Category: Writing

LAKE MACBRIDE— Almost every creative person could use more money. This has been true, not only for the vast majority of writers I have known, but for artists, musicians, potters, actors, dancers, painters, singers, theater technicians, and others who pursue creative endeavor. Very few people make a living in creative endeavor without working at something else for money that pays basic living expenses. It is tough to blend a personal economy with being creative without compromise. It is impossible to keep the two in separate isolation chambers, nor would we want to.

During my senior year at the university, a group of creative people shared expenses in an old house in Iowa City. We each had our own room, but shared the common space, holding periodic meetings when an issue arose. Residents came and went, poets, artists, musicians, a travel guide, a tropical fish breeder, and a mechanic. There was always something going on, most of it interesting, and some of it annoying. It was the creative life.

One day a poet arrived to set up shop. She found a job in town, and wrote every morning in the entryway. As an early riser, I encountered her often, and tried not to disturb the work in progress as I walked to the kitchen to make breakfast and get on with my day. After a while, and after giving a few readings in town, she left for California with another poet who was a frequent guest. She adjusted to a sparse life, focused on experience and her writing. Our shared moments seemed to be a way station on her longer journey. She swiped the cooking pans my grandmother had given me when she left, evidence she could have used more money.

That living arrangement and my undergraduate years were a way station for me as well. Early on, I was an admirer of people who worked a career and wrote, notably the pediatrician/poet William Carlos Williams. I thought I could do something similar. It takes a certain kind of career to avoid disrupting one’s creative outlook and I found my time in transportation and logistics wasn’t it. I’m thankful for the ability to earn a living, and led a full life. For 25 years, creativity wasn’t as much a part of my life as I would have liked. It took leaving the security of that work environment to enable writing. Now there is new hope.

Most days I get a chance to write here or off line. I continue to need monetary income to pay monthly bills, although I am no longer in search of a career, having left the one I had. That’s where gardening comes in.

The less than $200 in seeds and supplies will multiply tenfold in value during the growing season: home grown food reduces the need for money. I have a couple of paying jobs, and need one or two more to make ends meet. That’s life in the personal era of creativity. The good news is the garden seeds have been shipped.

I hopefully await arrival of the germinal package, and the chance to forget about money for a while and work directly with Earth’s bounty. Money may always be tight, but nature can help us survive if we are paying attention— and invest in the work.

LAKE MACBRIDE— The U.S. Passport issued on April 26, 1973 is on my desk, waiting to be put away. During the 1972 to 1973 academic year at the University of Iowa, I lived with a friend in a mobile home his parents owned next to Interstate 80 in Iowa City.

We thought to travel to Europe together during the summer of 1973, to see the continent and visit his relatives in Bruges. I got my passport, and in the end, he went that summer and I didn’t, ending up playing in a band in Davenport until returning to finish my senior year in the fall. I traveled to Europe the following summer, after graduation, by myself.

It was what used to be described as “the Grand Tour.” Although my adventures were much less than grand, I did manage to visit Paris, Madrid, Venice, Rome, Vienna and other traditional destinations. Stamps in the passport provide five milestones for the trip. I arrived at London Heathrow on Aug. 15, 1974, departed England at Ramsgate on Sept. 2, left Madrid on Sept. 16, arrived in Arnhem, Holland on Oct. 25, and arrived back in Montreal on Oct. 31. There is more to the story than these stamps.

I kept a journal during my trip, although the first volume was stolen in Calais where someone pinched my backpack from the youth hostel my first night in France. I remember two women making café au lait in the kitchen the next morning and reporting the theft in my hopeless French at the nearby police station.

Last night I skimmed the remaining volume wondering what I was thinking when I kept track of the trip. Well, I know what it was— that the persistence of memory would be better than it is. My trip to Madrid explains the point.

Unlike today, I hardly kept track of day-to-day activities. For example, I wrote an entry on Sept. 10, 1974 at the Hotel Sabina in Madrid, with additional entries on Sept. 11, 13 and 15. In none of those entries was mention of the Sept. 13 Cafe Rolando bombing in Calle del Correo near the hotel. Conversations afterward at the hotel, and the bombing itself, were the reasons I left Spain when I did.

