Copyright

While copyright lawyers are nice -and expensive-, there is a more common way to easily copyright your work. Simply make it all nice and in final format, then... send it to yourself.

You can request things at the post office that will officially date and/or keep track of your passage so there is an /official/ record of when it is sent. Then, should you encounter any copyright troubles, you have your original material safe and sound in a literal safe or freezer or refrigerator unit (Try to get something that is flame-proof).

More on shipping and formatting later...

Printing

I have just completed my first professional printing. I have a stack of my work, my first manuscripts, piled neatly on the desk beside me.

I feel very, very young and innocent, like this is the time /before/, when I still had hopes of being published and still had hopes of making everything work out. Hey, what am I saying? This /is/ the time before!

And so this week we shall focus on courage (and proper formatting, because man oh man are there a lot of rules).

Firstly, on random courage:

I don’t have the courage

I don’t have the courage
To stand in the dark
In the middle of the room
Staring at the mirror

I don’t have the courage
To tell my father what I think
Or tell my step mom that I really don’t give a fuck
What happens to her damned towels

I don’t have the courage to go out door to door selling things
So that I’ll have enough money for me to have the courage
To invite people over to our house and
Not be ashamed

I don’t have the courage to tell people
That they are rich if they live in a house that big
And have that many pairs of Gucci shoes
I don’t have the courage to tell that boy how I really feel
Or tell that other boy to get his filthy eyes
Off my fucking body

I don’t even have the courage
To write louder
Than a tiny spider creeping across the floor
Because my step mom might still be up
Trying to catch me in the act
And then I wouldn’t be able to write anymore

Burkina Faso


Secondly, on courage for writing:

It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address. ~Barbara Kingsolver

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. ~Ring Lardner

Somewhere I have never travelled

I do not remember if I shared this before, and because blogspot will not let me look at my July entries, I shall just repost because this is good enough for you to look at a second time.

Introducing 'Somewhere I Have Never Travelled', by E.E. Cummings
(And yes, this is all how he wrote it; I'm not copying from a gramatically-challenged website somewhere)



somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands


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The love abounds for that phrase 'not even the rain has such small hands'. Kudos to Cummings for the imagery.

And now for your favorite part, the pretty pictures: