I am closing in on finishing the edits for MAKING IT WRITE. I love my editor. He makes all kinds of funny comments and tidbits about his life in the comments section. I always go through the whole manuscript again and not just what he commented on.
I can always tell when I'm getting close to the quota of pages to go through each day as my mind starts drifting and I start checking my phone and reading articles on it. Today I read an article about how ball point pens had to do with the end of cursive writing. That actually turned out to be only a small part of the actual article. It seems to have to do with the different way you hold a fountain pen or ball point pen over the paper. Fountain pens made it easier to join the letters together, according to the author.
But what fascinated me was the history of ball point pens. The idea has been around for a long time, but making them workable had to do with finding a thicker ink. The very first ones cost the equivalent of $100. Hard to imagine when you can buy a box of them for a few bucks at Office Depot now.
I love being able to find information about things I've wondered about. This probably sounds silly, but I always wondered how they made ice before there were refrigerators. The truth was kind of mind boggling. Ice was harvested from frozen lakes and rivers and put on boats with sawdust as insulation and taken around the world.
But I have to limit myself into my Internet wandering or I'd never get anything done. Though sometimes it's actually research for something I'm working on. MAKING IT WRITE has a lot about art galleries. I remembered that the family I was a nanny for when I was 17 owned an art gallery. It was a summer job at a resort the family owned, too. It turned out the gallery is still in existence now run by one of the 'kids' I took care of. I even found a video of him talking about how they picked art for the gallery. I found all kinds of information about the family which had nothing to do with what I'm writing, just my curiosity. I am fascinated by finding out about people's lives now that I knew in the past. Facebook and the Internet are great for that. Sometimes it's sad and I find out that people have died.
I wonder about all the moments in their lives. I don't particularly like to talk about myself, but I love to hear other people talk about themselves. Facebook is good for that when you can't see people in person. I have a lot Facebook "friends" who I don't really know and yet through Facebook have come to know about their trials and tribulations. I always try to send cyber hugs or good wishes to people going through hard stuff. It's really hard when I read a post about the loss of a person or a pet.
It's the new world of connection, I guess. I hope all the cyber good wishes and sympathetic messages help.
5 comments:
I know how you feel about hearing about peoples' everyday lives. I've always been that way--I get so involved with what is going on in the lives of characters in a book series !!
Many of the reality shows on cable are obviously scripted, but it is still fun to follow them--like Sister Wives, 90 Day Fiance, etc. When I went to a counselor after learning I was adopted, she wound up telling me a lot about her life !
A certain amount of this curiosity is good, and can help us put our own lives and problems in better perspective.
Linda, finding out you were adopted must have been difficult. I always remember hearing that being adopted meant that someone had chosen you which made you even more wanted.
The hard part for me was not knowing l was adopted until after both parents died. They had made all friends and relatives keep the secret. I did find my birth mother, and had a pretty good relationship with her. She just passed a few months ago, at 96. My real father was in his 40's, involved with a teenager. It's a crazy story, and l will always have confusion and mixed feelings about being given away at birth, and being lied to....maybe l should write a book on this one !!!
Linda, I can understand that must have been hard finding out a secret like that after your parents died. It must have been a shock, but maybe they thought they were protecting you. It's good that you were able to connect with your birth mother and find out why she gave you up. I am sure it would make a fascinating story-- it certainly fired up my imagination.
I enjoy hearing the kinds of things you look into, Betty. Ball point pens? How fun! And how ice was obtained before too. I enjoy checking things out too, as well as people I know or see in social media. I think often about how much fun it is to have those possibilities, which have changed a lot over my lifetime.
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