as Lucy put it, "off they run out of the parking lot as though they're fleeing somewhere." Of course they are. They're fleeing the real world! The authorities! Life as we know it! That's what homeschoolers do!
Just to give the air of looming secrecy surrounding Nikki's decision to homeschool some added linger, Nikki doesn't tell her husband about her decision.
When next we see him, the son in question is shown sitting at the kitchen table in his school uniform. Nikki protests that he doesn't have to wear it -- "That's the fun part of homeschooling!" Implying, as Lucy pointed out, that we all sit around in our pajamas all day. ("Well, okay," Lucy conceded immediately after, "...but not EVERY day!") The boy insists that he likes to wear his uniform. Is anybody but me really depressed at the idea that we're apparently supposed to cheer at a gesture of autonomy and a symbolic lunge at independence that consists of dressing just like all those other kids who are going to sit learning exactly the same thing at exactly the same time?
Nikki, clearly having no real idea of what "homeschooling" means except that it must be stirring up some school-type stuff at home, asks him what one plus one is; and then, when her obviously bored son, much too bright for such skimpy intellectual fare, answers correctly, she ups the ante by asking, "What about one plus two?" Great! Homeschoolers are unprepared, not nearly as bright as their own children, and don't have the education or training that "real" teachers do.
The son is so unhappy with the situation that he runs away. When his parents find him, they put him back in the Catholic school. Hooray for happy endings -- he's back where he belongs, in a real learning environment!
Yes, it's absolutely true that this is one television program, and a drama to boot. Unlike, say, CBS' wonderfully balanced and factual reports a few years back on homeschooling's "dark side," this show is fiction. So what's the big deal? There are plenty of television shows in which public schools and their students and teachers are shown in a less than flattering light.
Sure -- but the vast majority of viewers have attended public schools. These people aren't going to be basing their idea of what public school really is on what they see on TV, because they have plenty of other sources of information about it. Homeschooling is getting more and more common, but it's still comparatively rare, and plenty of people already have the idea that it's all about keeping our kids at home.
And it's all about religion. And not even nice normal religion, but creepy culty stuff.
Thanks, HBO.
-----
Here's the response I received from the reader in question:
“I teach at a homeschooling charter K - 12 school, plus my daughter homeschools her kids. I thought this would be the perfect magazine to have at the front desk of the school for parents to pick up and read, and also give my daughter some new ideas for homeschooling. However I will not be able to give the magazine to either the school or my daughter. Why? Because the first issue is highly insulting to Mormons, and both the director of the school and my daughter are Mormons.
“Although you state in "Half Done" that there will be no religion bashing, you do just that in "Here We Go Again." For example, on p.10, after explaining that the movie is about a Mormon man and his family, you say "......Nikki, who [homeschooled] entirely for religious reasons. Weird religious reasons, naturally." Later in the article, "And it's all about religion. And not even nice normal religion, but creepy culty stuff."
“Wouldn't you be insulted by that if you were Mormon? Don't put me in the position of having to defend that faith, because I am not of that persuasion, but I was shocked that you would stoop to bashing Mormons after declaring that this magazine wasn't going to do that.”
So: Am I guilty?
In my own defense, I would like to point out that describing this show as being about "a Mormon and his family" is, I think, misleading. His family consists of three wives. In my reply to the woman who wrote to me, I pointed out that I thought any Mormons who read my column would be too upset at HBO presenting this group as "Mormon" to have any annoyance left for me. The Mormons I hung out with -- and yes, as a matter of fact, I used to do just that: my big teenage rebellion gesture was joining the church for a few years, stopping just short of baptism and spending hours attending services every Sunday -- wouldn't even admit that polygamy used to be part of the early church. They certainly don't approve of such behavior now, let alone participate in it. I was rather surprised that the writer, whose own daughter is a Mormon, didn't know this.
I wasn't describing Mormonism as "creepy culty stuff," because this show isn't about mainstream Mormonism. It's about some guy with three wives. Sorry, but my description of that setup as creepy stands.
I said something along these lines to the woman who wrote to me. She replied that I might be correct, but someone who didn't know the facts of Mormonism would think that I was sneering at Mormons.
So: did I bash?
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Some things I'll do when every subscriber has her first issue and the hate mail about the bitter list has slowed down a bit:
1. Get a haircut. I'd get a new hair style, but that would imply that I have one now. At this point, I'll settle for getting rid of the worst dead ends and (maybe) not being mistaken for an extra from a Duran Duran video.
2. Buy a blouse that doesn't have a cartoon character or funny slogan on it. I dressed like a grownup the other day and was surprised at how much fun it was. Wouldn't want to make a habit of it, but nice to have it as an option.
3. Go on that I'm-only-five-pounds-away-from-physical-perfection diet. I don't know how people who have real jobs manage to lose weight if they want to, but when I'm not eating, that's pretty much all I'm doing.
4. Bake a batch of my famous three-chocolate brownies.
5. Work on my sense of timing.
6. Buy date book and start using it.
7. Replace bulb in refrigerator.
8. Try to find out why in God's name refrigerator keeps making that horrifying noise.
9. And why it keeps freezing the strawberries but letting the milk go sour all in the same day.
10. Just get a new refrigerator, already.
11. Take long, vanilla-scented-oil bath with a big stack of books and a box of chocolate creams close at hand so I'm not tempted to get out any time soon. Make it clear to beloved family that no reason on this green earth could possibly be compelling enough to justify a knock on the door. If my sister in Oregon who hasn't spoken to me in a year and a half calls, she can wait another hour to hear my voice. And considering the layout of our apartment, there's no way I'll be able to get to safety if there's a fire, so don't bother telling me about it. Just blow me a kiss as you leave, and don't worry -- I'm the one in the room with all the water, remember?
