Free to Hurl My Lance at Anything

Freelance. This past week, I said this word in one of my college classes, and students had never heard it. They were asking about my “other job” as a writer, and I told them I worked as a freelance writer. “A what kind of writer?” they asked.

Freelance. I suspect a lot of people work freelance. They run their own schedules, generate their own work, and cobble together a career and an income. In a way, I’m a freelance professor, I told my students. I’m an adjunct and can take or leave the classes I’m offered as my schedule and whim permit. Every class is taught on a contractual basis. I get paid by the credit hour. Freelance teaching, I think I could call it.

I’ve been a freelance writer since 1982. It's hard to think more than thirty years have passed since I took the leap into self-employment as a writer. I remember visiting the local library in Deltona, Florida where I lived when I launched my writing career. There was a huge collection of books in the nonfiction section of the library devoted exclusively to freelance writing. There were probably 150 books on the subject. I was astonished and asked the librarian about them. "It's a popular career here," she said. Deltona was largely a retirement community in those days, and lots of folks try their hand at writing when they retire.

I checked out the books on freelance writing eight at a time—the limit per subject per checkout. I read them cover to cover, took notes, and tried to apply the advice they gave. It worked. I was published within the year. The first thing I sold was an article on lighthouses to The Compass, the magazine of Mobil Oil Company. It’s out of circulation now—a victim of budget squeezing and the Internet—but it was a classy publication and a wonderful career starter for me. I eventually sold about twenty articles to it.

Hundreds of articles and eighteen books later, I’m still happily freelancing. I’ve done a little freelance editing and freelance exhibit design and scriptwriting too. I think I'll always be a freelance worker. I did a stint as a public school teacher for a few years, but I like freelance work better, including the freelance teaching I now do at a community college. Freelancing allows me to take contracts and assignments based on what I know I do best.

Talking with my students reminded me of the origin of the word freelance. It goes back to medieval days when rich landowners had small armies to protect their castles and lands. Sometimes, those wealthy dukes and barons, even princes and kings, needed more soldiers to fight for them. The mercenaries they hired—paid for their services--called themselves freelancers, because anyone was free to hire their lances; they fought for pay. I think it’s rather fascinating that the word survives today to describe anyone working for himself or herself. I suppose "taking a stab at" various kinds of work is a good metaphor for the freelance life. (Confession: I secretly wish I had a lance hanging on my office wall!)

National Freelance Day is November 21^st. Perhaps I should wait to post this, until November. But it’s too much on my mind to wait, too interesting. It made for a teachable moment in class this week. I'll be sure to celebrate in November.

Freelance writing, freelance teaching, freelance editing, freelance scriptwriting…It’s a good life!

First E-Book Debut: A Departure with a Fowl Memoir in Honor of My Mother, and a Little Minutia Too

Since I began writing professionally in about 1980 (professionally is defined as getting published and paid for it), I’ve seen a lot of change in how writers do their work and how books are published and marketed. I started my career in the days before home computers were in widespread use and before the public at large had access to the Internet. Research in the early and mid 1980s involved countless trips to libraries and archives, phone calls, letters, notebooks full of notes and clippings, and folders housed in crates and file cabinets. Writing was much more tedious and paper-dependent back then, often starting with handwritten notes and drafts and then moving to the manual typewriter with carbon copies and White-Out in hand, and finally organizing and mailing crisp, clean cover letters, manuscripts, hard-copy photos, and SASEs. And the waiting for replies, often in the form of rejection slips, seemed like forever.

When I bought my first electric typewriter in 1984, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! I scrimped and saved for that $189 machine, but it was so much easier and faster than my old Royal manual, which I wish I’d kept. Such an antique it would be now, and an emblem of accomplishment! My first home computer, made by Commodore and purchased in 1988, was a godsend! My husband and kids used it too, for schoolwork and games. Sometimes I had to get in line to use my own computer. And it took a long time to “boot up.” Remember those floppy disks and dot matrix printers?

Then came the World Wide Web with so much information at my fingertips. The sound of “dial-up” connecting to the web, with its honks and quacks and beeps, is a treasured memory of late 1980s progress. It opened windows for me to so many new sources of information and was fast compared with my old methods. I could email libraries and archives and knowledgeable people on the topics I was researching and get quick responses, sometimes the same day. I created my own website and launched myself into cyberspace!

