Tag Archives: dream of things

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No Resolutions

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17 ny resolutions copyby Mike O’Mary

I don’t make resolutions on New Year’s Eve anymore.

Now before you put me in the “Scrooge” category, allow me to add that it’s not because I think resolutions are a bad thing.  For the most part, I think they may be a good thing.  They give people goals, and goals help us live our lives in an orderly fashion.

But we also need hope, and my concern is that too many goals–especially goals in the form of New Year’s resolutions–can have a bad affect on hope.

All too often, we rush blindly from one goal to another or from one project to another without really examining what we’re doing.  I’ve been guilty of this on more than one occasion.  I love to take on household projects–paint the dining room, build some new shelves in the basement, refinish that old table–all of which give me some degree of pleasure and satisfaction, but all of which, if taken on in quick succession, ultimately serve as distractions and diversions from our real purpose here.

What is our real purpose here?  I won’t pretend to be able to answer that question.  But I suspect that our purpose–and whatever meaning there is to our lives–is something we have to discover for ourselves.  Some think meaning comes through the pursuit of knowledge.  Others feel art and self expression hold the meaning of life.  Still others feel that to leave behind a healthy, well-adjusted child is no small feat.

Whatever the meaning of life may be, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to do with a fresh coat of paint on the dining room wall.  Not, as I said, that there’s anything wrong with doing a little home improvement–I personally find it relaxing at times–but we have to guard against letting such projects take on lives of their own.

So I don’t make resolutions any more.  I’ve got enough things I’m trying to do in my life without putting more pressure on myself.  Instead, what I do is to sit down sometime before the end of the year??and hopefully, a few times during the year, too–and think about why I’m here and what I’m doing with my life.  I figure that if I keep working on home improvements, I’m eventually going to have a pretty nice house.  When that time comes, I want to make sure there’s a pretty nice human being to occupy that house.

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things and of the Note Project, a campaign to make the world a million times better by inspiring participants to write 1 million notes of appreciation. “No Resolutions” is taken from his books Wise Men and Other Stories.

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What’s Your Favorite Writing Instrument?

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IBM_5150_PCby Mike O’Mary

Joe Wallace’s FZ post on January 4 (and the Dave Allen post it linked to) offered some good, common sense advice about early adoption of new technology. The consensus was to wait for later versions of new devices like the iPad.

I’m doing my best to wait, but I get a little antsy when I see other people typing on cool little touchscreens while I’m still lugging around my 30-pound Kaypro portable sewing machine computer. (I keep thinking it was a portable sewing machine because that’s how big the case was.)

Actually, the Kaypro is long gone. (Remember the Simpsons episode where Marge recounts how they got their Kaypro after someone threw it off an expressway overpass? That was me up on the overpass.) But I do have a two-year-old laptop that by today’s standards is already considered clunky. I’ll wait to replace it though. In the meantime, I’ve taken to picking up a legal pad and a smooth-flowing pen more often. It brings back fond memories of the times I would sit up late into the night with paper and pen, writing things out in long hand before moving to the typewriter to type them up. Later, I bought one of the first IBM PCs. No hard drive…just two 5.25″ floppy drives. One to run Wordstar, the other to save my files. And one of those lovely green-on-black monochrome monitors. For a whopping $2,500! And that was in 1985 dollars. I used that thing for almost 10 years before finally moving to something with a hard drive. (If nothing else, the original IBM PCs were durable. I still use it to crush rocks.)

Twenty-six years and countless PCs and laptops down the line from that first PC, I now sit here with my wireless keyboard and trackball mouse, creating literary masterpieces (and the occasional blog post) while trying to maintain proper wrist position so I can ward off carpel tunnel syndrome. I also try to look away from my giant color monitor periodically so I can retain just enough eyesight to still see more than a blurry image of myself in the mirror in the morning. More reasons to stick to pen and paper.

