Life | CW Hawes

2024

Today is the second day of the new year. I trust yesterday was a day of feasting and good cheer. It certainly was for me.

This year I’m not making any resolutions. I don’t think I’ve ever completed a single New Year’s resolution. So this year – phooey. I’m not making any.

In fact, I’m not even setting any goals for myself. Not a single one. I’m tired of goals. They remind me of work and I’m retired.

I have projects I’d like to complete:

- - - Set up a Kickstarter campaign for the ninth Pierce Mostyn book.
    - Write a new Justinia Wright mystery.

And that’s it. Anything else I do, will be done for the joy of doing it. No more goals for this guy.

You see, last year was fairly momentous. I had a significant shift in my thinking. Namely, that the chief end of man is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. In doing so, he achieves what we all want: happiness. And I want nothing more than to be happy throughout all the days that remain to me.

So no schedules. No goals. No resolutions. None of that stuff. It’s don’t worry, be happy. Il Dolce far Niente. The sweetness of doing nothing.

More and more I’m finding how sweet doing nothing truly is.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

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On the Shortness of Life

A little over a week ago, I learned of the death of a fellow indie author. I did not know Laila Doncaster, except in passing. We exchanged a few words now and then on Twitter, occasionally retweeted each other’s tweets, and that was that.

Her first book of a projected series was published on May 1st. Her bio on Amazon speaks of looking forward to an early retirement. And now she’s dead.

I am saddened. Very much so. A person looking forward to the future, an exciting future, and now there is no future. She’s gone.

Every now and again someone will chasten me for my attitude towards my writing. The sense of intense urgency I have to put pen to paper.

I am driven to produce as much as I can, as fast as I can, and get as many copies of my books into as many hands as I can.

I’m told I shouldn’t feel so driven. I’m told I shouldn’t be looking over my shoulder for the Grim Reaper, while my pen is scratching out page after page of words.

All I can say in response to these well-meaning folk is to quote Seneca: “The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

Or to paraphrase: I might die tonight — I need to write today. After all, only I can write my books; and I have many score begging to be written down.

Seneca’s essay, On the Shortness of Life, needs to be required reading. It is the antidote to the carelessness with which most of us approach life and live life — which is the most non-renewable of resources.

I’m 67 years old, and I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I’ve wasted most of the time given to me in this thing we call life.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. However, it wasn’t until I was 37 that I actually, in all seriousness, began to act on my desire instead of just dabble. And it was another 11 years before I began to see the fruit of that action.

According to the actuarial tables, I have another 10 years to live. That’s not a lot of time. And anything can happen between now and then to shorten those 10 years.

Seneca wrote:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

There’s some comfort in that advice, yet how many of us know how to use our time and not waste it? I confess I’m still struggling with that one. But here, too, Seneca has some advice for us:

No activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied … since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it. Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn… Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.

In other words, it is unproductive busyness, unproductive worry and anxiety, unproductive lack of focus, unproductive preoccupation with things that don’t matter that rob us of the one thing that does matter — irreplaceable time.

It is the life lived deliberately that is the fruitful life. It is the focused life that is the productive life. As Rainer Maria Rilke advised the young poet: once you’ve decided you must write, then you must structure your life so that nothing gets in the way of writing. Harlan Ellison put it more cryptically: “Writers write.”

I might beat the actuarial odds. My mom was 80 when she died. My dad is 87. His mother died in her 90s, although the last few years she was debilitated by a stroke, and his father died a month shy of his 103 birthday. But I can’t bank on it. Which means I have to write today.

As Seneca noted:

…the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day… Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man, who is already full and satisfied, food which he does not want but can hold.

Living deliberately is the key. And when we do, life — no matter how long or short — is time enough to accomplish great things.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy and productive living!

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One Writer’s Story

Tomorrow (October 2nd) is my birthday. I’ll be 67. Usually I like to spend the day quietly; reflecting on my life, and thinking about what I’d like to do in the next year. Eating some good food and maybe a homemade apple pie does help the thinking process. 🙂

As part of that life reflection process, I thought I’d tell y’all a bit of my life as it pertains to writing. So sit back and enjoy one writer’s story.

