Introduction to A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR PEOPLE WHO TRAVEL TOGETHER

I'm about 90% finished with a new manuscript titled, A Survival Guide for People Who Travel Together: Tales from the Road. Most of the anecdotes are Charley's and mine, but at least a dozen other travelers have contributed. Thanks to all who so willingly recounted their stories with great laughter or nostalgic affection! I might add, there are no children on these journeys. That is another whole book, probably not mine.

Introduction

     Charley and I have done a lot of traveling together over more than fifty years. It started while we were engaged. I was still in college and he was an Air Force officer assigned to Dover, Delaware.  For two years we drove back and forth between Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and Dover Air Force Base in his white VW “Beetle,” shouting fraternity and sorority songs to stay awake:  “Give a rousing cheer/For the boys are here/Lift your glasses high…”

Saigon, Viet Nam 1967

     After we’d been married a year, Charley was assigned to Viet Nam. We met in Honolulu halfway through his year-long tour in ‘67. He arrived at the agreed-upon hotel at 3 a.m., but the desk clerk swore his Rolodex didn’t have any record of my being there. “Try under my name,” Charley said to the man.

     "No, sir, nothing under 'Charles Carey.'"

Honolulu, 1967 

     “Try again under ‘Pamela Carey.’ That’s spelled C-A-R-E-Y.”

     ”Wait a minute! Here she is! Her card was stuck to the card in front of it.”

     “Honey, it’s me,” Charley said quietly, knocking on my door. Since I was expecting him the next morning, I was sound asleep with my hair in curlers and a mud-gunk mask all over my face. Today cell phones would prevent such tragedies. “Open the door!”

     Half asleep, I stumbled to the deadbolt and slid it back. Thirty seconds later, bits of my mud mask hung all across Charley’s stubble.

     We began to travel with another Air Force couple, but he was a pilot and none of us stayed in one place very long. Eventually we traveled with friends from each town where we settled.  We learned quickly there are close friends you can travel with and close friends you can’t. After we had kids, we gave up travelling with other couples. It was too exhausting to make decisions for more than four, and some of the other females qualified in the “bitch” category, were ALWAYS thirty minutes late, or simply couldn’t make up their minds. Charley and I needed our “quiet time,” without any explanations for the hours we might be missing-in-action.

Buzios, Brazil  1982

     Travel is one of the things we enjoy doing together most….unless there’s an argument. And on foreign trips, especially, one of us will always get pissed off, probably from a lack of sleep. Let’s face it – we all dream of an idyllic trip before we leave, but no trip can be perfection. There are often mis-communications, unforeseen emergencies, as well as plain old physical discomfort. No accommodations are quite like home. A sense of humor and the ability to “roll with the punches” are indispensable, even if the punches come in the form of a stolen car or poison ivy surrounding your torso. As we age, "rolling with the punches" has become more of a "get on your feet before the countdown."

Baldissero, Italy  2005 

     When our sons were playing amateur and professional baseball (college ball and the Red Sox organization), we traveled across twenty states to watch them play. During Charley’s professional life, we traveled around the world on business. In retirement, we devote several weeks a year to international travel.  In addition, we drive from Massachusetts to Florida and back as “snowbirds” each year. On one of those trips, we didn’t speak from Massachusetts to South Carolina.  It wasn’t smart to have an argument before leaving on a 1200-mile ride together in a small metal cylinder!

On the equator    2008

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador  2008

Machu Picchu, Peru   2008

   When we travel we are on a figurative journey without a map. We know memories of the unexpected, the funny, the touching, and the exasperating will remain with us long after we get home.  We will always have that! It’s mind-blowing to immerse ourselves in another culture, even if it's within our own country. It teaches tolerance and respect. It’s about “crossing borders into foreign regions of the soul,” as Sue Monk Kidd said in Travelling with Pomegranates.

Sampling the lagers in Castlebar, Ireland  2017

Our date with the raptors, Ireland  2017

     I've developed some unwritten "rules" along the way to help us survive our trips. Sometimes we 

follow them; sometimes we don't. May those who journey together do so in reverence, excitement, and 

never-ending repetition of the mantra, "Zip it!"

