Three thousand words: My wife the Ninja

Yesterday we were playing with Annie’s nephew when she busted out the kick-ass-kung-fu-guy-gets-knocked-down-and-then-hops-back-up-to-kick-your-butt move. I’m not sure if she has ever impressed me more. Just another reason why I (can’t) don’t beat her.

Erma Bombeck writers’ conference

I’m not sure I’ve made it as a writer yet. Such things are like knowing whether or not a country is in a recession – only hindsight can tell. But I owe much of what success I have had to the Erma Bombeck conference in Dayton, Ohio.

It was there, in 2006, that I met an editor at the Christian Science Monitor who gave me my first big boy clip, which led to an editor at the World Vision Report radio program contacting me to record some essays for them. One thing led to another and by 2007 I had enough clips to be taken seriously by editors of books and magazines.

This year, the director of the conference mentioned me in his opening address. He mentioned my small victories, my underwear wall of fame (which I forgot I even had), and the fact that I spent a month in Bangladesh because that’s where my underwear were made. I was “the underwear guy” the rest of the weekend. Garrison Keillor even signed his latest book Pontoon, “For Kelsey, the underwear guy.”

Garrison Keillor’s speech was awesome. Connie Schultz, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist and author of And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, gave a hilarious and touching speech. She was a single mother and feminist that ended up marrying Sherrod Brown shortly before his campaign to become an Ohio Senator. I was lucky enough to meet both Keillor and Schultz and her husband.

I had never met a Senator before. I was excited to meet Senator Brown because I voted for him in 2006 and he has worked a lot on trade laws. He helped introduce the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act in 2007, known by some as the “Anti-sweatshop” bill, and even wrote a book on trade. I have a bazillion and one questions for the Senator. When I told him about my book he was very interested, promised to send me one his book, and told me that he would give me a call. I think he might even have mentioned the possibility of contributing a blurb. I’m not sure about this; I was a little busy trying not to look like a stuttering idiot. The strange part is that he was on my short list of people to ask for blurbs. So was Nicholas Kristof who I met a few months ago. I would have never dreamed I would be lucky enough to meet them both.

Of course the most exciting part is meeting other writers. I had the pleasure of celebrating literary victories and consoling one another in our literary defeats with Dave Fox, Bobby White, Seth Brown, Lizzy Miles, DC Stanfa, Jenn Dlugos, Danny Gallagher, Norm Cowie, and Joanne Brokaw.

All-in-all a pretty successful and enjoyable conference. I’m sure I’ll be at the next one.

A Thousand Words…My Brother’s Wedding in SLC Utah

…At First Sight

The Brothers Timmerman

Dad can’t spell Y-M-C-A

The Village People with Class

Have you called your granny lately?

I’ve been writing about grandmas today, so I thought I would post a little of what I wrote and remind you to give yours a call.

My Grandma Wilt was a garment worker. That’s her in the front row next to my mom and dad.

In the summers growing up in Versailles, Ohio, she sewed the pockets on Lee bibs. “The more pieces you completed, the more you got paid,” she told me. She didn’t like the job and – to no real surprise – the money wasn’t very good. What is a surprise is that I never knew this. I traveled around the world to meet garment workers and here my very own grandma was one.

She’s not your typical grandma. For instance, she has seen every Death Wish Charles Bronson has made and she’s a fan of Walker Texas Ranger. But like any grandma, she is beaming with pride on a day like this.

Annie’s grandmas are on the other side of the aisle. Betty remembers the Great Depression and to this day it pains her to throw anything away. She has enough canned and frozen goods to survive a nuclear winter. Back then recycle and reuse wasn’t an environmental practice, but purely an economic one. In fact, Annie’s other grandma, Clara, used to make clothes from chicken feed bags for her family and herself.

Where do I come from?

Darke County, Ohio.

That’s right, I didn’t say a city or a town. There are only 50,000 people in the entire county and a fair amount of them live in the country. They don’t live on streets; they live on rural routes or hyphenated roads between tiny burgs (Hillgrove - Woodington Rd).

Your typical Darke Countian likes guns, is against abortion, and votes Republican.

The Washington Post featured Darke County, in a story today titled: In Rural Ohio, It’s No Country for Democrats.

Some highlights:

- Greenville is the seat of Darke County, which typically ranks first in the state in corn and soybean production.

When I write about playing in flat-fields of corn and beans as a kid, I know what I’m talking about.

