Gurus #19: Patricia Bishop: bringing an important ancient art back to the lost modern world

I first came across Patricia Bishop through the WWOOF organization (Willing Workers on Organic Farms). She hosts people who travel around the world wanting to learn about organic farming, and I applied to be one of her wwoofers when I was moving back to Canada from Europe. I had heard that they were growing flax and making linen on her farm, and as a historical author, this rare and wonderful find in the modern world fascinated me!

Well, schedules didn't work out, but when I moved here, I kept hearing about Patricia around the community, and much to my delight she met me for coffee, and subsequently involved me in some other adventures (she has so many initiatives, helping and caring for so many people, that I've totally lost count).  Anyway, I've been inspired ever since.

At left you can see a picture of Patricia speaking at an event where she explained the results of an absolutely incredibly flax and linen initiative in Nova Scotia.

In 2013, Patricia was involved with leadership in agriculture and was interested in sustainable development. She noticed that there were a lot of nettles on her farm and instead of regarding them as an unwanted weed, she wanted to learn how to make good use of them. She started thinking about nutraceuticals or maybe compost tea.

Richard Donald was a member of her Community Shared Agriculture group and he said "I'm working with a group of professors at NSCAD college about natural fabrics and dyes and maybe nettles could be part of that."

Other NSCAD members included:
Francis Dorsey, who taught natural dyes
Gary Markle, teaching sustainable fashion, but with the frustration there is absolutely nothing local available.
and Lesley Armstrong taught weaving were profs at NSCAD is a natural dye expert

These connections came to the project through the academic lens of sustainable, local clothing. She doesn't remember exactly how everyone got connected, but a small little group of people in 2013 harvested and retted nettles from Taproots Farm to see what would be possible to do with them.

Francis was going to play with leaves about dyes.
Pia the local weaver was there too.

They had fun with a little trial batch of stinging nettle fibre. They hosted on the farm a conference for dye experts and other experts from around the world, and about 50 people in the room talked about natural fibres.
And THAT is when Jennifer Green enters -- she gave an presentation of her masters' thesis about history and flax.


TedX Talk: The future of fashion is local.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lbhej3eJPA

Jennifer Green had a dream to revitalize flax and linen in Nova Scotia
she moved to Belgium to work in fashion designing

I just want to grow clothes" - Patricia

Claire Gagnon, Sow To Sew Conference, NSCAD University, September 27, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLfXUIhXsU



Patricia asked Jennifer to take longline flax from Patricia's flax that Jennifer spun by hand (she is a master hand spinner and weaver) to Belgium.
Patricia hired Jennifer to

Jennifer put together google map of linen

P + J arranged to go on tour of linen in Belgium and to machinery companies to find out about breaking, scutching, and hackling.

Jennifer ended up applying to NSCAD and moved back to Canada and has continued along on this project.

In 2015, Taproot Farms, which she runs with her husband Josh Oulton, started to grow flax plants.

Making flax into fibre is quite a process, and Patricia and Josh studied it all up: how to rett the flax, how to scutch it, and finally, how to spin it.

Lesley Claire and I thought about how they're going to make this project work. For a YEAR.
Claire's youtube video.

With the investors fronting up the funds, Patricia got some further grants hired some staff. From left to right in the photo below between Patricia and Josh, they are Rhea, Abi, Gabriel, and Pia. absent: Marilyn Rand and Lesley Armstrong.

Lesley has a weaving mill and studio in Lunenberg. but it can be only be used in summer months

She hired Rhea Hamlin to do a marketing plan for our machines. She then worked a season of field trials of growing different varieties of flax, and then seh was involved in testing the prototypes of the breaking, hackling, and scutching machines that Patricia and Mike Pickett had designed from the Belgian-gathered knowledge.
Rhea then helped to set up and run the spinning mill that had been made in Belfast Mini Mills in PEI. They usually produce minimills to make animal fibres but trials proved that they could work for bast fibres too.

There are two types of fibres

The two original goals were
seed to shirt
grow and spin longline linen
longline linen is special because it's higher quality
in the industry


With flax harvested and piling up in the "fibre shed," as they call it, and prototype machines ready to go, Patricia decided it was time to make stuff. Turns out, her reputation is such that a whole bunch of people jumped in to invest in this community effort when she came up with a plan. They would make stuff for twelve months, and investors would get one item per month. At least, that was the plan.

They managed to get 12 investors to raise $20,000 for the project.


Abi Hodson was a recent hired to do an internship in Sept 2017. Fashion Show in Halifax for a fashion incubator and displayed our flax stuff and when we drove home from it she said she'd like to continue with it and the only way we can do that is if we do a community shared linen model.

<catch image of Abi's card>

She brought enthusiasm, delight, and joie de vivre to her role.

Gabriel Soligo came on to help with a lot of the spinning and knitting.

Pia Skaarer-Nielsen, a Norwegian immigrant to the valley, is one of the best, most creative, productive, and willing weavers around. She got on board for the experiments.


