Month: March 2008

I wrote a piece about change (that was ultimately killed) that includes a bit that explains how I came to write the line “falling with my arms wide open.”

“Life is hard. And change is what makes it that way … Why aren’t we better at? We’ve been facing change since birth, we should have it down …

“I’d been dumped months before by the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and I was sitting on my couch in a stupor, realizing that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it … I just sat there, trying to watch television, with this ever present ache. Of all things, a TV movie about alien abduction called Taken came on, and the main character said, “We’re all standing on the edge of a cliff. All the time, every day. A cliff we’re all going over. Our choice isn’t about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall.” For the first time in months, the ache began to subside.

“… Sometime after my alien-abduction-TV-movie-epiphany, I was watching a rerun of Sex and the City. (I get all my best wisdom from TV, apparently.) At the end, Carrie Bradshaw comments about her imperfect, ever-changing life. “Maybe the best any of us can do is not quit, play the hand we’ve been given, and accessorize the outfit we’ve got.”

“I had a plan. It was time to get up off the couch. Don’t quit. Embrace the fall. And wear a nice outfit.”

And not too long after that I think, I went to Durham and started my next book. (The picture is of J. B. Rhine, the head of the former Duke Parapsychology Laboratory.)

A friend put it online for me. QUALIFICATION: I am not a great singer to begin with, but I am very shy so if I think people can hear me I get scared, and when I get scared my voice gets timid and shaky and FLAT. I did the best I could to sing past my fear, but you shall see the results.

ALSO, I didn’t mean to sound so sad! The point was, yes, life can be hard but you never know what’s going to happen next, like winning American Idol. The winning song is sung by the winner of American Idol, so the person singing this song is exemplifying what happens when you hang in there.

Anyway, here it is.

I am officially entered in the American Idol Songwriters contest. When you submit your song they ask for a bio about you AND about your song, and they only give you 100 words! This is what I said:

Everything about me and my song comes down to this part of the lyrics:

I’ve never written a song before, but I am a writer. Thank you for the opportunity. I had fun trying to write a song.

Okay, some of the time I fun. That part of the lyrics, by the way, came straight out of something that happened in my life, which I will explain later. Until I can figure out how to make the music audible in some way, here are the lyrics.

Falling With My Arms Wide Open

I’m falling with my arms wide open.
And I don’t know what happens next.
But it took everything I had just to get myself here,
and I’m ready for whatever comes next,
yes, I am ready for whatever comes next.

I push away from the table, yes the meal was fine.
The guests were funny and the wine divine.
Now it’s time to go home, and time to sleep
And dream this dream that I mean to keep.

And I’m falling with my arms wide open.
I don’t know what happens next.
But it took everything I had just to get myself here,
and I’m ready for whatever comes next,
yes, I am ready for whatever comes next.

Nobody ever tells you when dreams come true,
that some of those dreams will be bad.
When life knocks you down again and again
And it seems like you’ll always be sad …

Start falling with your arms wide open.
Because you don’t know what happens next.
You see it took everything I had, to make this dream come true,
and I’m ready for whatever comes next,
yes, I am ready for whatever comes next.
oh yes, I’m ready for whatever comes next.

Another in my series of, “Don’t You Wish Your Cats Were Cute Like He?” I mean, come on. Look at the guy.

My book is this close to being accepted. Just working on the teeniest, tiniest changes and fine tuning. It’s basically done and I will have a book coming out next year. Mind-blowing. Soon it will be on to the fun parts: the cover, seeing how they lay out the pages, getting the galleys, (a bound paperback version that is sent out to reviewers) trying to figure out how to promote it and get people to buy it (sometimes not so fun).

That reminds me of a totally not fun part. Publishers like to get quotes about your book from the most famous, influential people they can for the back cover. They’re called blurbs. So, every book you have to go through this process of begging people for blurbs, people you know, don’t know, begging your friends to ask their famous friends, it’s really horrible. Plus, I honestly think most people figure these blurbs are from friends (and they are, or people who are doing it because they owe someone else a favor, etc.). Which isn’t to say that the good things they said aren’t true. Anyway, I think that back cover is valuable sales real estate and could be used in much more creative ways. Every time I write a book I propose other ways to use the back cover and every book I’m shot down and told to get blurbs.

I just thought of something I might do for this book, for instance, and this is just off the top of my head so it might not be a good idea. But I could find some of the nastiest most over-the-top things ever said about the Duke parapsychology work through the years, maybe a good one from each decade, one from the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, etc., each leading up to now and something that says, “Well, all of the guys were WRONG. Read inside …”

I saw this picture online somewhere. It’s the corner of Christopher Street and 7th Avenue and it was taken in the sixties, I believe it said. This is only a few blocks from where I live so I took of picture of how this corner looks now.

It’s kind of astounding how little it’s changed. The lovely cobblestones are gone, there are a few new buildings, that’s about it. But some details are gone, some signs and things that are hard to see in the picture above. I’m going to try to dig up a picture I took of this very corner about ten years ago.