I was born into a lower middle-class family. The first of four children and the first grandchild on my dad’s side of the family. Because my mom had a very hard life growing up, she made sure I and my siblings had more than what she had when she was growing up. Back in the 60s, she was the only mom working outside of the home that I was aware of.

Back then there was no such thing as white privilege, because there were no minorities in my world. There was only economic privilege: the haves and the have-nots. And compared to my friends, I was one of the have-nots. Even with my mother working and trying to give us all the things she never got. I did not know privilege growing up. I was bullied and made fun of throughout my school years. I was awkward around people and considered a dweeb by my peers.

Being un-privileged and an outsider, meant I grew up without many friends, and was often rather lonely. To fill in all the alone time, I developed a very active imagination. Which has served me well as a writer.

Ever since I can remember I was a reader. My mom wasn’t a good reader, but she made sure I never lacked for books. There was always money for me to buy books from the Weekly Reader and the Scholastic Book Club at school.

Among the first books I remember reading were Scrambled Eggs Super by Dr Seuss; Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff; Sherlock Holmes; Edgar Allan Poe; Saki; Groff Conklin’s Omnibus of Science Fiction; Men, Martians and Machines by Eric Frank Russell; Costigan’s Needle by Jerry Sohl; and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Hunt Collins (aka Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain). Notice the adult books in the mix. They were courtesy of the books my uncles left behind, which I found at my grandparents’s house.

My parents also bought a set of World Book Encyclopedias, and I remember spending hours reading them.

I loved books. And still do. I think I can honestly say, they have been my best friends.

And because of my love for books, ever since I can remember I wanted to be a writer. I loved books so much, I wanted to write them.

In spite of my mom’s encouragement to read, neither she nor my dad were at all encouraging of my interest in writing. Nevertheless, they didn’t stop me from getting subscriptions to The Writer and Writer’s Digest when I was in junior high. I suppose they thought my interest in writing was a passing fancy and their steady encouragement for me to pursue a “real career” would eventually win the day. Sad to say, it did for most of my life.

The first thing I remember writing was a pastiche of Jules Verne’s From Earth To The Moon. Instead of the Moon, my spaceship went to Mars. I suppose I was somewhere around eight years old at the time.

The next thing I recall writing was a play while in my 11th grade drama class. The teacher had the class perform it, and I suppose I could call that my first “publishing credit”.

The first piece of writing I had accepted by an editor was a poem in a horror fanzine called The Diversifier. That was around 1971. And poetry remained my sole published output until 2014.

I wrote a few short stories, an attempt at a children’s book, and a novel during those decades, all of which earned me some very fine rejection slips. Very fine, indeed.

It was, though, my poetry that gained me a modicum of fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s. No money. There is no money in poetry writing. None whatsoever. If one is a poet, one must find satisfaction in something other than money. Success must be defined other than monetarily.

Which is why I’m probably satisfied with the pittance I make off my novels, novellas, and short stories. Sure, I’d like to make thousands of dollars every month instead of $10, $20, or $30. But for me, thanks to poetry, success isn’t measured solely by a piece of paper with some dead guy’s mug on it.

At the height of my poetry success, I quit. I was nearing retirement age and, on one of those birthday meditations, decided I wanted to pursue writing fiction for the rest of my life. And so I quit writing poems and started writing novels.

The going was difficult, at first, until I found a writing method that worked for me. And when I did, the words just began to flow.

The Rocheport Saga was first (some 2200+ handwritten pages — it was the guinea pig), along with Do One Thing For Me. Those two were followed by Trio in Death-Sharp Minor, and a completely re-written Festival Of Death (the original dates from 1989), and The Moscow Affair.

My first four books were published in November 2014. I was now an independent author-publisher. And I haven’t looked back. To date I have 25 published books, with number 26 coming out Halloween week.

I retired in January 2015 and have been writing full-time and learning about publishing ever since.

Life is indeed good. I’m living a dream first expressed over 60 years ago. And I’m feeling good.