My passport was stamped by Spanish authorities on the train from Madrid to Irun as I left for France. Security had been tightened as I stopped in San Sebastián, in the Basque area that was home of the ETA, a separatist group said to be responsible for the bombing. There were military and police everywhere. When attempting to make it to the beach, an armed officer stopped me, waved his rifle at me and indicated the area was restricted. There is no mention of the police state Franco’s Spain seemed to be in my journal. However, I did write that the Prado seemed, “one of the richest museums of the ones I have seen.”

Memory does persist, although the story may have changed in the telling. It was a trip of language, art and experiences that moved me away from the intellectual world of art history classes, and study of the works of René Descartes and John Locke. What I found was a legion of people my age traveling the continent, and the experience changed me in ways that continue to seem astounding, although I hadn’t realized it at the time.

~ This is one of a series of posts based upon writing in my journal.

LAKE MACBRIDE— On the second to last day of 2013, it is nine degrees below zero with little reason to venture outside. The kitchen is well stocked with food, and there is plenty to occupy an active mind. The only thing lacking is time to accomplish everything that needs doing. For a change, I spent time getting focused soon after waking.

I plan to continue writing this blog in 2014. In case you missed it, there is a tag cloud in the right hand column where readers can pick topics of interest. Seldom have I worked any subject for very long, although local food, worklife and sustaining the human species (locally and more generally) continue to be topics that most engage me. I’ll probably write about those in 2014.

Sometimes my posts are pretty good and other times… If you made it this far, I hope you’ll read more, and either RSS, follow or twitter with me by clicking one of the links to the right.

My commitment is to continue to make it worth while for readers to stop by.

LAKE MACBRIDE— A friend forwarded a link to an article titled, “The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing,” that reported more than three million books were published in 2010 yet sales were down. Stephen Piersanti, president of Berrett-Koehler Publishers wrote, “there is no general audience for most nonfiction books, and chasing after such a mirage is usually far less effective than connecting with one’s communities.” In other words, unless you have kismet, keep writing, and building relationships to develop your own market for your writing. I came to a similar conclusion, and a number of area authors seem to be pursuing this approach as well. What gives?

Part of my writing efforts have been figuring out what role words on a page or screen would play in life. Where it ended was “as a self-employed writer, the challenges are to find venues for writing, and to improve one’s skills. For most of us, writing is seldom paid work in the era of social media. My current writing can be viewed on my website pauldeaton.com.” This statement, posted on my LinkedIn profile, has been a sanity keeper and set my expectations about publishing low, while maintaining a reason to write. Sure, I would like to make a living from writing, but the simple truth is not many people do, and the number who sell more than 250 copies of their book once published is miniscule. The endgame is if a viable book idea was forthcoming, the work will be self-published and marketed.

There is a lesson to be learned from the prairie troubadour, Vachel Lindsay. Lindsay was one of the best known poets in the United States during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity after his death by suicide. He bartered poetry for food and lodging, and self-published works like, “Rhymes To Be Traded For Bread” toward that end. History has been unkind to Vachel Lindsay, and today his poetry is a difficult read.

The lesson to be learned is that we all live a life of struggle and desire. It is possible to self-publish a book, but the idea of written pieces as currency, or making a living solely from publishing and selling books is not realistic for most of us, and may never have been. It certainly didn’t work out for Vachel Lindsay, who had the fame that would presumably enable sales. Maybe he didn’t understand how to do it, struggling with in person sales negotiations to secure a bed and meal for the night, such bartering consuming a disproportionate amount of his time and energy. He worked hard, but maybe didn’t work smart enough.

The challenge isn’t the writing, it’s finding the reason to write and the opportunity to do so. For now that means sitting in front of a screen most mornings trying to figure out the meaning of a life. Hopefully readers will find some resonance with theirs. This may be as published as one person’s writing gets.