LITTLE BOXES ON THE HILL SIDE

My problem with wearing tree hats is that my days are not three times longer.


Hat one: music. We are rehearsing an hour of music for a monthly meeting at the local hospice, a meeting for people who have recently lost someone. Music is something we are used to. We have been involved with music most of our lives, no problem there. Worthwhile, just time consuming.

Hat two: sculpting. Making work for our upcoming 'Pregnantism' exhibition of sculptures of pregnant mothers. Challenging, but it feels worth the effort, and is well on its way. No problem there either, but also time consuming. So both hats take time, but in a positive manner.

Hat three: writing. And that reminds me of a sculpture I did some years ago. Little boxes on the hill side. Lots of little boxes, but no easy roads connecting them. In the first group of boxes live the writers, each in his own isolated box with keyboard and thesaurus. In box two lives the private editor, someone the more experienced author can't do without. The next traditional boxes house the publishers, with their own editors. Or writers go to a printer to bypass the publisher. The printer of course lives in a different box yet. Not an easy road so far, but it gets more difficult yet: the marketing box. A writer may try his own marketing, but writing and marketing take totally different personalities, can they live in the same box? So there's the next box: the distributor. And all that before the book even gets to a book shop or library shelf. Little boxes on a steeep, steeeep hillside!

I am close to the last of the trail of boxes. My first three full-length books were done by regular publishers. The first two are sold out. The publisher of number three, "CLONE" does not exist any more, so I bought the last few dozen off them and sell them privately myself ($30.)

The next three are 'on the market' to give me a feeling of how well they sell before I take them to the distributor box. They are "languageland" "LIKE A GUARDIAN" and "1819 AD"

"languageland" and "LIKE A GUARDIAN" are Holocaust survivor books. But I better talk about those in a few days in a separate post