The Big D

This here is my 500th blog post, and I can hardly hear the trumpets over the sound of my mind blowing. As many of you know, I spent over thirty years Moving The Nation's Mail, a job that allows for considerable daydreaming, especially if you're not too fussy about whose mail goes in which slot. And from time to time I found myself coming up with a clever way of saying something, and I'd polish it up like a little word-agate. Based on the small shiny collection of clever things I had rolling around in my pocket after thirty years, I concluded I should be a writer. I also made plans to be closer to six feet tall.

A lot of times these things never really get in gear. They stay in neutral and make little putt-putt noises and sometimes there's a little toot of blue smoke but mostly you spend the rest of your life idling in the driveway. People get notions for their bucket lists and knock off one or two of the ones that only involve buying airfare, and the bucket stays pretty full, and after a while there's nothing left to do but kick it. The sorts of things that make me very happy are pretty low-key: take a nice walk, look at the occasional cool bug, tip a really good beer. I'm tickled enough with life as it is that I hadn't even really gotten a start on making a bucket list. But if I had, writing an actual book would have filled up most of it.

I needed a bigger bucket. As soon as I retired I put my nose to the ground like a burrowing mole and rumpled up a whole collection of postal stories. I started and finished a novel. I started and finished a second novel. Now I'm about halfway through a new book, creative non-fiction this time. And most of the reason I was able to actually do what I always thought I should do is that I got in the habit of writing Murrmurrs, and that's why I keep writing it.

Yes, I have a dog poop stamp. You don't?

Which is why the occasion of my 500th blog post reminds me so much of pulling a sausage casing out of a dog's butt. Right about the time it occurred to me that cats make nice pets, I saw a friend bend down next to her straining mutt and grab hold of something netherly and start tugging. Poor dog was all bound up, but there was a little tag hanging out that turned out to be a sausage casing. That accounted for a few inches of the blockage; then other stuff started coming out, including not only what was designed to come out, but bits of string, and plant material, and part of a raincoat, and I don't know what-all. Some of that might have been in there for months. This blog, as you may have guessed, is my canine gastrointestinal tract. And you, my dear readers, are pulling on the sausage casing.

And boy howdy, but there turned out to be a lot of crap in there. It keeps coming out because there are people out there interested in it, and they keep giving it a little tug.

Reason I started this venture was to develop what is called a platform. You can write the best stuff on the planet but nobody will publish you if you don't have a platform. It was understood: if you hoped to be a published writer, you need a blog. No real explanation how that works. And people don't just

flock to your blog because it's so grand. You have to go out there and whack your way through a shrubbery of blogs and leave calling cards. There are billions of them. There are photos of people's dogs and photos of people's dinner. You can spend hours at this. Then you're supposed to tweet. Everyone tweets. It's getting loud out there. After a while you don't have time to look at cool bugs.

And not to cast nasturtiums on anyone's dog or dinner, but after a while you begin to spend less time in the shrubbery. And that trajectory of visitor numbers that had looked so promising begins to level off and then dip and dive. You loyal readers are a lot more intimate group now, but I hope you'll stick around and keep tugging on the sausage casing.  And I'll keep posting here because this place is the cod liver oil to my creativity.

Only twice a week, though. We want "crap" to remain a metaphor.

Funny Business

I don't want to let the subject of taxes go without expressing our appreciation for the fat credit we got for installing solar panels. That was a gift from all of you other taxpayers, and we're grateful. Now that you've finally got it right, I don't think I'd be out of line for mentioning that we like this a whole lot better than that war you've been getting us the last God knows how many years, which was the wrong size.

Something else. Once I got done with the preparation and sent it all off to meet its taker, my tax prep software wanted to know if I was interested in learning my chances of getting audited. I'm not particularly afraid of getting audited. If it happens, I will stride into the office with a clean conscience. "I've done the best I could," I'll say. "You figure it out, and then get back to me." Which is what I wish they'd do from the get-go, anyway.

Still, I clicked "yes" to the question, and my software then assured me my risk of audit was low. On the other hand, they saw some "areas of concern." Would I like to see the areas of concern?

Not really. I don't even like it when my friends tell me they're concerned about me. It's never anything good, and it interferes with my avoidance strategy.

But this is just a stupid bunch of software. A stupid, wickedly intuitive bunch of software. I could click "no thanks," and it would lean back, stroke its beard, arch one brow, and say well then. Okay. I just wanted to ask. Then I could banish its icon from my desktop and send it to its folder, where it would tell all my other documents about me. I hate when that happens.

