Update

Ouch, it's been a long hiatus; I apologise. It's sorta been a "When you want to do something, when you know you should do something, and "Life gets in the way." It's been a lot of doctor appointments, revising some chapters and inventing others. I've long known that I wasn't through: I needed to add some chapters that I hadn't even written one word about. I've re-written the entire long version of the original Around the World charter flight with Air Canada. I've also written a very long version of a chapter all about jewelry-making because I suddenly realized I had never discussed how I got started, how I plucked up courage to apply for a studio in an Arts Center in Kelowna, and now I'm organizing a chapter about the health care system in Canada. a subject I have longed waxed poetic about but not actually backed it up with one written word. In the meantime I ordered a set of stainless steel cabinets for the patio so that I could transfer all my jewelry machines out to locked cabinets and do the messy work out there. It has taken my handyman over two weeks to assemble them due to missing or incorrect parts, but it is almost finished and looks very elegant. The Engage Life Director told me yesterday that my and my neighbor's patios are the most beautiful in the entire complex. (Of course, the blossoming roses have something to do with that!) I had a serious problem with my good right eye suddenly start blurring, and the retina specialist diagnosed a burst blood vessel. then over the last weekend it worsened and I got an emergency appt. with him. They discovered that the retina had not changed, but that my eye was SO dry that it couldn't focus. Needless to say that I was so relieved, I've been dumping lots of little Refresh bottles in it, and already notice some improvement. Arizona's most famous cartoon, reprinted often, shows a skeleton lying on the desert with the comment "But's it's a DRY heat!" over it. So, the book. Anything accomplished on it? Yes, and No. Yes, because I completed re-numbering the chapters in chronological order, or at least as best chronological order you can do on a bunch of memoirs which are random thoughts. Memo to prospective Memoirists: Keep everything you write in just ONE file. Then you can move them around, up or down and it's easier for your copy editor. I have mine spread all over the place: Documents, Downloads, Memoirs, Libre Office, backup disks labeled D and E, etc. Try to move each chapter from one of the files to the only one that works on your Editor's computer and "Houston, we have a problem." But, she's at least reading all the manuscript and will soon call me to have a long conversation on what she thinks about the Content. (I see weeks of revision in the works...) On Wed. May 19th, I'm having my first jewelry class in my apartment. Instead of making something, I'm doing a Polish and Repair session, something people have been asking me to schedule. It seems like no one here has heard of silver polishing cloths, so my Ionic polishing crockpot will have a busy day. But maybe I'll pick up some new customers that way.Talk to you soon. I mean it. Love, Janice

Anecdotes, Bits and Pieces, and Untitled 1, 2, 3 and 4...

...Or: one step Forward, two steps Backward. Marion sent me the revised list of chapters, with the revised chapter numbers in the correct sequence. Except for all the question marks. When I was spontaneously writing new little thoughts I had pertaining to a chapter already written, I just saved it under Anecdotes, or Bits and Pieces. BAD IDEA! Because six months later, you remember having written something on a certain subject, but you can't remember. The Subject, the Reason for adding it, WHERE you added it....GONE. Now you have to read all the little Bits and Pieces over and over again to try to decide which chapter they belong to. That goes for Anecdotes, and especially the longer versions called Untitled 3. What was I THINKING?!? All of this to tell you that the one step Forward means I at least have most of the Titled chapters in reasonably sound sequence. When I get all the question marks identified, Marion says THEN, and ONLY then, can I actually start revising the chapters after I have a long conversation with her as to Content. Sigh...Your impatient Janice

Beds are for sleeping.

My last Blog mentioned the various piles of chapters I had scattered all over the bed, under various scraps of paper marked with the Subject matter. Last night I finished the sorting and wanted to assure my readers that my grumbling was finished, too. Next step? Taking each subject with all the chapters in it, and putting each chapter in the sequence it should be read. Once I get the numbers on each title, I can then start revising them. Did I mention somewhere in the past that writing a book was a lot of fun? Nobody warned me about hamster cages Love, Janice

Not what I signed up for...