                                                        Athens, Greece  2014

Dubrovnik, Croatia   2009

Puglia, Italy   2010

Monet's Giverny, France   2011

Zulu headpiece   So. Africa      2011

Relaxing in Key West 

Oia, Island of Santorini, Greece   2014

Island of Majorca, Spain   2015

Utah Beach, Normandy, France    U.S. Navy Memorial

Disney World   2014

Bonita Springs, Florida

                                      Harbour Island, Bahamas    2015                                 

Cape of Good Hope, So. Africa   2011
Photo below Las Vegas, 2007 

Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris   2016

Lacco Ameno, Island of Ischia, Italy    

 Amsterdam, Netherlands    2016

Conference Detox

I've just returned from three days at the annual Florida Writer's Conference in Lake Mary, Florida. There were over four hundred of us, each hoping to unlock the secrets for publishing a best-seller.  I have an entire journal of notes.

There were three sessions each morning, starting at 8 a.m.  For each session we had a choice of several presentations by writers, marketing experts, financial experts, lawyers, publishers, agents, or screen writers. Fortunately there was a mid-morning break for some liquid and a cookie, granola bar, or yogurt.  I chose the cookie.

There were three sessions each afternoon, again with a choice of several presentations or panel discussions. During my mid-afternoon break I chose an ice cream on a stick.

There was a dinner each of the two evenings I attended, with a keynote speaker or awards.  Having walked for thirty minutes before each dinner, I felt righteous and ate a dessert at each - the carrot cake and chocolate mousse.  I managed to waddle into my book signing for ELDERLY PARENTS WITH ALL THEIR MARBLES: A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE KIDS.

However, extra poundage wasn't the only thing I gained from this Conference.  The amount of information we gained was dizzying. Here are some of the presentations I attended:

"Sell Truckloads on Amazon"
"Change Your Characterizations through Syntax, Grammar, and Diction"
"What to Do and Not to Do in a Book Signing"
""Financials of Book Selling"
"Contracts and the Creative Process"
"How to Use Social Media to Sell Your Book"
"Using Writing Competitions to Advance Your Career"
"Book Trailers"
"Satisfying Endings."

With Margie Miklas
FWA Conference  Lake Mary, Fla.

In addition to seeing old friends from my critique group, I also made new friends - one in particular.  Her name is Margie Miklas, a recently-retired open-heart surgical nurse.  She won an award at the Conference for her memoir of travels through Italy (my favorite place in the world).  It's called MEMOIRS OF A SOLO TRAVELER: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ITALY, so check it out at www.margieinitaly.wordpress.com.

Now I've got to digest and absorb all the information. That goes for the food, too.

Toward Publication Again

OK, so a writer toils away for hours, days, months, years, in her office while the sun shines and people are inviting her to do fun things like play golf or go to a lecture or even shop!

Why?? Because it's something she loves to do more than anything else (except maybe a game of tennis), and she believes she's good at it. Herein is the crux of the matter: how does she KNOW she's good at this craft?

In other words, "Am I crazy??" How do I know that what I've written is actually good? Especially because I keep learning from writers' groups, editors, blogs, and newsletters every day?!?

Friends and family don't count, though my husband will always get the first look at any rough draft before anyone else. I trust his general reaction; we were in college together forty-five years ago and I know that our training in critical analysis served as the basis for his success, as well as for other writers, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin (also a graduate of Colby College).

After a thumbs-up from my husband, I proceed to ask him pointed questions about the flow of the story, the development of character, point-of-view changes, the time sequence, etc. He can usually provide some pretty obvious answers.

Then it's time for an objective opinion. In my first venture into publishing, I took the first one hundred pages of my manuscript to a sportswriter for The Providence Journal, since my memoir was the saga of our two sons in the Red Sox minor league system.  He perused the pages in front of him, suggested it should be a more intimate mother's story, and declared, "You've got to publish this!" He then gave me the names of two reference books to purchase, which would help me develop a proposal for literary agents.

So I sat at my computer for another six months and revised and revised some more. Then I decided to get another objective opinion. Purely by networking, I found a "reader" for a literary agent right in my backyard, who happened to be excited enough about my first draft to become my first editor. In addition, he was a published author.  He told me I had a unique story and a readable one and concurred with my first mentor: "You must publish this!"

