Time to Unclog the Blog

Posted on by Tom Bentley

(Well, It’s More like Bye and Hi)

Comrades, Kind Souls, and Those Who Stumbled Onto This Blog Looking for Free Cookies:

I’m going to streamline some of my business practices and pursuits, narrowing down some types of writing, and more finely tuning the audience towards whom that writing is slanted. Part of that consolidation is that I’m going to stop blogging and concentrate my messages to my peers and my pals in my newsletter.

Thus, these monthly blog posts will cease, though some of their content—info on the general writing life and my specific writing life—will migrate to or expand in the newsletter. Here’s an example of last month’s newsletter.

If you want to be subscribed to the newsletter, you don’t have to do anything: I’ll add your email addresses there. If you don’t want me to add you (sob!), please email me and let me know. I’ll wait a couple of days before I add anyone to the newsletter list. (And of course, you can unsubscribe there any time.)

I do appreciate you reading my blog stuff here, and best to your work and your writing! See you in the ether…

In a Rut? Travel to Malta and Marvel

Posted on by Tom Bentley


Here’s the gym where I work out lifting 1,000-pound stones

A successful method to realize that you are just a 10-minute-lifespan, buzzing gnat in the endless hallway of the universe: travel to Malta, whose recorded history stretches back a mere 5,000 years or so, and consider whether your dust might make it into any buildings of the 22nd century, like the dust of those in Malta’s buildings from the 13th or so. At least there are the Aperol Spritzes.

My inamorata Alice and I just returned from several weeks of house-sitting in Malta (with a short dip in the Mediterranean in Sicily), and goodness gracious, history hits you in the face there. Since Malta was invaded over time—that winnower of souls—by pretty much every culture you’ve heard of, and some you haven’t, the Maltese (and some of their occupiers) built massive fortifications and emplacements all over the island. Along with a mere 300 or so giant domed churches, being good Catholics and all.

As Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Twain, however, didn’t have to contend with Maltese drivers, prejudice towards whom, rather than vegetating, might save your life.

Travel Is Word Fertilizer

I’m writing about Malta because I’ll be writing more about travel to Malta later. The converse of travel’s fatality toward prejudice is its genesis toward creation, writing creation. Being in a place utterly foreign, even surreal, spurs considerations, concepts and captivations that the familiar dust-bunnies of your “regular” life can’t fathom. Those novelties are worth every inconvenience, like back-aching plane rides and heat and humidity that made our daily Maltese excursions a bit of a fever dream.

Or maybe it was all those Aperol Spritzes, a drink I’d long liked, but which seemed to loom out on advertisements on sandwich boards and windows in every cafe in Malta. (By the way, it seemed that every café in Malta, no matter if it was a cafe that could barely host a desk and a stool, had a full bar. They are civilized that way.)

So, keyboard, meet Malta. I must admit to being somewhat disheartened in that I didn’t land an assignment to write about Malta before I left, though I queried a number of publications. Some of them, like the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News, for whom I’ve written many travel pieces in the past, no longer solicit pieces on international travel. Other publications have cut back on freelance budgets, and often editors don’t answer queries if they aren’t interested, even for a place as fantastical as Malta.

But I’ll keep working the room a bit on a travel piece. And there’s always a chance that some flavor of Malta might slip into some upcoming fiction, even if the story isn’t set in Malta, but might need a provocative statue of a beheaded saint in it. Malta is very big on statues of saints.

Travel is good for everyone, but I think particularly good for writers. Even if no articles or stories based on a journey come to mind right away, seeds are planted. And they could grow into gigantic fortresses of the imagination.

Steal a Copy of Sticky


If you’d like to read an electronic/PDF copy of my memoir of my teenage wickedness, Sticky Fingers, and consider writing a review, check out this page.

At the least, I think my criminal exploits will amuse you. When they aren’t appalling you.

Self-Publishing Tools (and Fools)

Posted on by Tom Bentley


Since I feel like insulting someone right off the bat, I’ll start with me: the central self-publishing fool in this post is me, seen in the “fool me once, fool me twice” adage. I’ve published a number of books, so I should already know that the only straight lines in the process are the angled crooked ones. And I already knew that writing and publishing a book are separate and unequal tasks regards marketing a book, but I unworkably squooged those processes together for my latest book.

That’s Sticky Fingers, Confessions of a Marginally Repentant Shoplifter, starring me (well, the criminal high-school version of me). I wrote that book early in the pandemic, so we can agree it’s the product of a diseased mind. Before I ported it to Word, I wrote the book in Scrivener, which has splendid move-this-chapter-here-then-move-it-there tools, along with excellent note-taking and URL research storage and access,

Sticky went through a couple of professional edits, and a dandy cover design, detailed on this WriterUnboxed post. Those measures were expensive, so I decided to format the print version myself, using a snappy Word template downloaded from The Book Designer, again, a process I’d done before. Here’s where Sticky became sticky:

Rather than be exclusive to Amazon, I wanted to go “wide,” meaning broader distribution of the book to other markets. So I had to edit different HTML versions for Amazon and for Draft2Digital, with differing in-book links (Amazon hates when you link out to other retailers), and with slightly different front- and back-matter pages.

HTML Mini-hell

I’m no coder, but I can plunk slowly along, which I did, using the free HTML/ebook publishing tools, Calibre and Sigil. Plunk I did, because each of the online and download previewers at Amazon and Draft showed me little, niggling problems, and I do dislike being niggled.

And then I had a puzzling exchange with Amazon, who emailed me to tell me that something about my ISBN info from Bowker wasn’t right, but they couldn’t tell me specifically about it in an email, and that I had to call them instead. Turns out I forgot the subtitle colon in my Bowker version of the title, and had to add it there. Why I had to call Amazon for that remains a mystery.

And after Amazon had long approved of the cover I submitted, my “final” upload of the approved print manuscript with the approved cover didn’t meet their specs. Though it did before. So I had to have it adjusted by the cover designer, again, and it was accepted. My goodness. Something odd is also going on with the IngramSpark print distribution setup too, which I’ve had multiple email exchanges with them about, all over confusion over my various email addresses, nothing to do with the book—hope to hear the resolution today.

Pre-order Freebies

The upshot of all this head-scratching is, Sticky Fingers is available for pre-sale now, with fulfillment on July 21, chosen because that would have been my mom’s 100th birthday.

The pre-sale deal is this: if you send me a purchase receipt between now and July 21st, I’ll send you a link to download a free ebook or PDF version of my book, Flowering and Other Stories (which does have one story about teenage shoplifting, which won the National Steinbeck Center’s story contest in 1999). The free download will suggest you subscribe to my newsletter.

If subscribing’s not your order of pizza, just let me know, and I’ll send you the short story book directly. (By the way, that download delivery tool is from StoryOrigin, which has a lot of writer promotional tools, not being fools.)

The ebook versions of the memoir are available for pre-sale on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble,  Kobo and some other online retailers. Let me know if you like it!

Stay safe out there—the world seems to be getting weirder and weirder, and not in the good weird way.

Linking for Thinking

The eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life
“The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower. It’s shocking to realise how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life, merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness.”

How to Improve Your Happiness, According to Science
“Happiness, experts say, means accepting negative experiences, and having the skills to manage and cope with them, and to use them to make better decisions later.”

Feeling Stuck? Try Improving Your Productivity
“The pursuit of happiness is doomed to failure. One of the most obvious ways joy arises within human beings is when we create something. When we spend time on something and actually finish it, we get a sense of accomplishment and inner satisfaction. A feeling of joy that’s different from lying on the beach.”

The Perks of Being a Hot Mess
“It is a well-studied phenomenon in psychology that if a person is healthy and normal—not a narcissist or a sociopath—she tends to focus more on her worst characteristics than her best.

