December 6, 1999

Happy Holidays Everyone:

How was your 1999? Mine was pretty routine - not that this is a bad thing.

I looked through my calendar and notes for the year and my most significant events that would be worth talking about in a holiday newsletter were my trip to L.A. to see my hairbands from the 80s, my trip to Las Vegas with my girlfriends and my adventure(s) seeing The Phantom Menace. All these tales have already been told here.

This leaves one, unfortunately sad story, about how enormously unsuccessful my manuscript has been.

HOW NOT TO SUCCEED IN PUBLISHING

Way back in Pam NewsLetter ("PNL") v. 2 (92) I jokingly confessed that I was writing a novel. I came clean in PNL v. 3 (93) that I really was writing a novel that was supposedly almost finished. It remained almost finished until about August 97. In the interim several friends read it for me and gave me feedback and I did lots of re-writing, in particular, chopping out about 60 pages from the beginning.

WRITING LITTLE FRIDAY

I suppose I should describe my writing habits. I have wanted to write a novel since I was in the second grade and I think my mother would back me up on this. I even remember a couple that I started back then. One had to do with these kids who ran away from home and ended up in the hills roasting apples over the fire. The other had to do with these girls who had horses (what else does a second grader come up with?). But through the years I never had the discipline and it was always something I was going to start tomorrow.

When I moved into my own apartment in Oregon (May 92) I lived alone, had no friends, no money, no cable TV and I realized there would never be an easier time in my life to write and that's how LITTLE FRIDAY got started. (Incidentally, LITTLE FRIDAY is about hairbands in Hollywood in the 80s.)

Since then, most significantly, I got married, but I also have a life and I go to movies and lectures and visit with family and friends and have digital cable with about 400 channels, and run errands, oh, and go to work, and do the things we all do -- so writing gets squeezed into morning bits and weekends. I should also mention that I'm not particularly disciplined and there have been long periods (like now) where I don't write much at all except perhaps a page or two in my notebooks in the mornings.

I'm not one of those people that you sometimes read about who, in order to make time to write, simply cuts back on sleep and gets up at 2:30 am to grind out several thousand words before going to work in the morning. If I manage to drag my butt out of bed at 5:30 am I feel like I deserve a medal.

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REGARDING THE PHOTOGRAPHS:I have had a number of requests for captions on the photos. This year, I raided the old photos. The pic on this page was taken Dec. 95 in Orange County when Bob and I got engaged. Photographer: Jim Hughes.

*Poison, "Cry Tough"

Posted: 12.9.99
http://www.pamrentz.com/pampage/xmas/v9/p1.html