Tag Archives: books

Helpful (?) Talk at a High School “Senior Girls Tea”

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I had the honor of speaking to high school seniors in Lebanon, NH at the annual Senior Girls Tea, hosted with excellence by the Lebanon Woman’s Group at a cool historic home. The girls got quite dressed up, some in sneakers. Gen Z is practical. Great article on them in the Stanford News. I post my very abbreviated talk here. It is true that, “While we teach, we learn,” per Roman philosopher Seneca. I myself am reminded of the important things whenever I suggest them to the YPs (young people). As well might be Dear Reader? 

Good day, Seniors. Today is 42424. Seems meaningful. 

I wrote a book of darkly funny – but true! – advice for young women, which I called a “Cautionary Tale” because I wanted to advise the YPs what NOT to do. It’s truly horrifying some of the things I did. I figured a book could save the YPs years of bad feelings and wasted time. But today I mostly address what TO do. 

I didn’t do things wrongly because I was stupid. I wasn’t. But because nobody warned us. Adults didn’t know how to, because the world was changing fast. Plus, our parents were different from yours. As were theirs before them. As will be you … whether you become parents or, like me, an aunt. A sacred role, that!

Gen Z is 70 million strong in the US alone. Think of your POWER. Power to the people, right on. That’s John Lennon. I’ll give you ideas today to mull over – four major points.

  1. Herd Animals

I say all the time: people are herd animals. You know that dogs and horses are terrified of being cut off from the herd, as it could mean certain death. Same for humans. Scientists say that people who live in groups are happiest. I believe it. I’m all for dormitories and group housing — with decent bathrooms.

So if you’re feeling lonely, get the heck off social media (“anti-social media”). Get with humans. Join a music or theater group, chess club, community garden, bowling league, anything. I joined a chorus in January that saved me psychologically. It sure beat crying at home in my PJs watching Hallmark movies, eating a bag of Funyons. 

A Vermonter once told me, “Do the things you like to do and you will meet people who like to do the things you like to do.” Yes! I made new friends in chorus. At my advanced age!

Important: if you see someone else seemingly cut off from the herd, very shy or self-isolating, invite them in. Say, “Hey, would you have lunch with my group? Or take a walk with me? If today’s not good, ask me any time.” You could change someone’s entire life. Guess what: They could change yours.

  • Feel Good!

Today, anxiety and depression are going through the roof. I’m no stranger to either. Dwelling in bad moods will sicken you. So: get happy if it kills you.  Also, your moods are contagious. If you’re in a foul mood, you’re likely passing it on. Boost yourself by saying something nice to a stranger or two, and they just might pay it forward. You and they will feel better.

Luckily, I’ve never been a procrastinator. I see procrastinator friends torturing themselves. My secret has been this: Just get started. When you receive a school or work assignment, stop somewhere before your next obligation. Sketch an outline. Title it? Draw it. Sing it.  Why start now?

1. It’s way, WAY easier to pick up where you left off than to start something you’ve been putting off for weeks. You just … glide back into it. 
2. It’ll turn out 100 times better than if you had started it last-minute. You’ve had time for it to marinate, and for the Forces, as I call them, to deliver ideas unto you. It’s a little mystical how that happens. I believe in serendipity and synchronicity and information being imparted to us from the ether. 

Other Idea: Make a list of the high points in your life.  Our pasts weren’t all cupcakes and rainbows; this list makes you feel good about the past.

Feeling good is important. Endeavors tend not to turn out well if you don’t feel good while doing them. It’s some energetic law of the universe. As for fun, do feel-good things besides drugs, booze, overeating, etc., which I highly un-recommend because addictions are super addicting and hard as holy hell to break. Addictions mess with your entire being, and exact a price. Feel good in other ways. Exercise. Stretch. Meditate. Get in water. Write a nice letter. Make music or art. Read. Do a good deed! Watch a funny movie. With other humans. Feel good!

  • Life Resume

As you move onto your next phase, whether a job, college, trade school, the military, gap year, Peace Corps, internship … think about building your life resume. That’s what I call experiences that wouldn’t go on a career resume. Plan adventure. Trips need not be expensive. Take classes that appeal, maybe free. Public libraries are increasingly fantastic resources of things to learn and do and borrow (Snow shoes! Park passes!). Volunteer? Your life resume is every bit as important as your career resume. 