How To Become More Disciplined In Just Five Minutes Per Day
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

A Writer’s Orderly (?) Daily Processes

Posted on by Tom Bentley

You should have seen it before spring cleaning

When you read someone’s tweet about what they had for breakfast, you may have sighed and moved on. (Cereal today, by the way.) But in knowing that all writers are deranged in their particular ways, I have read with fascination how some writers work. Truman Capote said, “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down.” I guess you could balance a typewriter on your chest, but not easily.

At the risk of fascinating you, here’s a take on how a writer—this writer—delays, er, prepares for their writing day.

The Day Before and the Morning Of
If I need a glass of electronic water thrown in my face the next day, I’ll post a frantic, “You need to write this or die!” note in my Apple calendar to frighten me into action. Or further stupor.

Mornings begin early, before six, with coffee, blessed strong coffee. I used to read the news on my iPad while drinking the blessedness, but the news has been so wretched of late, I read email instead, which is more bitchy, less wretched. And sometimes it’s even fun. I don’t attempt to answer any business or personal email then, but just dip my toes in the waters to see if they are warm or cold.

Meditate, It’s Great
Every weekday, before 7am, for somewhere near 3.5 years, I have meditated for 20 minutes or so, seated in a comfy office chair, eyes closed, feet on the floor.

My Sanskrit is limited, so I repeat a series of words for an eight-breath count: One on the in-breath, Two on the out-breath, repeated four times, then Breathe In on the in-breath, Breathe Out on the out-breath, repeated four times, then the same counts on the words Peace, Strength, Calm, Wisdom. And then I start over again.

Because I am a cheapskate, I use the free timed sessions on Apple’s Mindfulness app, which let me add cheerful background birdsong or ocean sounds to the voiceover, mostly using the 20 minute one, which has a simple bell chime every minute for the last 10 minutes or so.

I also use the free (cheapskate) meditations on Christiane Wolf’s site; I’m partial to the 20 min. Mountain and the Mindfulness of Breathing mediations. I’m also partial to the 19-minute free (yep) Complete Meditation Instructions on the UCLA Health site, because I like to cuddle with the disembodied voice on the program. 

I always end my sessions with Dr. Weil’s 4-7-8 breath method, which seems a good sendoff to the meditation. (His recommendations for dark chocolate are good too.) I am anxiety’s child and frequently sup on depression’s cupcakes, but these sessions over the years have helped me settle in during sour times.

CYA (Covering Your Art)
Then it’s on to actual writing work. I have been pitching articles less and less these days while getting ready to publish my shoplifting memoir. Here’s a WriterUnboxed (great writing site!) detailing of my working with a book cover design team for a couple of months, showing the evolution and final outcome of the cover possibilities.

These past few weeks, I’ve been narrowing down the best (and most practical) approaches to marketing the book, which likely will include a pre-order, with an incentive to get a free download of Flowering, my book of short stories, guest posts on writing sites that will let me link back to the book, and reaching out to some local and wider press. There are scads of other minor marketing matters I’m sifting through.

If I don’t have actual deadlines (and deadlines do help spur the laggardly writer), around 4pm or so I’ll do some reading of whatever books I’m currently reading—right now, Edwidge Danticat’s book of short stories, Everything Inside, and the Lonely Planet Guide to Malta and Gozo, because me and my gal are planning on gozoing to Malta.

Exercise, almost always, at mid-day, whether a walk on the nearby slough trails, a walk through our hilly semi-rural neighborhood, or a walk on the beach, which is blessedly near enough to make it easy. A 30-minute tour on the recumbent bike inside if it’s not a walky day.

In the Wee Hours
And those are the hours between six and nine, because I get up early and need my beauty sleep. I rarely work during these hours, unless there is something truly pressing. I will check email once and might have to address something in the eve, but more often than not, it can wait. And because I know how you feel about those breakfast tweets, I won’t tell you what I have for dinner.

Weekend work? Once in a while, but often not. So, that’s it. I’ve written a number of books and had perhaps a thousand articles published, so these structures have worked for me.

Your heart undoubtedly stopped once or twice while reading this thrilling itinerary of a writer’s processes. I know it’s not like Victor Hugo’s habit of writing naked, or Honoré de Balzac’s 50 cups of coffee a day, but give me time: I could always start on those tomorrow.

Links to Thinks

Continuing a theme I’ve employed for a while, below are some articles that offer helpful ways to deal with the madness of our days, which these days seems to be the madness of our years.

Effortless Effort: Relaxing While Trying Hard
“You can cook, wash dishes, talk to people, answer email, without needing to be tensed all the time, without needing to exhaust yourself. Notice if your torso is tensed up, your jaw clenched, your temples tight. Then relax.”

The Four Enemies to a happy life and how to defeat them
“If anger, hatred, and fear come to dominate our lives, they will separate us from everything in life that gives us joy. In their passionate, fiery maw, there’s little room to do anything else, let alone be present with others.”

How to Put Life on Easy Mode
“Do things as simply as possible: We overcomplicate things. What’s the simplest way you can approach the things you have in front of you? How can you make decisions with ease, instead of overthinking it?”

Margaret Atwood Burns the Pages

Posted on by Tom Bentley

I will be the one person to praise Margaret Atwood’s work. Well, make that the millionth and one person—she’s that good. I have read five of her novels, but, rudely, she has published 40 or more, so it’s likely I’ll never catch up. And then there are the poetry books. Books of essays. Reams of awards. 

She’s even a prolific tweeter. Damn.

So, in talking about her latest collection of essays, Burning Questions, the words of which span the years 2004–2021, I likely won’t be shocking Atwood fans to say to say she is sharp, ironic, funny, lamenting, biting and delightful. But as the subtitle, “Essays and Occasional Pieces” implies, many of the works aren’t full-blown essays: many were from presentations or lectures, many are ecological observations with a political bent, many are breezy and self-effacing musings on her past publications.

Some of the breezy ones are a mere page and a half, but if you’ve swallowed much Atwood, her breezy can contain some whipping winds. Though it’s an easy target, in later pieces she’s unsparing of the Trump administration’s mocking of democracy, and incisive on the way our global institutions are bleeding the planet dry. 

To (and From) the Woods They Shall Go

I was fascinated to learn that her father was a forest entomologist, and that the family spent many months yearly in the woods, retreating to cities (notably Toronto) for the snowy winters. Thus her sense of the natural world (and the collision with the unnatural world) was seeded. But for writing that can sometimes have a doomsayer tone, she is yet credible in presenting that the world can still be saved, but it needs a stern hand, which is yet wavering.

There are also many warm and informative testimonials to other writers, such as Alice Munro, Ursula LeGuin and Barry Lopez. Some pieces seem slight, but it’s a collection, after all. Try to read any few of these without a smile and a nod to her wryness and her good sense. 

Jealous of Margaret Atwood’s continent-wide talents? Not me. (You can’t see my face, can you?)

[Note: I actually won an ARC of this book through Goodreads, after applying for many others. Funny to go through a book that’s just on the verge of publication, and find a fair amount of typos and a bunch of blank pages where the acknowledgments and index will be. Didn’t dilute the book’s strengths though.]

Memoir Maneuvers

I am moving along in publication prep of my memoir of my years of lunatic shoplifting during my high school days. I’ll soon see the refined cover (designed by Studiolo Secondari).  There will be a lot more info about that (including some free book downloads) and more in my monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Links to Thinks

Below, a few articles on psychic good cheer, something to cheer about these days.

A new method to boost your creativity gets rave reviews
“… stories are essential to humans making sense of the world. Interpreting the stories of everyday life leads thinkers to solve problems. Imagining new stories prompts novel inventions to weave those stories into reality. Creativity arises by envisioning ourselves as thoughtful agents in our own stories as well as others’.

5 Ways to Make Your Mornings Better, According to Science
“I suggest keeping movements and stretches so light in the morning that you can barely feel them initially,” Szado explains. “Continually focus on relaxing the muscle and letting the stretch relax to a point where you can’t feel it.”

HOW ONE MUNDANE CHANGE TO YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE CAN BRING POWERFUL HEALTH BENEFITS
“Routines have the power to help us manage our health and our work, home, and community lives. Two years after the pandemic changed everyone’s lives, people now have an opportunity to consider the routines they want to keep and the meaningful things they need in their daily lives to stay productive, happy, and healthy.”

12 Hard Things You Can Do Today
“There you have it, twelve activities that will make your day just a little bit worse, but in a good way. A skipped lunch here and a casual ruck plate there, and you’ll be on the path to freeing yourself from the tyranny of comfort. Your next step is a misogi, and soon you’ll be crying tears of pain on the regular. (That means it’s working.)”

George Saunders Saunters Through Your Writing Mind (Klara Too)

Posted on by Tom Bentley


First, a PSA (Publications Service Announcement): hie your mouse over to Story Club with George Saunders and subscribe, at the very least (as I am so far) to the free version of his newsletter. Mr. Saunders, the famed author of Lincoln in the Bardo and other acclaimed fictions, is the genial host for some exacting and often exhilarating voyages into what makes a story, what makes a scene, what makes a sentence.

Here’s just an appetizer, chosen without having to look far (because so much of what he writes is good), from one of his posts:

As we get better at choosing, we come to know the feeling of a good swerve vs. a bad one. We come to sense when we are working too hard to provide specific details and thus over-packing our story and making it feel unnatural; we come to sense when we skim past a place where we might want to linger. We learn the tiny mind-adjustments that cause good phrases to appear. We learn how our writing sounds when we are leaning too much on the analytical mind. We learn – we actually can learn – how to steer our minds toward an intuitive place from which it will surprise and delight and sometimes shock us.

George Saunders’ thoughts on writing are excellent. The comments on his posts (and his comments back) are excellent. The punctuation is excellent. Subscribe and thrive.

Klara’s Warm Suns

Sometimes, even through a lifetime of reading good writing, I forget that some books can cast a complete spell, can put you in a state of enchantment. And then, having been enchanted, can threaten that conjured warmth so that your emotional investment increases.

I recently finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and was spellbound. Ishiguro creates a world in an undated future, where children are often raised with companion robots (“AFs”) for security and comfort. But “robot” isn’t the right word: Klara, the protagonist of the tale, is a sentient being, endlessly curious about the ways of humans and ever adjusting her behaviors based on her fine-tuned observations.

We hear her thoughts immediately in the work, for she is the first-person narrator, and those thoughts, sometimes alarmed, sometimes amusing, are beguiling. Because Klara the artificial life-form makes many judgments that are somewhat off, that dislocation can be charming—and then alarming, as you become more aligned with her being, and fear for her and her mistakes.

Klara is purchased to be the companion for an ill child named Josie, whose serious condition is Klara’s deep concern. I won’t go into the murky and often tense, skirted-about structure of how children are raised and positioned (or demoted) for societal success in this odd world, because it gives away too much of the plot, but Ishiguro is masterful in pulling you, without argument, into Klara’s corner—you root for her, fear for her, shine with her triumphs.

Who’s the Robot Here?

The humans in the book, as humans ever are, are struggles in kindness, resentments, schemes and vanities. Klara’s discernments and confusions over human behavior, her puzzling and speculating, continue throughout the work, and my anxiety over her fate confirmed Ishiguro’s skill in making her real. Ethics and moral decisions are structures in the book, but not abstract notions.

I don’t want to give away any more about the work, but I’m jealous of his ability to invite you to an experience in empathy—what a gift to so steep a reader in these feelings. Ishiguro wrote Remains of the Day too, a book that deals with subtle feelings and constrained emotion. I have only seen the movie, which is good, but I want to read the book.

And back to Klara: even the cover got me, so I had to give it lead billing here. George, forgive me.

Links to Thinks

Following are two of my newest boozy pieces, plus a few articles on psychic good cheer. Cheers!

Finishing Touches

Spirits producers can’t let their products rest. At least completely rest, until they put them in a barrel that had some other spirit (or some odd concoction) in it. The practice known as barrel finishing is making new rounds, and sometimes with some unusual barrels. Published in March 2022 in Craft Spirits Magazine.

Irish Distilleries Will Have Their Whiskey Way with You

I haven’t made it to Ireland—yet. But many of their fine whiskeys have made their way to me. If you’re on your way to the fabled old sod, here are some of their distilleries that will amply host your thirst. Published in March 2022 on the fine spirits blog known as Flaviar.

This Year, Try Spring Cleaning Your Brain

Why It’s So Important to Remember That Online Trolls Are Lonely Weirdos

8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year

 

Flying on Other Writers’ Fiction

Posted on by Tom Bentley

Me and My Muse, Discussing Lunch

I’ll use the pandemic, politics and general pissiness for an excuse, but I haven’t written any fiction—other than some absurdist flash—in more than two years. That surprises and distresses me, because I love the stuff: I love its whooshing of you into another world, the anxieties and delights you can feel for certain characters, the textures of place and time.

I’ve had a good story idea in the wings for a couple of years, with notes and references, but type a word of narrative?

No.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped reading. If I stop reading, it’s time to put me down. That dog isn’t breathing.

I just finished Jonathan Franzen’s latest, Crossroads, a 600-page sprawler, though it’s set in a narrow phase of time, December 1971, and in a sometimes claustrophobic family situation in suburban Chicago, which at moments spirals into mania. Three of the family’s children are in high school or recently out, and two of them have a torqued involvement with a Christian youth group, as I also did during that period.

If you ever read The Corrections, another of Franzen’s novels, you know that he has more than small skills in depicting family dynamics, especially if those dynamics involve much self-deception, unfounded hopes, absolute lies, love, desire and a highlight reel of human folly. He goes into that ring and everybody gets a good workout; at times his depictions of some mental illness and drug-addled actions had my heart beating (maybe because of my own suppressed depression and drug addlement during the 70s, about which I’m writing a memoir now).

I can’t give the book five stars though—there were some long sections of backstory that plodded along for me, and that seemed curious in light of Franzen’s talents. And occasionally the whininess and entitlement of all of the main characters was grating, even though it served the plot. Plus, I think he could have shaved 100 pages off, and not missed a beat with his themes and story arc. Nonetheless, worth the read.

I am also a sweep of the second hand from finishing Einstein’s Dreams, a much more compact fiction work. Or works, as it is a collection of very short stories, vignettes even, on the nature of time, what it does to us, what we do with it, and how it slips away. Or in the case of several stories, stops.

There are 1905 title time stamps on all the stories, though none of the tales take that as a starting point. For Einstein, 1905 was his so-called “miracle year,” when he published 4 groundbreaking (clock breaking) papers. The great man himself is a peripheral character in a few of the stories, but most of them center on unnamed men or women or places and objects in Berne, Switzerland and elsewhere in the country.

For these men and women, they are subjects of memory leaks, jarring and soft movements through the past, a variety of parallel worlds and futures, baffling fulfillments or thwartings of their desires, bizarre time effects on bodies and minds.

The author, Alan Lightman, is a physicist himself, who naturally has poured the bucket of relativity theory over his own head more than once. I admire his use of lyrical and often economical language, and perhaps I absorbed some remote-starlight glimmer of the scientific dissection of time tricks, though I doubt it. No matter: There is a romantic wistfulness in many of the stories, which are often just three or four pages long. People meant well, but time got in the way. I loved this one.

And for the people of Ukraine, and of Europe, and to we Americans, Godspeed in the hell to come. Now is a time that should happen only in a parallel universe, and one from which we could step away.