Patricia herself did x y z

7 projects -- get details from Abi's blog.
1. January felted Slippers: Abi


2 February: woven sweater by Pia.-- and women's vest and men's vest


3.
skirt
summer garden top (P wearing)
tunic
table runner & 4 napkins

dish cloth & scrubby
felted trivet

Workshop for value-added flax waste product.

2017

we were making yarn on the Belfast Spinning Mills spinning machine and this produced a lot of flax waste from the breaking and hackling processes.

P. got connected to Mary Hark who is a magical person who has a small-scale paper-making studio in Madison Wisconsin

conference of people who own Belfast mill machine

Andrea in St. Paul Wisconsin knows 

They invited P to come speak to their Wed night group.

50 amazing women in St. Paul which is really investing in Fibre arts.

Mary gave P her card.

P asked if M does workshops, and invited her to come to a workshop and Andrea (and Stu and daughter) and M came to NS in Nov. 2017 and hosted papermaking workshop

Kristie Farrier from Cape Breton came to the workshop and bought the infrastructure 

P sends her flax fibre and K sends her paper

Mary goes to Ghana (2 hrs. north of Accra) developing papermaking from plant fibres in Ghana.

P spoke at Mary's university (Madison, Wisconsin?) Mary Hark, is professor in Wisconsin.

handmade paper guru

puts patricia's story in front of grads there. Creates opportunity. Tons of potential for the short fibres.

Justine knitted this cowl from the yarn that Rhea spun on the Belfast Spinning Mills spinning machine.

And as you can see, all involved are delighted to have been part of such an extraordinary project. Everyone hopes that it's the start of a larger local clothing industry, one the produces durable and beautiful clothing that people will be proud to own and wear -- and skip the foreign imports in the shopping malls. Good for Canada, good for communities, good for us.

Gurus #18: Kitty H-D: French Female Secret: Know What's for You

The mysterious French female. Happy and alluring to all. How do they do it?
The woman in the photo, Kitty Hemnache-Devenoge, gave me the magic phrase, and I understood at once what the mystery I've been missing all my anglo-raised life, was. Live your life by this phrase and you'll have the French femme mystique, and a whole lot more happiness besides.

Prendre soin de soi

pour prendre soin des autres.

Translation: Take care of yourself so that you can take care of others.

Many of you may think that's a no-brainer, but I was way past 30 before I learned that I was allowed to take care of myself.
As a WASPy Canadian (White Anglo Saxon Protestant), I got the idea that my role in life was to give, constantly and unstintingly, to others, and that to do anything else was selfish and wrong. My grandma lived that way, and I tried to emulate that. So many women try to live by this ethic -- give and give and give, until they finally have nothing left. They fall ill, or they become resentful and unhappy. It's no wonder.
If you live by the Frenchwoman's ethic, and take care of yourself first, then you also know what you have to give to others. 

Knowing these boundaries means that you have more to give on both sides -- to yourself, and to others.

Acceptance is so empowering.
That's basically the difference. The French woman accepts her desires, and acknowledges her right to them, whereas many of us anglo-society-raised women (including Canada and the US) have been taught not to accept ourselves. We've been taught to serve, to worry what others think, to reject ourselves.
So it's no wonder that others reject our right to our own desires as well, is it? Anglo societies tell women all the time that they've no right to this, that and the other. Happily, it's not everyone in society who does that, and happy navigation of life often means finding a spouse, boyfriends, and friends who will accept us for who we are. It's a tricky thing to figure out when you've been taught to reject yourself.
So give yourself a start on the training: take the time to do whatever floats your boat: special time at the spa, yoga classes, a latte and a good piece of chocolate. Just some you time. Meditate on what it is you most need to be content. Let yourself believe and know that you deserve it.
Don't take more than your fair share, but don't take less, either. When you're offered help or a compliment, accept it gracefully and gratefully. Receive. Let others give. And give in return.
And then go out in the world and be able to serve others.

That Secret Smile

That secret, satisfied smile that French women are so famous for comes partly from the chivalrous charm of French men, and the sheer kind lovingness of French people with each other... but even in the absence of admiration, a woman who starts with the phrase "prendre soin de moi," knows how to keep herself happy first.
This happiness radiates onto those around her.

When I met the woman in the photo, she was camping with three young girls, and generously lending a helping hand to all and sundry within her sphere. I thought she was about 38 years old. Her positive outlook and can-do attitude completely fooled me, though. She's 60! Those are just the most recent 3 of her 21 foster kids so far, and she has 6 of her own, too.
She found time to help everyone and to inquire after my well-being, my son's well-being, the neighbour's well-being, to tease the hostess along... to take care of the children with her, to have loving calls with her own children... she served more people than most people even know.
And she's the life expert who taught me this phrase. She's far from selfish, but she knows how to be selfish at the right times. She took some holiday time just to do her nails and her hair, and to have some time to just do everything slow.

"Take care of your own happiness first, and then you have more to give others." 