  • Keep the Window Open a Crack for the Unexpected.

Opportunities could arise that you’ve never dreamed of.  Don’t fear an opportunity that seems daunting, like, “I don’t know if I could do all that.” Because as Madeleine Albright put it (former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, and ambassador to the UN — all this after her husband left her): “An exciting position replenishes the energy it consumes.” 

Life could take you somewhere magical if you allow it. You could do, be, have, give more that you ever thought possible. You could: solve a problem facing people, creatures, or Mother Earth; invent or cure something; make art that touches people; write a book (!); or just … spread joy. You don’t have to be a big deal. Or a billionaire. 

In closing, everything humankind has ever accomplished started as a thought. Thoughts have power.  So I leave you with an assignment. As you drift off to sleep tonight, think about what could happen. Think about what you could be, what you might create. Thoughts have power. They do. So:  Ponder what you’re good at. What you’d like to do. Send loving thoughts to your friends and frenemies. Consider what changes you could make in your behavior or thinking. Envision good deeds. A kind act is love in action! Some of my kind acts I don’t even remember. But I bet the recipients do, as I recall every kindness ever done unto me.

I’ll be thinking about you. Report in as able? Contact me any time. I’ll write you back. Thank you, and good day! 

Ann Aikens’ book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, is at Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Vermont shops. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find shops & events at annaikens.com.

Self-Publishing: Are You Up For It?

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It is harder than ever in publishing, as it is in music, to get The Industry behind you. Finding a publisher with a promotional machine ain’t what it used to be, unless yours is a real niche book or you have 1M followers on Instagram. So you may think: DIY. Why ever not? 

I’ll give you the facts. My background: I educated myself at a Writer’s Digest Conference, I lived the entire process, and promise not to candy-coat it here for Dear Reader.

Self Publishing Is A Retiree’s Game – Unless You Have Wads of Cash

Two reasons: time and money. There is so much to learn, so much to do, to get your book published and into readers’ hands, that it will eat all of your time, or you’ll pay someone else to do it (or have free, techy grandkids). Even if you do a ton of work yourself, it will cost you plenty. You’ll need an editor, proofreader, cover designer, website, blog, business email address, email services provider (e.g., MailChimp), time and money to drive to bookstores and libraries for sales and readings. You’ll build an email list. And 27 other things. But first, you write.

Writing Can Be Isolating

When I wrote my book, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wrote and edited before and after work, all weekend, and at 3 am.  It was easy! As they say, you have your whole life to write your first book. I’d penned reams of notes.  But: I saw no one, I did nothing. I was a rock, I was an island (nod to S&G). Really, I don’t mind being alone, to a degree. But I was forever scrambling to meet deadlines, alone. Which brings us to publishing and promoting.

The Publishing Part

Writing is just the beginning. You can publish a slim volume at your local printer. Printing a larger book this way is prohibitively expensive for most. The cheapest way is to do Print On Demand (POD) via giants Amazon and/or Ingram Spark (the latter libraries and bookstores use to order books). But hey, Amazon sells 85% of all books. Your book is in an Amazonian virtual bookstore! This is all beyond complicated. Which leads us to help me.

Get A Publishing Service Company

An entire industry sprang from the heinous process of getting your book uploaded to Amazon and Ingram properly, and promoting your book without getting fleeced, so you don’t put your head through a wall in frustration. Few people have time to learn to do this on their own. Publishing services companies can be terrific or horrid. They cost $8-12,000 dollars. On to the selling.

Getting Your Book Out There

Distribution and Marketing and are massive topics. I gave a one-hour summit talk on it, speaking New York-fast, with zero time for Q&A. For sure, you’ll want to sell on Amazon, although some independent bookstores will thereby refuse to carry you. They detest the Amazon, understandably. Marketing your book requires learning several forms of social media, which keep changing, and a whole lot more. Even with a publisher, these days you need to promote.

Oh, and If you hate doing your taxes, wait till you write a book. 

But If You’re Willing, It Will Change Your Life

When you get your first printed copy, you’ll cry.

You’ll learn Social, or more than you already know.

You’ll meet independent bookstore owners, librarians and book lovers, who rock.

People including yourself will think of you as an author, because you are.