So here’s my suggestion for today: Put aside your laptops and iPads for a little while. Try a non-electronic writing instrument for a change of pace. Personally, I’m digging the very economical Signo pen from Uniball and Second Nature recycled legal pads from Tops. Stop by sometime and I’ll give you a preview of next week’s blog post. In long hand.

Mike O’Mary is founder Dream of Things and of the Note Project, a campaign to make the world a million times better by inspiring participants to write 1 million notes of appreciation. Coming March 20, 2011.

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Story Circle Network and She Writes

by Mike O’Mary

Writing used to be a solitary profession. You sat in a room by yourself, typing away on your typewriter or computer, sometimes long into the night. If you were lucky, you toiled away in an upstairs room instead of in the basement. And if you were really lucky, maybe you were part of a local community of writers, and you could get together to talk about writing, books and publishing opportunities with other edu-ma-cated types. That’s if you were fortunate enough to have enough writers nearby to form a community. The key word was “local.”

Not anymore. Writing is still a solitary profession when it comes to actually doing the work. But with the Internet, it’s easier than ever to be part of a community of writers. Heck, I think I belong to 40 or 50 online writing communities. Sometimes it seems like there are more writers than readers. (Fortunately, most writers are also capable of reading. Most of them.)

For starters, there’s a great community of writers who frequent Freelance-Zone.com. On top of that, FZ provides you with a pretty comprehensive list of writers groups. Just click on the “‘Writers Groups by State” tab up there on the right. You can also find lots of writers groups on LinkedIn (including Freelance Nation).

Beyond that, there are new communities for writers popping up all the time. Two communities I’ve been recommending to women writers are Story Circle Network and She Writes.

scnlogoThe Story Circle Network is dedicated to helping women share the stories of their lives and to raising public awareness of the importance of women’s personal histories. SCN carries out its mission through publications, a website, classes, workshops, writing and reading circles, and woman-focused programs. SCN founder Dr. Susan Albert tells me that they will soon be inviting submissions for the May Sarton Memoir Prize, a new prize to be awarded annually.

50556_175987360307_548556_nShe Writes describes itself as “a community, virtual workplace, and emerging marketplace for women who write.” They currently offer support and advice for novice and experienced writers. Future plans are to connect writers directly to readers “in a marketplace distinguished by its commitment to the production and distribution of high quality content.”

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things and of the Note Project, a campaign to “make the world a million times better” by inspiring participants to write 1 million notes of appreciation. Coming March 20, 2011.

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The Law of Comparative Advantage

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Hand cleaning blackboardby Mike O’Mary

A couple of Saturdays ago, I met with some high school kids and talked about writing. I told them that if they know how to write, they will always have a job.

I used to believe that. Now I’m feeling like I should have qualified my advice. (Maybe something like “In between layoffs, there’s a good chance you’ll find some form of work if you know how to write well.”)

One of them asked me when I decided to become a writer. I told them that when I was a senior in high school, our English teacher gave us a writing assignment. I wrote a story about growing up in Louisville. It was a mix of humor and pathos, and that’s what I’ve been writing ever since.

It was a nice simple answer, but not the whole truth. The truth is that although I could write in high school, I was better at math. I took six years of math in four years of high school, and went to college with the intention of being in math major. Then during my freshman year of college, I found myself struggling through a calculus class (a class I had already taken in high school!). The turning point for me came during class one day when I wasn’t getting it, even though I was paying close attention and taking lots of notes. I turned to the student next to me  and realized he wasn’t paying attention at all. He was doodling. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m calculating the density of a star.” The next day, I became an English major.

But that’s not all of the story. I still had the math bug in me. So I also studied economics and became an English/economics double-major. Along the way, I learned about the Law of Comparative Advantage, which is when I really decided to be  a writer.

The Law of Comparative Advantage is usually discussed by economists as it relates to international trade, but it applies to individuals, too. I sum it up this way: if you are good at math and good at writing, the greater good of society will be served if you do the one where you have the greatest “comparative advantage” relative to other people. In my case, I’m good at math…certainly better than average…but not enough better than average to stand out compared to people who calculate the density of stars while doodling. On the other hand, I’m also good at writing (not as good, in my opinion, as I am at math, but I have a bigger comparative advantage in writing compared to the average writer than I do in math compared to the average mathmetician.