Are you already living by this principle? Is this idea totally old hat to you, or something new? I'd love to know!

Gurus #17: A Coffeeshop, and so much more

There's a tiny little coffee shop in Calgary with two walls made of glass and a consistent collection of interesting patrons.
A third of the floor space of this tiny shop is taken up by a real-fire coffee roasting machine. There are few things more magical than the moment when the roaster reaches that point in the process where he releases a plume of delicious-smelling smoke into the sunbeams to dance and enchant any viewer clever enough to be paying attention to the visual and scentual extravaganza.
Another third of the space is taken up by the barista bar. Baristas here are university students, world travellers, artists, technical wizards, philosophers. The baristas know each other and the patrons and mostly have, for ages. Conversation is likely to be quirky, brainy, interesting, free-flowing, passionate.
 The patrons, too, are quirky, interesting, world travellers, philosophers, students, neighbours. This is one of the very few coffee shops in Calgary where you can walk in and join the chat. There's an easy, friendly, relaxed vibe that's all too often absent in this glitzy, moneyed town.
The location is in Kensington, next door to downtown. You'll find the odd patron wearing a business suit, though you're more likely to find long skirts, funky sweaters, backpacks, student clothing. No-one looks out of place. No-one feels out of place.
I admire the owners of this shop for so many reasons. There are so many things they do right, but the first and foremost is that welcome. It's not everyone who can create the feeling that all are welcome here. And of course, I love the coffee. The business has been providing local residents with the best coffee in the city for three decades.
No electricity, computerized temperature gauges, or modern gadgets are needed for the exquisite artistry of flavour achieved here with the widest variety of beans you'll see almost anywhere.
The beans arrive green from all over the world -- Yemen, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia... everywhere that coffee grows. Lech, the owner, can tell you stories about many of the suppliers and their methods, from the straw-woven bags certain countries used to use, to gravel added to increase the weight of bags from certain other producers ("the coffee was so good, though, we'd just smile and know you have to put up with that," he says).
Over the decades, the coffee artists at the Roasterie have adventurously sought out the highest quality providers. For example, they got in on the wave when civet-poop coffee was discovered. The reason it was of such high quality, says Lech, is that the civets routinely chose the perfectly ripe berries in the wild. However, the quality decreased when greedy suppliers tried to cage the civets. Caged, they couldn't choose the highest quality coffee berries, so the product was not at all the same.
The Roasterie switched to another craze that comes around but once a year -- bird-poop coffee. It will sell this season for two hundred and fifty dollars a pound.
They could sell it for a lot more, because there will only be about thirty pounds of it, and they have a surfeit of wealthy customers clamouring for the product. But no. Lech plans to sell the coffee in quarter-pound bags only, to make sure that every customer who wants to buy some will get a chance.
No matter where they're from or how they get to the Roasterie, when the beans arrive they are lovingly, perfectly roasted to perfection right inside the small cafe.
Typically when an artist achieves perfection in this city, plumped up with oil money, gloss follows. The price of their product rises; money rolls in. Their premises change, as if expensive surroundings will coax consumers to spend more money. The Roasterie hasn't suffered that fate. They don't clamour or claw for fame. They don't increase their prices to match their popularity. They don't renovate their premises to show the high-class consumers what a benefit it would be to walk through the door.
No, they keep their battered stools, their second-hand tables, because they're comfortable, and they have more heart and spirit than brand new ones could. They welcome their patrons in suits and rags alike -- and those patrons talk easily to each other here, as they never would in any other downtown cafe. The advertising campaigns here are no different than it would have been a hundred years ago, or two -- all word of mouth through the people who return, and return to their café.
It's a business that has lived long and prospered, I think, not because its owners sought financial prosperity, but because they sought to be a part of a community.
After all, what's the meaning of life?
Wealth is in our friends.

Gurus #16: Create a Community: Randy McCharles

There's this guy named Randy McCharles who I think you should know about, because his brand of guru-ness is worth learning and emulating, in whatever small degree we might each be able to.

Results: Thanks mostly to him, there's this huge festival in Calgary now, and it's not just a festival. It's a community. It's a groundswell of excitement, community, and energy. Thanks to the festival, people are meeting people, finding common ground, forming friendships and professional alliances, and staying together in the intervening year  to accomplish more, grow more, be more, than they ever would without the alliances formed at this festival.

From the conversations I heard, I understand that this festival is influencing not just the many hundreds of attendees from Ontario to Vancouver, but also their networks, their communities, their friends. Because this festival exists, people want to be a part. And to be a part of it, they're inspired.

• Inspired to be more themselves than they can be alone
• Inspired to pursue their craft and perfect it
• Inspired to set goals and do their best to meet them.
• Inspired to make things happen in the time frame between conferences.

Of course, it's synchronous growth. The conference came about as an initiative of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association in Calgary, and started off small. Partly due to Randy's friendly welcome and benign excellent management, it has blossomed quickly, outgrowing its boundaries and selling out well before show time each year.