- For county Democratic Party Chairman James Surber, it is a place to contemplate the most puzzling human behavior. “I have always said that the three most baffling questions you could ponder forever are: What’s the meaning and purpose of life? Why is Bruce Willis a star? And why do farmers vote Republican?”

I never knew there was another Democrat in the county besides me and my mom. (Yep, Dad’s a Republican.)

- And the way you pull wedgies out is simple — you say it’s a lie.

Okay, that quote is a little out of context. You probably could tell it was because everybody knows the way you pull a wedgie out is to have a good friend stand behind hind you so nobody can see when you reach down your drawers and pick it out. You could lie until your nose was ten-foot long and that’s going to do nada for that wedgie. You gotta pick it out. What does the Washington Post know? Someone should give them a wedgie.

- “I’m a Christian lady and I kind of like that Huckabee, Huckletree, however you pronounce it. And I think McCain is too old. And I like that fella who is running against Hillary, and he was my choice until I heard what he said the other day.” She wouldn’t say what he said. “And I didn’t want a woman. That’s a man’s job being president. I don’t think God put a woman here to run the country. Well, her husband was in there already. They don’t need that much more money, do they?”

God Bless (Help) Darke County.

(I first saw the story on John Scalzi’s Whatever)

A new category: Cat’s and their writers

The cat, Oreo, that let’s me occupy her house has now decided the chair – which was the only thing in the entire home which was solely mine – is pretty cozy. We’re sharing for now. But I foresee a future where I will write on the floor and she will supervise from above.

Oreo already dictates when I can and cannot work. Although, she did send me a Valentine this year, which makes her less of an evil dictator. It read:

(Outside) Today I though about clawing you to pieces and feasting on the remains. But I didn’t.

(Inside) If that’s not love, what is?

I’ve made a static page here that will feature cat’s and their writers. Whether you are a writer or not, if you’re owned by a cat in your office send a photo and I’ll add it.

It’s my birthday…how about a gift?

I’m beginning to learn that there is more work to writing a book than the actual writing. There’s the propositioning of other authors for blurbs to be included on the book, there’s the marketing considerations, and there’s the cover.

My publisher will primarily be taking care of the cover, but they asked me if I had any ideas, which was nice of them. I sent them a few pics of the workers and their homes and then they told me that we can’t use people on the cover. Then I directed them to the ultimate WAIW? slideshow to see if anything struck their fancy. So, I wasn’t much help. Here I’ve been thinking about all of the words that go in the book and not what goes on the book.

Today, I’m 29 and since I know that you want to recognize my last birthday before I’m 30, here’s something you can do for me…

Share any ideas about what images or concepts you think would be great for the cover of WAIW?

Or, if that isn’t quenching your desire to give me stuff, you can always send me money. Please round to the nearest $100.

Notes to aspiring writers

I had a fella email me today that is trying to break into writing, specifically travel writing. I decided to paste my response here. I’ll continue to update this and use it to direct future “how the hell do I get published” queries.

I think that every writer has their own path to getting published. No book or website or email can tell you what exactly will work for you; in fact, they often distract us from what’s most important – actually writing.

My path went something like this…

At first, I traveled for traveling’s sake. To experience the freedom of the open road and all that jazz. I was a bum. It was pure. It was beautiful. And then, the writing bug bit me and now travel plays second fiddle to writing. I can no longer bum. If I’m not working on a story, or what could become a story, I’ve got to move on to one or I’ll go nuts. Damned writing anyhow. It had to go a screw with the bum gig.

I was living in Key West and wrote a column for the local weekly paper. I got paid $0. My column was titled Travelin’ Light and I give any credit of what success I’ve had writing to the obligation of writing a weekly column. I probably wrote over 100 columns and I started to place them in a couple of other papers – small ones in random places in Ohio and Illinois. During this period of time I emailed about every paper with a circulation over 50,000. I’m not kidding. It was a monumental waste of time, but it taught me a lot about marketing my work. Occasionally I submitted individual stories to newspaper travel section and got published in Raleigh, NC, and Indianapolis, IN. I met an editor of the Christian Science Monitor at a writer’s conference and landed several publications there. This led to some radio work and by far my most impressive writing clips. I planned the Where am I wearing? trip and right before I left an agent contacted me if I had thought about writing a book about the trip to which I responded, “holy crap I just crapped myself.” I’m eloquent like that. I came back from the trip with a lot clearer idea of what the book was. I went to a local writer’s conference here in Indiana and met another agent. While I was asking her questions about how to work with the original agent, she asked me what my book was. The other agent lost interest and she became my agent. A few months later she sold my book. That’s it.

