Button Tapper

I haven’t written any of my haiku-a-day in a while, and since I’ve got a few Basho books out of the library right now, I thought I’d give it a go. It’s the end of January, and I’m feeling a bit unmoored. I’m used to ice and snow at this time of the year, and while it’s certainly cold here in Texas (apparently it’s 34 degrees outside right now) and rather a desolate landscape (as evidenced by my recent visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center), the lack of a standard Winter Wonderland is making me feel kind of spooked.

Add on top of that the fact that I just read The Road by Cormac McCarthy (which I wrote up briefly on CrackBooks), where the two protagonists are shivering with cold virtually all of the time and the post-apocalyptic landscape is described as “cold enough to split rocks,” and you’ve got a bit of a paranoid writer on your hands. Am I dying, or is it just cold in here? (To paraphrase a Sarah Silverman song lyric.)

So, here are three of my winter haiku:

"texas winter landscape (with poodles)" by Flickr user greg westfall

Silent winter snow
missing from Texas landscape
Strange chill without ice
–

"texas in winter #4" by Flickr user greg westfall

Do I miss freezing?
Strapping boots to venture forth?
Not at all! (a bit)
–

"Real winter in Texas" by Flickr user CameliaTWU

Montreal Winter

Icicles question,
breath hanging in air shatters.
Cold, clean fear of death.

I should note that I wrote all of those haiku in a great (free!) Zen-style writing program called OmmWriter. If you’ve got a Mac, you should definitely check it out (it’s not currently available for you [suckafool] PCs), as it’s quite a neat way to approach your creative writing. It takes you out of the clutter of your desktop and allows you to choose your background, a repeating pattern of music that resembles my husband’s Buddha Machine (another great little gizmo if you want to clear your mind), and another ambient noise associated with tapping the buttons of your keyboard. You’re focused on the words on the page, and the repeating musical patterns are meant to keep your thoughts flowing, rather than snagging on the words to a familiar tune or even the hook to some classical music. I really like it, especially for things like my haiku writing project—and did I mention it’s free?

Seriously, try it. You’ll convert.

Finally, I am announcing a crazy (but attainable) goal, inspired by my recent reading of Jeremy Mercer’s Time Was Soft There. Apparently George Whitman, the owner of the illustrious Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, allows writers to stay at the bookstore so long as they read one book per day to earn their keep, so to speak. This is an amazing idea, both because it will help any writer improve his or her craft, but also because it immerses you in the world of literature and ideas. It allows you to see the connections, to see yourself as one in a long line of writers, to broaden your horizons and deepen your interests. It sounds time-consuming in our rush-rush world of corporate consumption and pointless motion, but really, what have you got to lose when you sit down and read a book?

I always have a book or two on hand anyway, and regularly read about a book a week. I’m already the type of person that puts library books on hold so I can have good books delivered (almost) to my doorstep, and since the Austin library nearest my house has a drive-thru, well, I’ve been going a bit nuts with my holds (despite their threat that you’ll have to pay $1 per book if you don’t pick them up within 10 days of your request being fulfilled). I am, in a word, voracious. Always have been. I was the kid who checked out stacks of books, and once a little girl saw me with my pile and whispered to her mother, “Look at all the books she has, mommy!” The mother whispered back, “She’s not going to read them all.” I turned to face them and said, “Yes I am!”

That child was undoubtedly scarred for life, but you get my point. I’m an unstoppable reading machine. So now it’s time to step it up a notch and really get serious. Thus, I pledge to join the ranks of the Shakespeare and Company writers, from afar. Tonight I’ve got a few hours left to kill Under the Tuscan Sun. Let’s do this thing!

Who’s with me?

There are some weird jobs out there. Some are weird in a good way, offering zany items to pad your résumé, fun work environments, or simply a chance to try new things while earning a few bucks. Hey, you never know where it might lead, and all experiences are learning experiences.

Others are just creepy, dirty, demeaning and wrong. They make you feel bad for even bothering. They waste your time and your energy, and they suck your soul.

Obviously, I’m looking for the good type of weird jobs out there, the ones you never knew really existed, the kind that feeds your soul rather than squishing it like a bug. I’ve been catching up on Aimee Davison’s One Hundred Jobs blog this evening, and it has inspired me to continue my job hunt in a fearless manner. Who cares if the job is a one-off gig? At least it’ll pay some bills, and you can have fun doing it. Right?

So I happened to catch a glimpse of a back-page ad in the Chronicle this week, advertising the need for an old-school transcriptionist for one of the paper’s writers. I sent a quick note to let her know that I’m available, although to be honest, I’m not sure whether this is really a job, much less a paying one. I mean, what’s up with the ads on the back page? They seem a little weird, like the one for semen donors, or the “celebrity braider” named Isis. Are these for real? Or are they just the Chronicle’s idea of a joke?

I guess I’ll let you know, if Ms. Messer actually replies.

In the meantime, it looks like there are some openings in-house with my current employer, so I think I will take a crack at those as well. I’ve never been promoted from within before, since I’m more used to being a freelancer than a payroll employee, so this could be my first “internal hire.” Wish me luck!

I’ve applied for a job in NYC, because that’s where publishing happens in the United States. You can say all you like that location no longer matters, that everyone can work remotely from their home offices, and to some extent that’s true, but if you want to learn how the old-school publishers do their thing, you’d best move to the heart of it all.

New. York. City.

(I keep hearing that old Pace Picante sauce commercial in my mind: “That stuff’s made in New York City!” “NEW YORK CITY?!”)

I haven’t lived there in about a decade, and I’m still not sure whether I miss the place. In some ways I definitely do. New York has the best subway system in the world, and I dare anyone to say otherwise. Sure, it may take you an hour and a half to get from your apartment in the Bronx to the airport in Queens because you have to go through Manhattan by subway and bus in order to take the cheapskate route, but it can be done. Show me Austin’s subway system, pal. And riddle me this, while you’re at it: why did CapMetro just raise the fares on the express bus from $1.50 to $2.50—a 75% increase overnight? Shouldn’t that be illegal?

Anyway, back to my original point, which was this: New York is a city I’ve loved and hated. I’ve loved its big-city glamour, the ability to easily get around no matter what time of day via subway, the crazies, the zanies, and the only-in-New-Yorkers. I’ve loved Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (my comparison chart for all museums), the NYC library system, the pizza, and the glamour of being able to say “I’m from New York,” like it’s the center of the universe, when anyone asks.

I’ve hated New York, too, of course. It’s dirty, it’s impersonal, it’s full of yuppie scumbags and jerkoffs who think they own the universe just because they live on the Upper East (or West) Side. There are total degenerates looking to grope you on the subway. The place is often best described as an open-air insane asylum. There are hazards on every street corner. A single gal has got to be sharp in that concrete jungle. It’s nothing like Sex and the City, or any one of millions of rom-coms (When Harry Met Sally, anyone?), and for that I am bitter.

Throgs Neck Bridge, via Wikimedia

But you know what? I miss it, too. And what’s more, I miss being in the know about all the latest and greatest. I miss exploring everything that city has to offer. I miss the hustle and bustle. I miss driving my crummy Chevy Celebrity late at night down the West Side Highway, doors locked, windows up tight, just staring at all the sights. I miss sitting by the water with a cup of crappy coffee and waiting for the lights on the Throgs Neck Bridge to blink out, like they always do, sometime during the night and totally at random—a lit-up string of pearls winking out of sight. I used to stare at those blue lights on lonely nights in the Bronx, feeling oddly comforted, like if one beautiful thing were in my field of vision, then everything couldn’t be that bad.

So I applied for a job in NYC, even though I’ve just moved to Austin. Even though I would love to get to know this place better. Even though there are a million little things that drive me crazy about NYC. Because, ultimately, I think I belong there, along with the man of my dreams (who also belongs there, as an artist and musician), exploring that city together, sharing the greatest city in the world.

I’ll let you know how that roll of the dice turns out once I know myself. In the meantime, wish me luck.