So, the association started the conference, and then the conference attracted writers from other associations, and then those associations are growing and flourishing more because of the conference, and they give back to the conference, and.... symbiosis. A frequent symptom of good things.

I had some photos of Randy alone, but I realized that the photo above describes exactly the reason I'm writing this article: Even though I don't know him very well (yet, anyway!), do you see how welcoming he is? He just naturally reached out an arm and drew me in for that photo. He's one of those rare people who, very soon after meeting, you feel that you are friends with. The kind of friend who you want to do things for, and who would do things for you at the drop of a hat.

That characteristic -- Randy's incredible, far-reaching ability to welcome and befriend people -- is, I think, the reason this massive festival called When Words Collide has become so influential. (Naturally, his ability to plow through mountains of work, willingly and cheerfully, has contributed to its success too.)

I must stop here and say -- of course there is also an army of volunteers who have helped create this inexpensive, influential, massive festival. It only cost $50 for the weekend for each person, and attendees could choose between 200 presentations, including frequent exposure to the likes of Diana Gabaldon, Brandon Mull, and a host of other famous and inspirational authors. That's a HUGE experience for attendees. And that's a mountain of work to get through to put it on. It required a small army of volunteers.

I asked Kim Greyson, another highly-visible volunteer, if I was doing the other volunteers a disservice by praising Randy so highly. No, he confirmed, Randy was definitely the point man and had done incredible volumes of work behind the scenes months ahead of time. I know that personally, whenever I had tech issues questions about my presentation, or questions as an attendee, Randy always found time to cheerfully and quickly answer whatever I needed. And I know too that there were 200 presentations... that's a lot of people to cheerfully juggle! Plus volunteers. Plus attendees. Plus facilities folks.

Aside from that, he managed details like finding the nicest conference bags I've ever seen at a conference, for a ridiculously affordable price. I suppose it's Randy's natural empathy that motivated him to work hard to keep the prices low, since writers aren't known as the wealthiest sector of society. At $50 for the entrance fee and $20 for a bag, even kids can afford to go (supposing their parents encouraged them to, that is... please, parents, get on this encouraging thing, will you?).

The festival was so huge that I could not keep track of what just my son and I (2 people, just 2) all wanted to do. And there was Randy juggling a starving thousand, with aplomb, and jokes, and welcome, and cheer.

And, as I told Randy in a thank you note (if you ask me, we all should have been raining gifts down on the man, so I at least contributed  small Starbucks card):

An army of volunteers won't align to follow just anybody.

He's extraordinary.

Along the lines of gifts, Mark Lefebvre (Leslie) brought newfangled glowy Kobo devices for all of the keynote speakers. We were all sort of thinking, "hey, what about one for Randy?" Luckily, Mark (also a classy and interesting guy) had one for Randy too.

At the beginning keynote speakers panel, Randy was, of course, at the microphone thanking various people for being there, and we all clapped with varying degrees of politeness and enthusiasm. 

The exciting part came when someone in the crowd put her hand up and said, "Randy," and then we all got to give him a roaring cheering standing ovation.

It's good to be a person that others will give a standing ovation. Not everyone can inspire that. It made me feel so glad that we got a chance to show some thanks.

Even in mid-juggle, Randy found time to inspire people. My son made an exercise of collecting autographs (EVERY autograph of the dozens of authors there, and many included nice little notes to him, thanks to any of you who might read this, because that meant, and means, a lot to him), and Randy's signature is accompanied by a praiseful little note for Yarrow.

I wrote to offer some post-conference volunteer time, and even in that e-mail, Randy made me feel welcomed. I quote:

"Great spending some time with you this weekend. Chatting with new friends and old is the highlight for me."

No wonder everyone wants to get on his team! Who wouldn't want to hang out with someone like that?

I thought I'd wrap this up with a sample of Randy's brand of encouragement. (Yes, ladies and gentleman, he can sure write, too!) I think we would all do well to emulate the warm and professional approval he injects into every interaction. This sample is copied from http://starklightpress.com/category/our-writers/

"Here is the awesome foreword written for our latest short story anthology by Randy McCharles, well-known Calgary author and writing retreat guru. Many thanks to Randy for his thoughtful, high-energy and excellently penned words!"

Foreword- StarkLight Volume 3 
By Randy McCharles 
“Katrina, she is death.” So begins the third compendium of quirky short fiction from Starklight Press. Like its predecessors, this issue fully achieves its mission of providing tales that are pertinent, timely and, above all, imaginative. The four words that begin the first of eleven amazing stand-alone stories are indicative of what you, the reader, will find– striking fiction that will wet the pallet, expand the mind, and bring a smile to your lips. One of the pleasures of such a collection over say, a novel, is that you have little idea of what you will find until you have devoured the book. There is no back cover blurb enlightening you as to what to expect– setting, character, theme, and plot. A collection such as STARKLIGHT offers, instead, a treasure chest of surprises; eleven jewels to pick up and examine, each gem offering its own unique color, sparkle, and appeal. What the stories contained within these pages do have in common, however, is that they provoke thought and will take your imagination to lands and times and feelings you have never seen before. Where the assembled stories differ is the second pleasure of such a collection. After discovering who Katrina is, why she is death, and why that is important, not only to the characters in the story, but to you the reader, there are still ten additional tales to enjoy, each astonishing in its own way, offering up new and unique experiences. Experiences unexpected, yet always managing to push one or more emotion buttons and resonate with realities in your life that makes each reading experience an intimate adventure between reader and author. If that is not enough, a third pleasure is that you not only have eleven unique tales to enjoy, but tales from nine exceptional authors, each of whom have their own style and voice for story telling. Let us consider the opening line of our second story, What Has Kenneth Done! by J.M. Duell. “Let’s get a hold’a this fellow about the pamphlets again Fitz, there’s too many mistakes on ‘er.” Duell’s writing style could not be more different from Virginia Carraway Stark’s as enjoyed in Katrina, yet Duell’s story will carry you along just as easily. And what Kenneth did is only one surprise in the story. It is said that variety is the spice of life, and this saying is no truer than in a compendium of short fiction. The selection of tales that fill these pages by authors no less distinguished than Virginia Carraway Stark, J.M. Duell, Veronica Robbins, Tony Stark, Roxann Alecia Harvey, John J. Higgins, G.W. Renshaw, Van Fleming, and Robert Marquiss, are stories you will wish to savour and share with your friends. So sit back, put up your feet, and prepare yourself to spend the next little while seeing the world in a different light. STARKLIGHT.

Gurus #15: Embrace Humiliation, No Fear: Arthur Boorman

1. A great failure story
2.The funny story of my recent humiliation
3. How this inspires others

 Yesterday in my yoga practice, I was channelling this guy (by which I mean, I was flailing my arms and falling over, clumsy, feeling fat):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9FSZJu448

(a reader gave a heads-up that this video link didn't work for him -- try Googling "inspirational yoga video" and it will probably be the first hit. Or, try "Arthur Boorman yoga." Thanks for the tip, Frank Huangfu.)

That is one of the most inspirational yoga videos ever, because it shows the true power of yoga. It starts not with a skinny, strong, flexible person, but with someone who is broken, fat, falling over, clumsy. (If you want to see the end result, I won’t spoil it – I challenge you to feel nothing if you watch it to the end.)

This guy, Arthur Boorman, starts off recording his failure, as a veteran who doctors say will never walk again. He’s fat, he’s out of shape. But fearless. He wasn’t afraid to be embarrassed. He recorded the whole damn journey on his yoga mat, including the times he fell over. It is through his failure and his clumsiness and ineptitude that we are able to be so incredibly inspired.

Today when I wobbled on my yoga mat and waved my arms just like Arthur Boorman did in Warrior Pose (when he was getting better at it), I felt inspired. Instead of being frustrated with my wobble, I thought, “I’m channelling that guy, and he’s a guru.” His youtube video cast light in my life today. Thank you, guru.

(Actually -- full disclosure, I remember falling over in my first six months of yoga classes, too -- a lot! And I still fall over sometimes. But when you look at Arthur Boorman, you see that falling over is no reason to quit. Stand up and come back to class.)

Humiliation is good for the soul. I have always said so.

I had a chance to practice some nice humiliation this past weekend, too. I had a whole room of people laughing at me, more than they laughed at anyone else that hour. They laughed extra hard because at the time, I was anonymous, so they could be as cruel and no-holds-barred as they liked. Later that day, a woman I sat beside in another conference session thanked me for inspiring her by how I reacted. :)

You see? You can be a guru by being embarrassed. Just do it well.Here’s the little tale of how I did that.

So. The context of this tale is a wonder of a human activity called “Live Action Slush.” The deal is that writers bring just the first page of a novel to a conference session. A reader reads out each entry in turn, and a panel of judges listen (along with about a hundred people in the audience) and put up their hand when they would reject the manuscript.

It’s fun. It’s not for the faint of heart. My son had taken my one-pager to the Live Action Slush – Romance version the day before, but I hadn’t been able to attend because I was teaching a session about editing during the same hour. Anyway, he wrote down notes, and said that the reaction was generally positive.

I figured, hey, I’d like to see this process, and my novel is a historical fantasy time-travel romance, so why not try it on in the historical section? What the heck.

(Sorry for the long noun string for the genre… it was only mean to be a historical time travel romance, but the dragon who lives on the property where the heroine lives said he wanted to jump in, and I didn’t figure it was right to say no, as I’ve been meaning to write him into a book for years, and after all, he already lives there… and really, he was right. He’s been a very handy addition. So it's a historical time travel fantasy romance.)

The conference was so huge that it was easy to be bewildered, and I had taken care of getting my son to where he needed to be and had sort of dizzily realized only after a while that I was missing the Historical edition of the Live Action Slush (with Diana Gabaldon and David B. Coe on the panel).