Needless to say, the research and writing resources have multiplied immensely in recent years. I still have those crates and filing cabinets, piles of notebooks and sheets of slides and b&w photos—I’m a bit old-fashioned about them and haven’t converted everything to digital form yet—but so much of my work has been simplified by the electronic age. I’ve gone through more than a dozen different computers since the 1988 Commodore, each one better and faster and more convenient than its predecessor. I’ve learned new software and word processing programs, have endeavored to stay abreast of changes and try new gadgets, and I consider myself a sound technology user. I’m networked and well-connected, and I now can honestly say my head is truly in the clouds, or “The Cloud!” People can easily find me on the Internet and communicate, yet my privacy remains much intact. Something new is always around the corner to try; the learning never ends…

Yesterday, I launched some new learning—

Like most writers, I’m proud of my work and display the covers of my books on the wall of my home office. I added a new one yesterday, a cover I couldn’t tear off a print book and mount in a frame. Instead, I printed it from the digital cover I submitted to Kindle for my first E-Book. Yes, my first E-Book!! I’m thrilled I’ve acquired this new skill and have entered the digital age of publishing with my own E-publishing name--Cat in the Window Press. The name is telling. One of my two cats, or both, is always sitting in my office window as I work. I seem to do some of my best writing when there’s a cat in the window.

Learning to format and upload an E-Book wasn’t easy. There was a lot of hand-holding by several kind people.  I’m grateful for their help and encouragement. Last January, I took an E-publishing class with my friend and colleague from Olympic College, Daphne Van Berkom. Daphne has hit it big in E-publishing with her crime novels (www.dvberkom.com) and is computer savvy too. In fact, she’s so successful at both, she was able to quit her job at the college and focus on writing and E-publishing full-time. She taught herself how to publish on Kindle and other platforms, and fortunately for me, she’s now teaching others how to do it. She’s been quite patient and generous with me as a novice E-student, even helping me format the cover of my first E-book to fit Kindle’s requirements and giving tips and advice whenever I ask for it. She’s my steady and much-loved friend in this new endeavor. I also took a short class at our local library and read several how-to books (E-Books, of course). My first effort is sound; I’ll get better with each new E-title.

If you’re planning to try your hand at this, I can assure you E-writing is different from traditional writing, and E-publishing is a bittersweet affair. Everything must conform to the rigid electronic rules; you own it all—writing, designing, formatting, publishing, even most of the marketing. You’ll bang your head on the wall on occasion, or stand up and cheer when something goes just as planned. You’ll cry for help and rue your early mistakes. You'll upload and re-upload many times to get it right.

Some pleasant moments from traditional publishing are sacrificed. There’s no box of hard copies that arrives in the mail from a publisher, no opening that box and smelling those fresh-from-the-printer tomes. No holding the books and flipping pages in the usual way, wrapping brand new books in gift wrap for family and friends, or spreading them out on a table at a book sale/signing. In fact, there’s no autographing E-Books at all. Transactionally, they’re a bit impersonal. But you can print out the cover, digitally of course, and mount it on your office wall. It’s as real as your print books, just entirely otherworldly, pixelated, and floating around somewhere in that undefined place where all electronic media live.

There are perks, for sure, many of them: No book proposals with outlines and sample chapters, no rejections slips, no haggling or compromising with publishers, editors, and designers, no waiting months, even years, for publication, no closets in the house devoted entirely to book storage. Best of all, prices are lower, royalties are bigger, and  if there’s a typo or mistake missed the first time around, or something to add or remove, a simple reload will fix it. I love that part.

It‘s a tradeoff for those of us schooled in hard-copy print publishing. As Daphne wisely tells all her students: “You’d better know your stuff and your audience and be meticulous about editing and marketing. You have control, and that’s a good thing. Don’t let it be a bad thing.” (I copied that quote directly from Daphne’s lips during her class last January, as I knew I needed it to be front and center when I launched into E-publishing. Someone else has done most of these tasks for me in the past. Now I own them.)

So here it is, my first E-Book: The Funky Chicken: Memories, Truth, and Tribute. No lighthouses, you say??!! No lightships, buoys, fog signals??!! No amateur astronomy or maritime history??!! That’s correct, and there’s no disappointment about it for me. I haven’t fallen out of love with my track-record topics; I simply wanted to depart from my established genre for this first E-effort. (That way, if I screwed it up, all my regular fans would forgive me.)