12. Start planning the next issue of the magazine, since I now know that just because it's a quarterly doesn't mean I can waste a single minute, especially if I'm working toward making it a bimonthly after the fourth issue.
13. Swear to self that will definitely take that last one seriously, but first must decide what to dress up as for Halloween next year. Something the very opposite of my usual self, presumably. Someone who doesn't know how to spell, read, or care about commas; and who does know how to drink, dance, and have a good time. Which seems to narrow my choices down to Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and evil Willow from the alternate-universe episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Evil Willow a much better choice, because though evil, still better than Daisy, who isn't evil in the sense of being a demonically-possessed member of the legions of the undead, but is really, really annoying. Plus I don't have the right hair to be her anyway. Am a redhead. So wouldn't have to fake anything to be Willow but a bustline and evilness.
14. Get priorities straight. (Note to self: do this one last.)
2. Buy a blouse that doesn't have a cartoon character or funny slogan on it. I dressed like a grownup the other day and was surprised at how much fun it was. Wouldn't want to make a habit of it, but nice to have it as an option.
3. Go on that I'm-only-five-pounds-away-from-physical-perfection diet. I don't know how people who have real jobs manage to lose weight if they want to, but when I'm not eating, that's pretty much all I'm doing.
4. Bake a batch of my famous three-chocolate brownies.
5. Work on my sense of timing.
6. Buy date book and start using it.
7. Replace bulb in refrigerator.
8. Try to find out why in God's name refrigerator keeps making that horrifying noise.
9. And why it keeps freezing the strawberries but letting the milk go sour all in the same day.
10. Just get a new refrigerator, already.
11. Take long, vanilla-scented-oil bath with a big stack of books and a box of chocolate creams close at hand so I'm not tempted to get out any time soon. Make it clear to beloved family that no reason on this green earth could possibly be compelling enough to justify a knock on the door. If my sister in Oregon who hasn't spoken to me in a year and a half calls, she can wait another hour to hear my voice. And considering the layout of our apartment, there's no way I'll be able to get to safety if there's a fire, so don't bother telling me about it. Just blow me a kiss as you leave, and don't worry -- I'm the one in the room with all the water, remember?
12. Start planning the next issue of the magazine, since I now know that just because it's a quarterly doesn't mean I can waste a single minute, especially if I'm working toward making it a bimonthly after the fourth issue.
13. Swear to self that will definitely take that last one seriously, but first must decide what to dress up as for Halloween next year. Something the very opposite of my usual self, presumably. Someone who doesn't know how to spell, read, or care about commas; and who does know how to drink, dance, and have a good time. Which seems to narrow my choices down to Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and evil Willow from the alternate-universe episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Evil Willow a much better choice, because though evil, still better than Daisy, who isn't evil in the sense of being a demonically-possessed member of the legions of the undead, but is really, really annoying. Plus I don't have the right hair to be her anyway. Am a redhead. So wouldn't have to fake anything to be Willow but a bustline and evilness.
14. Get priorities straight. (Note to self: do this one last.)
Monday, November 12, 2007
So when you say "secular," do you mean...?
Just before the wild rush of response to the Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List descended this weekend, I got a letter in my emailbox from a would-be purchaser who was interested in SHM, but had been burned before by homeschooling magazines purporting to be unbiased, but quoting the Bible on every page. She apologized for any offense the question might give, and asked with refreshing straightforwardness: Just how secular is Secular Homeschooling Magazine? I had a lot of cleaning to do (when both parents work, the bathrooms are the first to suffer), and was delighted by both her question and the opportunity to give it a really, really long answer. Here it is, if anyone else is interested.
Hi, there --
Your letter was great. I'm not at all offended.
The short answer to your question is that the reason I started the magazine in the first place is because of experiences just like yours.
The medium-length answer is that although it's true that only two sample articles are posted for perusal, they're completely representative, in both tone and content, of what readers can find in the rest of SHM. The article about Deborah Uhler's experiences with our local community college is especially the kind of thing you'll read in our mag: a nuts and bolts, positive piece about a particular aspect of homeschooling.
The super-long answer is:
Let's break down the table of contents.
The editorial is by me, the resident heathen. In it, I talk about how and why I decided to edit a secular homeschooling magazine. (Actually, my family and I still haven't completely nailed down the "why." Localized insanity and a strange virus that was making the rounds at the time are leading the list of possible culprits. But I digress.) I explain what I mean by secular: non-, rather than anti-, religious. I also mention two advertisers that I turned away: a religiously-oriented homeschooling magazine, and the owner of a site that spoofs the tracts put out by Chick Publications.
We then have a regular column called Curiouser and Curiouser. In every issue, readers will be invited to write in replies to the burning question of the issue before. I had to cheat on this one and beg pretty much every homeschooler on every loop ever to please send me a reply to the following question: What's the weirdest thing anyone's ever said to you about homeschooling? (Hard to pick a favorite, but "If you homeschool your kids, are they going to be normal?" is high on the list.) All weird, no religion. Good times.
Next is Hot Chocolate!, another regular column. This one's devoted to good news in the homeschooling world. I talk about how homeschoolers took the prizes in this year's National Geography and Spelling Bees this year; a nice article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a secular homeschooling group; and, in the mixed-feelings department (at least for this raving feminist), a cheerleading class that girls can join without having to attend school or experience the ritual humiliation of tryouts. Those who participate are given the chance to cheer for a junior basketball team, if that's their idea of a good time. I was just happy that any "But what about cheerleading?" questions from concerned friends and relations can now be countered with the reply that homeschoolers can cheer, too.