Links to Thinks

I said in my last monthly newsletter that I was going to park all of the links to articles on psychic health and good cheer I’ve been curating only in that newsletter, but instead, fickle boy, I’m going to split them between there and the blog. Here are a couple:

HOW TO SHUT OFF YOUR BRAIN: 4 SCIENCE-BACKED TIPS TO STOP THINKING AND RELAX
“This silent internal dialogue is vitally important to our ability to problem solve, cultivate a sense of self, and understand our place in the world. But our inner coach can become our inner critic.”

How to make a difficult decision
“Avoiding a decision is in fact a decision. It can be tempting to kick a difficult decision down the road – but that itself is actually a decision, and probably the wrong one.”

Blog-etter or News-log, Why Not Both?

Posted on by Tom Bentley


Me wondering if my verbs would improve with looser shoes

For a while I’ve squinched up my face when I’ve been writing my blog posts. Not that they’ve tasted of rancid cheese, but that they haven’t felt fully satisfying. After letting that notion sit on my head for a month or two—I’m slow—I came up with it: it’s more the format that’s got a hitch in its giddyup, rather than the content. (I’m willing to have you argue the point that it’s the content that needs more caffeine.)

Rather than continue a monthly blog post that’s often an essay-style exploration of a single writing topic or writing concern native to me, I’m going to pen writing-related thoughts on a looser basis in the blog: shorter, possibly more personal, and at least a couple of times a month rather than monthly. I’m going to resume the monthly newsletter I suspended a while back and use that as the forum for longer posts.

In both, I’ll include links to my published pieces, which have been scant of late, but the curated links—which for a long while have dealt with maintaining mental balance and a broader perspective in pandemic times—will only be in the newsletter. I put some in here for old time’s sake, goopy sentimentalist am I.

In the main, the next few newsletter posts are going to deal with the past year and a half of writing a couple of books, and my current effort to set them up for self-publishing.

So, I would love for you to stick around here. Let me know if there are any topics (or tropics) you’d like explored—in a succinct, dazzling way, of course—in the blog.

And please join me on the newsletter list too. I am outlawing rancid cheese there as well.

Of course, if you’ve smelled old cheese in my posts for a while, you’re welcome to clean out the fridge by the way of the unsubscribe button. It’s been fun to have you—best success to your work and your subsequent cheese selections.

Links to Thinks

Chatting With the Bourbon Sasquatch
Me on a video chat with the Emperor of All Things Bourbon (AKA Steve Akley) on one of his many podcasts. I’m in my ’66 Airstream office, blathering about shoplifting, Las Vegas, and yes, whiskey.

Scientifically Speaking, Doing Nice Things for Others Could Help You Live Longer
“The beautiful thing about kindness is that it gets you outside of your own perception box, and it helps you to remove the focus from yourself and put it on other things in the world that help to provide meaning and purpose.”

5 Simple Principles That Will Help You Live Your Life On Purpose
“You don’t need to save the world by inventing an eco-friendly toilet that’s made of recycled microplastic and turns your poop into money for needy kids when you flush. Instead, it’s about making a difference, no matter how small.”

Positive Phrases for a Healthy Author Mindset
“And therein lies the premise of today’s post: using positive self-talk to improve your mindset and prospects as an author. Achieving this feat might seem unlikely now if you struggle with negative thoughts but, providing you have a healthy mental state in general, it’s possible. The key is learning how to identify and dispute your irrational thoughts. Turning the tide is a challenge but you can overcome it with a few key phrases.”

100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying
“17 – Don’t be weird about how to stack the dishwasher.”

The Year of Unmagical Thinking (with apologies to the great Joan Didion, who died today)

Posted on by Tom Bentley


Photo by Jan Kopřiva from Pexels

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … well, at least that’s half right. This year, which promised to be a rebound year, turned out to be stinky cheese, with less cheese, more stinky. No need for a detailed recount: virus hells, climate catastrophes, and democracy in peril are pain’s banquet menu enough.

On the home front, there were the deaths of friends, plus a second hip replacement and some other medical maladies to remind me that though I didn’t send in an application to be an old man, the HR recruiters kept calling.