Departures are good for many reasons. Sometimes we need to revitalize with new topics, chase new ideas, and dream new dreams. Our readers need to know we have other interests and other knowledge. It’s exciting to chase down this new information and professionally stretch. My friend Joe Follansbee, who wrote two very successful Fyddeye guides on marine/maritime topics, wrote a kids’ book and now writes science fiction. A woman I knew years ago who worked for a big newspaper, switched to romance writing under a pseudonym. The popular novelist, Anne Rice, switched gears a few years ago. I hear Stephen King likes to write poetry. If the big names choose to do it, then we small fry should take a lesson from them. The bravest among us will do it under our own names.

Why chickens, you ask? Quite simply, I love them. They're fascinating, much unsong creatures, and if you read my book you'll discover just how special they are. I have my own flock and spent a good portion of my childhood taking care of my mother’s Plymouth White Rocks. When I think about the lessons I learned growing up—the truths about family, friends, hard work, caring for things, and life and death in general—well, those chickens were instructive. They still are. Hardly a day passes that they don’t impart some bit of wisdom or deliver reminders about life.

Two weeks ago, as I was preparing to upload this new E-book, one of my flock died. My husband found her lying peacefully on the floor of the coop, her eyes closed as if asleep. It was a bit of a jolt for us both. She’s the one we thought was a rooster at first. She was big, she crowed, she bossed the other chickens. We called her Zeus, and then she laid an egg. It was all so comical and fun. We tried calling her Zeusette, but it always came out Zeus. We made a lot of jokes about her and became quite fond of her. And then, for unknown reasons and without warning, she died. Life throws us such curveballs—unexpected and inexplicable events--and if we choose to look we'll find wisdom in them. Zeus, I hope, is now immortalized in this first-effort E-book.

My mother is remembered for sure. She died when I was a young woman; my children never knew her. Perhaps they'll find some essence of her in my E-verbiage. I certainly found her again while creating this E-book.

Cyberspace—the new bookshelf. Go see, and let me know what you think—

http://www.amazon.com/The-Funky-Chicken-Memories-ebook/dp/B00FAS4U6W/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1379704422&sr=1-1&keywords=funky+chicken

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Are Lighthouses Sexy?

Sexy?? That word "sexy" gets used a lot these days, sometimes in ways I don't quite understand. If it means "arousing," or "provocative," then it makes sense. A lot of things besides sex itself can arouse us, appeal to our passions, and make us feel a swift and strong emotion. But lighthouses??

Maybe use of the word is more about drawing attention. If something is said to be sexy, then people will want to see it.

Recently, someone told me one of my book covers was sexy. This is why I'm pondering the question of "sexiness" today. Here's the book cover; judge for yourself. Sexy or not?

Hmmm. Is it the red color, the stripes on the tower? The keeper with his arm upraised? Or, the combination of all? (I'd hate to think there's some phallic symbolism in all this.)

I'm grateful for the comment, but it still baffles me. When Pineapple Press helped me compose this cover, we weren't thinking "sexy." We wanted to project the idea of the lighthouse as needing a keeper to bring it alive. But maybe it turned out sexier than we intended. What do you think?

Lighthouses can be sexy, I suppose...in a subtle way. They certainly add to the milieu of sea and shore and make it prettier and more interesting. The seashore itself might be sexy in some ways. Lighthouses are interesting background objects in seashore photos and images. Postcard manufacturers and photographers know this. Check out these pictures from various websites and see if they are examples of sexy lighthouses:

Writing Advice I Like and Live By

There are so many websites and blogs for writers! If you like to write, and especially if you desire to have your writing published and read, check out some of the websites. Just type "Writing Advice" into a search engine. Be sure to set a timer, because you'll be immersed for hours and will forget to go to your "other job," cook dinner, feed the cat, go to bed...

An important thing to remember, I think, is that writing is a calling, a drive, an obsession with most successful writers. It can't be a casual hobby or diversion. I'm taking a class right now with some casual writers, and I have little hope for their success. They talk a lot about their projects in class, which is good--we all should talk with other people about our writing--but very little ends up on paper or a thumb drive. They come to class with woes about not having time to write, concern about format and grammar and the minutia meant for the final stages of writing, or they make excuses about not being able to find the right words. "How do you get so much written every day?" one woman asked me. Neil Gaiman's quote below sums it up. I showed this to her and said, "To put it simply, sit your butt down and do it. Quit worrying about all the details. They will follow. First, you need to get something on paper."