I don’t mention all of that to brag about my skills in math or writing. Believe me, there are people who are WAY better at both (either?) than I am. But the Law of Comparative Advantage helped me understand and feel good about my career choice. Even so, when the high school kids asked me about my decision to be a writer, I took creative license and told them about my high school English teacher rather than about the Law of Comparative Advantage. I hope they’ll forgive my white lie — even as they stand in line at the unemployment office twenty years from now cursing my name.

Perhaps if they write well enough, they’ll at least be able to barter for some calculus.

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things, an book publisher and online retailer.

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It’s an Ambiguous Life

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10 Note iStock_000004513105smallby Mike O’Mary

Just about everybody’s favorite movie during the holidays is “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Everybody includes me. However, I think Frank Capra may have slightly off the mark. Sometimes it’s a wonderful life. But most of the time, it’s pretty ambiguous.

Oh, sure. Things turn out pretty well for Jimmy Stewart in the movie. But sad to say, for most of us, things would not be so cut and dry.

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like without you? What it would be like if you had never been born?

Maybe you think you’ve made the world a better place. But maybe your neighbor–the one who doesn’t like your dog and thinks you should mow your grass more often–maybe he liked things just fine before you came along. You see, value judgments–is life wonderful, or does it suck–are subjective. And subjectivity implies ambiguity.

With this in mind, I recently sat down to list all the pros and cons in my life. And frankly, I got a little depressed. For every good thing I had done in my life, there was something I shouldn’t have done–or something I should have done and didn’t. But it doesn’t hurt to sit back and think about the things you’ve done that made you feel good about yourself. And the things you’ve done that hurt your self esteem. Then do more of the former and less of the latter. And above all, be alert. Good things happen every day.

Like I said, it’s an ambiguous life. But it can still be wonderful. And in the end, we often find that ambiguity and wonder are not mutually exclusive.

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things, and author of Wise Men and Other Stories, a collection of holiday-related essays.

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Facing Our Fears as Writers

iStock_000010261391XSmallby Mike O’Mary

Here’s a great quote on writing for you: “When you write about something more important than your fears, the story will come.”

That’s an excerpt from a recent post by John Rember about writing memoir, but it applies to all types of writing. Rember goes on to say, “Writers often face what looks like a bleak choice: either resurrect unpleasant memory, or focus on happier times and risk writing stories that are superficial and contrived and short on meaning. In a memoir, it’s hard to hit the depth of emotion and wisdom you want to convey without including seminal events. Some of those seminal events are going to be dark and disturbing or full of shame and embarrassment. It won’t always come easily or happily, but once it’s on the page, it will have the capacity to deepen the experience of your reader. So…deal with it. And the way you deal with it is scene by scene, story by story, until you’ve got it finished on the page. Finish it well enough, and it can’t hurt you anymore.”

For the entire post on writing memoir, click here. And when you have written something that isn’t “superficial and contrived and short on meaning,” please submit it to Dream of Things.

Dream of Things was founded in 2009 with the intent of publishing anthologies of creative nonfiction that will fill the gap between popular anthologies that publish stories that are “short and sweet” (sometimes so saccharine-sweet they are hard to swallow), and the Best American Essays series, which are typically quite a bit longer. The goal for Dream of Things anthologies is to publish writing that is not short and sweet, but short and deep. With depth comes authenticity. The result is stories that are easier to swallow because they are authentic, and easier to digest because they average 1,250 words in length. Dream of Things is currently seeking submissions for anthologies of creative nonfiction on a variety of themes, including stories of forgiveness, coffee shop stories, travel writing, life in the modern workplace, Internet dating, and others. See the Workshop section of dreamofthings.com for more details, including payment information and submission guidelines.

Mike O’Mary is founder of Dream of Things, a book publisher and online retailer.