July 14. 2008 by Dick.

I write but I rarely write about writing. I think about writing. I sometimes talk with friends about writing. I have written once or twice about writing^*1*. Thank goodness I don’t do it very often.

See, the first piece of advice a young writer gets is, “Write what you know.” Unfortunately for readers, most writers know most about writing so they tend to, well, write about it. I’d rather write about nude wimmens or careening to the inside of turn 7 at Lime Rock or whether I can catch a cow on a hook in the deep blue waters of the Gulfstream.

But the sun is shining. Life is good. And Duma Key the place is, for now, very far away.

I’m reading Duma Key the book right now and have been thinking about why I like Stephen King and, as a broader question, why we all like Stories-with-a-Capital-S and the people in them. See, I don’t read fantasy. I don’t even like horror stories. I never told ghost stories around the campfire nor believed them when I listened but I like Stephen King and he tells some serious ghost stories.

I have just two simple truths to share here:

1. We want to spend our time with interesting people.
2. Characters in novels are always busy.

The USA Network peeps have it right with their “Characters Welcome” promotion. The books I like best, the movies that grab me, and the television serials I keep going back to are all peopled with interesting characters. It doesn’t matter as much what they do in the stories as it matters what makes them interesting.

I may be an interesting person. Or not. You may even like me as a person. Or not. No matter. Neither of us particularly wants to share our time with someone doing what I did today. I brushed, pooped, showered, and wandered around my office in my underwear for a while. I spoke to a couple of clients. I researched a strategic plan. I wrote this blog and my weekly column. I worked on a couple of photo images. I checked that I have a band booked for the weekend concert. I may have passed gas. I ate lunch and will eventually eat supper. Tonight I have a heavy evening planned with the t00b.

Yawn.

That was a busy day. Absolutely no part of it moved this story forward. In the novel we could have skipped directly from finding the red picnic basket in the attic to catching the cow on the hook.

Any writer who can create someone we like and keep us hooked with his or her day-to-day puttering is a treasure.

¹ My 10-1/2 Hot Tips for Small-Town Op-ed Writers was commissioned and published by Inklings in 1997.

Posted in Books, Big Thoughts, Random Access | No Comments »

July 7. 2008 by Dick.

Big Mistake. Really big mistake. Today, as I write this, is July 7. I realize it may not be July 7 where you are or when you read this, but I can live with that. Here and now it is definitely the Monday after our long weekend long birthday celebration for America and the Back to School sales have already started.

Franklin County, Vermont, celebrates the Fourth of July twice: once on the Fourth of July and once on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July when thousands of residents and guests crowd in to St. Albans Bay for a day of family stuff, music, and fireworks. I got my Summer Sounds concert band, Rumble Doll, set up, got my mug on teevee, and, of course, spent some quality time in the lake. My new sandals seem to have stood up to total immersion.

Tom Oliver did a great job with the fireworks; this may have been his best yet with some new “spiders” that dropped their legs all the way to the water and a finale that included high and low skybursts with Roman candles.

And it took only an hour for enough cars to clear out that I could drive home.

Summer.

The entire summer is ahead of us.

I don’t know about the rest of the world but I don’t want to be in a classroom in July.

We read the Burlington Free Press on Sundays here in Vermont because it is the only Sunday paper sold here that has a TV section and a reasonable number of advertising inserts for the stores we patronize.

I like the sales, see…

The sales often confuse me, though. I have to wonder why stores expect to sell Summer clothing in February, Winter clothing in June, and school supplies this week.

Staples® has “one cent deals” through Wednesday as part of the Back to School ‘08 national promotion. I’m reading their advertising flier now. Dixon® #2 yellow pencils for a penny. I like #2 pencils and Dixon® makes pretty good ones but does anyone actually use wooden pencils anymore? There are two-pocket paper folders for a penny, too. I like two-pocket folders but I don’t use them much for reports because I prefer a report that reads like a book, so I use staples or a folder that grabs the edges.

Back to school? It is weeks, count ‘em, long weeks before school starts.

The mistake? Timing is everything. The stores obviously should have held the sales in June when people were still actually thinking about school, not now when I want to sit on the beach. That was easy®.

Posted in Marketing, Seasonal, Random Access | No Comments »

July 3. 2008 by Dick.

I’m not a carpenter, but I do haul sheets of plywood. I’m not a garbage man, but I do haul trash to the dump. I’m not a yardman, but I do tow my broken down tractor around. I need a truck.

My op-ed in the Detroit Free Press was an open letter to Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman and general visionary of Global Product Development at GM.

Dear Bob Lutz, I wrote:

GM needs to lead the market. You can touch the real heart of America with GM innovation. If you can put a 30-m.p.g. truck in the showroom this year and build the new 35-m.p.g. truck for 2011, the rest of the product line would fly again. Read the entire op-ed here..

We’re dying here. GM has to do something.

So. Anybody know how to get to Mr. Lutz? If so, send him a copy, would you?

Posted in Business, Big Thoughts, Random Access | No Comments »