The "thinking about...talking about...worrying about.." quote below sparked some good discussion in my class. I do all these three of these activities, but I also get a lot of writing done. I don't believe it hurts to be thinking, talking, worrying about writing, so long as there's actual writing worked into the formula. Writers do have an enormous cerebral side to their work--antenna up all the time searching for ideas, and a part of their brain going constantly in response to the writing urge--but ultimately they're successful because they sit down and do it. They also keep notepads in their purses and in backpacks and in cars and beside their beds and lots of other places. Those sticky Post-It Notes are the best things ever invented for writers! Ideas can vanish; get them down when they're fresh.

And, finally, Henry Miller's advice: I agree with most of it. I agree that finishing is important. But starting is crucial too, and having lots of balls in the air is good for someone who gets bored easily, as I do. I need to revitalize with new topics. I need excursions of the mind and departures from the norm. Often, I stop in the middle of a writing project and do a different one for a few days. It clears my mind and revs me up to get back to the first project. Maybe this method didn't work for Henry Miller. I'll think about it, since he was a much more successful writer than I am. :-/

That mantra about re-writing: It's true. Good writing is re-written, re-vised, re-worked over and over. I wish my students would accept this.

In a nutshell then, good writing is writing every day, writing with passion, and rewriting vigorously. Writing is good for your head, good for your heart, and sometimes good for your wallet too.

Writing is truly a sport. You have to love it to play well. You have to respect the rules and be willing to work with the team--editors, publishers, audience. The more you practice and refine your moves, the better you play the game.

Okay, I've thought about writing enough for today. It's time to do some of it...but then I have been...am. Yes, this blog counts!

Nearly-out-of-Provisions Stew

Keeping enough food in the larder on remote lighthouses was a problem before powerboats and helicopters came into being. Lightkeepers at places like Boon Island, pictured below, could run out of food if bad weather prolonged the wait for a quarterly visit from the lighthouse tender, the ship responsible for delivering supplies to the keepers. Book Island Light stands on a pile of rocks nine miles off the New Hampshire coast. Nine miles may not seem a long distance (the mainland is in view in the background of the picture), but in the days before modern means of travel, it may as well have been 900 miles from shore. Entries in the Boon Island logbook in the nineteenth century sometimes mentioned dwindling food supplies or a meal made from a duck that slammed into the lantern.

Below is a tongue-in-cheek recipe given to me years ago by a lighthouse keeper stationed on an offshore lighthouse on the North Sea, England. It illustrates the problem of an empty pantry and no supply ship in sight, and also the attention given to fairness. Note the two keepers get equal shares, as do the lighthouse dog and cat--

Into a big pot of boiling water, drop:

• the last potato, diced neatly

• the last onion, chopped fine

• parsley flakes from the bottom of the spice jar

• 1 of the 3 turnips that washed ashore form last week's shipwreck, whole

• enough salt to fill a thimble

• dumplings made from the last cup of flour and last dab of lard

• 1 seagull egg found in the beach grass; hard-boil it in the stew

• 1 dead duck that slammed into the light tower last night, picked and cleaned

• duck giblets--heart, gizzard, liver

Boil everything for several hours. Scoop out the duck and clean the meat off its carcass. Divide meat into two bowls. Remove the turnip and cut it in half, one piece for yourself and the other for the assistant lightkeeper, and place the halves in the bowls. Do the same with the hardboiled seagull egg. Remove the duck giblets and divide in half between the bowls. Ladle stew into the bowls, being careful to give equal onion, potato, and dumpling to each bowl. If any soda crackers remain in the cracker can, place one alongside each bowl. Finally, divide the duck carcass and entrails in half and place in bowls on the floor. Yell to the assistant keeper, the dog, and the cat: "Dinner is served!"

A Sweet Story

In October 2001, Jon and I attended the Great Lakes Lighthouse Festival in Alpena, Michigan. This annual event was in its infancy back then. Over the years, it has grown quite large. Great Lakers love their lighthouses!

I was asked to speak at the event in 2001 and had a book table to sell and sign my books. It was beautiful autumn weather that Columbus Day week as we drove from Connecticut to Michigan in our motorhome. We arrived early and had a few days to do some sightseeing, so we headed off to find lighthouses.

First, we went north to the Mackinac area, then turned south along the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. As we approached Grand Haven, I peeled my eyes for the pierhead lighthouses at the mouth of the Grand River, about 40 miles north of Kalamzoo. There are two of them that create a "range" for vessels to stay in the channel as they head into the river.

"I see them!" I shouted.