I’m a very happy man, even without making the money Patterson, or King, or Cussler make. Or even that which my fellow indie authors, such as Mark Dawson, Michael Anderle, TS Paul, PF Ford, or Patty Jansen, make.

What matters is I’m writing. And that’s all that matters.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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How Ecotherapy Can Improve Your Mental Health

Today we have a guest blogger, all the way from Vermont: JP Choquette. I ran into her on one of those many closed Facebook groups, and I’m glad I did. Not only did I find a neat person who writes suspense novels and the cases of a cool private eye, Tayt Waters, but I also found a very interesting blogger.

One of the wonderful things she wrote about not long ago was ecotherapy. I’d never heard of that term before, but soon realized that ecotherapy is really something we all know about. We just don’t think of it as therapy.

So without further ado, I’ll let JP take over and tell us all about this simple and effective tool to improve our lives.

***

Do you suffer from anxiety or depression? Or just have that general sense of malaise more days than not? If so, you might benefit from the healing (and free!) practice of ecotherapy.

What’s ecotherapy? It’s basically nature immersion. I first learned about it as a valid treatment used by counselors and psychotherapists several years ago while researching an article for Urban Farm magazine. My interest sparked the article and the research conducted for that article led me to better understand this unique form of therapy. If you live in a winter climate like me, you’re likely half-starved for any green growing things about this time of the year. March is a cruel month in northern areas because while you know that spring is coming, it still seems an impossibility as more snow falls outside your window.

Ecotherapy was the basis for my latest suspense novel, Shadow in the Woods, in which two mental health counselors take a small group of clients into the backwoods of Vermont for an intensive ecotherapy weekend retreat. When the group must take cover in a sinister cave due to an unexpected and violent storm, the trip turns into a nightmare. That initial article I wrote on this topic was the kernel of the idea for what later became this book.

Happily, you can enjoy all the benefits of ecotherapy without any of the drama. This practice doesn’t require special outdoor gear, hours and hours spent in nature or even leaving one’s house. Read on for five easy ways that you can experience the little “lift” that ecotherapy offers today.

5 Easy & Free Ways to Enjoy Ecotherapy Today

Tune into YouTube. Enjoy listening to the ocean waves crash? Prefer the sound of a babbling brook, a thunderstorm or bird chatter? YouTube offers a lot of great videos that can be the soundtrack of your day. I frequently listen to thunderstorms or horse hooves clopping along while working on my suspense novels. Whether you like the sound of a crackling fire or the surf, you’ll find a wealth of options on YouTube.
Care for a plant. Ecotherapy doesn’t have to be this “big thing” that takes hours and hours of your time. Something as simple as caring for a houseplant, tending its soil, watering it and refreshing it’s leaves with a damp rag can benefit one’s mental health. Nurturing acts make us happy. Adding in the care of a green, growing thing makes the act even more pleasurable.
Walk or jog. Despite my best intentions to exercise outdoors nearly every day, even in the dead of winter, I usually wimp out. Walking or jogging on freezing cold, dark mornings is just too much to ask sometimes. On those days, I fire up my laptop and enjoy “treadmill TV,” special videos that other walkers and joggers create. Choose to walk along the cliffs of Dover, the beaches of Maui or the wild trails of Oregon. Best part? You don’t have to bundle up to enjoy, just slip on your sneakers and get going.
Hang a photo. While researching the article that I wrote on ecotherapy, I learned that something as simple as looking at a picture of nature can improve our wellbeing and our general sense of health. Is this one of the reasons that so many hospitals feature nature scenes? Indeed, studies have proven that looking at scenes of natural settings can increase the speed of healing.
Get outside. If it’s not unbearably cold and/or dark, go for a walk, a ski, a snowshoe or a short hike outdoors. The fresh air, sunshine (even through gray clouds) and sight of trees and other natural elements have been proven to increase our endorphins.

All of us can use an emotional lift from time to time. In addition to the mental health benefits you’ll enjoy from practicing ecotherapy regularly, you’ll be positively impacting your physical health as well. I hope that one or more of these tips will help you. I’d love to hear about the ways in which you incorporate ecotherapy in your days. Please leave a comment below.

