career

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It’s Time to Publish

My Long Path to Publishing

Aptitude and Ambition

10-things-you-have-to-do-before-you-leave-varsity-female_graduate90I can still remember like it was yesterday the evening almost eleven years ago that I sat beside my husband in bed, doing aptitude tests and reading books like What Colour Is My Parachute? It wasn’t the first time I was trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d already been to university for years and earned several degrees. I’d tried to put all that worthy education to good use by building not one but two professional careers, first as an architect, then as an academic researcher in gerontology, and then, rather feebly, as an architect again.

 

Enter the Sandwich Age

toddler excited about diggerThen a baby, aging parents and a huge home renovation got in the way. Et voila, five  years vanished. Strangely, I put good use to my architectural training being my own house designer and project manager, and I put all that valuable gerontology knowledge to good use caring for my mother-in-law and mother. But once junior was in full time kindergarten, I began to get restless and look for new outlets for my energy and creativity. Thus the soul-searching moment I mentioned above. At that point in my life I really needed to close those doors and move into a new arena.

The Sleeping Writer

cat on laptopOr not completely new, as I’d always been an avid reader and book lover, and had attempted to craft my first novel at the age of nine. I made it (longhand on yellow foolscap) ten chapters in before something else stole my attention away. But I never lost the desire, and the books, or their genesis, accumulated inside my head over the years, like secret friends whose voices called to me.

So that night, revisiting my strengths and interests via these tests and quizzes, I decided I would give it a shot – I would try my hand at writing a novel. I said to my husband, “I’ll give it five years. If I haven’t published a book by then I’ll quit and get a real job.” How naive.

A Fire in the Belly

As it turned out, five years is nothing in the life of a writer. Barely enough time to figure out which way is up. I had taken on so much more than I’d realized at the time. Firstly, that being educated and literate does not mean you can sit down and write a decent novel – oh, no! Without any formal training in creative writing, it was a long learning curve. An iterative one,  as I dreamed, wrote, studied, workshopped, networked, critiqued, competed, read, and wrote some more. And I got better. But most importantly, I discovered two things: I LOVED writing, and I’d finally found my tribe. I didn’t want to stop at five years. I didn’t want to stop ever. This is where I belonged.

Ten… Make That Eleven Years On

robert-de-niro-oscars-2104-quote-about-writersFive years came and went in the blink of a cursor, and no book publishing happened. I suppose for some writers it happens faster, but I believe for most there are many quiet years of devotion and diligence, and perhaps dabbling, that precede those fabulous debuts. But the path to publishing is paved by many a stumbling block. Mine included perfectionism, an addiction to research and learning, crushing self-doubt (a cliché in our business), a desire to learn how to navigate the online world of social media in order to build my author “platform”, a desperate attempt to learn about and keep abreast of the quickly shifting sands of the publishing industry. All necessary parts of the author’s career. Oh, and did I mention crushing self-doubt? None of these new challenges came easily, especially the digital-technical stuff, which seems to get harder the older I get.

Never Look Back

Nevertheless, the pressure to get my lovely children out there into the world built and built. Several half-hearted forays into querying traditional agents and publishers over the years simply sent me scurrying back for another round of honing my craft. But when the ten year mark approached, I decided I really needed to get at least one book “out there.” Even with that determined goal, another year+ has slipped by. Now, however, I see the cumulative effect of that determined effort and focussed goal. In fairly short order, I’ve won a prize, got another manuscript request by a traditional publisher, and prepared yet another manuscript for independent publishing. Sometimes I think it’s just about setting clear goals.

e73514af7309c4006bfce2a7e38a4451Having several completed works is one of the side benefits of working diligently for eleven years– I have an “oevre.” And I’m certain at least one of those books will be published very soon. One way or another. I now have a solid sense of the industry and my place in it, and a lot more confidence about how I want to manage my writing career.

Time to Publish – One Way or Another

Sometimes what you need is sitting right in front of you all along but you look right past it, because you were looking for something– different. Recently, as I’ve been editing, revising and designing my very first novel, Reconcilable Differences, in preparation for independent publishing, it occurred to me that submitting it to Amazon’s relatively new Kindle Scout program was worth the effort. Since I’d already decided it was a “special” book, a quiet one that would find its readers, even if a legacy publisher wasn’t willing to take a risk on it, I had nothing to lose. Even if it wasn’t selected for publication, the exposure would only help my indie launch later on.

So last week I got the bits all together and submitted it, and it was accepted. [What is Kindle Scout?]

