Question of the Day
Pet Peeves
How do you feel about people who are chronically late?
Labor Day is about the people who do the work. Not the people who talk about work in boardrooms while pointing at charts. Not the people who create slogans about productivity from chairs that cost more than my first car.
For a writer, this is especially annoying because writing depends on concentration, and concentration is a fragile little diva. It requires space, mood, energy, patience—none of which did I possess this week—and a brain willing to stay in the same room for more than 11 seconds.
This group is open to experienced authors with dozens of published titles, first-time writers still wrestling with Chapter One, and newcomers trying to decide whether KDP is the right path. Any writer or author is invited. If you have information that may help another creator, bring it.
What stayed with me was not simply that she was kind. Plenty of famous people learn to appear kind when a microphone is nearby. With Dolly, kindness seemed less like publicity and more like the machinery quietly running beneath everything else.
When I rescued her, I knew I was getting a dog. I did not realize I was also getting a schedule, a conscience, a security system, a therapist, a comedian, and a furry little judge who would one day stare at me as though my entire life could use stronger leadership.
I do not think appreciating “Imagine” means agreeing with every implication of every idea in the song. It means respecting the courage of the question.
When someone lifts your words, copies large portions of your text, borrows your interior layouts, mimics your cover design, or leans heavily on your branding, they are not being “inspired.” They are helping themselves to work they did not create, and that is a problem.
Every August, families walk into stores with optimism and leave looking like they have survived a negotiation with office supplies.
Big publishing has its place, of course. It gives us major releases, famous authors, polished campaigns, and enough memoirs to suggest every person with a microphone has survived a meaningful journey with a lesson meant to change the very fabric of our existence. But small publishers help keep reading interesting. We are the ones creating the odd little books...
A screen can show a child something creative. A blank page asks them to become creative. That is a very different thing.
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