When the revisions were completed, I spent six months on a query letter along with a seventy-page proposal for the literary agent my "reader" worked for. In fact, he personally delivered my package to the agent. I waited and waited and waited  - another six months went by, to be exact.  I received a two-line rejection letter. Eighteen months later, I had received seventy of these!

But somehow I kept believing I had written something worthy of publication. After all, I had two professional writers who had told me so! That stayed with me through all the rejections, through all the networking that proved useless, and through the months searching for an independent publisher. Yet I had never published anything before. I didn't have a "platform."

But I had a flow and my readers really cared about our sons in their quest toward the major leagues.

Here's a thought I kept in my head from literary agent Nathan Bransford: "Not every talented writer is a published author, but (nearly) every published author is talented."

Well, my book, MINOR LEAGUE MOM: A MOTHER'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE RED SOX FARM TEAMS, was published in April, '09, by independent publisher Barking Cat Books (a division of New River Press). No, I didn't ever find a literary agent, and yes, I did hours and hours of speeches and book signings over the next year.  I was chosen as one of ten authors to participate in a "Local Authors Day" at the Delray Beach, Florida, Public Library.  I appeared on Fox TV in Providence, R.I., on NPR, and on radio talk shows across the country.  The book was reviewed in print in Boston, Providence, and Florida.

Now my second book is ready.  It's called A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR CHILDREN WITH ELDERLY PARENTS (WHO STILL HAVE THEIR MARBLES).  It's a handbook based on the bizarre and often laughable antics of my parents in their eighties and nineties.  But the "rules" also apply for negotiating through hospitals, rehab centers, and nursing homes.  There's even an Appendix where terms like "Medicare" and "Medigap" are defined, with websites and phone numbers.  A SURVIVAL GUIDE been professionally edited twice and is ready to go. 

But my first publisher went out of business!!  So ready to go where?

Ready to go through all of the above process, all over again.

Why would I want to put myself through that again, you ask? 

Because I have to write.  My inner life depends on it.  And publication means validation.

Take my advice:  pick up a pen and jot down what's happening to you.  Jot down your family history.  Jot down funny conversations.  Jot down what you see out your window.  Maybe you don't want to see your words in print, but someday your inner life might depend on it, too.

Two Minutes Ago

     David Morrell (First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose) said in an interview, "Writers need to be tough.  This (writing) is not for the weak of will.  And we have to realize that yeah, it's never good enough."

     I know, pressure is often self-induced.  I live a "It's a Wonderful Life" reality.  Florida to Massachusetts, we split the year.  I have a husband of forty-seven years I adore, who adores me.  We are fortunate to enjoy good health and we stay active. We don't need to worry about our shelter, our food, or our kids.

     So what's my problem?  I write.  It's self-induced pressure, till you sign a publishing contract.  Till then, you have to finish the manuscript.  Then you have to rewrite it.  Then you have to rewrite it again.  Then you send it to a professional editor.  Then you rewrite again - portions (I hope) or all.  My second manuscript is at an editor now.

     I am really excited about this book called, A Survival Guide for Grown Children with Elderly Parents (Who Have All Their Marbles).  It consists of lighthearted rules for grown children to survive the care-giving days, based on humorous anecdotes about my parents, Ev and Walt, who lived into their nineties.

     It's also a practical guide.  The rules in the last half of the book are based on my experiences dealing with hospitals, rehab units, and skilled nursing facilities in Florida.  There's even an addendum for easy reference called, "Useful Notes, Definitions, Websites, and Phone Numbers." 

     The first email I got from my editor said the title was "clunky."  I probably agree with her - after all, I hired her to make suggestions like this.  So right from the get-go, we have to brainstorm.

     The same email showed suggested changes for the first three pages.  The changes were marked in dotted lines and arrows that go up, down, right, and left.  I don't know what triangles or circles mean either, since my first editor and I made changes to Minor League Mom the old-fashioned way.  We sat down with hard copies in our hands.  Before I make changes on the new manuscript, I must watch a tutorial video.