Jon looked for a place to pull over--not easy task in a motorhome. He was busy scanning at the roadside while I kept the lighthouses in view.

"There's a park of some sort over there," Jon said. "I'll pull in there long enough for us to get some photos."

We drove into the park and eased our motorhome into a parking space. There were people everywhere, picnicking in the sunshine and walking the beach along the pierhead. Some were on the pierhead itself walking out to the lighthouses. The parking area was full of cars. There were quite a few motorhomes too. In fact, we had managed to park alongside several of the RVs, all lined up in a row. Jon shut down the motor, cracked the windows, and said:

"How about we have a quick snack before we walk out to the lighthouses?"

Good idea. I went to the back of the motorhome to our small kitchen to fetch peanut butter and crackers and iced tea. The big window in the kitchen overlooked the beach and the lighthouses. What a view! While I made the snack, Jon went outside to look around and do his usual check on the RV. Moments later he was back inside with a big smile on his face.

"You won't believe this, but we've backed into an RV space with hookups for water and electricity. This isn't just a park, it's a little RV park--right here looking out over the lighthouses!"

Sure enough, there were hookups behind our RV. Earlier in the day, we thought we might stay at a state park father down the shore, but this was perfect. Jon paid for our space, hooked up the water and electricity, and we had our snack. Afterward, we walked out to the beach and then to the pierhead to visit the lighthouses.

That night as I prepared dinner, the sun dropped low and made a shimmering path of light across the lake. The beacons in the lighthouses clicked on and made for some amazing photos. I couldn't stop looking out the kitchen window. How lucky that we found this spot, and by accident! When dinner was ready, we sat outside in our lawn chairs facing the lighthouses and the lake as we ate, still amazed that we had unknowingly backed into an RV space with such a fabulous view.

A few days later we arrived back in Alpena in time for the lighthouse festival. I had a book table for sales and signings and gave my presentation each day of the event. It was based on my title Guardians of the Lights, which sold well after each presentation.The festival was wonderful, with lots of tables and spaces filled with lighthouse goodies and many excellent speakers.

A few spaces away from my table was a young woman with her paintings of Great Lakes lighthouses. I admired her work, especially her watercolor of the Grand Haven Pierhead Lighthouses. I told her the story of how Jon and I ended up with the best view possible by accidentally backing into an RV hookup space near the lighthouses. A few hours later I passed by her display again and saw that the Grand Haven painting was gone. No surprise. It was pretty and would look nice on someone's wall.

At the end of the festival on Sunday afternoon, we packed up my books and slide show and fired up our motorhome to head back home to Connecticut. But first, we did a little more touring. We drove up to Mackinac Point, visited the lighthouse there and then crossed the bridge to the Upper Peninsula before finding an RV park for the night. It was dark when we pulled into our space and hooked up, and we were tired. Dinner was sandwiches and soup. While I took a shower, Jon made up the beds.

As I emerged from the bathroom in my RV pajamas, Jon handed me a cup of tea and gave me a hug.

"I got my favorite author a little souvenir from the festival," he said, motioning to my bed. On my pillow lay the framed watercolor of the Grand Haven Pierhead Lights....

Musings about Successful Writers

People often ask: “What makes a person likely to become a successful writer?”

A friend of mine wondered about this a few years ago, reminding me that her elementary school-age son loved to write and approached every classroom writing assignment with relish. She sometimes sent me his writings, perhaps hoping I possessed some form of occupational ESP and could tell her she was raising a great novelist or a future Pulitzer Prize winner. Students in my college classes know I'm a writer "in my other career" and seem to feel a need to tell me about their writing acumen or lack thereof, though I don't teach writing. They will say they love to keep journals and diaries, and I tell them I did too, as a child and still as an adult. Journaling and writing in diaries are good habits. But there's more to being a professional writer, I remind them, than writing every day. They’ll offer confessions of sorts: “I’m not a good English student, so a writing career is not for me.” Or, "English is my favorite subject, so I'll probably become a novelist." Or worse, "I love to write and want to become a full-time writer, but I hate writing on topics teachers require. I'm at my writing best when doing my own topics the way I want to write them, not constrained by a teacher's demands." (Editors are laughing at this admission!)

Doing well in an English class certainly isn’t a guarantee. I aced almost all of my “English” classes in high school and college and even received a small college scholarship "For Excellence in English," but I feel sure I did not become a writer because of these achievements. What's the explanation/answer/reason then? Musing onward....

