An Author’s Thanksgiving

By Karen McCullough

I think there’s some kind of unwritten rule that November blog posts in the U.S. have to be about being thankful--and, really, that’s a good thing! Cultivating gratitude as a top-of-the-mind trait is something we should all do and it’s great we have a special time of year to remind us to do so. I’m more disappointed than I can tell you that retailers are turning a beautiful holiday into a gateway to the profligate spending money for Christmas season, the antithesis of what Thanksgiving should mean.

But anyway, back to gratitude. I firmly believe that gratitude isn’t something you do. It’s one of the most important underpinnings of how you live your life. It’s an attitude that everything you are and everything you have is a gift. It means taking nothing for granted.

With that in mind, I want to take a slightly different slant and talk about some things I’m thankful for, strictly in my capacity as an author. Some of these may be controversial, so feel free to disagree in the comments. Here are some of them:

Computers and word processing software – I’m old enough that back when I was in college all my term papers and theses were produced on a typewriter. I developed into a fairly speedy typist, but not a very accurate one. The typewriter I used was old enough that when you messed up, you had to either use that messy white-out stuff or just retype the whole page. I shudder to think how many times I would’ve had to retype each of my book manuscripts to get a reasonably clean copy.

The freedom to write what I want – I’m grateful to live in a country where I have the freedom to write pretty much whatever I choose. But let me be clear, freedom to write whatever I want doesn’t absolve me of responsibility for my words. I can write what I want, but the rest of the world has the right to object to my words, to refuse to buy my books, and to write scathing reviews. They can sue me if those words are stolen from someone else (something I’d never do, by the way), or hold me responsible if someone uses my words as inspiration to commit a crime. (I like to think my books are inspirational but not that way!)

The ability to travel for research and inspiration – I love travel and it inspires me with ideas for stories, settings, and characters.  And several of us here on this blog have talked about the importance of getting details right in your settings. There are some substitutes for actually visiting a place, but none will give you the richness of detail of the actual experience.

Libraries – As a kid, I hung out in libraries as much as I could. I loved to read, and I loved to research odd facts, pursuing all sorts of information. I don’t go as much as I used to, but it still gives me joy to be in a library. Usually when my grandkids are visiting, we’ll take them to the library and let them check out a few books to read during their time here. I love that they regard that as a huge treat. In the early days of my writing each book would require several trips to the library for research purposes. The staff at the research desk knew me and sometimes I could just call to verify a few facts.

Google and Wikipedia -  Google created the first search engine that delivered really accurate results, speedily, and Wikipedia created the first crowd-sourced, comprehensive encyclopedia. I do a lot of my research using them. I don’t take everything I read on the Internet as gospel, but at the very least, the articles I find suggest leads to more authoritative sources. I try to verify everything I learn with another source.

Amazon – I know not everyone will agree with the gratitude here, but Amazon did create the first online bookstore and, let’s face it, that has changed the world. Before Amazon I bought books at the local bookstore, but frequently would find an author I liked and had to go searching through used   Not to mention the time I’ve saved because I can do most of my shopping online and have everything delivered right to my door! That’s more writing time for me!

bookstores to find the rest of the author’s works. Since my taste runs a bit off mainstream, I often had to special order books I wanted and then wait, and wait, and wait some more for them to arrive. And Amazon popularized the ereader. It’s hard to describe what a boon that has been for people like me, with poor eyesight. Now every book can be a large print book! And for the author, the advent of epublishing has meant I can make my backlist available as I get the rights back to my older published books, and also have a chance of putting out those other books that mainstream publishers didn’t want – usually because I crossed too many genre boundaries!

Cultivating Gratitude

I don’t know if the old saying that age brings wisdom is true, but the advancing years to seem to bring some deeper level of self-awareness. Is that the same thing? Probably not, but it’s what I’ve got. And now that I’m in my seventh decade of life, there are a few things I’ve realized that seem useful to share.

One of the great revelations of my life was the recognition that no one else could be responsible for my happiness. At one time I was seriously depressed, stuck in a job I hated because my family needed my income, so miserable that I wondered if life really was worth living. And then one day I realized that my family needed a healthy and functioning me more than they needed my income. I took a huge leap of faith and quit the job. Fortunately I found another one that made me much happier in short order.

That incident really brought home to me that I needed to take control of my own life. If things weren’t right, it was up to me make them better as best I could. I couldn’t wait for someone else to tell me to do what I needed to do for myself.

I’ve also learned that in most situations, I have a decision about how I want to view it – glass half empty or glass half full. Some things are irretrievably bad.  I’ve had family members die, pets die, serious illnesses, and other bad events. You go through the grieving process – the denial, the anger, the bargaining, etc. And eventually you accept. You can choose to continue in the grief or you can take a more positive view. It can be hard at times, but there is always something to be learned and gained from even the most awful events.

I’ve spent time I now regret being jealous of people who had things better than I did, people who were richer, more attractive, smarter, or more personable. It irritates me to think of the time I wasted on that.

Now, when I’m tempted by those things, I remind myself of how fortunate I am. By the standards of the U.S., I’m middle middle-class, but by the standards of much of the world, I am rich. I’ve never been completely without food or clean drinking water. My house is warm and water-proof. My clothes don’t have designer labels, but neither are they worn to threads or shreds.

I have family who care for me, and a few good friends. I’ve had some great experiences. In the most important ways, I am rich. I just have to remind myself of that fact every now and again.

A Matter of Perspective

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

This past Thanksgiving holiday weekend The Husband and I decided to go to a gigantic flea market – the oldest in Texas – about an hour from our home. Neither of us had been there for a decade or more. This is neither a small nor a quick expedition; the market site covers many acres and has everything from permanent buildings with interior stalls to miles of winding sort-of-paved paths (just exactly the width of a large pickup) with individual open air sites marked off with paint. 

We were there about seven hours and, as we are dedicated lookers who walk rather slowly, saw only about half of it. The weather was cool and perfect, and a slight breeze kept us comfortable. A thin layer of clouds filtered the sun’s glare. Every few yards there was a food hutch of some variety or other and you could find all kinds of flea-market delicacies. I could write an entire post on the corny dogs alone, and the funnel cakes are to die for!

The day was one of the most distressing I have ever had.

Why, you ask?

One of the main draws of this particular flea market is the antiques. You can find everything from a rusted kitchen ricer to an early 19^th century crystal chandelier. My shock came from what is now acceptable to call an antique!

Apparently the pundits of the antique trade have now decided that things from the 50s (that’s the 1950s) can legitimately be called antiques. They even have their own official classification – MidCentury Modern. It’s distressing to see things that I grew up with – some of which I still own and use – marked as ‘antique.’ 

A hammered aluminum (which I love) casserole in a much more battered state than mine was marked almost $40. A blue flowered Corning Ware water kettle – identical to one I was given when I went off to school – ran between $15-20.  (Mine was obtained for two and a half books of Green Stamps, a viable currency in those days.) A rather undistinguished pressed glass bowl my parents received when I was a child for some anniversary or other was well over $50.

And these were all marked as ‘antiques’ – not collectables, not used-but-still-useful objects, but antiques. Arrgh!

Half of me was tempted to go home and clean out the house, bring the stuff back, get a booth and start selling.

The other half of me wanted to cry.

After all, if these things are regarded as legitimate ‘antiques,’ what does that say about me?

Pardon me – I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a nice, icy Diet Dr. Pepper (the National Drink of Texas!). In an antique, MidCentury Modern aluminum glass, of course.