     Then there are the query letters to agents that will follow or proposals to publishers.  And the ongoing weekly blog or emails and newsletters and mail from others who write or mail to writers who may end up writing blurbs for my book.   Not to mention the marketing...which has already begun!

     Of course, I could self-publish and skip the last two paragraphs.  However, even self-published authors have to spend a year marketing, once their books appear.

     After the release of Minor League Mom, a friend asked me why I would want to go through the process again. Answer:  a writer wants to write!  Especially if there is potentially an enormous market for the manuscript.  I love this quote from Caitlin Moran, whose How to Be a Woman is part memoir, part rant, part manifesto:  "...if you're complaining about something for more than three minutes, two minutes ago you should have done something about it."

    

Manuscript Update



It's been three years since a division of New River Press published MINOR LEAGUE MOM:  A PARENT'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE RED SOX FARM TEAMS.  People have started asking me when the next book will appear.

As Red Smith once said, "Writing is easy.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." 
Here's an update on A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR GROWN CHILDREN WITH ELDERLY PARENTS (WHO HAVE ALL THEIR MARBLES).

Although the SURVIVAL GUIDE manuscript is finished and the rewrite done, there are approximately four unpaid "editors" I've asked to read it, before I send it to a paid editor!  After each of these readings, the manuscript must be "tweaked," hopefully without major sections needing a rewrite.

Then there is detective work involved.  My parents (on whom the manuscript is based) are no longer alive and cannot refute the humorous antics I divulge.  However, there are others in the book who are alive, six years later!  I must track them down for their permissions to publish, to the extent possible.

There is also research involved.  I don't mean the journals or interviews on which I based the entirely personal "Rules" I learned for the GUIDE.  I mean the fifteen or so books I've read on the same topic, to ensure I am not duplicating material for a publisher.

After all three of my writing groups have weighed in each month on the excerpts I read them, I must keep up-to-date on internet blogs about writing, as well as the Writer's Digest and Florida Writer's Association newsletters.

But writing is the EASY part, to state it once again.
Next I must find an agent or a publisher.

My first publisher, New River Press, has gone out of business.  I must begin the solicitation process over again, since I choose to go the traditional publishing route for validation vs the self-publishing route.  I will query agents and send proposals (with very stringent guidelines for nonfiction) to publishers.

At least this time I have some contacts and know the ropes.  If I am lucky enough to get into print some day, the HARDEST JOB begins....marketing!

There is no money in the publishing industry today for marketing, even with the best-known giants, unless you're a John Grisham.  An author must devise a marketing plan on his own.  From past experience with my first book, I know it is a plan that an author will be asked to follow for all leads and contacts, down to "cold-calling" for book signings.  I spent a year on the road marketing MINOR LEAGUE MOM from Maine to Florida.  I paid for travel and provided many book giveaways and refreshments at book signings.  I hired a N.Y.C. publicist who acquired interviews for me on NPR, sports radio across the country, and Fox TV.

So why bother?  A writer must write, a dancer must dance.  It's something I enjoy doing every day.  Thankfully, electronic self-publishers are available in case the rejection letters stack up!  At least I know two recipients for A SURVIVAL GUIDE - our two grown sons.

Writing Dilemma

The manuscript I have been working on is approximately two-thirds complete. It is a memoir describing a daughter's caregiving during the final three months of each of my parents' previously healthy, independent lives in Florida. It is also a chronicle of the hilarious eccentricities of the elderly. By interspersing my memory bank of laughable moments with scenes from the hospital, rehab unit, and nursing homes, I am trying to recreate a scene that is too familiar to many.

My parents were in no way extraordinary. They did not abuse; they were not alcoholics or schizophrenics; they did not suffer from bi-polar disease or obesssive compulsion. They were loving, involved parents and devoted partners. However, my relationship with them shifted when they became dependent on me as their caregiver. Mine is the story of millions of sons and daughters who must balance their own very full lives with the daily concerns for their parents' survival and their own self-preservation. By creating a memory bank, I was able to deal with my parents' struggles and my own.

Here's the problem: this manuscript is not marketable. There are thousands of published works out there about caregiving of the elderly, as well as Alzheimer's Disease. A memoir, if it is to attract a publisher, must tell a very unique story. Should I go in another direction with this, or continue as planned?