In a writing class I taught in the late 1990s, a student told me she was driven to write. “I have stories to tell,” she said, “and I have to get them down on paper.” Another added, “I read everything I can get my hands on and am always thinking of how I can turn ideas into stories.” I like both of these statements, because I think they hint at what it is to be a writer—an avid reader, an obsessive word-weaver, and a story hunter. Here I am this morning pounding the keyboard when I could be doing something else—messing about in my flowerbeds, reading a novel, watching an old movie, sewing or crafting (I've re-discovered macrame!), or taking a long walk—all activities I enjoy. Instead, I’m looking at the monitor as my fingers weave ideas. I realized long ago the computer monitor is really the public, my audience. I know good writers are adept at many skills, but most important I think is identifying audiences and imagining conversations with them. When my students get stuck on their writing assignments, I tell them that writing is, at its simplest, a conversation on paper. Who are you talking with? Why? What is it you feel the need to tell them? Pretend they’re interested in what you have to say and are asking questions and adding their comments. Believe that what you have to say is important and detail it without a hammer. (Nobody likes being hit in the head with a hammer.)

Those high school and college papers I wrote so long ago, marked up with corrections and comments by teachers, all had something in common. A positive comment I frequently received was: “You target your audience well.” Long before I became a professional writer (meaning I'm paid for my work), I understood the importance of knowing who I was talking with and how to speak with them. There are other skills necessary beyond ID of audience, of course, but the listeners are critical to successful writing.

How do we learn to ID audiences and speak directly to them? I think an appetite for reading is part of the process, along with a great desire to talk about the ideas discovered in a reading, either on paper or with others, and glean the message. Translating that message into something new and useful, even if just for entertainment's sake, is satisfying. Reading generates ideas, but it also brings familiarity with good writing. It's instructive if you're willing to think about how the author presents it. The old adage about imitation being a form of flattery is true, but imitation is an excellent tool for developing writing skills, including audience sensitivity.

I read voraciously as a youngster and still do. I loved (and still love) characters that carried messages, mostly implied (no hammers, please). The guy pictured below is a good example, a guide I followed early in life. He now hangs in a maple tree outside my office window, a sort of inspiration on days I need a boost. I made him from a bucket and cans in honor or my favorite childhood character from Frank L. Baum’s "Wizard of Oz" tales. The scarecrow had so many wonderful things to say about choice, confidence, and brain power, not to mention the fact that goofy and clumsy is okay. For years after I first met this character in the classic Judy Garland movie and an entire summer in about 1962 spent reading Baum's Oz books on the glider on our front porch, I sought out characters who weren’t human in the physical sense but had important things to say to flesh and blood characters. Often, they were sci-fi and fantasy characters.

These days, my husband will hear me complain that all my reading seems to be targeted at specific research for a book or article or for my classes, leaving me little time for leisure reading. I still relax on porch funriture to read, in fact, but I know I don’t leisure read. I can't. I realized this long ago. Reading is an obsession for me. I do enjoy it, but every book I choose for entertainment fills me with new writing ideas and IDs new audiences. A good example is Peter Fitzsimons Batavia, a sprawling piece of historical fiction I read about a month ago that’s more fact than fiction and details the 1629 wreck of a Dutch ship on its way to Indonesia during the spice trade. The history therein sparked my interest, again, in the Dutch East India Company, in the issues with navigation before the chronometer, in the marking of Indonesian shores with navigational aids, and in the horrendous eruption of Krakatoa in August 1883, resulting in the loss of several lighthouses on Java and Sumatra. After a few weeks of research, I went to work on an article roughly titled "Krakatoa and the Loss of Light in the Sunda Strait" for my favorite audience—readers of the U.S. Lighthouse Society journal, The Keepers Log.

I like lighthouses for much the same reason I like the Oz scarecrow, robots like Gort (shown below from The Day the Earth Stood Still), talking animals like Garfield, and other anthropomorphized characters. Lighthouses speak; it’s fun giving them a voice. And...they're not so different from the Tinman and Gort.

Those characters made us think about ourselves; they had a message of welcome, warning, strength, and salvation. (Note: The modern version of The Day the Earth Stood Still spun Gort as a destructive character rather than the instructive one he truly was.)

Like the student in my writing class years ago, my antennae are always up looking for new ideas and new audiences, or looking for new ideas to entertain and educate a proven, reliable audience. It’s audience I crave. That's what drives me to write....even if that audience is myself. I think most successful writers agree.