Here We Go Again is another department, this one given over to not-so-good news in the homeschooling world. I review an episode of HBO's "Big Love," which presents homeschoolers as -- shockingly enough -- cult religious weirdos. I also waste some time lambasting a stupid movie about two guys who were homeschooled on the North Pole and grow up with no social skills whatsoever. (No blame is given to the fact that their dad is the guy who used to play the bionic man, though in my opinion that would be enough to mess *anyone* up. But I could be bitter.) And I kvetch about a homeschooler who is on his local school board and accused of not really caring about public education, and the fact that homeschooling sports teams in New Zealand are apparently not given the same opportunities to compete -- or to keep their awards if they compete and win -- as school teams.
The next piece is "A More Perfect Union," which can be read in full on the mag's site. This deals entirely with petty bureaucrats bullying homeschoolers, and how and why homeschoolers can and should stand up for their rights.
And then there's the infamous Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List, also available in full online. The only mention of religion is in item #8: “Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious;” and #9: “Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.” I had some religious homeschoolers write and thank me for that last one, which made me very happy.
Camille North's article "How Do I Get Started Homeschooling?" is first-rate. She did mention, in the first draft, a couple of companies that sell homeschooling materials and whose mindset is deeply religious; we cut the reference to them. No other mention of anything religious. No Bible quotes. Just some wonderful advice that I wish I'd had earlier in my own homeschooling career and that several friends who bought the issue appreciated.
The Homeschool Burnout article is about, well, how even homeschoolers can feel burnt out sometimes, and why this doesn't mean you're a terrible parent or a bad teacher or anything. The closest thing to a religious reference is when I mention that it can be very hard to admit to other homeschoolers that you're feeling a little toasted "when it seems that everyone on your homeschooling block is saying how blessed they feel at having the great privilege of teaching their children." I went ahead and used the word "blessed" because it’s something I hear a lot, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's the only word in the entire article that is even remotely religious. I think it works, so I'm standing by it.
Hard on the heels of this is a wonderful piece by Donna Tarkett. My article is factual; hers is personal, and complements the points I bring up perfectly. Tarkett's "about the author" includes a mention of being interested in spirituality and herbalism/homeopathy. That's it, so far as religion goes.
Then there's the "Home Scholars" section, for our young readers. Sage Barton gave us a fantastic article about the history of rockets; Siri Wilder allowed me to print a beautiful poem she wrote several months ago about finding meaning in life even when it must end in death (nothing about heaven, just a lot of lovely words about hope and helping one another); and my son contributed a piece about how Legos are the greatest thing ever, as well as a comic about a mild-mannered stegosaurus named Spike. Linda Kulp, a grownup, gave us a how-to article about writing limericks. No religion in any of it.
Lyndy Latta's article about "Taking Back the Moral High Ground" addresses how secular homeschoolers tackle character education. This article does mention religion, because her point is that families do not have to be religious in order to teach morality. Also, interestingly, many of the people who responded to her requests for input on the idea of character education for secular homeschoolers were themselves religious, though they considered themselves to be secular homeschoolers because their primary reasons for homeschooling were not religious. A very matter-of-fact piece.
Anita Marchesani's "Homeschooling and the Home-Based Business" is exactly what the title says. I found it very helpful myself as I started up this business of magazine editing. No religion. None. Not even a little. (This is either making you giggle or steaming your clams. I'm hoping the former.)
I interviewed Florida homeschooler Kimberly Powell about the secular homeschooling group she started. She had some bad experiences with some so-called inclusive groups. There is, of necessity, some mention of religion, or rather of religious individuals (no names, of course), including one woman who was religious but highly indignant that a homeschooling group was more about religion than about homeschooling, since frankly she could take care of the religion at home but needed some support on the homeschooling front. A very heartening and practical piece about how to start a secular homeschooling group of your own, should you be so inclined.
I followed this up with a piece about my own local homeschooling group, which is inclusive rather than secular, and the ups and downs of being a non-religious homeschooler in a "mixed" group. Even in the big bad city, it can be uncomfortable at times. But mostly it's great.
Kathy Funari's "Nature Study" article discusses the history of nature study, goes into some detail about Charlotte Mason and other proponents of the importance of nature study for children, and gives some tips about incorporating it into our homeschooling lives. Fun piece. Cute pictures. No religion.
Lill Hawkins is so funny, I was thrilled when she offered to contribute a humor piece to SHM. She unschools in Maine, where recently her husband managed to set their lawnmower on fire. Fun to read about. Glad I didn't have to clean it up. She has a blog that I want to shamelessly promote:
http://hawkhillacres.blogspot.com
Renee Desai wrote a wonderful article about seeing our children for who they are rather than who we wish they were. The closest thing to a religious reference in it is a quote from Krishnamurti: "To see what is, is to love."
Homeschooling in the Real World is all about how cool it is to homeschool our kids and take them on adventures. It's a great answer to people who think that we must sit behind little desks all day. Her son took several photographs of the Sacramento area that are included in the article. No religion.
Deniz Martinez talks about a bunch of fun educational web sites having to do with art. No religion.
The product reviews section includes reviews of the four-book series A Cartoon History of the Earth, which starts at the Big Bang and ends with the evolution of modern man; Mike Venezia's fantastic children's books about great artists; the Evan-Moor series of History Pockets; and The Writer's Jungle. Cheryl Holbrook reviewed that last product, and explains that there is some religious content in it, including a few Bible verses in the copy work section. Readers can make up their minds, given what she tells them about the product and how it teaches, as to whether or not that's a deal-breaker.
The Money Matters section offers tips on home cooking with our homeschoolers as a money-saving and educational practice, and includes two recipes.