Fine. Since you must know, Mr. Fancypants Tax Software, yes, I have a business that doesn't appear to be taking in any money. If you'd take the time to notice, Mr. Fancypants Tax Software, I said that right up front, when you asked the nature of my business, and I typed in "writing." Do you know what that means? That means that I am employed in the business of distilling my entire life experience and language heritage into little jewels of verbiage to charm the hearts or loosen the bowels of dozens of unnamed souls in the blogosphere, for no remuneration whatsoever. Similarly, I am compelled to concoct gems of humor for the likes of Smithsonian Magazine or The New Yorker, one of which wants humor as long as it isn't all that funny, and the other of which doesn't care if it's funny at all as long as it's gimmicky enough. And to do this I need to take my natural wit and cook it down till all the funny is rendered out of it, leaving only a thin gruel of light chuckling. Then I must send it out and wait several months for a rejection notice, or--because people in my situation are a dime a peck--an extended silence that I can feel free to interpret as a rejection after an abject half-year or so. I will have you know, Mr. Fancypants Tax Software, that I have been rejected by the best of them, and also by the North Dakota Living Magazine.

And why is this a business? It is a business because it is all in the service of developing an audience for more of my productions, which will also go unremunerated. It is a business because I am writing a novel that I would like people to read, and I have been solemnly informed that I require a platform in order to get anyone to read it. I need to network without appearing to stalk, work the social media without appearing to wheedle, and urge my readers to tell all their friends about me without appearing to snivel, all so that some day people will want to part with a dab of cash for this book I'm writing. And why should they, when they can get so much for free? I have no idea, Mr. Fancypants Tax Software. To be absolutely honest, I don't even care that much if they do pay, as long as they read it. But you asked if I had a business, not if I had an intelligent business plan.

So thank you for your concern, but if I were you, I'd just grow up and get used to the fact that I'm going to be writing off the cost of my printer cartridges for years to come. Suck on that, Mack.

Pimp My Platform

Here's how I thought the writing business should play out: I would go sit in a tower and write a really cool book. I would polish it up and present it in a form that required no editing, and pass it briefly under the nose of an agent or publisher, who would detect the scent of genius and promptly fling out thousands of copies to a waiting world.

I didn't actually write much of anything for about 52 years, but I did have a tower, so I had a good start. Then my friend Dave Gerritsen gave me some sort of choice--I believe one of the options was "get off the pot"--and I started writing some stuff down. It went well. I got a little something published, I won a couple little contests, and then I revised my plan. I had gotten some free publicity as a result of winning the contests, and so I thought I'd just sit in the front room, in literary heat, and whack at the agents and publishers with a broom as they crowded around the front porch; I'd let one or two with impeccable bloodlines stay. Meanwhile, I'd write a book.

The book was coming right along, but the front porch was kind of quiet. So I joined a writers' community and went to a meetin'. The preacher at the meetin' house soberly informed us that we needed to develop a Writer's Platform. My platform is pretty well developed, I've always thought, although it's nothing that couldn't be handled with stretchier pants. But I had misunderstood. In order to get a book contract, we needed to prove to a publisher that we could personally sell books, because they weren't about to be responsible for that. Heavens no. And the way to do that was not just to write a good book; certainly not. We needed to read in the town square, get a column in the paper, give commentaries on the radio, advertise on bus benches, wear spangly outfits and hire a bugler. Really, the writing was secondary.

So with great sadness and trepidation, I decided to start a blog. I didn't want to. What if I had only twelve ideas in my whole head, and after I had sent them out for free, there would be nothing left? Well. It turned out that I can go on and on about virtually any little thing. I had no idea. My husband Dave knew, and has made his peace with that over the years, but I didn't. It turned out to be fun. It's like a big paperweight for flyaway thoughts. All those odd little ideas that go traipsing in and out of my brain (there being, literally, nothing to stop them) now get pinned down in one place.

The book I'm writing is tentatively titled Miss Delivery: A Substantially True Postal Memoir. It's in the polishing stages. If you want to see it all published and everything, here's all you have to do: tell ten of your friends to read Murrmurrs. Tell them to tell ten of their friends. Within three or four weeks, we should have most of the planet on board unless some of you have duplicate friends--try not to do that. And don't break the chain or I'll have bad luck. Okay, pop along now--you should be able to do this before breakfast.

Incidentally: the blog posts that seem to engender the most spirited commentary are the ones about poop. I have written about it several times (raccoon poop, possum poop, lizard poop). Clearly, it speaks to something deep inside us all.