If I decided to write this purely as a family history, I would finish the manuscript as originally planned and let the kids and grandkidc have a copy someday. But I am constantly asked for advice from friends who are undergoing the same stresses and concerns with their parents. I have concluded that balancing elderly care and a life of one's own is truly a common experience among the 50-and-60generation, simply because our parents are living longer.

So here's what I have decided to do. I am going to finish the original manuscript, although it is slow going, and then redirect it. The new working title will be something like, A HANDBOOK TO OUTLAST YOUR ELDERLY PARENTS. The HANDBOOK will provide tongue-in-cheek lessons based on the bizarre, laughable, memorable antics of my ninety-year-old parents. It will also provide tongue-in-cheek lessons based on my navigation through hospital surgeries, rehab facilities, nursing homes, health care agencies, parental alienation, and family rivalries. A HANDBOOK will provide levity while dealing with a demanding, stressful world that is neither black nor white, a world of laughter and tears. Suggestions???

Sustaining an Injury

On April 22nd at 6:30 p.m. I will participate in a panel discussion in Cambridge, Mass., with our son Todd and Tom Brady's (the Patriot quarterback's) dad and, hopefully, his mom. Our son Todd, along with his older brother, were the subjects of my book published last April entitled, MINOR LEAGUE MOM: A MOTHER'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE RED SOX FARM TEAMS (on Amazon). The subject of the panel discussion will be, "Parenting Elite Athletes."

I'm sure that somewhere in the discussion the topic of injuries will arise, particularly injuries in the pros, where jobs are at stake. Although I am not in that category, I would like to relate my recent experience with a back injury.

I am a grandmother who works fairly hard to stay in shape. I have played on a tennis team at a rather high level for twenty years. We compete all around South Palm Beach County, Florida, from September till the middle of May. I have worked out at a fitness center twice a week for the same number of years, and I play golf twice a week. Sevven days a week I am running off to compete or exercise, including four-mile walks with my husband. I live to play sports, which are a huge component of my life, along with my family, and writing/marketing my book. Many of our current friendships today were made on the courts.

When my mother was in her eighties, she suffered from osteoporosis, then dislocated and herniated discs. Her will power enabled her to exercise faithfully for three months in a pool. This was a godsend, which kept her free of surgery till she was ninety. At that time, she cracked a vertebra, and the angioplasty (gluing procedure) which had worked for my father, unfortunately, had unforeseen consequences for my mother. After a piece of vertebra fractured off into the spinal column during angioplasty, she sustained two emergency surgeries and could not regain her strength. Ninety-two days after entering the hospital for the first operation, she passed away.

I have just experienced my first back problem, and it is purely a result of my mother's genes. Fortunately, I don't have osteoporosis, but I have a herniated and dislocated disc which has put me out of action for five weeks already.

When people say they experience back pain from stenosis or sciatica, I now know what they are suffering. The back is so fragile, and yet we put so much pressure on it with gigantic purses, books, cartons, groceries, even children and grandchildren that are too heavy for us. We do not lift with our legs, but instead with our backs. Women's heels put the back at an unnatural angle. I have learned that any treatment for the back is a matter of TIME and exercise, and the mending cannot be rushed.

I refused cortisone shots (a stopgap measure, in my view, and dangerous if too many) and stopped all activity. I entered five weeks of physical therapy; I wore a brace; I used a heating pad and always wore (and still do) sneakers for support. In order to sleep with the pain going down my leg, I bought a hard, contoured foam pillow to put between my legs to keep my spine straight. I swam laps five-six days/week. And I succumbed to taking an anti-inflammatory pill for one week, before I discontinued it because of warnings about stroke, cardio-vascular disease, and bleeding ulcerations.

Did I have withdrawal symptoms while I couldn't play team tennis? NO! I was too busy swimming laps in the pool; reading books I had piled up for months; and starting to organize the writing of my second manuscript. I actually loved the time off from the treadmill! Of course, I'm counting down the days till I step back on the court, but it will be a friendly social tennis game, not a competitive match. The matches might return eventually. One thing I've learned: you can't rush the mending of your body. Oh yes, I learned another thing: to get off the treadmill and do some things that are on your "bucket list."