So I went to the Historical Live Action Slush session, and I was late. Being late is often a good way to start off being humiliated, if you’re aiming for humiliation. (I wasn't. Being late was not actually in my plan, it was simple ineptitude.) I thought I had probably missed my chance to put in my page, but that’s okay, I enjoyed listening to the critiques of the other pages.

But then, hurray! The reader said that she’d noticed that people had come in late, and that we were welcome to bring our pages up. So I did. As I was walking back to my chair, she mentioned, “you people are brave, because now we know who you are, bringing your pages up!”

I just spun around and said,

“that’s alright. A little humiliation every day is good for the soul.”

Folks laughed.

Then I sat down and listened some more. Somebody had written a scene where the hero appeared to have four or five hands because of all the actions the hands were simultaneously doing, but then when the author admitted that it was a dream sequence, someone said, oh, well, it’s fine to have five hands in a dream sequence! Everyone laughed along.

Someone else had written a scene in ancient Rome, with some wonderful imagery with red mud. One of the panelists got obsessed with the idea that she didn’t think the mud in Rome would have been red. Meh. You need to take some people with a wheelbarrow of salt. She was off-base and wasting our time (she was similarly distracted and long-winded about her erroneous assumptions about tiny details for all the manuscripts, actually – not an ideal panelist. In another manuscript, she started obsessing about whether the author had chosen the correct type of chain mail, and one of the other panelists (no, two of them!) finally piped up and said, "come on, give the author some credit for having done their research!").

When the reader started to read my scene, which starts with a kiss, nervous laughter started almost immediately. It wasn’t what they expected to follow the cool red mud ancient-Rome manuscript. Ms. Erroneous Details put her hand up straight away, and said that she didn’t like sex and she couldn’t stand for books to start with sex. (It wasn’t sex, it was kissing, but she assumed.)

And then someone said that I couldn’t use the word “supple” for lips that are kissing. Hm. (In the editing panel the day before, I encouraged writers to always question editorial advice that doesn't ring true immediately with them. Therefore, I have since run that past my largish group of editor colleagues, and they said, essentially, “meh. Nonsense.” Nonetheless... it was Diana Gabaldon who said that, just before she said she's written four million pages describing her characters' long-term relationship, and when I looked back at my manuscript, I did take that word out in the first paragraph... but it might not always be my policy to do so.)

While the critique was going on, the laughter in the room was pretty loud. The crowd had gotten raucous with the five-hand descriptions and though they’d quieted with the red mud manuscript, they were raucous again, and the panel of critics had turned into a panel of comics.

And my manuscript was the fodder. When they were done shredding it (they’d only read a few lines, actually, so how hurt could I be?), they dared the author to identify themselves, rather assuming nobody would want to.

But it was no problem for me. I spoke up right away.

“It’s okay, I’m the one who said that humiliation is good for the soul.”

I explained that actually, I was not too worried by their criticism,because they same manuscript had been enthusiastically received on Friday by a romance editor, and had been well-received in the Live Action Slush – Romance edition. I also had reader-fans who are already madly in love with Massimo, the hero (they didn't object to his lips being supple... nonetheless, today I admit I edited that word out before sending it along where it was requested).

I concluded by mentioning that since humiliation is good for the soul, my soul had just received a pretty good cleaning!

That made people laugh. Laughing is good.

So. Water off a duck’s back really. I had resilience because I knew I had good feedback elsewhere. The more you put yourself out there, the less scary it is. Some people will love you, and others will not. The world has always been, and will always be, thus.

And because I was able to laugh it off easily in public, some other writers took the time to tell me that it made them feel braver about doing it themselves. That they realized they could do it and not be deadly serious about the results. That it was worth trying.

They said,

"thanks. Thanks for lighting the way by laughing at yourself."

I think this little tale is a great illustration of that old saying:

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will always fail.”

By which I mean to say, people who don’t want to read romance, just don’t want to read romance. An excellent lesson re-learned. Perhaps my notion of submitting a cross-genre romance in the other genre was a bit crazy... but maybe not. Maybe I just hit comedy hour.

But you know what? In the Kobo workshop, the presenter was very clear about what sells best: romance. So it's okay if the woman who said she doesn’t like sex never reads my work. The women who love re-reading Massimo’s kisses can just keep right on doing that, too.

Chacun a son gout. 
(each to their own taste)

Et vive le difference. 
(and hurray for differences!)

I wouldn’t have learned as much if I had missed my chance to be embarrassed.

So be brave -- you might inspire someone when you fail the first twenty-two times. Keep at it anyway, and don't worry about your red face. We're all in the same boat some time.

Gurus #14: How to Make Space for Better Things (Louise Hay)

I recently wrote a post about the positive benefits you can get from social e-mail groups. A lot of folks are starting to think through the opposite side of the coin -- what do you do with the negative people in your networks?
In fact, there are some super-simple procedures to help you.