***

Thanks, JP! I’ve started spending time with virtual fireplaces on YouTube!

Here’s JP’s book featuring ecotherapy:

Get it at Amazon!

And here’s a bit about herself:

J.P. Choquette lives and writes in northwestern Vermont which is still snow-covered at present. She practices ecotherapy as frequently as possible while working on her next suspense novel. Learn more about her by visiting http://www.jpchoquette.net

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, enjoy a stint with nature – virtual or real!

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We Are The Boss

no masters only you the master is you
wonderful no?

—Ikkyū (trans by Stephen Berg)

The past two weeks we’ve been learning life lessons from Zen poet and monk Ikkyū. Two weeks ago we learned we are happy. Last week we learned we are the truth. This week Ikkyū let’s us know we are the boss. We are the boss of us. No one else is.

Today’s poem is simple. Ikkyū first tells us there are no masters, only us. Last week we were told to put aside the books of the masters because we are the truth — not them, nor their books. Today we see that there are in actuality no masters. Let me repeat that. There are no masters. Only me. Only you.

There is no authority. There’s only me. Only you. There’s no teacher. Only me. Only you.

As Zen master Tetto Giko put it:

The truth is never taken from another.
One carries it always by oneself.
Katsu!

There is no truth outside of us. Katsu! (The traditional cry when one achieves enlightenment.) That’s why there are no masters, because in truth there’s nothing to teach. There are people who think they are masters. But they can’t teach you or me anything, because the truth is already inside us. You and I are the masters. No one made us masters. We’ve always been masters. We just never realized we were. And that’s why we let others be the masters.

We aren’t free because we are always looking for some authority to tell us something, or give us permission. We aren’t free because we don’t realize we are the authority we’re looking for. We’re the master we’re searching for. We are the one to tell us something, to give us permission. We are our own authorities.

Rainer Maria Rilke told the young poet in his first letter to him that we must look deep inside ourselves for the answer. If I want to know if I’m a poet, or a writer, I must find the answer within. No one outside of myself can tell me if I am or not. And that goes with anything, not just writing.

Any authority figure only has authority because we give it to him or her. And it doesn’t matter who that authority figure is. Granted, it may be expedient for me to grant someone temporary authority. But if I grant someone full and complete authority over me, I’ve just made myself a slave.

Ikkyū is telling us we’re the master. Not the slave. We are free. We don’t have to be anyone’s slave: mentally or physically. We don’t have to be in bondage to priests, or ministers, or gurus. We don’t have to be in bondage to governments, or employers. We don’t have to be in bondage to parents, or spouses. We are free. We are the masters.

But with freedom, with being a master, also comes responsibility. And it may be expedient to not always exercise our freedom, to be the master.

Advent is the celebration of God coming to his people to be in them in the New Covenant. In effect, the New Testament writers are saying the same thing as Ikkyū. There are no masters, because I am the master.

If God is for us, who can be against us? And since God is in us, then we ourselves are surely the masters. Truth is in us. Authority is in us. Power is in us.

And that’s why Ikkyū tells us “wonderful no?” Of course it’s wonderful. I’m free from the masters. You’re free from the masters. Because there are no masters. You and I are the masters of ourselves.

May this holiday season be a time of enlightenment for you.

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, remember — you’re the boss!

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We’re A Razor

forget what the masters wrote truth’s a razor
each instant sitting here you and I being here

—Ikkyū (trans by Stephen Berg)

Last week Ikkyū told us we are already happy. We don’t experience that happiness because our minds are focused on a whole lot of crap. Stop focusing on the crap—that which has no value in our lives—and we’ll be happy.

This week, with a little help from our Japanese Zen Buddhist monk, we’re taking a look at truth.

Ikkyū detested the conventional. He thrived in an environment that was free, stripped of authority. That was probably why he left the monastery and frequented the tavern and brothel. Life was more honest there.

Forget the Masters! Their dry, dusty tomes contain no truth— for truth’s a razor.