I have to get this off my mind. I have worked so hard the last two weeks, that I'm suffering from an anxiety complex, and that's not good. That's not what I thought I was getting into when I started writing my Memoirs. I thought it was going to be a lot of fun. Well, it was! When I was writing. But now that I've completed most of the writing, it seems like the fun has gone out of it, and now I have to get down and work. Maron Mundy, the woman who is putting my chapters into manuscript form came to the house last week and wants all the lists of chapters numbered in sequential order, then she will send the entire list to me and I can start revising the chapters to their final perfection. Just one slight problem: I can't put them in order till I re-read them all so I know when they took place, or at least under which SUBJECT to put them, and so many of them are titled "Anecdotes", "Bits and Pieces", "General" and "Untitled 1, 2, and 3". Now that's a doozy, if you want to know what it's about on the list, right? So my first advice today to those of you contemplating Writing, is: For God's sake, LABEL your articles! I've now taken all the PILES of papers (duplicates and ten-tricates of all the articles I ever wrote) {and printed out for the Writers Group to critique} and keep putting them in labeled piles on the bed every morning and stacking them in one pile every evening so I can use the bed for what it was intended. Sleep, although I'm not getting all that much... The Subject titles are under papers labeled Early Years, Teenage, Auburn, State Prison, Marriage,Fritz, Travel, jewelry, studio, Life in Switzerland, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Spain, England, Canada and Tucson. Are you beginning to get the picture? Some of the piles are already two inches high, and I still have two more stacks of FIVE inches to sort out! Trying to make Order out of Chaos is not my thing; I'm better at Creating. Maybe the Covid is finally making a dent in my equillibrium; it's doing it to everyone else -- why not me? So I will sort. And Number. And Revise. and eventually I will make Order out of Chaos. Where have all the flowers gone? Till soon, Janice

Here we go!

I've had my first meeting with Marion, who is the lady putting this all together for me. She made copies of all my different Files and sent them to her computer; that way she didn't have to copy them onto disks to plug into USB ports. She will start putting each chapter into manuscript condition and any more revisions will have to be done on those. I am searching valiently for the Cover sketches I made, and haven't found them yet. (I sure put them in a "safe place.") She is going to write to the cartoonist David Fitzimmons, to ask permission to reduce the large poster cartoon he made of me, to add it to the "middle seat". My job now is to go over every chapter, and put it in final shape. She's coming back on Saturday afternoon, to start a website in my name, so that as I approach the deadline to print, anyone who googles my name will be directed to the website, which will include all my Blog site going back to 2017. Today's Zoom with the Writers Group was a talk based on The Four Pillars of Memoir writing. a very good discussion, and I was happy to note that my book follows all their suggestions. Big sigh of relief.

No longer on Facebook

Hi, Everybody! I apologize for the lack of a blog so far into February. One of the reasons is that I have cancelled Facebook, and while it is easy-peasy to join, when you want to get out, try to find "Unsubscribe" anywhere in their information. I have become disillusioned with Facebook: When I told my Writers Group that I was nearing publication time for my Memoirs, they all said I had to increase my "Platform" to reach more Buyers, and join Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Well, we all know who uses Twitter and the lies that proliferated every day to the point that even THEY stopped his account. And I have to confess that unless you just climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro, I'm not interested in where you've been, (Costco?), what you've done (baked sourdough bread?), or whether you got any sleep last night. I'm up until two a.m. every night and who cares? Facebook usually contains old jokes, older cartoons, or inane comments, and I'm wasting my precious time reading it all. Plus, all the Friends of Friends of distant Friends, whom I haven't exchanged an email with in 10 years. And finally, I don't like all the rag-tag organizations Facebook allows on their site. So I had my cleaning lady (she's a genius on the computer) stop vacuuming today, long enough to finally find that magical word "Unsubscribe" and voilà, I'm outta there! So, for those of you who recently DID climb Kilimanjaro, please send me an email and tell me all about it. janicefingado@gmail.com. I'll get right back to you. My holidays turned out to be really busy, along with the capricious doctors's appointments, etc. but I now have some interesting news for those of you on my Blog. I now have a Copy Editor and Formatter, who will be working on all the chapters, turning them into manuscripts. She's a former member of my Writers Group who is now in the publishing business, wants to get my book in proper shape and has given ME a deadline. To have someone who knows you and knows your "voice" is a big advantage, and at the same time be nicely "bossy" is probably the necessary "when push comes to shove" that I needed. My head is whirling with all that I must do, but I have the incentive that I needed to do it. And, to help all of you still struggling with the questions, I'll be forthcoming in future tweets on my Blog to tell you the sequence of what we are doing. It will still be printed by Amazon, so it will be on sale through them and to heck with Facebook. I'm excited. Whew, back to work, Janice