My Kindle Scout Campaign

Reconcilable Differences cover

Reconcilable Differences cover

I was shocked that it was finally happening. Now, I wondered, did my long, slow build as a writer in the world of social media amount to anything? Would I be able to hold up my end of the publishing bargain by calling on my vast (possibly a slight exaggeration) social network and generate enough nominations to get noticed? Well… we’ll see.

My Kindle Scout campaign launched on April 6, 2016 12:00 AM EDT (9:00 PM PDT) and ends on May 6, 2016 12:00 AM EDT! Now it’s up to me (and you) to generate enough nominations for the book in the next 29 days to get Kindle to publish it.

Are You Willing to Help?

Please click the link and have a look, and if you think the book is worthy, give it your vote. Also please pass this along to friends, family and other readers who might be interested in helping out. As a bonus, those who vote for a successful candidate receive a free e-book as thanks. So we all win! If you don’t mind checking out the book, here’s the link: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/JXXN1LUS2SHW

And stay tuned. I’ll be monitoring my progress through the campaign and reporting back here a couple of times, as well as at the end to let you know what’s happening next.

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Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future – Part 2

Education is More Important than Ever to Prepare for Future Jobs

Continuing from Monday’s post:

Jeremy Rifkin, American economic and social theorist, presents the argument that an emerging zero-marginal-cost sharing economy will make itself felt most strongly in the labour market, where “new employment opportunities lie in the collaborative commons in fields that tend to be nonprofit and strengthen social infrastructure — education, health care, aiding the poor, environmental restoration, child care and care for the elderly, the promotion of the arts and recreation.” (The Sunday Review, March 15, 2014 and on CBC Ideas.

 

In this new economy, the youngest generations at last emerge to take the upper hand. They who have been weaned on digital communication technology and the new social practices that accompany it will be best suited to navigate this new economic and social reality.

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They who have been weaned on digital communication technology and the new social practices that accompany it will be best suited to navigate this new economic and social reality.

 

Rifkin argues that the first impact of the “Third Industrial Revolution” will be a massive “rollout of hardware buildout” to accommodate digitization and new renewable energy sources. Overlaid and subsequent to this forty year transformation of our physical plant, the vast majority of jobs in the new automated world will manifest in the growing social economy, including education and welfare.

 

The trick is to facilitate the change. Despite doubts about the challenges of supporting and realizing this global transformation and ensuring its truly democratic impacts expressed by Bob Rae, Anita McGahen and Janice Stein on the CBC Ideas panel, the alternative, the status quo, looks grim.

 

All of these changes make possible a better, laterally integrated, democratized society that enables a liberation of human potential unprecedented in human history. Toward this end, new jobs will universally depend upon education. The question remains: who will get it?

 

It’s been argued that the steadily rising cost of education, combined with increasingly scarce financial aid for students, is taking a professional, or even a basic undergraduate degree, beyond the reach of the working poor, and even the middle class.

 

Returning to the question of competition for education and jobs, it’s been argued that the steadily rising cost of education, combined with increasingly scarce financial aid for students, is taking a professional, or even a basic undergraduate degree, beyond the reach of the working poor, and even the middle class.

 

While competing for advanced education becomes more challenging due to rising costs and competition, education alone is not enough to guarantee success.

 

Students of today, and young workers, must be conscious of how technology is changing the very fabric of our world, and therefore influencing the shape of the job market in the near and distant future. Making wise and fruitful educational choices depends upon being able to see into the future and to strategize accordingly. They may intuit and take for granted the new world they live in, including technology and the new sharing economy, but they will do better to understand how it works, how it differs from the world of the past, and their place within it.

 

Students of today, and young workers, must be conscious of how technology is changing the very fabric of our world, and therefore influencing the shape of the job market in the near and distant future.

 

As baby boomers prepare for retirement, it is important that they also consider the legacy they leave behind. They must not turn their backs on a world that is increasingly difficult to understand. Rather they must ask: Are the youth who will replace them prepared to function, run and thrive in the society that is emerging in their wake? And what can be done now, while they are still in positions of power and influence, to ensure that the next generation will succeed?

 

Mary Ann Clark Scott, formerly an architect and environmental gerontologist, currently works as an education savings advisor, a novelist, corporate storyteller and freelance writer.
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Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future – Part 1

file000898499863Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future

 

As a mother and aunt of a few young digital-age millennials, I often ponder the particular challenges these emerging adults face in our overwhelming and rapidly changing world, and how they will fare in the future.

 

In the last century, post-war changes to society, including wider access to education, industrialization, a growth economy, the sexual revolution, and changing social values tended to have a flattening effect on social hierarchies and increase opportunities for advancement and success. The world we now live in is very different.