What does Ikkyū mean “truth’s a razor”? Let’s start with, first of all, the razor. Ikkyū is talking about a good old-fashioned straight razor. Basically a knife. A razor is very, very sharp. Razor-sharp is as sharp as it gets. Truth cuts.

Those dusty old tomes of the Masters cut nothing. They make good doorstops or paperweights. They’re dull and thick and perfunctory. The razor cuts. It can cut those old books into scrap paper.

But the razor’s edge can also divide. And it does so with an exceedingly fine line. Truth separates. It forms two camps. However, in Ikkyū’s mind these are not equally valid camps. And this can be seen when the razor is put to work shaving. It cuts away the facial hair. Truth is discerning. It cuts off that which is false. In a sense, that which is not me.

Which brings us to the second line. What are we to make of what Ikkyū is saying here? I think the best way to understand Berg’s rendition is to understand he’s using enjambment.

Let’s re-cast the poem this way:

forget what the masters wrote:
truth’s a razor, each instant sitting here—
you and I being here

In other words, we are the razor. We are the truth. You and I, together, cut off the dead crap of the authority figures. They are not the truth. We are. Which makes us the real masters.

Advent celebrates Immanuel—God with us. But that’s only half the story. Because the whole point of the New Covenant that Immanuel brought with him, was that the law would no longer be an external master—it would be written on our hearts.

That’s something to think about. Forget the masters. Forget the rule makers. You and I being here, we are the razor. We are the truth.

That’s why Ikkyū left the monastery after nine days of being abbot. It was all crap. He told the monks if they wanted to find him, he’d be in the tavern and the brothel. Where the real people were. Where the razors were. Where the truth was. And still is.

Comments are always welcome, and, until the next time, do some truth cutting!

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You’re Happy

self other right wrong wasting your life arguing
you’re happy really you are happy

—Ikkyū (trans. by Stephen Berg)

Ikkyū (1394-1481) was an eccentric Japanese Buddhist monk. He’s one of my favorite poets. His poems are direct, poignant, and laden with wisdom. He was very much an individualist and legends about him abound.

Today, I’m going to do a brief meditation on the above poem. I think it appropriate for Advent season, which began this past Sunday. After all, it’s difficult to have peace on earth if there’s conflict — especially conflict within us.

Let’s begin by looking at the second line of Berg’s rendering, which has a bit of ambiguity to it. The line could read:

You’re happy. Really. You are happy.

You’re happy, really. You are happy.

You’re happy. Really, you are happy.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter how we read the line — because Ikkyū’s point is that we are already happy. Happiness is our natural state.

If that’s the case, then why are so many of us not happy? The answer is found in the first line.

Self-Other. Us-Them. The old tribal mentality of “we are right and everyone else is wrong”. Why is everyone else wrong? Because they are not one of us. They are “them”. And “them” is bad. “Them” challenge us. The others are a threat because they think they are right and we are wrong. Of course, we know they are wrong. Because we must be right. If we aren’t, what is our reason to be?

Ikkyū moves from the self-other dichotomy to the right-wrong dichotomy, which is the natural outcome of self-other thinking, which I noted above.

When we feel we must always cast things into the right or wrong mold, it is then that we have problems. And the biggest problem is conflict. Conflict without and conflict within.

In the third part of the line, Ikkyū bluntly tells us that we are wasting our lives in arguing.

Why is this happening to us? Because we’ve set up these dichotomies, these artificial constructs that lead to arguing and fighting and no happiness. How many friendships end over a fight about something that is actually not important? How many marriages break up because the spouses are constantly arguing over who is right and who is wrong? Too many.

We can look at Ikkyū’s poem this way:

Unhappiness = self other right wrong arguing

Happiness = You

In other words, we, in and of ourselves, are happy. Happiness is our natural state. Happiness, though, disappears when we set up us-them dynamics, because they lead to arguing and arguing leads to unhappiness.

This is why we are advised to cultivate an attitude of inclusiveness. “And the second commandment is like unto it: treat your neighbor as yourself.”

When we treat others as we ourselves want to be treated, the self-other distinction breaks down. Right and wrong breakdown. We cease wasting our lives in arguing — and we come back to our natural state: happiness.

One day, when I was still working, I tried an experiment. I went to the office and smiled at everyone, wished them good morning, and was exceptionally pleasant. I listen to their complaints, told them things could be much worse, and pointed out the sun was still shining. I treated everyone that morning and successive mornings as I wanted them to treat me.

Sure, I got a few looks. But I also noticed I was much happier throughout the day and that I continued to treat others in a very positive manner. Positiveness flowed from the initial act of being positive. And for a little while at least I even saw some of my sour-faced coworkers smile.

If we set aside that which causes conflict, the ego (self) and the other (them), then we eliminate the cause of arguing and are free to treat others as we ourselves want to be treated. And when we do that, then we might see a little bit of peace on earth.

We can only control ourselves. But if we actually do that, control ourselves, we’ll find life to be pretty doggone wonderful.

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, be a rivulet of peace.

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Buying Online

As far as I’m concerned, the brick-and-mortar store is a dinosaur waiting to become extinct. I have been a mail order shopper since I was a kid. There’s just something magical about getting packages in the mail. And with the advent of the internet, my mail order shopping — now called online shopping — has dramatically increased.

I regularly buy the following online: books, music, clothes, shoes, paper, pencils, pens, ink, tea, special food items, cat food, cat litter, soap, razor blades, vitamins, toothbrushes, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.

My wife buys most of her art supplies online, as well as toys for her grandkids.

Shopping online is my kind of heaven and I can’t wait for the day when I can do all of my grocery shopping online.

Being a reader — and a book buyer — my decision to buy online is of importance to brick-and-mortar bookstores and traditional publishers, both the corporate giants and the small press. Why? Because 63% of traditionally published adult fiction was bought online in the US in 2016. And the trend isn’t reversing. (Data from authorearnings.com)

That means trouble for physical bookstores which is where traditional publishing has for over a century done business. It also spells trouble for traditional publishing companies because their traditional sales outlets are disappearing.

Many of you are aware of the Amazon-Hachette fracas. As physical bookstores disappear and more and more print books are sold online, the online stores — we’re really talking Amazon here — are going to have more and more clout. And while Hachette got more or less its way this time, I doubt Amazon will be so nice in the future.

But that’s not all, traditional publishing is tied to the physical book. Yet last year in the US, 70% of fiction sales were digital. That’s ebooks and audiobooks. And when we add in that 42% of all adult fiction was non-traditionally published in 2016, the way the book business has done business is fast becoming a thing of the past. (Data from authorearnings.com)

Non-traditional publishing consists of indie author/publishers and Amazon. Yes, Amazon. The mega-giant is setting itself up as a publisher. To date, Amazon has 17 imprints. They regularly recruit authors to publish through them and offer those authors, generally speaking, contracts which are far less draconian than those of traditional publishers. It truly is time to beware the beast.

Why do I buy online? Because it’s easy, and I like getting packages in the mail. I have, quite literally, the entire world from which to choose whatever I want to buy. Can’t quite say that when I go to the local shopping mall. Plus I have to drive there.

I am, though, concerned about my online shopping. Mainly because it feeds the mega-giant Amazon. The Zon makes online shopping so easy, it’s difficult not to buy from them. It takes a conscious effort to not buy from the Zon. And I have to admit, I’m rather lazy about exerting that effort.

Recently I did buy a pair of jeans from The Duluth Trading Company. Excellent service and product, by the way. And I bought a pair from Lands’ End. Again, excellent service and the product was very good. Zappos is another fine online store.

I buy pens and ink from small online retailers such as Jet Pens. chewy.com is an excellent online source of pet food and supplies.

Nevertheless, the Zon is the 800 pound gorilla on the block and it takes much diligence to avoid the beast. And quite honestly, there are times when I’m just too lazy.

For indie authors, I think we already know where the future lies. It lies in ebooks and audiobooks. Print books aren’t necessarily a thing of the past, but as we baby boomers die off and generations take over who grew up in a digital world — the paper book will become a specialty item. Akin to handmade paper, or handmade wooden kitchen utensils, or custom made shirts.