Some tips:

* We need deadlines to actually make us write, no excuses. By far the most important thing is writing. From my first column until now, I’ve come a long way. Everybody knows that practice sucks so try to find yourself something that you can contribute to on a regular basis. Even if it is only your personal blog or local paper, you need something that people are going to read so you hold yourself to higher standards.

* Dave Barry on writing: “Do things not think things.” I still think I have a long way to go as a writer, but I think what success I have had is just as much a credit to doing interesting things as writing well about them. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective, a good idea will sell bad writing.

* Go to writer’s conferences and make contacts. I’ve only been to a few, but all of my “breaks” (Christian Science Monitor, landing and agent) have resulted from writer’s conferences.

* Be completely indifferent to rejection. When I submit something I make sure that it’s my best work, but once it is out of my hands, I don’t expect anything to come of it. I call this being cautiously pessimistic. I have stacks of paper rejections and MB worth of email rejections.

* Don’t do it for the money. I do it because I just love writing. I’ve always had other work and still do. If I would have taken a year off to make a go at the writing thing I probably would have said screw it a long time ago. Patience is required.

Getting your book published:

Subscribe to publisher’s marketplace for their daily deals email. They report what agent sold what to what editor. Pay attention to agents that are selling stuff like yours. Visit their website to see what their submission guidelines are and submit away. I was in the process of doing this, but got lucky that agents found me before I went looking for them.

Here are some links to more bits on writing:

On editors
Websites to check out about industry
Exploiting aspiring writers
Getting an agent

Look ma! I’m quoted in the Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal reporter Hannah Karp email interviewed me while researching her story The Stay-at-Home vacation. The article is about people who are concerned about their carbon footprint choosing not to fly, even if it means missing a siblings wedding or dream vacation. I take a slightly different stance:

That’s misguided, says Kelsey Timmerman, a 28-year-old Muncie, Ind., scuba-diving instructor and author. If he’d never been to the Great Barrier Reef, he wouldn’t care as much that it is dying from rising ocean temperatures. Decisions he makes as a consumer and a voter offset emissions resulting from his travels, says Mr. Timmerman, who visited Bangladesh, Cambodia and China last year. “Travel helps us care more about our world.”

I’ve heard rumblings of this debate, but had no idea the No-Fly movement was gaining so much ground. Really, I’m amazed that it is since flying represents only 4% of an individual’s average carbon footprint (Farting is probably more than 4%.) I can understand the desire to cutback on unnecessary travel, but missing your siblings wedding? My brother is getting married in Utah in March and if I told him that I wasn’t going to fly out for it because of my concerns of the planes pollution, I would sound like a jackass. I would be a jackass. I’m all for being their for the environment, but I’m even more for being there for my bro. As they say, “Bros before…CO’s.”

Here is the full answer I gave in an email to Hannah:

If I hadn’t been SCUBA diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I wouldn’t care as much that it and coral reefs around the world are dying because of rising ocean temperatures. If I hadn’t been hiking on glaciers in New Zealand, I wouldn’t care as much that it and glaciers around the world are melting because of rising global temperatures. If I hadn’t spent a month in Bangladesh, treated to the near limitless hospitality of the Bangladeshi people, I wouldn’t care as much that homes and lives are being swallowed by the rising sea.

Travel helps us care more about our world. I expect that the decisions I make as a consumer and a voter offset whatever negative impacts result from the fossil fuels burnt to get me from place to place.

10 things that I’ve done that you probably haven’t

The blog I read the most is science fiction writer John Scalzi’s Whatever. Yesterday he posted 10 things that I’ve done that you probably haven’t. At first I thought this would be an exercise in one-ups-manship, but it’s more of a revelation of how unique, coincidental, and just plain stupid our individual lives are.

Here’s my list.

10 things that I’ve done that you probably haven’t

1. Been sprayed by a skunk
2. Watched David Blaine take a leak
3. stuck a sweater defuzzer on my tongue
4. held my breath and dove to 100’ beneath the Atlantic Ocean
5. Spent the night in Dracula’s Castle
6. been molested by a drag queen
7. touched a shark
8. melted a penny in flowing lava
9. been zorbing
10. taken 19 kids and one old man into a Bangladeshi amusement park for $67

How about you?