I’ve been working at the University of Texas Co-op Bookstore for the past little while, and it seems tomorrow is “Orange Day” as it’s the first day of classes for the Spring semester. Not being a native Texan, one of my first questions during Co-op orientation was, “Is this UT color brown or orange?” The girl training me responded, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

For the record, UT’s color is BURNT ORANGE. Comme ça:

Junior Fit T-Shirt with Texas Script (image via UT Co-op Bookstore)

Anyway, tomorrow is “Orange Day,” which means employees are encouraged to wear some burnt orange and/or an official UT t-shirt. Seeing as burnt orange is most definitely not my color, and I am loath to wear the colors of a school I’ve never actually attended (and, oddly enough, both Concordia and Fordham’s school colors were maroon), I don’t have the required orange t-shirt on hand. I did buy a Texas shirt in anticipation of the Longhorns winning the football championships, but we all know how that turned out… and anyway, that shirt is grey, not orange. So I am wondering: should I blow $5 of my hard-earned dollars on another UT shirt just to participate in Orange Day, or should I buck this conformist system and go rogue with my bright red, Canadian maple leaf, free-with-a-box-of-Cheerios t-shirt instead?

Cus, frankly, I don’t have any clean t-shirts to my name, and the weather is supposed to be in the high-60s (or even 70!) again tomorrow, making long-sleeves (and even quarter-length sleeves) out of the question. Especially since they’ve been blasting the dadgum heat in the Outlet.

Obviously, this is a question best determined by the fashion police. Anybody got the number for a squad member here in Austin?

I recently approached a previous client regarding the possibility of more copywriting work, emboldened by The Well-Fed Writer’s claims that cold calling works, but “lukewarm calling” is often more lucrative. The editor I queried wrote back to ask if I had any experience writing in the style of the inimitable J. Peterman.

I promptly went to the J. Peterman website, perused some of their copy, and set to work spinning a few Peterman-esque short tales of my own that might work for the client’s website, using some of their current merchandise as inspiration.

I also posted on Twitter about it, saying “One potential employer I contacted wants copy in the form of the J. Peterman catalogue. I’ve been browsing the monocle: http://bit.ly/65wW0l.” (Seriously, who can pass up a real, honest-to-goodness monocle?!)

J. Peterman is, naturally, on Twitter, and responded accordingly:

Unfortunately, I’m still in suspense myself. But I promise to let you all know if I do end up landing any work of this type, as I will clearly be shadowing the footsteps of genius.

And, of course, watching all of the old Seinfeld episodes with Peterman in them to serve as a secondary source of inspiration. Despite the show’s ribbing, they did manage to get Peterman’s sometimes overblown tone down, emphasizing the fine line between creative copy and impenetrably ridiculous wordsmithing (see, for example, the episode entitled “The Foundation,” where Elaine takes over for Peterman and puts the “urban sombrero” on the cover of the catalogue). Still, the real J. Peterman’s descriptions do work well: if you’ve ever read through the catalogue, you’ll find yourself agreeing with the company’s Twitter summary of what they do: “People want things that are hard to find. Things that have romance, but a factual romance, about them.”

In short, J. Peterman’s style is about both romantic product descriptions and the whiff of exclusion. Not everyone can afford the items for sale in the catalogue, and that’s what gives them an edge. It’s this idea that the product you are buying is, if not one-of-a-kind, then at least one-of-very-few. It’s that rarity that puts the item in demand, and the copywriter’s sexy description helps nudge the customer’s hand toward the “buy now” button. It’s an elegant form of salesmanship, and one that clearly gets results, as the company has been thriving since 1987.

It also makes for a great writing exercise, as demonstrated by this article in Writing Fix, “A Six-Trait Writing Lesson That Uses the J. Peterman Catalogue.” (Seriously, try it. You’ll be waxing lyrical in no time!)

In the meantime, if anyone would care to gift me with one of Peterman’s (discounted) Get Around Vespa Jackets, I promise to use this inspiration toward writing brilliant copy for the sender of said inspiration. Hey, J. Peterman: need any new writers for your site? Will work for designer duds*!

*Fee negotiable