Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Predetermined personification of pulchritude
Storytelling Saturday is a beautiful thang
Once upon a time...
One of my all-time favorite subway-riding pastimes is watching the make-up girl (MUG, to me) in full effect. She is a local Astoria gal, somewhere between 21 and 24, appears to be either Italian or Greek, with long brown hair and big green eyes. Far more impressive than her physical beauty is the skill with which she puts on her make-up. As the N train rumbles and rocks from station to station, the MUG is fully capable of dashing on her mascara, blush, lipstick, and eyeliner with the precision of a goddamned micro-surgeon. Ultimately, of course, this skill is quite superfluous since she does not need an ounce of make-up to look appealing. MUG is a natural knockout with a capital “N,” and like so many of my “regular” train-riding crowd, I have a tutorial about life all prepared for her. Here’s how my subterranean soliloquy would start: “Comrade, by covering your face with that toxic, tested-on-animals crap, you are subconsciously trying to live up to some male ideal of what a woman should look like. However, you are chasing shadows. You can never fulfill this artificial image, so why even try?”
Consider the concept of “beauty” parlors...as if beauty was a commodity to be bought and sold. Ladies like the MUG spend endless time and countless dollars trying to satisfy society’s predetermined personification of pulchritude. They’re told to “dress up” in order to get approval. Also, there’s the evolutionary factor to consider. Our bodies were simply not designed to have chemical-laden make-up and perfume and cologne poured, sprayed, doused, and rubbed upon ’em.
(John Lennon sez: “We make her paint her face and dance.")
There are something like half a million Americans employed to do nothing but style hair and paint nails, and this country spends $20 billion a year on cosmetics. Imagine how swell our nation would be if there were half that many people and half that much moola working towards justice, an equitable social order, and a vegan cheese that melts like real cheese.
Who else wants to spin a yarn?
The comments section awaits...
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It’s almost November: So, click on “more” below to learn about an opportunity to spread your novel-writing wings.
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Mudge sez:
I’d like to invite the Expendable NaNovelists to participate in a contest we’re having in my writer’s group. The prize is publication.
I propose that everyone who is a member of Austin Writer’s Block (AWB), and who participates in this year’s NaNoWriMo, should enter him/erself into a contest where we as a group would publish the winner’s novel through a print-on-demand (POD) service called Lulu.com.
How would this work? First and foremost, there is NaNoWriMo itself. It’s the write-50,000-words-in-30-days event we’ve discussed in group before. That’s the easy part. ANYone can write 50,000 words in 30 days! Piece o’ cake.
Second, the AWB participants in NaNoWriMo would pony up $25 by 10/31/06 into a prize fund. This amount would entitle the AWB member to have his/er project (novel, short story collection, anything fictional not fact-based) considered for the Big Prize: Publication!
Here are the conditions for participation:
—must complete at least 50,000 words between 11/1/06 and 11/30/06, and be certified by NaNo as a “winner.” If someone who paid the entry fee doesn’t complete the 50,000 words, that person is still on the decision-making committee. Their novel or whatever isn’t in the pool, but their opinion’s still valid.
—just making it past the 50,000-word mark doesn’t mean a book is finished∑if anyone needs help and support in the finishing-it-up process after reaching the 50,000-word hurdle, there’s always NaNoFiMo...National Novel Finishing Month (http://www.nanofimo.org) from 12/1 to 12/31! It won’t count against your eligibility for the publication prize.
—must agree to provide ALL other paid-up participants with a copy of his/er manuscript in completed form, regardless of how many more words this means s/he has added between 11/30/06 and 12/31/06, at our first meeting of 2007 (Tuesday, 1/2 or 1/9).
—everyone on the committee would read each entry by Tuesday, 2/27/07. All participants get two votes to cast as they like...one for their own eligible book, one for someone else’s; two for their own eligible book; one each for two other winners’ books. No half votes. Simple majority rules; for example, if there are 5 eligible books and 10 members of the committee, there are 20 votes to spread around, so if one book gets 5 votes, three books get 4 votes, and one book gets 3 votes, the 5-vote book is the winner. In case of a tie, all results tossed out and a new vote taken until a simple majority is reached.
—once we all agree on a winner, we begin to edit the winner’s book! There’s a group for this, too: “National Novel Editing Month” from 3/1/07 to 3/31/07 (http://www.nanoedmo.org/) to guide us all in this process. We’d all have to agree in advance that any critiques offered be constructive in intent, constructive in phrasing, and ENTIRELY OPTIONAL for the winning writer to follow or not! IT IS STILL HIS/ER BOOK!! If we liked it enough to vote it in, we’d better like it enough to see our names on it no matter what.
—everybody who paid their $25 and posted at least some word count during NaNo will be listed as “Editorial Board Members of Austin Writer’s Block” in the final printed book.
—the prize kitty would provide funds to complete the publishing process, create a real, honest-to-gosh paperback book, and provide the winner with 5 copies, each committee member with one copy, and some sample books we can send to reviewers, to book buyers at local stores, pay for a professional press release to be written and sent out on PRWeb, etc etc.
This book will be very different from others out there. We can use that to publicize the hell out of the winning book. Austin loves its weirdness and independent spirit. We’re a group of local writers battling for attention for one of our group, fighting the odds and following a dream; we’re scrappers who completed a grueling 30-day novel bootcamp and agreed to crown a winner whose book we’re publishing to professional standards. Can you just see the Sunday Statesman piece, the Chronicle profile, sheese why not even Texas Monthly or Austin Now having the winner on its interview show? We’re perfect copy for a slow news time. We’re perfect examples of Austin’s maverick spirit.
We could SELL this jewel.
And about that: let’s think wild, wild fantasies of success come true, and we sell a few thousand copies of the winner’s book. Obviously, the winner gets most of the money. But shouldn’t the group have maybe $1 a book to finance next year’s contest, or a trip to Natural Bridge Caverns, or one helluva binge downtown and a limo ride home for us all? Or perhaps tickets to Austin for remote members to come play with us?
I’ve researched a lot of places that do POD publishing. Most have some sort of up-front costs to prepare the text file for printing, etc etc. I think Lulu.com is the best option for self-publishers like we would be because there are no, that’s zero, up-front costs.
There are several packages Lulu offers to authors, with various very very modest price tags involved, that get the book listed in the Library of Congress (essential for copyright protection), indexed in the ISBN database (essential to sell in bookstores) and suchlike. These modest costs would be part of the prize-kitty payment to create the book.
Anyone who wants to see what I’ve been talking about, start here: http://tinyurl.com/klhv6
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