Our Continuing Education is about Kate Chopin's novel "The Awakening" and her idea of "mother-women" -- women who willingly submerge their identities and lose themselves and their own needs in favor of their families. I speculate whether or not homeschooling mothers are at greater risk of being mother-women, and whether our kids would really be better off if everything was all about them, the way they keep telling us it should be. (Hint: I'm not in favor of this.)
The ads are all of non-religious educational products, to the best of my knowledge.
Let me wrap this up by saying that if you buy SHM and think that I've pulled one over on you, and find that the mag is saturated with Bible verses and WWJD, I will refund your money. If you read it and admit that it's genuinely secular but you think it just plain sucks, well, I can't help you there. Money is tight, and I won't blame you at all if you want to just buy one issue at a time.
Hope this helps. And thanks for your interest.
All my best,
Deborah Markus
Editor, Secular Homeschooling Magazine
Hi, there --
Your letter was great. I'm not at all offended.
The short answer to your question is that the reason I started the magazine in the first place is because of experiences just like yours.
The medium-length answer is that although it's true that only two sample articles are posted for perusal, they're completely representative, in both tone and content, of what readers can find in the rest of SHM. The article about Deborah Uhler's experiences with our local community college is especially the kind of thing you'll read in our mag: a nuts and bolts, positive piece about a particular aspect of homeschooling.
The super-long answer is:
Let's break down the table of contents.
The editorial is by me, the resident heathen. In it, I talk about how and why I decided to edit a secular homeschooling magazine. (Actually, my family and I still haven't completely nailed down the "why." Localized insanity and a strange virus that was making the rounds at the time are leading the list of possible culprits. But I digress.) I explain what I mean by secular: non-, rather than anti-, religious. I also mention two advertisers that I turned away: a religiously-oriented homeschooling magazine, and the owner of a site that spoofs the tracts put out by Chick Publications.
We then have a regular column called Curiouser and Curiouser. In every issue, readers will be invited to write in replies to the burning question of the issue before. I had to cheat on this one and beg pretty much every homeschooler on every loop ever to please send me a reply to the following question: What's the weirdest thing anyone's ever said to you about homeschooling? (Hard to pick a favorite, but "If you homeschool your kids, are they going to be normal?" is high on the list.) All weird, no religion. Good times.
Next is Hot Chocolate!, another regular column. This one's devoted to good news in the homeschooling world. I talk about how homeschoolers took the prizes in this year's National Geography and Spelling Bees this year; a nice article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a secular homeschooling group; and, in the mixed-feelings department (at least for this raving feminist), a cheerleading class that girls can join without having to attend school or experience the ritual humiliation of tryouts. Those who participate are given the chance to cheer for a junior basketball team, if that's their idea of a good time. I was just happy that any "But what about cheerleading?" questions from concerned friends and relations can now be countered with the reply that homeschoolers can cheer, too.
Here We Go Again is another department, this one given over to not-so-good news in the homeschooling world. I review an episode of HBO's "Big Love," which presents homeschoolers as -- shockingly enough -- cult religious weirdos. I also waste some time lambasting a stupid movie about two guys who were homeschooled on the North Pole and grow up with no social skills whatsoever. (No blame is given to the fact that their dad is the guy who used to play the bionic man, though in my opinion that would be enough to mess *anyone* up. But I could be bitter.) And I kvetch about a homeschooler who is on his local school board and accused of not really caring about public education, and the fact that homeschooling sports teams in New Zealand are apparently not given the same opportunities to compete -- or to keep their awards if they compete and win -- as school teams.
The next piece is "A More Perfect Union," which can be read in full on the mag's site. This deals entirely with petty bureaucrats bullying homeschoolers, and how and why homeschoolers can and should stand up for their rights.
And then there's the infamous Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List, also available in full online. The only mention of religion is in item #8: “Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious;” and #9: “Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.” I had some religious homeschoolers write and thank me for that last one, which made me very happy.
Camille North's article "How Do I Get Started Homeschooling?" is first-rate. She did mention, in the first draft, a couple of companies that sell homeschooling materials and whose mindset is deeply religious; we cut the reference to them. No other mention of anything religious. No Bible quotes. Just some wonderful advice that I wish I'd had earlier in my own homeschooling career and that several friends who bought the issue appreciated.
The Homeschool Burnout article is about, well, how even homeschoolers can feel burnt out sometimes, and why this doesn't mean you're a terrible parent or a bad teacher or anything. The closest thing to a religious reference is when I mention that it can be very hard to admit to other homeschoolers that you're feeling a little toasted "when it seems that everyone on your homeschooling block is saying how blessed they feel at having the great privilege of teaching their children." I went ahead and used the word "blessed" because it’s something I hear a lot, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's the only word in the entire article that is even remotely religious. I think it works, so I'm standing by it.
Hard on the heels of this is a wonderful piece by Donna Tarkett. My article is factual; hers is personal, and complements the points I bring up perfectly. Tarkett's "about the author" includes a mention of being interested in spirituality and herbalism/homeopathy. That's it, so far as religion goes.
Then there's the "Home Scholars" section, for our young readers. Sage Barton gave us a fantastic article about the history of rockets; Siri Wilder allowed me to print a beautiful poem she wrote several months ago about finding meaning in life even when it must end in death (nothing about heaven, just a lot of lovely words about hope and helping one another); and my son contributed a piece about how Legos are the greatest thing ever, as well as a comic about a mild-mannered stegosaurus named Spike. Linda Kulp, a grownup, gave us a how-to article about writing limericks. No religion in any of it.