Complete strangers will read and praise your humble tome.

Your book could get re-Tweeted (re-X’d?) by a celebrity and your ship comes in.

Do I have another book in me? Only if I have a publisher or magically become retired or rich. Other writers persist and publish entire sets, and do well! These are typically genre writers (bodice-rippers, fantasy, sci-fi) and they love their lives. So there’s that. Bon aventure.

Your Christmastide Present: A List of Books

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Not only do these lists drive my editors crazy, they seem like a breeze (read: copout) for me to assemble when in fact they are a bear. But what decent gift doesn’t entail a lot of work?  Dear Reader’s prize this Kwanzaatide is thus…a list. Of books I read this year I think you might like.

As a celebrity businessman once said to me with a wink, “Charity begins at home!” While a nod to a talented writer is hardly charity, it is a plug, and I shamelessly command you now: turn on, dig in, and kindle up to Vermont’s own Archer Mayor if you like mysteries with snowy backdrops. Mayor has penned 22 books in his Joe Gunther detective series. Even if you’re clever at plot prediction, Mayor keeps you guessing.  His novels take place in Vermont, and the new one looks hot.

Cloud Atlas by nutter Brit, David Mitchell, winner of and short-listed for coveted awards, is a crazy-smart patchwork of genres spanning the globe from the 18th century to a post-apocalyptic future.  Warning: you can’t be tired or dumb when you read it. Dennis Lehane’s Shelter Island boggles the bean; don’t see the movie first because the plot is the whole thing. Hotel World by Scottish-born Ali Smith won awards, but I preferred her The Accidental which is dark, with things that make you go Ooh. Meg Wolitzer’s The Uncoupling received accolades though I wasn’t wooed.  Then, when you read a book can make all the difference. Timing was clearly good for Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre because I bathed in its dated melodrama.  Her sister’s Wuthering Heights got canned, and Bronte fans will can me for saying so. We hags don’t finish books we’re not thoroughly digging.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is frustrating as hell but, oh, the scene where the townspeople think the butler is a gentleman…painfully aws for Dear Reader made omniscient by Ishiguro. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has a Murder on the Orient Express quality, with satisfying retaliatory violence (sorry, Jesus!) I enjoyed Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero more than his latest, but Ondaatje fanatics might spank me for saying so. Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen is Calgon Take Me Away to a Nunnery, depositing you in a world as foreign as The Handmaid’s Tale, if less menacing—both divinely spare.

20th Century Ghost by Joe Hill is a brain-liquefying short story collection. His father taught him well, else he was born with it. Forgetting English by Seattle’s Midge Raymond is another artful collection; it whisks you to foreign lands wherein you totally buy her characters. A writer’s writer.

Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You is funny, foul, funny. His characters speak like my people in New York; you was warned. The Help is terrific on tape. The readers are so good I can’t imagine reading it yourself would be better. Murder in the 11th House by Mitchell Scott Lewis is a treat if you really know astrology.

For nonfiction, I dug Ellen Langer’s Counterclockwise (on atypical aging) and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. The Soloist by Steve Lopez describes with delicacy an L.A. journalist befriending a schizophrenic music prodigy. Water Cooler Diaries, a compilation of women’s workday diaries by Joni B. Cole, is perfectly edited and reminiscent of an older treasure, Gig: American talk about Their Jobs.

Some older gems. Nonfiction: Woe is I and Eats, Shoots & Leaves (both grammar), Freakanomics, The Tipping Point. Fiction: The Ice Storm, The Wonder Boys, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, The Kite Runner, The Hours, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s  Daughter.  Memoir: I Feel Bad about My Neck (on tape!), The Year of Magical Thinking, A Girl Named Zippy (fave charmer of all time), and The Glass Castle—all terrific.

Here on Earth is Alice Hoffman’s rewrite of one book on this list. Weirdly, I happened to read it right after the original and thought she’d ripped off the plot. Snort.

The Most Brilliant Jewel of my 2011 Reads is a tie between The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by French genius Muriel Burbery, and A Visit from the Good Squad by American genius Jennifer Egan. I’m not spoiling it if I tell you that the goon squad, as Egan told NPR, is time. Or that I bawled with abandon at Burbery’s poetic sparkler. To both authors—all authors, really—I say: we are not worthy. Good day.