(As advertised, this article has a long intro, with great resources from others at the end... skim to the back half after the cartoon, or the back quarter after Louise Hay's photo, before clicking away, if you would prefer the quick version.)

Table of Contents
1. A historical rambling reflection (skip it if you like)
2. A cartoon
3. A great philosophical music video 
4. Louise Hay's useful procedure that's easy for you to learn to use 
5. Unfriending, or blocking, which is better?

I am an editor, so for many years of my career, it was very easy to be surrounded by critical people. I am also a scientist, and we're trained to think critically, to analyze the whies and the wherefores and the how-to-improves of everything. For a long time, my young self thought that being critical was some kind of badge of intelligence (many young students seem to think the same, have you noticed?). After all, we need that kind of thought if society is ever going to improve, and not everyone seems able to do it. My life spiralled downwards as I cleverly criticized everything (and sought out clever critical people). I learned this:

If you're always seeking for things to be better, then they never seem good enough the way they are in the present. 

Oh, it's not that we weren't right in our criticisms. We often were. Or are. When things are bad, it does need speaking up about. I believe that. 

However, it doesn't need to be talked about all the time. At the age I am now, I feel pity for people who can't stop criticizing. There is a time and a place to do these things:

• Put away criticism and choose to be supportive.
• Just stop talking about the bad stuff for a while and find some good stuff to talk about.
• Just let somebody be wrong, and let everyone be happy.

As we all know, there seem to be plenty of people on the internet who can't seem to do those things. 

There are a few things you want to do now:
1. Don't be one of those people.
2. Keep away from those people, at least when they're in a mood (and probably more than that).
3. Identify some red flags to help you cull the chaff and cancerous folks. Here are some that I have low tolerance for: 

• sarcasm (it's rarely as funny as imagined)
• picking on other people (they'll turn around and do it to me next)
• betraying others
• inability to let conflict go after a reasonable discussion period online
• personal attacks of others' work
• another category it's worth being wary of are the "poor-you" folks. I'm a single mom, and even when I was creating a much better life out of the shreds I had than others were in their abundance, I always ran into people who wanted to talk about how horrible my life was. Nah. It's not horrible, and stop telling me it is. Nix. Cull them. (They might be long-term friends who you don't want to lose. If so, limit your conversations with them, or learn to steer that steamship another direction and insist on positivity to help you create a good life.)

An excellent measure of a person's real value to you is how you feel about yourself after you talk to them.Also, what's your mood? 
Are you in a happy, productive, helpful, go-love-the-world mood after talking to them, or are you needing to hide away and lick your wounds, or feeling like you want to go out and snarl at people? Pay attention to that. You know what to do.

It's pretty easy, actually, if you just follow the procedure below.

You know this phrase:

"Ignorance is Bliss."

Happiness on the internet is often found by choosing to close our eyes to critical garbage that really doesn' t matter. It's that easy. You choose to think about something else. You make a habit of it. Every single time you want to criticize and complain, you leave that conversation, and you choose someone from your vast list of friends who you can send a random positive message to (a hello, a compliment, or an "I'm thinking of you.")

It's not easy at the beginning, but if you start, and you keep at it, it soon becomes habit: when people are arguing idiotically, you simply turn away and find something more positive to do. 

I think we have all seen this cartoon from xkcd, now: https://xkcd.com/386/

It's a procedure. You just need to keep doing it over and over again, and you get better at recognizing when you're doing it.
1. Recognize futile negative timewastingness.
2. Stop it.
3. Replace it with something positive (the person in the cartoon seems to have someone who loves them right in the room with them! Dude! Put the phone down.)(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX_pZTlERaI)

You also get better at recognizing when other people are doing it. And you start choosing to minimize interactions with those people in your life.

I find that allowing yourself to have a low tolerance for complainers, haters, and criticizers on the internet has excellent results.

It makes more space for the wonderful people.

There are plenty of articles here on LinkedIn about finding the right people to help you grow your career. About how visionaries and positive, supportive people work, and about how negative people, narcissists, and other poisons can destroy not just your daily life, but your career.

You know that the above is true. So choose to do something about it!

Facebook and LinkedIn have a wonderful feature called "Block." Use it!

Use it when you notice that certain people in an e-mail thread always criticize, without care for colleagues.

• Blocking these people allows me to stop seeing their poison, and so I can stop trying to defend others against them (sometimes we feel compelled, futile as it may be... when you realize you're in a futile argument, consider the master block!). 
• It also has the benefit that anything that I post will not be seen by those critics, so the conversation and discussion on the threads I start will be of much better quality in the group.

Use the block function when someone shows negative business sense. There's a highly respected editor I know who posts a lot for colleagues, and I have valued some conversations with him in the past. However, when I experienced his completely-without-compassion, hateful, fight-like-a-dog reaction to some plagiarism of his work, I realized I would never want to do business with him. It's not that he wasn't right. He was right, and the plagiarist was 100% wrong. However, he was completely unable to feel any compassion or to let the issue go for his own health. Imagine doing business with someone who was so unilateral and unwilling to explore alternatives when something goes wrong. I couldn't. And I couldn't imagine witnessing any more of the furious conversation on his page, either.