Lyndy Latta's article about "Taking Back the Moral High Ground" addresses how secular homeschoolers tackle character education. This article does mention religion, because her point is that families do not have to be religious in order to teach morality. Also, interestingly, many of the people who responded to her requests for input on the idea of character education for secular homeschoolers were themselves religious, though they considered themselves to be secular homeschoolers because their primary reasons for homeschooling were not religious. A very matter-of-fact piece.
Anita Marchesani's "Homeschooling and the Home-Based Business" is exactly what the title says. I found it very helpful myself as I started up this business of magazine editing. No religion. None. Not even a little. (This is either making you giggle or steaming your clams. I'm hoping the former.)
I interviewed Florida homeschooler Kimberly Powell about the secular homeschooling group she started. She had some bad experiences with some so-called inclusive groups. There is, of necessity, some mention of religion, or rather of religious individuals (no names, of course), including one woman who was religious but highly indignant that a homeschooling group was more about religion than about homeschooling, since frankly she could take care of the religion at home but needed some support on the homeschooling front. A very heartening and practical piece about how to start a secular homeschooling group of your own, should you be so inclined.
I followed this up with a piece about my own local homeschooling group, which is inclusive rather than secular, and the ups and downs of being a non-religious homeschooler in a "mixed" group. Even in the big bad city, it can be uncomfortable at times. But mostly it's great.
Kathy Funari's "Nature Study" article discusses the history of nature study, goes into some detail about Charlotte Mason and other proponents of the importance of nature study for children, and gives some tips about incorporating it into our homeschooling lives. Fun piece. Cute pictures. No religion.
Lill Hawkins is so funny, I was thrilled when she offered to contribute a humor piece to SHM. She unschools in Maine, where recently her husband managed to set their lawnmower on fire. Fun to read about. Glad I didn't have to clean it up. She has a blog that I want to shamelessly promote:
http://hawkhillacres.blogspot.com
Renee Desai wrote a wonderful article about seeing our children for who they are rather than who we wish they were. The closest thing to a religious reference in it is a quote from Krishnamurti: "To see what is, is to love."
Homeschooling in the Real World is all about how cool it is to homeschool our kids and take them on adventures. It's a great answer to people who think that we must sit behind little desks all day. Her son took several photographs of the Sacramento area that are included in the article. No religion.
Deniz Martinez talks about a bunch of fun educational web sites having to do with art. No religion.
The product reviews section includes reviews of the four-book series A Cartoon History of the Earth, which starts at the Big Bang and ends with the evolution of modern man; Mike Venezia's fantastic children's books about great artists; the Evan-Moor series of History Pockets; and The Writer's Jungle. Cheryl Holbrook reviewed that last product, and explains that there is some religious content in it, including a few Bible verses in the copy work section. Readers can make up their minds, given what she tells them about the product and how it teaches, as to whether or not that's a deal-breaker.
The Money Matters section offers tips on home cooking with our homeschoolers as a money-saving and educational practice, and includes two recipes.
Our Continuing Education is about Kate Chopin's novel "The Awakening" and her idea of "mother-women" -- women who willingly submerge their identities and lose themselves and their own needs in favor of their families. I speculate whether or not homeschooling mothers are at greater risk of being mother-women, and whether our kids would really be better off if everything was all about them, the way they keep telling us it should be. (Hint: I'm not in favor of this.)
The ads are all of non-religious educational products, to the best of my knowledge.
Let me wrap this up by saying that if you buy SHM and think that I've pulled one over on you, and find that the mag is saturated with Bible verses and WWJD, I will refund your money. If you read it and admit that it's genuinely secular but you think it just plain sucks, well, I can't help you there. Money is tight, and I won't blame you at all if you want to just buy one issue at a time.
Hope this helps. And thanks for your interest.
All my best,
Deborah Markus
Editor, Secular Homeschooling Magazine
Saturday, November 10, 2007
The Halloween Baby Arrives
I've given up on that whole "don't call them, they'll call you" idea. The printers said to come by the same time the next day to pick up the magazine. I called them at noon. They were finished.
Emotions don't work the way they're supposed to. This should have been the big day. I had looked forward to the excitement, the triumph, the joy of finally having this baby. That's what it felt like, and I mean no disrespect to anyone's real baby, especially my own. There was that same sense of expectancy in every sense of the word. I'd conceived this idea in love and enthusiasm, spent months feeling nauseated and dizzy and sleepy, and tensely waited to see the beautiful creature itself. And then, once the moment had truly arrived, I was so exhausted and numbed by all the emotion leading up to the great moment that when I was handed my creation, when it was finally a physical entity existing outside myself, I felt almost detached.
When my son was born and the midwife handed him to me, I felt little more than a terror that I would drop him and a desire to feel what I really ought to at a profound time like this. I clutched the wet, naked little creature, who doubtless felt as dazed and bewildered as I did by his cannonball journey into the world. My husband says that when he heard me whisper "My baby, my baby," he almost cried, it was so sweet. But really, I was only trying to explain to myself exactly what was going on here, and muster up some feelings appropriate to the occasion.
I love the fact that the magazine is a Halloween baby; but I also love Halloween; and I have a son who had plans and excitements of his own for the day. And so my attention and my emotions were divided. And of course all the obstacles and little confusions on the way to getting it had taken some of the wind out of my sails. At one point, I remembered reading about some radical political type who hadn't been able to find a printer willing to work with her writing. What if my printer finally figured out whatever was wrong with the PDF file, only to see the contents and recoil with horror? Sure, I'd already paid for the work; but it was on a debit card. They could reverse the transaction easily enough. And then what? It had been hard enough, in the expensive city I live in, to find one printer who didn't demand a minimum print run of a thousand copies. Would I ever be able to find another?