The only real question facing indie authors is how much clout are we going to give Amazon? Are we going to invest our futures to the Zon? Or are we going to support competing enterprises, such as Apple, Kobo, or Scribd, or Findaway Voices (an ACX alternative, available through Draft2Digital).

Because if we indies tie ourselves to Amazon’s shirttail, then we have to go where they go — and what happens when they stick it to us, as the traditional publishers did so very many, many decades ago? Then where will we go?

A very difficult decision. Very difficult.

As an online buyer, I need to ensure that I don’t help create a monopoly that will in the end bite me. I must diversify my purchases. So fellow online buyers, lets not feed the Zon. Let’s put it on a diet.

As indie authors, let’s seriously consider a publishing world where the only distributor is Amazon. I know that isn’t a nightmare I’m willing to have.

Comments are always welcome! And, until next time, happy reading!

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A Reader’s and Writer’s Life

I love to read. Give me a book any day. I’ll take it over TV, movies, and video games. Nothing can replace my imagination. TV, movies, and video games give me someone else’s imagination which may be truly fabulous, but it isn’t mine. With my imagination, I can interact with a book’s author in a way that’s impossible through other media.

My love of reading goes back to the beginning of my life. My mother was not a good reader, by her own admission. But she did think reading was important. She read to me before I could read and once I could read on my own, she did not stint on the books I could have.

And I had all manner of books: novels, books on science and technology, the World Book Encyclopedia, books on archeology and history and ships and the sea.

To this day, my choice of reading material is still broad. I read novels and short stories in a wide range of genres. Books of history and biography. Poetry. Philosophy. Science and technology, mostly online. Cookbooks. Travelogues. Art.

Currently I’m reading Zeppelin: The Story of Lighter-Than-Air Craft by Ernst Lehmann, who was an important figure in the history of the airship. But that’s not all I’m reading. Also on the pile of works in progress are 2 short story collections, a book on criminology, and one on the famous Route 66. And as if that wasn’t enough, also on the pile is a post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophe novel. And the occasional letter from my favorite philosopher, Seneca, might just start my day.

I almost always have a book with me. And the reason I so love my iPad is because at present it contains over 600 books and that’s a lot of books! And I can carry them all with me wherever I go. What a wonderful age we live in!

Most readers don’t have so many books going at once and that’s certainly okay. Everyone needs to read at the pace which is comfortable for them. Just as long as people read. Lots of people.

I think my love of reading played in to my desire to be a writer. Why not create the books I so loved to read? Pretty much ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. And now I am!

Being a multi-genre reader pretty much dictated I’d be a multi-genre writer. I write what I like to read. I read private detective novels and I write them. I read post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophes and I write them. I enjoy dieselpunk and I write it. I like a good psychological or supernatural horror story, and I write those too.

But that’s not all that I like. So sometime down the road, if I live long enough, I intend to add space opera, historical novels, fantasy, poetry collections, and philosophy to the mix.

Isaac Asimov wrote over 500 books on all but one of the major Dewey Decimal System divisions. I’ve always thought that to be a wonderful accomplishment. Something I’d like to do myself. After all, variety is the spice of life!

The reading life and the writing life are the best of lives, in my opinion. Only the imagination is the limit and the imagination is limitless.

Comments are always welcome and, until next time, happy reading!

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The 8-Fold Path: What is Silence?

We know what sound is, both pleasant and unpleasant. What, though, is this silence I’ve been talking about? What do I mean by experiencing silence?

There are two aspects to silence. One is freedom from the external noise we all must contend with. The ever pervasive deluge of sound pounding on our ears and even on our bodies.

The other is inner silence. Wait! There’s sound within us? The short answer is yes. The long answer and what we can do about it I’ll come to in a moment.

Our Outer World

Noise pollution is rampant in our urban and suburban worlds. And we add to this noise voluntarily. The TV. Our phones. The chimes our computers make and the noise from many websites we may visit. The radio. People we associate with. Music.

External to us is wanted and unwanted sound.