Hence, why keep him in my network? The negative potential outweighs the positive. 
Block!

Consider using the block function when you ask for help and don't get it. Do you want to try to maintain a friendship or a business relationship with someone who won't give you anything back?

Again, weigh it out. What are the negative consequences of trusting this person? Are they really worth the potential positive of having them in your network?

We tend to think that a bigger network is a better network, and for the most part, that's true. But it's not true when you have cancerous members. The poison from negative people can erode and destroy your relationships with others.

You wouldn't keep a cancerous tumour, thinking it would make your stomach function better, would you? Don't keep the cancerous negativity in your network, either.

You'll find that a little surgery helps the rest of your network flourish better.

I used to hesitate about blocking people. I would think,  "oh, but so and so is so influential, or so wise, or so smart."

Nope. They're mean. If they're mean online, they're unprofessional. You don't want to do business with them (the costs can easily exponentially outweigh the benefits), and you don't want to try to keep up friendships with people who can turn on a dime, bite like a rabid snake, and not apologize.

Caveat: Of course, everyone has an off day. Everyone makes a mistake now and then. Seriously consider the offender's remorse/willingness to change. 
Are they likely to reoffend? 
Will they apologize?

If they might do it again, and they won't apologize, ditch them. Another little question to address: blocking or unfriending someone?

• Unfriend them if you'd simply prefer not to be associated with them any more because they are embarrassing or irritating (even online, and maybe more so than before the online world, you ARE judged by your friends), but they haven't seriously attacked.
• Block them if they have demonstrated that they will attack people. It doesn't matter if they've attacked you or someone else. We are all one. If you see someone abusing another person, assume that they could turn around and do the same to you. They will, at some point (I've another article about that).

 

So how do you get more positive people in your networks?

Listen to a life-changing hour from visionary Louise Hay, called "Receiving Prosperity."(Last time I checked, $5.95 on iTunes.)

Here's the gist of it:

1. Every day has good and bad in it.
2. Whether it seems overall good or bad depends on what you focus on.
3. In general, you will get more of what you focus on.

Louise Hay's life started out really, really bad. And as often happens with bad childhoods, it led to a bad young adulthood. At some point along the way, though, she learned something.

She learned that she could focus more on the positive things every day. She says everyone can do this. Every day, you try to get a little bit better. She says that when she first learned this, she had maybe 10% positive thoughts. Now, she is up to about 90% positive thoughts in a day, simply by persistently replacing a negative thought with a positive one. 

Do the same thing with your social networks. 

• Minimize the time you spend with people who are not good for you, no matter how important they may seem to be. They may currently hold major roles in your life, such as family members or work colleagues. That doesn't matter. You can choose to spend less time with them, and let go of the guilt. You do not have to spend your Saturdays golfing with a nasty colleague who pressures you about your income when you'd rather be with your family (who you should feel a greater duty to anyway!). You do not have to invest a lot of time in relatives who disparage you, either. You are free to stop it, now.
  And definitely, definitely, don't waste online time with haters. A total waste of your time on this earth. 
• Find ways to maximize your time with people who are kind, interesting, supportive, no matter how minor you might perceive them to be. You can maximize the positive, minor people in your life, and end up with a much happier life! (Many families or jobs do not endorse this idea. Instead they tell us we have a duty to limit ourselves to certain people, for some reason made up by them (profit, duty, tradition, whatever). No. Actually, how it is, is that you are free. You have the right (and even duty!) to choose people who are good for you.
  Do invest online time interacting positively. It pays off. I still have offers and contacts showing up from help or kindness I gave a decade ago. 

If you're scientifically trained like me, you might assume that the cheerful people are not as smart as the gloomy ones.
In fact, when you start spending more time with the cheerful people, you might discover that they are much more successful than you expected (given that they're probably not bragging about it -- they don't need to!) -- with opportunities to share, and a willingness to connect you with others for your success, too.

Imagine an example with me, here:

1. You start your morning with an encouraging note from a stranger who has been impressed with your profile. Score!

2. Your day turns south when you ask a question in a professional list and someone attacks you.

There are two ways you could handle this:

Always do that. Always choose to honour the positive, respectful, and wonderful people first.

If you give any time to the negative people, put it as your last task to do. Sometimes problems like those really do take care of themselves (and trust me, they do so more and more as you practice these strategies).

Unfortunately, both because of our instincts and because of our society, we tend to give our attention to the problems first, instead of creating more great stuff. 
But we can change that with considered and careful thought and strategies.

I would love to hear how this works for you! Comment below or drop me a line sometime!

Thanks to http://motherhood.modernmom.com/deal-someone-not-respect-personal-boundaries-10313.html for the image.