Day: December 2, 2011

Bailey Guidon at the bookstore

At Battenkill Books. First call from Chapin in North Carolina. PhD student, Instructional Psychology. Come and see.

Bookstores are about people. Connie Brooks runs Battenkill Books with her mother Marilyn. I will be uploading stories and photos from the bookstore on my Ipad and taking photos with my camera. This is about people. And our choice: do we wish to live only in a digital and corporate world, clicking on our purchases with no human connection to the creators of them?

Sometimes that works. I just bought a cheap suitcase online for $50. Great. I didn’t need to talk to the machine in China that made it. Books, among many other things are different. They are about ideas, connections, imagination. They nourish the soul. I go into Battenkill and Connie and Marilyn suggests books to me, and help me choose them. Important to my soul.

So I’m heading there shortly for the phone calls, people bringing books and the Christmas Parade coming right out the door. Vote for people, affirm the importance of people in our lives. Corporations are not the only entities worthy of concern. This Christmas, people all over America are voting for community bookstores. This is one community “connection” that corporations will not wash away, I believe. You can call me at 518 677-2515 or Connie at the same number and order my books or any other books. Or e-mail her online at www.battenkillbooks.com You can occupy your local bookstore, if you can’t occupy this one.

If you, like me, are frustrated by our political system, unnerved by the growing power of corporate money, concerned about the right of the individual to live and work freely in America, love books and the people who know and sell them,  cherish the idea of independence, this can be a good day for you. Cast a vote for independent businesses and the creative spark. Let’s not Occupy Wall Street – who would want it? – but  instead let’s occupy Battenkill Books, a terrific independent bookstore in Cambridge, N.Y., my local bookstore run by the worthy Connie Brooks with the help of her charming and intelligent mother Marilyn.

From 4 to 6 p.m., I will be at Battenkill taking phone calls and orders and signing copies of “Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die” and all of my other books. Connie is celebrating individuality and creativity and giving away free stuff – videos, notecards. Call us at 518 677-2515, or e-mail the bookstore at www.battenkillbooks.com. Anger and frustration are pointless. Doing something positive and constructive is healing and useful. Call me. Occupy Battenkill Books. 4 to 6 p.m. We are aiming to sell 1,000 copies of “Going Home.” About 300 to go till New Year’s Eve.

Got an e-mail from Suzanne in Connecticut this morning,  telling me she enjoyed my photos and blog “immensely,” but …(I can often sense when there is a “but” coming) “you really need a copy editor. Your punctuation is atrocious, and there are about 10 typos in just one of the passages I read. I am available to do it,” she added, “but no matter – it just needs to be done before you post. You writers!!” She added a photo of her dog, for good measure.”

It was an interesting message, and it spoke to so many changes in our culture to my own particular ideas about what is important in writing in general, and in the blog in particular. Aside from the slightly patronizing tone,  perhaps predictable in one who cherishes punctuation and grammar, the message prompted me to think  about punctuation and grammar. They – and the people who care about them –  have never been my friends, not in grammar school, my brief run at college, or, as my editors can testify, in publishing. I remember a fourth grade teacher who wept to my mother at the prospect of having me in her class again. I have never been big on rules.

I have to be honest – punctuation is the least important thing to me when it comes to  my blog or my writing.

I have a good friend who is an artist, and she told me recently that she can’t bring herself to blog much and promote and sell her art because she believes her grammar has to be perfect. She spends so much time polishing her writing that she doesn’t get to do much of it. I thought, how sad. She is a wonderful artist, and would like to present and sell her work.

I have to declare my own heretical position. Grammar and punctuation are not important to me, and have never been. Nor do I think they very important in writing. My Random House editor agrees with me. It’s the story that counts, she says. And the ideas. Words are important, as are voice and style. But I agree with my editor. From the first, I decided that an integral part of the blog was openness and frequency of posting. I promised myself that people would see something new here most, if not every time they logged on. I didn’t want to stop each time – five or six times a day – and correct my spelling. I surely did not want to send my work to a copy editor five or six times a day and wait for it to come back. It’s a kind of creative constipation to me, a great way to kill momentum and stifle imagination. The blog works because it is impulsive, and it flows, and it’s a bit chaotic. Just like me. A blog should reflect the person, not a grammarian’s notion of a person. I guess that’s what I told my grammar teacher in the fifth grade too. Sorry, Mrs. McKenzie. Sorry, Suzanne.

So my theory of writing is holding up. The blog is on target for six million views this year. And I love writing it.  I thanked Suzanne for the note and passed on her offer to copy edit my work. I told her she can get a refund if she’d like.