 

“Canada’s economy is built on a simple but deeply entrenched belief: that every new generation will do better than the one before it.” MacLeans Magazine

 

Personal observations lead me to agree with Jason Kirby’s opinion back in 2009 that the above may no longer be true. The reality for today’s youth is increasingly the opposite. Costs of living are higher, incomes lower and debt even greater than they have been in previous decades.

 

Young graduates have a much harder time getting established than did previous generations.

 

Economic recessions combined with competition for jobs with established and as-ever numerically advantaged baby boomers, as well as a rapidly evolving, technologically changing job market, mean that young graduates have a much harder time getting established than did previous generations.

 

Evidence that today’s young adults suffer from anxiety and depression in unprecedented numbers, as well as often cited statistics about late launchers and boomerang kids, support this notion.

 

The January 24th issue of The Economist included a pair of articles pointing to “America’s New Aristocracy” and “An Hereditary Meritocracy”  which reveal that America’s founding principal of equal opportunity for advancement and success is being undermined by systemic filtering.

 

Wealthy, educated and powerful couples tend to beget more of the same, and both educational and career advantages, from cradle to college, accrue to the children of the existing elite, meaning that opportunities for success are slipping away from the rest.

 

The amount of recent political dialogue about the fate of the “middle class” and ensuing debates about how to define this term shine a light on the growing struggle average Canadians have to survive and thrive.

 

There seems to be general consensus that the “middle class” is growing, and the gap between the middle class and the privileged elite is widening.

 

While it’s no surprise that politicians are free with this term, even economists who insist on statistical definitions do not agree. Despite this, there seems to be general consensus that the “middle class” is growing, and the gap between the middle class and the privileged elite is widening.

 

This phenomenon in part explains the widespread growth in income disparity. “[An] OECD report shows Canada is near the top of the heap in terms of both growth in income disparity over the past three decades and in absolute terms.” http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/canadian-income-disparity-growing/

 

Add another ingredient to the mix: the changing nature of our economy in terms of both the types of jobs that are emerging (and disappearing) and the emergent alternate economy that social media and the internet have spawned.

 

Jeremy Rifkin, American economic and social theorist, presents the argument that an emerging zero-marginal-cost sharing economy will make itself felt most strongly in the labour market, where “new employment opportunities lie in the collaborative commons in fields that tend to be nonprofit and strengthen social infrastructure — education, health care, aiding the poor, environmental restoration, child care and care for the elderly, the promotion of the arts and recreation.” (The Sunday Review, March 15, 2014 and on CBC Ideas.

To be continued July 1, 2015…

Mary Ann Clark Scott, formerly an architect and environmental gerontologist, currently works as an education savings advisor, a novelist, corporate storyteller and freelance writer.
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Dare I Do NaNoWriMo?

COMMITMENT PHOBIA

crest-bda7b7a6e1b57bb9fb8ce9772b8faafbRight off the top, National Novel Writing Month sounds like a really bad idea for a person as commitment phobic as me.

For readers who aren’t familiar, NaNoWriMo is “National Novel Writing Month, shortened as NaNoWriMo (na-noh-ry-moh), … “an annual internet-based creative writing project that takes place every November. NaNoWriMo challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and 30.” For more information read the rest of the Wikipedia definition here, or go to the NaNoWriMo site.

But since my writing’s been totally off the rails for quite awhile now, what with dealing with getting my house ready for the market, suffering from unexpected chronic pain and disability, dealing with the consequenses of menopause-induced brain fog (more on that in a later post,) shooting off exploring screenwriting, film-making and other, largely unrelated employment opportunities over the last couple of years, I’m thinking this might, in a counterintuitive sort of way, be A GOOD THING, as Martha says.

writing, handwriting

 

 

 

 

 

A bit of focus, you know?

NOTHING TO LOSE

Well before anyone starts shouting, ‘Hell Yeah, go for it!!’ I’ll just say I’ve already registered. I’ve never had trouble cranking out words before, but then again I’ve never committed to writing 50,000 new words in a month. But since my buddies at the RWA-GVC are doing it en masse, I figure I’ll jump on the coffee-trolley and see what happens. The worst case scenario is that I write no more than I’ve been writing lately, which is a big fat ZERO. Absolutely nothing to lose, right? My situation can’t get any worse, and the beauty of NaNoWriMo is, there really aren’t any consequences. (Except shame.)