The other side of the coin is silence. This may be absolute silence, the complete absence of sound, or it may be the silence of nature. I can hear you say, “Wait a minute! Nature is silent? There are all manner of sounds in the park and in the woods.” And you are right. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Absolute silence is not easy to obtain in our modern world. A soundproof room is one way to go about it. And that is a very nice experience.

On my retreats, the cabins, hermitages, were soundproof. They were built so tightly, the retreat management advised that one should open the windows, at least a couple of them, an inch or two, in order to let fresh air in. This was especially needed if you burned candles, or used the gas light, or gas burner.

Yet even with a couple windows slightly open, I heard no external sound. There was freedom from noise, unless I made it.

Experiencing a soundproof room in a natural setting is something I think everyone should experience. It is totally awesome.

The other perhaps more easily obtainable way to achieve absolute silence is to use earplugs. I can hear you say, “What?” Yes, earplugs. There is a reason health officials recommend ear protection when you use loud noise producing tools or are in a noisy environment. Noise destroys your hearing.

When I want, or need, to reduce or even eliminate outside noise I pop in a pair of disposable earplugs. There are many different brands that reduce noise by varying decibel levels. I happen to use Hearos. The ones with a noise reduction rating of 33, which means the noise coming into your ear is reduced by 33 decibels.

I found NRR 33 earplugs highly effective at virtually eliminating noise in the office, at home, and on airplanes. What you get is silence. There are also noise isolating headphones, which for a higher price eliminate even more noise.

Natural Sound

Nature is replete with sound. Or at least can be. Crickets and cicadas on a summer evening. The crows or mourning doves can produce quite a racket. One I don’t find soothing.

But there are plenty of natural sounds that are very soothing. The wind stirring dried leaves in the autumn. The rain. A waterfall. There are, though, times when the natural world is silent. Winter is the best time to experience that or in a very isolated location like Chaco Canyon, for instance.

I’ve experienced rural winter silence. Absolutely no sound. It is spectacularly awesome and supremely peace inducing. A former co-worker said the same about her time at Chaco Canyon. The place is so remote there are times of absolute silence that will take your breath away.

Natural sounds are not bad. In fact, they are usually very good due to their soothing effect on us. Let’s face it. Our world has advanced. Our bodies have not. We’ve had very little physically significant change in over several hundred thousand years.

That’s why our world and it’s noise is so stressful. The primitive part of our brain, the part that runs all of our automatic systems, still thinks we are in the jungle, or the forest, or the savanna. And it reacts accordingly to all outside stimuli.

Even with a high degree of self-control, we still feel the effects of the “snake brain’s” autopilot responses to our world. One reason so many of us suffer from stress, anxiety, or those sleepless nights.

The sounds of nature can soothe away those feelings. And so can earplugs by eliminating the sounds that stress us.

Our Inner World

We have noisy minds. We are constantly thinking, complaining, getting even, planning our next meal, contemplating what to buy, and the list goes on. Every meditation technique is designed to still the mind. To get it to stop thinking. To stop planning. To stop worrying.

Our minds, the front part of our brains, are designed to solve problems. If our mind doesn’t have a problem to solve, it will create one. Our mind doesn’t want to be empty. It doesn’t want nothing to do.

In meditation, we basically redirect our mind to focus on something other than problem solving — real or imagined.

There are many ways to meditate. A walk in the woods or the park, where you focus on the natural world, is an excellent way to redirect the mind. To get it out of problem-solving mode.

Sitting and focusing on your breathing is another tried and true method.

My favorite is to sit and let thoughts just wander through my mind. I watch them enter and leave, as it were, not focusing on any particular one. If I sit long enough, the thoughts cease. It’s as if my mind has gotten tired of trying to interest me in a problem. That’s when my mind becomes truly silent.

Additional Thoughts

It does us little good to shut out the noise coming from outside of us, if our minds take up the slack and run rampant with inner noise. That inner noise can produce stress and anxiety just like outer noise.

The 8-Fold Path helps us to deal with both kinds of noise.

Next week, I’ll talk about where and when we can practice silence. I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is.

Until then, unleash your inner quiet and enjoy the stillness.

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