Ridiculous, of course. But we never know what worries are ridiculous until the journey is safely over.
The printer had loaded the boxes of SHM into my trunk. After a moment of standing in a cramped little parking lot, I opened one of the boxes up and took a copy of the magazine out. I'd already looked at one in the shop, just to confirm that I hadn't picked up crates of someone's self-published novel; now I gave one to my son to peruse on the drive home. I didn't actually want to look too closely at it myself just now. The job was done, finally. If there were hideous errors hiding inside, I really didn't want to know.
"Isn't it great?" I asked my son, trying to convince both of us.
"Nice," he agreed politely. He'd been spellbound by his own work, right there in the center of the mag where it belonged. But now he began politely to flip through the rest of the pages.
"Hey, I've seen that," he said.
"What?"
"This place in the picture."
I was driving. He was in the back seat. That was safer for him, physically. It didn't do much for my sanity just now, but that was no one's top priority but my own, apparently.
"The Santa Monica Pier?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
I relaxed a bit and smiled. I'd been childishly pleased myself to recognize that sign when my husband showed me the pictures he'd picked out to illustrate the Santa Monica College article.
"Is this supposed to be here?" my son asked.
My smile vanished. "What?"
"This article. I don't remember this."
My worse fears realized. "And is it supposed to be right here, next to the kids' section? I didn't think -- "
"Honey!" I shrieked. Am I the only one who, when I feel a scream coming on, tries to channel it into a nice word on the theory that shouting isn't so bad if what you're hollering is technically an endearment. "I can't look right now, okay? I'm driving."
"Okay. Sorry."
A moment's silence. I turned the radio away from his annoying kids' station and to my alternative rock one, hoping they would be playing something at least moderately kid friendly.
"Is this supposed to look like -- "
"Oh, for the love of corn!" I howled. "Look, if it's completely wrong and awful and horrifying, there is nothing I can do about it now! Put the magazine down and stop scaring Mommy when she's trying to drive!"
"Sorry."
These special moments are what make trying to combine homeschooling and editing all worthwhile.
Emotions don't work the way they're supposed to. This should have been the big day. I had looked forward to the excitement, the triumph, the joy of finally having this baby. That's what it felt like, and I mean no disrespect to anyone's real baby, especially my own. There was that same sense of expectancy in every sense of the word. I'd conceived this idea in love and enthusiasm, spent months feeling nauseated and dizzy and sleepy, and tensely waited to see the beautiful creature itself. And then, once the moment had truly arrived, I was so exhausted and numbed by all the emotion leading up to the great moment that when I was handed my creation, when it was finally a physical entity existing outside myself, I felt almost detached.
When my son was born and the midwife handed him to me, I felt little more than a terror that I would drop him and a desire to feel what I really ought to at a profound time like this. I clutched the wet, naked little creature, who doubtless felt as dazed and bewildered as I did by his cannonball journey into the world. My husband says that when he heard me whisper "My baby, my baby," he almost cried, it was so sweet. But really, I was only trying to explain to myself exactly what was going on here, and muster up some feelings appropriate to the occasion.
I love the fact that the magazine is a Halloween baby; but I also love Halloween; and I have a son who had plans and excitements of his own for the day. And so my attention and my emotions were divided. And of course all the obstacles and little confusions on the way to getting it had taken some of the wind out of my sails. At one point, I remembered reading about some radical political type who hadn't been able to find a printer willing to work with her writing. What if my printer finally figured out whatever was wrong with the PDF file, only to see the contents and recoil with horror? Sure, I'd already paid for the work; but it was on a debit card. They could reverse the transaction easily enough. And then what? It had been hard enough, in the expensive city I live in, to find one printer who didn't demand a minimum print run of a thousand copies. Would I ever be able to find another?
Ridiculous, of course. But we never know what worries are ridiculous until the journey is safely over.
The printer had loaded the boxes of SHM into my trunk. After a moment of standing in a cramped little parking lot, I opened one of the boxes up and took a copy of the magazine out. I'd already looked at one in the shop, just to confirm that I hadn't picked up crates of someone's self-published novel; now I gave one to my son to peruse on the drive home. I didn't actually want to look too closely at it myself just now. The job was done, finally. If there were hideous errors hiding inside, I really didn't want to know.
"Isn't it great?" I asked my son, trying to convince both of us.
"Nice," he agreed politely. He'd been spellbound by his own work, right there in the center of the mag where it belonged. But now he began politely to flip through the rest of the pages.
"Hey, I've seen that," he said.
"What?"
"This place in the picture."
I was driving. He was in the back seat. That was safer for him, physically. It didn't do much for my sanity just now, but that was no one's top priority but my own, apparently.
"The Santa Monica Pier?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
I relaxed a bit and smiled. I'd been childishly pleased myself to recognize that sign when my husband showed me the pictures he'd picked out to illustrate the Santa Monica College article.
"Is this supposed to be here?" my son asked.
My smile vanished. "What?"
"This article. I don't remember this."
My worse fears realized. "And is it supposed to be right here, next to the kids' section? I didn't think -- "
"Honey!" I shrieked. Am I the only one who, when I feel a scream coming on, tries to channel it into a nice word on the theory that shouting isn't so bad if what you're hollering is technically an endearment. "I can't look right now, okay? I'm driving."
"Okay. Sorry."
A moment's silence. I turned the radio away from his annoying kids' station and to my alternative rock one, hoping they would be playing something at least moderately kid friendly.
"Is this supposed to look like -- "
"Oh, for the love of corn!" I howled. "Look, if it's completely wrong and awful and horrifying, there is nothing I can do about it now! Put the magazine down and stop scaring Mommy when she's trying to drive!"
"Sorry."