2020 is the new Dirty Word

Hi, Everybody, Happy New Year. In 1967, during the Cold War with Russia, Fritz and I were living in Zuerich, Switzerland. We saw an ad for the "inaugural" flight to Moscow by Swissair, because Switzerland was the only "neutral" country and Russia wanted to open up flights for their planes to fly to. And by now I guess you have grown to know my husband enough to know that that sort of offer was right up his Travel alley. So at Christmas we were the only Americans on a planeload of Swissies on the first flight into Moscow, while, in return, Switzerland would allow an Aeroflot from Moscow to bring Russians to Zuerich. I have written about the entire trip in a long chapter called Moscow Diary for my forthcoming book, so I won't go into any of the interesting details of Intourist's attempts to braiwash us the entire time, but just wanted to lead into today's Blog with something from the New Year's Eve event. After the gala banquet and the entertainment, we returned to our hotel room in the Metropol Hotel, and as we stepped out of the elevator, we were confronted again, as usual, by the dour-faced woman sitting at the desk directly in front of the elevator door. She grudgingly handed us our key, and then in (her) best English said, "Happy New You". Fritz and I laughed all the way to our room. But now, in retrospect, after the year we've had with 2020, I find myself wishing all of you, AND ME, a Happy New You for 2021. I've been re-reading all the Christmas and Hanukkah cards that Marta and Steve received the last month of 2020 with all the variety of stories of how the Covid-19 Pandemic had affected each writer. Suffice it to say that if you have any sense of humor left, you are thinking of phrases like, "What the 2020?" On the other hand, think about reinventing yourself into a New You. Think of the possibilities! What have you wanted to do? To become? To accomplish? To achieve? To reform? To complete? Forget about New Years Resolutions. They are only made to be ignored. Dishonored on the third of January as you sneak one more piece of See's candies from the box that you hid in the freezer, to keep from eating.... Hah!!! And, approaching bedtime once more without having done your sworn 20 minutes on the treadmill with the guilty "Mañana" on your lips. Small wonder that "Mañana" is the busiest day of every week! But the concept of reinventing yourself creates tons of new possibilities. I realized as I turned 94 two days ago, that this year I am going to change from being a Writer to being an Author. That entails getting my Memoirs published. To do that, I have to organize and perhaps revise some chapters, so, fired up with the new energy being an Author generates, I dug out two cartons of already-written chapters, separated them into piles of "Ready", "Need Revising", and "Ideas". Unfortunately, they're all back in one carton, and the carton labeled "Ready" is empty, but I really enjoyed reading all of them over again... And I did organize them. I'll tackle the writing and revising as soon as I get all my jewelry supplies organized. Because my New You wants to recapture the Old You who used to live minimalistically, totally without Clutter. That's on the current Agenda. So with the great plans and the enthusiasm a Great Plan generates here we go, into 2021. First, we halt the Pandemic, then we eagerly greet a new Administration, and with all the good, new "You's" create an atmosphere of love, good will and accomplishments. And that will make a lot of different annual letters this December. Cheers! Janice