PLANNING THE NOVEL BEFORE I BEGIN

The problem now is, I’m definitely NOT a “pantser” as we say in the biz. In other words I’m not one of those writers who can just sit down at the computer and start banging out words without any concern for what the novel is about or where it’s going. (The very thought of it makes me catatonic!). Which means that I have to decide WHAT I’m going to spend the month of November writing and do a little preparation. And since everything I’m working on (in a figurative, if not a literal sense) is either in revision, nearly complete, or a screenplay, I’m not sure what to choose.

f1d33654a95bb8b75bb0de7aa35c554f

Option A: To take my rough, incomplete outline for an interactive STEAMPUNK novel about a time-travelling jeweller and write through just one storyline. (Basically the interactive novel requires three “forks” in the story, something like gaming narrative, or “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories, where the reader makes a decision for the protagonist about where the story goes next, requiring a total of 12 different endings for the same storym, making it rather complicated.) But since I’m somewhat stuck on that, it makes me nervous. On the other hand…

 

Option B: To take the seed of an idea for one of my future novels and just go for it. Some of these are a bit better thought through than others. Whichever one I choose would fit into a potential “series” with one of my already completed novels. The possibilities include:

downtown eastside lane, b&w imagea) a story about an ambitious and uptight lawyer trying to rise above her family’s shame and a passionately dedicated social worker dealing with kids on the street, and greedy developers and corrupt city officials interfering with approvals for construction of a youth shelter, who teaches her to take risks, let down her hair and believe in causes again.

red car, crashedb) a story about a vain, hardened lawyer with a secret past whose glamourous life is shattered along with her face and her pelvis in a serious car accident, and who must rebuild herself inside and out while working through physiotherapy, with the help of a selfless contractor whose estranged wife’s street life as an addict doesn’t make his job as a father any easier.

Italian villa on a lakec) a story about an Art History doctoral student doing thesis research in Florence who meets an Italian architect and gets drawn into his shabby-chic aristocratic family’s troubles, deciding to help them keep their run-down ancestral villa out of the clutches of a crazy-rich egomaniacal American rock star who wants to renovate it beyond recognition and destroy centuries of cultural history in the process.

Okay so that’s it. Tough choice, eh?

If you read this and want to vote, leave a comment and tell me which story you think I should write for NaNoWriMo and give me a couple of reasons why (or not). Depending on public opinion, it might make it easier for me to choose. And wish me luck. Thanks!

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The Cut Direct

WHERE HAS BUSINESS ETIQUETTE GONE?

 

images-2

BY-GONE DAYS

 

Those of you who read Regency fiction will know what this term means: The cut direct. For those that don’t, it refers to the social snub, a complete diss. Which was done very rarely only under extreme circumstances when a person was in the wrong place at the wrong time or behaving in an inappropriate way for their social class or the setting, or importantly was known to have done something shocking or socially unacceptable. It was extreme and it was noteworthy and it was a shocking cut down.

 

It was not done simply because you were too busy or self-important or didn’t like someone. Despite the accentuated social hierarchy in Regency England, people in those days understood that every person was worthy of acknowledgment regardless of their place. Whether a servant, a merchant or a member of the nobility, everyone had an appropriate address and everyone was acknowledged. It was ungentlemanly and unkind to treat people badly or to just simply ignore them. Not that there were not social boors then as now.

 

Which brings me to my reason for my blog post today which admittedly is a bit of a rant. This is been bothering me for sometime now.

 

Be Nice or LeaveFALLING STANDARDS

 

In the last couple of years, I’ve had occasion to apply for employment or to make inquiries with a number of business people. And I’m frankly still shocked at the lack of appropriate business etiquette that seems to be the norm in today’s world.

I sometimes wonder if it it’s a problem unique to the younger generation but I hope that that’s not the case and I would rather not believe that.

 

Although if it is a demographic phenomenon I can only assume that the current generation have learned their bad habits or failed to learn good habits from their parents, teachers and mentors. Perhaps we simply forgot to pass along what we understood and took for granted.

 

Free-Vector-3d-Social-Media-Icons-Pack-2012-New-Twitter-StumbleUpon-PinterestANOTHER CASUALTY OF THE ELECTRONIC AGE?

 

Alternatively, and more likely, this can perhaps be explained by our sudden global immersion into an age of electronic communication. Early on (The 80s and 90s?) there was some kerfuffle about lack of etiquette in email communications and people talked about that and took the time to critique and to pass along what they felt were important guidelines for appropriate behavior.

 

Now of course we have Facebook and Twitter and Instragram and LinkedIn. All these new, abbreviated forms of communication added to our options for and to further confuse our standards of appropriate social congress.

 

But things have clearly gotten out of hand.