These special moments are what make trying to combine homeschooling and editing all worthwhile.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
On the third day...
Trouble with the printer. Naturally.
It felt just like when I went to pick up my wedding ring. The jeweler measured the ring, and the finger I'd be wearing it on, and assured me that when I came back in two weeks, the one would fit the other perfectly. I returned, and he triumphantly handed me back...a ring that hadn't been altered at all.
When I left the PDF file with the printer, he asked me several salient questions, some of which I even knew the answer to. "How long will it take to print?" I asked at last in my turn.
"Three days," he said. "Three business days," he corrected himself. It was a Thursday.
"So I can pick it up on Monday?"
"Correct."
"Should I call first, or...?"
"Just come."
That felt weird to me. It felt too magical. I was dropping off a tiny little disk that fit so easily in my purse that I had to keep checking to be sure it was actually there; and in three (sort of) days, I'd be coming back for enough copies of a print magazine to fill up my car trunk.
And that not-calling part felt...odd. No calling to confirm the order, or to be sure that there hadn't been any problems? Why not?
I should have gone with my gut feeling, of course. But I was already embarrassed about having to have so many of his basic questions explained to me in humiliating detail and simplicity. I didn't want to come across as more of an idiot, and an interfering one at that.
And this was the only place I'd been able to find that didn't have a minimum order of a thousand copies. They could make me as many or as few as I needed, and at a decent price. I didn't want to risk annoying them and having to start searching for another miracle worker.
So I waited. Quietly. Without calling; and, with a degree of self-control rare for me, without telling everyone I knew that the magazine was coming back from the printer on Monday and wasn't that just the greatest thing ever?
On Monday, quietly, I went back to the printer. The man I'd spoken to last time wasn't there. "I'm here to pick up an order," I said.
The man looked harassed and uneasy. I hate seeing my own expression in that kind of mirror. I had dibs on nervous; he was supposed to take brisk, efficient, and all-knowing.
"What kind of an order?"
"A magazine." A certain note of pride there, subdued by the fact that, look around as much as I could, I saw no sign of any stacks and stacks of neatly-bound paper that could be my order.
"A galley proof, or the order?"
"The order."
Now, look. I've worked with editors and publishers before. I know what galley proofs are. I've seen them. But no one here had said anything about them. If they had, I'd have been ready for there to be a hitch, an extra step, a pause between file and completed product.
He sighed, took my name and the name of my magazine, and looked at pretty much everything in the shop. It took a while. He also spoke to someone else who worked there.
Part of what I'd liked about this printer was that it was obviously a family operation. That meant, I hoped, that everyone would know all about any given order.
All that this man was able to find out, however, was that there had been some kind of problem with mine. With the file, to be exact.
"Why didn't they call me?" I asked. Damn it, they could have called days ago. This could have been sorted out.
He looked even more stressed, which I appreciated. I'm not a sadist; like everyone else, I just want to be able to pretend that what's important to me is important to everyone around me. And he was getting paid to give at least the impression that he cared.
He explained that whoever was taking care of my order wasn't here right now, but would be back in a couple of hours, and would call me.
I more than made up for my previous taciturnity by calling them at every possible opportunity. Well, technically, it wasn't me calling. I know nothing about computers or files. If the printer gave me more detail about why what I'd given them wasn't working, all I could do was cry, which I do rarely but well. I bow to no one when it comes to hitching and sobbing. Instead, I had the technical expert call.
He called that night, and the next morning, and later that morning, and then in the afternoon. Every time the story was the same: the person dealing with my order wasn't in, but would be very soon, and would really really call.
An hour after my tech man had called them and heard that he could expect a call in three hours or so, I got a call from the printer. They had printed a sample copy, and needed me to come and confirm that it was all right before they completed the order.
I would have canceled my own wedding, funeral, or emergency appendectomy at that point to get the ball rolling; but my son had a bowling date, and canceling that would mean not only winning the Baddest Mommy Ever award (which I've already received numerous times, and am really not looking to find more wall space for) but depositing several thousand dollars into son's therapy account. So I told them I'd be by as soon as I could, and went to watch my son aim at pins, miss them, get depressed, get angry at me for not having taught him how to bowl better or sooner, and repeat the process for two whole games before he guilt-tripped me into ponying up some cash for use in the video-game room that every bowling alley is apparently legally required to have on the premises.
Finally, finally, I was allowed go and see the first issue of my magazine, which I now firmly believed would never exist except in my mind. I wondered how many of my subscribers had my home address, and if they'd try to purchase torches and stakes in my trendy urban neighborhood or wisely stock up at home before heading over to do unspeakable but completely justified things to the editor who'd promised them a product. Only the ones who'd sent checks had any idea of my locale; and I hadn't cashed those yet, so maybe I'd be able to calm their issuers a bit before they did more than burn a representative sampling of my building down.
It should have been exciting to see that first copy, but it wasn't. Partly because so many things had gone wrong that it had quite taken the wind out of my sails; partly because I'd spent so much time proofing printouts of these very pages that it wasn't as if seeing them was some kind of miracle, but only felt like yet another trial run; mostly, though, because I was tensely trying to remember what kind of flaws I was supposed to look for before I gave the printers the go-ahead. There was a certain spread of pages that were supposed to fall exactly in the middle, so that the reader could pop them out like a mini-mag without disrupting the rest of the pages. They seemed fine. I said so.
"Do I have to wait another three days?" I asked.
"No."
"How long?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" I looked at him to see if there was any chance at all that he was kidding. Didn't seem to be. "Tomorrow," I added for good measure. "I can pick up all the copies tomorrow."
"Correct."
"What time?"
"This time tomorrow."
