Published Writer in the Family (split)

[Origisaurus]

Got me thinkin'...

There was a time when writers got more respect.

Mother and her college chum Bunny worked together on the WPA writer's project.  They each got paid $20/week or so to research and write a book.  Mother wrote about the Arctic explorers, I dunno what Bunny wrote.

Bunny, at age 36 or so, joined the Waves and landed a job writing parts of the Bluejacket Manual, a hard cover book given to all Navy recruits and a copy of which she sent to Mother, along with a hand-painted set of Mexican pottery that she bought in Brownsville (the Waves' boot camp was in Corpus Christi).  It must have been well written because I learned a whole bunch of stuff - at age 8 I could field strip a M1911A1 pistol and a Springfield '03A3 rifle and knew more knots than an Explorer Scout.  Plus a lot of sailor stuff.

So even an artsy girl can write hard techy stuff!   

[DG9]

My Dad's Bluejacket Manual from WWII was my favorite book as a little fella!  The knots kept me busy and the rest was pretty darn interesting for quite some time too.  Thanks for the fond memory OriSaur...

[benali72]

Origisaurus, what was the title of the book your mom wrote on Arctic explorers? I bought a bagful of used books on this topic once at a library sale, maybe hers was among them. Thanks.

[Origisaurus]

Origisaurus, what was the title of the book your mom wrote on Arctic explorers? I bought a bagful of used books on this topic once at a library sale, maybe hers was among them. Thanks.

Not sure I never knew the title.  Decloaking ever so slightly, look for something by Ethel Dunn, circa 1935.  Let me know.  All I have is her ashes and a watercolor done in 1927.  Lost the best pieces, pots thrown about the same time.

[benali72]

Thanks, Origisaurus. I looked through my maybe two dozen older books on the arctic but found nothing by an Ethel Dunn. Sorry.

[The Gorn]

This could be an interesting research project.

Origisaur, try every possible variation possible of the cogent search terms with Google.

Google Books has scanned many thousands of older, public domain texts, magazines, etc. It's quite possible that Google Books has your mother's work archived.

[TRexx]

I too have a copy of my father's Bluejacket's Manual, vintage 1940.

Several parts stick in my mind.

- There is a series of photographs detailing the wrong way to take a kink out of of a piece of wire rope. They are labeled "First mistake", "Second mistake" etc

- The section on ships includes a nice photo of the USS Arizona and states proudly that a battleship is ready to "fight any enemy, anywhere, any time".   Several pages later, after destroyers and PT boats, they mention the aircraft carrier as a means to move airplanes from one place to another.

- Venereal disease is mentioned several times, usually in some context that says how anyone who contracts it will be punished.  For example, time spent being treated does not count towards your enlistment commitment.

 

[David Randolph]

I have a published writer in the family. It is not for the faint of heart. She talks about getting very tired of being broke all the time. She made money by going around and giving seminars on what she had written about. She recently got a job at a small college.

[John Masterson]

Writing is the same as the music business today:  anyone can publish on the Internet, hundreds of thousands now do so, most is average to junk status.


...but there are an unprecedented number of tremendous new talents as well.  Yet with all the noise, they are not found, nor noticed.  Who has time to sift through the amateur stuff to find these new gems??

It's like having 1,000 cable TV channels, trying to find the 20 truly WONDERFUL new episodes mixed among the 50,000 junk show episodes blaring all week.

[The Gorn]

Writing is the same as the music business today:  anyone can publish on the Internet, hundreds of thousands now do so, most is average to junk status.

...but there are an unprecedented number of tremendous new talents as well.  Yet with all the noise, they are not found, nor noticed.  Who has time to sift through the amateur stuff to find these new gems??

Which leads to a conclusion that I have formed about social networking: creating effective publicity for your talents online exclusively is a sucker's game and ultimately an extremely poor way to use your energy and time. It's a traffic jam today. Everyone has drunk the social media Kool-Aid.

The only way to get good paid projects or offers is to devote significant energy to actively marketing your services.

I imagine that any writer who wishes to get paid decently for writing will have to promote themselves aggressively to many outlets. Pretty much how it's always been.

[John Masterson]

Writing is the same as the music business today:  anyone can publish on the Internet, hundreds of thousands now do so, most is average to junk status.

...but there are an unprecedented number of tremendous new talents as well.  Yet with all the noise, they are not found, nor noticed.  Who has time to sift through the amateur stuff to find these new gems??

Which leads to a conclusion that I have formed about social networking: creating effective publicity for your talents online exclusively is a sucker's game and ultimately an extremely poor way to use your energy and time. It's a traffic jam today. Everyone has drunk the social media Kool-Aid.

The only way to get good paid projects or offers is to devote significant energy to actively marketing your services.

I imagine that any writer who wishes to get paid decently for writing will have to promote themselves aggressively to many outlets. Pretty much how it's always been.

I feel that there *may* have been a small window of time when you could be one of the first to publish music, or an eBook on the Web and be successful because the "crowd" of happy amateurs had not yet discovered how to do it.

But today we are back to the "old way"...you need to create a *buzz* to get noticed.

And for a business, you have to do it the proven, old-fashioned way: through your network of past happy clients.  Things are a bit better though, because a good word about your worth travels faster today, thanks to 21st century communications.

[The Gorn]

I have no such network. My clients never seem to refer me and they say they don't know anyone who could use what I do. I have to get business in a very crude way, by waving my arms around and saying HEY! LOOK HERE!

[Origisaurus]

This could be an interesting research project.

Origisaur, try every possible variation possible of the cogent search terms with Google.

Google Books has scanned many thousands of older, public domain texts, magazines, etc. It's quite possible that Google Books has your mother's work archived.

A cursory google search didn't help.  It occurs to me that the Library of Congress may be the best source.  If I were motivated to dig that deep.

 Speaking of published authors, Meridel Le Sueur published "North Star Country", a people’s history of Minnesota.  She was one of Mother’s gang of 1920s feminists from the cow college