 

Standards of behavior and modes of communication that might arguably be appropriate for some of the new social media platforms should not therefore translate into our person-to-person, face-to-face interactions. I should say that this does not apply to follows, friends and likes. But I’ll leave advice about what’s appropriate on those platforms to the social media experts.

 

telephone and keyboard in officeA SOCIAL OBLIGATION

 

It used to be and not so very long ago that if you phoned someone and left a message they were socially obligated to return your phone call. It didn’t matter if they were busy or if they didn’t want to talk to you or even if they didn’t like you. The onus was on them and it reflected poorly on them if they simply ignored your message. The same went for written communications and invitations, which clearly extends into the world of e-mail. It maybe electronic but it’s still mail.

 

If you’re very busy and very important… It’s likely you have staff and one of their responsibilities is to take care of your correspondence. Note the word correspondence: the CO and the RE meaning that it involves two parties and it’s reciprocal.

 

Sadly we live in an era of spam. We are all of us bombarded with email spam, with advertising, with telephone solicitations of every kind. All of them intrusions into our privacy (you remember privacy don’t you?) And the stuff of course must be ignored and should be ignored but that’s another rant.

 

But I’m talking about our personal one-to-one communications. The kind that impacts on our daily lives and our livelihood. I realize that sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between one and the other. It’s my belief that we need to assume that a person who’s contacting us with their own name has a good reason to do so, is doing their job and pursuing some worthy goal and deserves to be acknowledged respectfully and politely. Until proven otherwise.

 

trash behind mesh fence

FINISH WHAT YOU START

 

Furthermore if you initiate communication with a person or persons and then someone responds to that you owe them the courtesy of a reply. If you post a job and receive responses to that in the appropriate mode and manner then the onus is on you and it is appropriate business etiquette to acknowledge and reply to those responses. It is just plain rude to ignore them.

 

No matter how busy or important you are you owe those people the respect of an acknowledgment. Very likely you have staff whose job it is to do exactly that. It’s up to you to say thank you for responding and then let people know if the position is been filled or if their application is unsuitable. They’re worthy of that. Has our new, electronic age of communication so depersonalized our exchanges with other human beings that we can now without compunction treat them like trash?

 

Everyone’s time is valuable. If someone made the effort to find your notice, to prepare materials, and to submit them, how can you imagine that it’s alright to just ignore them? Is that how you treat your clients? Is that how you want to be treated? Let’s remember the golden rule people. We’re supposed to be living in a civilized society.

 

It reflects very poorly on you and on your business and business practices. This applies equally in personal and social situations. And yet regretfully it seems to be the new norm.

 

What about you? Have you received “the cut direct”? How did it make you feel? Did it change your opinion of that person or company? If you agree with me, how do you think we, as a society, can address this failing? Create courses for students to teach social and business etiquette? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

 

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Fire in the Belly

Every once in a while I read a book, see a movie, or gaze on a work of art that just rocks my world and reminds me why I’m alive and who I am.

The Firebird book cover, Susanna Kearsley author, CONVERGENCE

I had one of those moments recently while reading Susanna Kearsley’s latest novel, The Firebird. Something about the convergence of art, history, love and war, connection, and mysterious paranormal phenomena that hint at the unknowable potential of the human mind and our place in the universe, as well as Susanna’s beautifully rendered prose and expert storytelling create that experience for me – like a punch in the gut. Or, more like a flaring of that fire in the belly that drives me to create.

HUMANITY

Something resonates to remind me  what I care about, what I believe I’m capable of and why I have always had a persistent, unexplainable desire to create something that reflects upon our fundamental humanity and resonates and connects. A reminder of our common humanity, and something deeper and more mysterious about our interior lives as opposed to our day to day existence which is in so many ways petty and superficial, and raises us up above the banal, pragmatic aspect of our existence. I think this is why art, architecture, music and literature and in some way history, which removes us from the particular and reminds us or gives us some perspective on the general human condition, has this effect on me.

Still image from short animated film "more"MORE

This line of thinking reminded me of a powerful, award winning, academy-nominated short animated film that I saw when I was doing an intensive screenwriting course at the Vancouver Film School, called “More” made by filmmaker Mark Osborne in 1998.

I wanted to share it, and I managed to find it and link it here. Although the ending is ironic, I can’t help relating to this poor idealistic schmuck and his burning desire to create something “more”, something beautiful that clearly everyone in his dull, monochromatic world desires. And despite the ending, I can’t help believing if more humans acted on that urge, the cumulative effect would render the world an even more colourful, blissful place.

 

Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you have that feeling? What are the things that inspire you and make the fire in your belly flare?