Which was about four o'clock. On Halloween.
"Should I call?"
"Just come."
It felt just like when I went to pick up my wedding ring. The jeweler measured the ring, and the finger I'd be wearing it on, and assured me that when I came back in two weeks, the one would fit the other perfectly. I returned, and he triumphantly handed me back...a ring that hadn't been altered at all.
When I left the PDF file with the printer, he asked me several salient questions, some of which I even knew the answer to. "How long will it take to print?" I asked at last in my turn.
"Three days," he said. "Three business days," he corrected himself. It was a Thursday.
"So I can pick it up on Monday?"
"Correct."
"Should I call first, or...?"
"Just come."
That felt weird to me. It felt too magical. I was dropping off a tiny little disk that fit so easily in my purse that I had to keep checking to be sure it was actually there; and in three (sort of) days, I'd be coming back for enough copies of a print magazine to fill up my car trunk.
And that not-calling part felt...odd. No calling to confirm the order, or to be sure that there hadn't been any problems? Why not?
I should have gone with my gut feeling, of course. But I was already embarrassed about having to have so many of his basic questions explained to me in humiliating detail and simplicity. I didn't want to come across as more of an idiot, and an interfering one at that.
And this was the only place I'd been able to find that didn't have a minimum order of a thousand copies. They could make me as many or as few as I needed, and at a decent price. I didn't want to risk annoying them and having to start searching for another miracle worker.
So I waited. Quietly. Without calling; and, with a degree of self-control rare for me, without telling everyone I knew that the magazine was coming back from the printer on Monday and wasn't that just the greatest thing ever?
On Monday, quietly, I went back to the printer. The man I'd spoken to last time wasn't there. "I'm here to pick up an order," I said.
The man looked harassed and uneasy. I hate seeing my own expression in that kind of mirror. I had dibs on nervous; he was supposed to take brisk, efficient, and all-knowing.
"What kind of an order?"
"A magazine." A certain note of pride there, subdued by the fact that, look around as much as I could, I saw no sign of any stacks and stacks of neatly-bound paper that could be my order.
"A galley proof, or the order?"
"The order."
Now, look. I've worked with editors and publishers before. I know what galley proofs are. I've seen them. But no one here had said anything about them. If they had, I'd have been ready for there to be a hitch, an extra step, a pause between file and completed product.
He sighed, took my name and the name of my magazine, and looked at pretty much everything in the shop. It took a while. He also spoke to someone else who worked there.
Part of what I'd liked about this printer was that it was obviously a family operation. That meant, I hoped, that everyone would know all about any given order.
All that this man was able to find out, however, was that there had been some kind of problem with mine. With the file, to be exact.
"Why didn't they call me?" I asked. Damn it, they could have called days ago. This could have been sorted out.
He looked even more stressed, which I appreciated. I'm not a sadist; like everyone else, I just want to be able to pretend that what's important to me is important to everyone around me. And he was getting paid to give at least the impression that he cared.
He explained that whoever was taking care of my order wasn't here right now, but would be back in a couple of hours, and would call me.
I more than made up for my previous taciturnity by calling them at every possible opportunity. Well, technically, it wasn't me calling. I know nothing about computers or files. If the printer gave me more detail about why what I'd given them wasn't working, all I could do was cry, which I do rarely but well. I bow to no one when it comes to hitching and sobbing. Instead, I had the technical expert call.
He called that night, and the next morning, and later that morning, and then in the afternoon. Every time the story was the same: the person dealing with my order wasn't in, but would be very soon, and would really really call.
An hour after my tech man had called them and heard that he could expect a call in three hours or so, I got a call from the printer. They had printed a sample copy, and needed me to come and confirm that it was all right before they completed the order.
I would have canceled my own wedding, funeral, or emergency appendectomy at that point to get the ball rolling; but my son had a bowling date, and canceling that would mean not only winning the Baddest Mommy Ever award (which I've already received numerous times, and am really not looking to find more wall space for) but depositing several thousand dollars into son's therapy account. So I told them I'd be by as soon as I could, and went to watch my son aim at pins, miss them, get depressed, get angry at me for not having taught him how to bowl better or sooner, and repeat the process for two whole games before he guilt-tripped me into ponying up some cash for use in the video-game room that every bowling alley is apparently legally required to have on the premises.
Finally, finally, I was allowed go and see the first issue of my magazine, which I now firmly believed would never exist except in my mind. I wondered how many of my subscribers had my home address, and if they'd try to purchase torches and stakes in my trendy urban neighborhood or wisely stock up at home before heading over to do unspeakable but completely justified things to the editor who'd promised them a product. Only the ones who'd sent checks had any idea of my locale; and I hadn't cashed those yet, so maybe I'd be able to calm their issuers a bit before they did more than burn a representative sampling of my building down.
It should have been exciting to see that first copy, but it wasn't. Partly because so many things had gone wrong that it had quite taken the wind out of my sails; partly because I'd spent so much time proofing printouts of these very pages that it wasn't as if seeing them was some kind of miracle, but only felt like yet another trial run; mostly, though, because I was tensely trying to remember what kind of flaws I was supposed to look for before I gave the printers the go-ahead. There was a certain spread of pages that were supposed to fall exactly in the middle, so that the reader could pop them out like a mini-mag without disrupting the rest of the pages. They seemed fine. I said so.
"Do I have to wait another three days?" I asked.
"No."
"How long?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" I looked at him to see if there was any chance at all that he was kidding. Didn't seem to be. "Tomorrow," I added for good measure. "I can pick up all the copies tomorrow."
"Correct."
"What time?"
"This time tomorrow."
Which was about four o'clock. On Halloween.
"Should I call?"
"Just come."
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