I did get some articles published that I liked, and I’m in the middle of another edit—before I send it on to another editor—on my lunatic years of shoplifting as a high school miscreant memoir. I also have a proposal out for the equally loony 30+ years of correspondence (including them mailing me many odd objects) between me and the Jack Daniel’s Distillery. That’s two fingers, poured neat.

So, in Beckett’s immortal words from The Unnamable, “… you must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on” and from Worstward Ho, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

So, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy Festivus. And pie, lots of pie.

Goodwill to all (excepting the evil, and you know who you are). Let’s make the next year better.

Linkability

Pretty scant on the publishing front for me this past month, but here’s one fun piece from the tail end of November:

Characters in Motion (Keep Readers in Motion)
How using the structure of a road trip, with encounters with unexpected characters, cultures and places, can work well for novel development. I provide explanations of brief examples, including my own. (Well, my own isn’t that brief, but hey, it’s my essay.) Published by the fine folks at WriterUnboxed in November 2021.

And I didn’t do a lot of article curating either (what did I do?), but here’s one, to keep your brain’s hips in shape:

Meditation’s Anti-aging Benefits

This Writer Turkey Has Bionic Drumsticks

Posted on by Tom Bentley

This Thanksgiving, I cut all my vegetables using the leading leg of my walker

A quickie here just to express my gratitude: I’m still reading, still writing, still walking. Well, the walking part is more complicated, because a few weeks ago I had a hip replacement, and because I like balance, this is on my right leg, complementing the hip replacement I had two years ago on the left.

Because I often played pickup basketball, often full court, often on asphalt for 40+ years, I had plenty of wear and tear. Or make that tears, to various joints. That has resulted in multiple surgeries on multiple limbs.

The consequence is that the old gray mare ain’t what she used to be, but she still gets around. For instance, last week I graduated from a walker to a cane. Soon, I’ll drop the cane and wobble about on my own. After that, god and my titanium implants willing, back to my bike and my hikes.

But I really am thankful that I’m lucky enough to get the medical care I need, and that I can afford to make interesting cocktails on the weekends.

And if you want to read an amusing tale about a surgery that wasn’t exactly on one of my limbs, take a gander at this: Vasectomy, the Unkindest Cut of All

I hope all of you had a happy Thanksgiving, and that the holidays to come are warm, safe and stirring.

Linkability

Here are a couple of my recent articles, followed by some from other writers, mostly on the mental health front, and which have been helpful in these unhelpful times.

A Dazzling Invitation to Johnnie Walker Whiskeys Opens in Edinburgh

The Johnnie Walker folks have built in Edinburgh what can only be described as a whisky temple: eight stories of history, tastings, consultations and drams. Many drams. Published in November 2021 on the fine spirits blog known as Flaviar.

A Wiseguy Loses His Wisdom Teeth

I had a spectacular misunderstanding at the dentist many years ago. Let’s just say I became a little, just a smidge, paranoid. Published in October 2021 in An Idea (by Ingenious Piece).

Other Writer’s Posts

4 Simple Practices to Help Train You to Really, Truly Live in the Moment
“Here’s the thing about living in the moment: It’s not as complicated as you might think. You’re not looking to eliminate distractions because, well, you can’t. You’re just recognizing when you’re pulled away and then re-gathering without judgment or self-criticism.”

On the Hidden Value of Hard Things
“The Stoics warned us to never look at outcomes. Just like the illustration at the top, look at your next step, not at the finish line — otherwise, you risk slipping on that banana peel.” 

33 Ways To Be More Selfless… And Experience Greater Happiness
“Take a moment to wonder what the person who just slighted, upset or offended you is going through. It’s easy to judge, but a moment in their shoes – even if it’s just imagined – is the first step to cultivating empathy. Broadening your perspective is a great gift to yourself and others.”

7 Tips to Help You Develop a Quiet Mind
“Do not try to get rid of thoughts. Simply attempting to push thoughts out of your head almost never works and results in over-efforting, which is the opposite of the desired state.”