Will free mean cheap?

I haven't posted for a while, but it hasn't been because I didn't have any ideas. I've had ideas that I wanted to share, but I haven't had the time or the energy or enough of either at the same time to pull it all together.

Today, I have a day off, and it's sunny, and I can think for more than five seconds at a time.

And time is the theme today. Time and money (just like the old saying).

One thing that got me riled up this week was a post on Seth's Blog. The post is about Chris Anderson's new book Free, which I guess is about the new economy where everything is free. (This is the upside or the downside of the Internet age, depending on how you look at it.). In this post, Seth Godin is responding to Malcolm Gladwell's comments about the book..

I'll confess right now that I haven't read Mr. Anderson's book or Mr. Gladwell's article, but one thing in Mr. Godin's blog post got me pretty steamed:

In a world of free, everyone can play.

This is huge. When there are thousands of people writing about something, many will be willing to do it for free (like poets) and some of them might even be really good (like some poets). There is no poetry shortage.

Always picking on the poets!

On the one hand, I agree that it's great that everyone can play, and everyone can get their work out. Everyone can share, and we all know that sharing is good.

But if everything is free, how does anyone get paid? Or is all this sharing in the status of hobby? Because at the end of the day, you probably need to eat. I know that I need to eat. So if everything is free, you need a day job or you need to be married to someone who has a day job or you need a patron.

If everything is free, there are no longer any professionals, and I guess that's what bugs me about the example: The assumption that Professional Poet is an oxymoron. I'd just been thinking earlier in the day that maybe as poets we need to respect ourselves a little more, be open about what we do, instead of mentioning it out of the corners of our mouths.

I could go on and on and on, but this is my day off from my day job and I'd like to work on some poems, so I'm going to try to get off my soapbox without tripping now.

Thanks for listening. Feel free to share your thoughts.

How do you track submissions?

Recently, I've spoken with a poet who doesn't track them at all. I've heard from people who use Excel, and I've also heard from someone who uses index cards, a system he started before the digital age. It works for him. For me, it would get heavy.

In my new video, I show my (super-simple) solution. I also include a bad joke and some flying SASEs.

Take a look, and let me know how you track which poems are where, what's rejected, and what gets accepted.

What I learned from Pie Week

Pie and writing?

I thought about this as I was rolling out for yet another crust. (The crust might be my favorite part.)

At the beginning of the week, I'd envisioned brushing up on my skills, getting better than I've ever been and turning out perfect rounds of dough. Pies as art.

I tried every trick I knew and several I'd just seen on TV, but quite a few of my efforts required a little patching. Or a lot of patching. Sometimes the dough would collapse just as I was putting it into the pie pan. Not the brilliance I'd imagined.

It reminded me how often I expect to be good at something right away—not that I have any evidence to back that up. Pie and writing—I want to be good at both.

And I tend to hope that my poems will be successful right away—say what I want to say, be delicious, get accepted, stuff like that.

When I start to feel disappointed, I should probably make another pie, and remember how much work it takes to get to where I want to go.

Pie week: The finale

Last night, I made an early summer favorite: lemon tart with lavender ice cream.

Thus ends Pie Week (although we still have some pie left).

Pie week, days 4 and 5

I'm behind on pie posts, but here's the update.

On Wednesday, Daniel made a Bing cherry pie. Sweet!

On Thursday, Claire made pumpkin pies, partly for a school project (something about the Columbian exchange).

I apologize that I don't have pictures.

Day 3 involves chocolate

Tarte aux aubergines de la comtesse Lisa

Don't be fooled. While the (French tart) cookbook has a story about Chateau de Blanville, this is a pizza—with tomatoes, garlic, eggplant, chevre, thyme, and pine nuts.

Tarte au chocolat infuse au basilic

Yes, the tart has basil in it—along with a lot of bittersweet chocolate. And the sauce is grapefruit, rosemary, and honey. I was a little concerned about pairing grapefruit with chocolate, but it was delicious!

Pie-palooza: Day 2

Tomato and fresh mozzarella.

Blackberry.

How long can we keep this up? I don't know!