Conversations with Calliope- A Matter of Taste

(Spring Rock)

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. I missed you yesterday.
JOE: Sorry. I was anxious to take a peek at my new website and finally saw it yesterday morning.
CALLIOPE: And?
JOE: I discovered that it wouldn't do as posted. I thought I would try a quick fix and ended up spending most of the day revising it.
CALLIOPE: How does it stand now?
JOE: I'm still working on the revisions but think I have a good plan. We shall see.
CALLIOPE: Did you spend every minute working on it?
JOE: No. I went with Carol and some friends to a Michael McDonald concert last night at the Rochester International Jazz Festival.
CALLIOPE: Did you enjoy the concert?
JOE: Not in the least. It was the first time since I was eight that I so thoroughly bored and agitated by a concert.
CALLIOPE: What was that about?
JOE: I wish I understood it. Those who went with me agreed that his style was repetitious although it didn't seem to bother them like it did me. I thought he shouted everything and that all his songs sounded the same. I didn't like his rendition of the songs I recognized.
CALLIOPE: Do you think it's just a matter of taste?
JOE: I wish I knew. I don't like leaving a concert feeling the way I did last night.

Conversations with Calliope- Dialogue with My Muse

(Night entrance)

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. I missed you Saturday.
JOE: I know. I got caught up in website development, e-commerce, etc. and never made it here.
CALLIOPE: Did you have a busy weekend?
JOE: Yes. We were out socially Friday and Saturday evenings and as I said I worked on my website. Yesterday I just felt a need to relax.
CALLIOPE: Not a bad idea. Did you mention a book review last week?
JOE: Yes. I have been reading Richard Bayer's The Good Person Handbook and am planning to review it.
CALLIOPE: Tell me about the book.
JOE: It approaches many of the ideas I pursued in Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life.
CALLIOPE: Does it differ in some ways?
JOE: He is much more structured than I am. He is organized from page one and presents an orderly flow of ideas, one building on another.
CALLIOPE: Do you like that approach than the one you took?
JOE: Not necessarily. Mine is organized into categories. although not as structured in its development. I have had readers say they like to be able to read a brief self contained passage on a particular topic without belaboring it.
CALLIOPE: How does his book compare with yours?
JOE: I think we have different approaches. Some people like ideas to flow in strict order and others like more spontaneity. I think there is room for both approaches. Talk with you tomorrow.

Conversations with Calliope

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. How are you today?
JOE: I'm ready to go for the day.
CALLIOPE: What's on your agenda?
JOE: My first priority is to complete reports from police candidate screenings I did yesterday, one of my few remaining psychological duties.
CALLIOPE: Then what?
JOE: I have a column to write for Saturday and also a writers' meeting tonight in Brockport.
CALLIOPE: Have you decided on anything to read tonight?
JOE: I did just this morning. I had planned on reading a story I have been revising, but decided to do something different.
CALLIOPE: Are you going to tell me?
JOE: Hold your horses. I'm getting to it. I was reading last night about personal essays and realized many of my columns were of that genre. I decided to write one about the chandelier in the mall and also take the column for review tonight at my writers' group.
CALLIOPE: You have never submitted a column to the group?
JOE: No. I have almost always taken a book chapter for review. Lately I am working on writing style and I think this might be a good chance for input on my recent efforts.
CALLIOPE: Sounds like a good plan.
JOE: I think so. I'll let you know you know how it goes tomorrow when we speak.
(Moorish Castle- Gibraltar)

Conversations with Calliope

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. How are you today?
JOE: Energetic.
CALLIOPE: What brought that on?
JOE: I'm not sure. How do you know it isn't my natural state?
CALLIOPE: Maybe it is. What's going on?
JOE: I awoke in the middle of the night thinking about where I am with my writing.
CALLIOPE: Where are you?
JOE: I have come to realize with the help of my readers that I need to do some work on my style and voice before completing Marital Property.
CALLIOPE: What did they say that brought you to that conclusion?
JOE: They observed in their own ways that my presentation tended to be bland. They graciously suggested my characters seemed flat instead of my writing. In reading popular authors, I could see the difference between expression of Danielle Steele for example and my own. I have also been reading about the craft of writing. My writing needs some work.
CALLIOPE: How do you plan to go about it?
JOE: Three ways. I will keep reading about style, reading writers with style attractive to the average reader and practice my craft with short stories for a while before returning to the manuscript of Marital Property.
CALLIOPE: Sounds like a good plan. Will you suspend your other writing in the mean time?
JOE: Not exactly. I have also started gathering teen writings to include in Commonsense Wisdom for Teens and getting that project back on track. I am going to Niagara Falls tonight for a Neville Brothers/ Dr. John concert and will be back probably tomorrow afternoon. I'll contact you then.
(Pond in the forest- Oramel, NY)

Conversations with Calliope

JOE: Good morning, Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. How are you this morning?
JOE: Excited.
CALLIOPE: That's a nice change. To what do we owe the honor?
JOE: To my intention of creating a video podcast. I finally found the wire for my Canon camera but could not get the camera and computer to communicate for some reason. I decided to try using the webcam with Windows Movie Maker and found the whole process relatively painless.
CALLIOPE: How far did you get with the process?
JOE: I recorded and posted the podcast about Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life on MySpace and YouTube.
CALLIOPE: With no difficulty?
JOE: None. The whole process went swimmingly as the British would say.
CALLIOPE: I'll have to take a look at it. Is it professional quality?
JOE: Well, no. Just a conversation with me and a brief reading. Quite informal. But I don't think my approach needs to be slick. I tire of slick ads on TV and find them annoying in their competition to outdo each other.
CALLIOPE: Agreed. How is your editing of Marital Property coming along?
JOE: Quite well thank you. I can smell the end of my initial edit and inch up on it every day. I make a conscious effort no to minimize the use of the verb "to be" in all its forms. I find it quite a challenge sometimes but I think my work sparkles more without it.
CALLIOPE: What about your story?
JOE: Haven't started it yet. Editing keeps my attention. This weekend might be the time. Talk with you tomorrow.
(Nantucket Bay Sunrise- Martha's Vineyard)

Conversations with Calliope

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. How are you today?
JOE: Humbled.
CALLIOPE: What brings you to this state of awareness?
JOE: My presence last night in the PEN World Voices presentation.
CALLIOPE: Tell me about it.
JOE: Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco both read from their works and Joanna Scott hosted a conversation with the two writers. Both inspired me to be the best writer I can be and gave me some ideas about how to do it.
CALLIOPE: Excellent. What did you learn?
JOE: More than I would from one author alone. Joanna Scott did an excellent job facilitating a conversation between the two authors.
CALLIOPE: Specifics please.
JOE: Okay, one insight from each author. Eco sees fiction as inviting the reader to think about how we think. We step back from our practical world and look from a distance at ourselves and how we operate. This is similar to what Eckhart Tolle suggests as awareness in A New Earth.
CALLIOPE: And Rushdie?
JOE: One of my favorite insights he shared was that we often get stuck trying to answer the question why when reading. Concentrating in writing on answering the question how leads to the understanding of why.
CALLIOPE: That sounds rather profound. I'll have to think about it for a while. What's up for today?
JOE: I will continue working on editing Marital Property. I am reading the manuscript first for clarity and consistency. After that I will look at it's musical properties, an insight I gained last night. But more about that tomorrow.
(Polar Bears- Peter Langen)