Dear Hamlet, I choose “to be”

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
~ William Shakespeare

I don’t wish to imply that retirement is mental suffering in a sea of troubles, but it is the last stage of life, where the next stage is an unseen answer to some of life’s biggest questions. Therefore, I’m inclined to approach retirement seriously, where “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” take the shape of a great deal of unstructured time. Much of the advice I received about retirement can be summed up by saying, “don’t let a day dawn without a plan of action.” I’ve taken this advice to heart, and I’m glad I did.

Fortunately, retirement plans don’t really require a great deal of original thinking. When my parents retired, they chose to migrate between North Idaho and Georgia with lengthy layovers in the Midwest. So, when I retired and discovered that a moonshot was probably not in the cards, I convinced my dear, overly trusting wife that migrating between North Idaho and Georgia with lengthy layovers in the Midwest was a good idea for us too. She focused on the layover part of the plan, and I immediately began acquiring literature about fishing in North Idaho and Georgia.

To our great surprise, our plans have come to fruition after three and a half years. As documented in this blog: the house has been sold, we’ve rented a beautiful little condo in downtown Sioux Falls for our migratory layovers, and we’ve secured our endpoint camps in North Idaho and Georgia. Our trusty Chevy Equinox has been trained to run the route and to minimize its stops at the increasingly expensive watering holes along the way.

The basic infrastructure for positively answering Hamlet’s famous question is in place. All that remains is meaningfully filling the hours we aren’t actually on the road.  For my wife, this involves a concerted attempt to catch up on the sleep denied her during her twenty-five years of teaching elementary school children. She says that she rose shortly after 1:00 a.m. each day for her entire career to face unimaginable classroom challenges. I was never awake early enough to dispute her claim.  Her story also includes dropping exhausted into bed by 7:30 p.m., fifteen minutes after she arrived home from work. This tale is uncomfortably close to the truth, and we all know how Hamlet would have answered his existential question if he had faced a couple of dozen first graders each day.

My answer about what to do during retirement is a bit more complex. I quickly discovered that professional fishing was not a prudent choice since that vocation normally involves actually catching fish. My success in fishing is best understood by using the golf scoring method, another traditional retirement time-sink, where the highest evaluation goes to the lowest count. With fishing relegated to an avocational interest, there was a large and dangerous amount of unstructured time left unfettered.

My parents spent considerable time writing and publishing books during their retirement years. I decided not to fall too far from the tree in true Newtonian style. I wanted to write books for the younger generation. Since my wife spent her career teaching them to read, it seemed like a good follow-up. Becoming an author is my retirement motivational plan, and I think it’s panning out pretty well.

To the uninitiated, being an author appears a relatively simple thing. People also think that about teachers, but I’ve watched my wife enough to know that being a good teacher is anything but simple. I now know that the same is true for authors. The classical image of an author whacking away at his typewriter, or less classically, his computer, drastically oversimplifies what goes into making a book. In fact, that dramatic moment when our imaginary author rips the final manuscript page from his Underwood typewriter is only the beginning of writing a real book.

Books worth reading start with an editor. True, most authors have a vague idea about the direction and flow of their story, and they know something about the characters, but they see “through a dark glass.” It’s the editor that sees the true potential of a story. But editors need authors to write the first draft before they can see a vision for the story. This is the dynamic which really causes the fog of war in publishing.

It was my extraordinarily good fortune to stumble across an extremely gifted editor early in my venture into publishing.  I’m not making any claims about the humble books I’ve written, but my editor has given them their best chance for quality. You are not an author until you experience that blaze of humiliation that comes when you realize the hateful direction your editor is pushing your work is what will save your book. Writing a novel is like starting on a long-distance road trip by taking 50 laps around your own block before you finally head for your true destination. If it’s not frustrating and intelligently frustrated by your editor, you can never get there.

It was also a bit of a shock to discover that there are not scores of publishers lined up to share my books with the world. In fact, most publishers, if not all of them, pay a great deal of money to avoid publishing authors like me. You’d think this might be an impediment, but zero publisher interest is not much of a problem for writers these days. The resources for independent publishers open the door to getting your book out to the world or to your five friends, whoever is paying the most attention. Of course, this sometimes results in novels that read like third-grade writing assignments, but good things can happen.

The upshot is that not only have I become a writer, but I’m also a publisher. Now my formerly unstructured time is pleasantly filled with managing a small business that contracts editing, cover art, proofreading, typesetting, and audiobook production. I was fortunate enough to bamboozle my editor into partnering with me, so we have a chance to produce some nice stuff. Our venture, called Midwestern Books, focuses on stories about the Midwest told by Midwestern Authors. We figure if the rest of the publishing world is simply going to fly over us, we’ll take matters into our own hands.  This is not really a David and Goliath story. It’s more like a flea on the back of one of David’s sheep and Goliath, but we are having fun and hope to produce stories that reflect a uniquely Midwestern mindset.

So far, we have published two books and hope to have a third out by the end of the year. Our first book, published in June, is a unique whodunit about a young elementary school teacher/amateur sleuth moving to a quirky little western South Dakota town where a hit-and-run murder awaits resolution.  Some of the most surprising aspects of Jolene Stratton Philo’s new book, See Jane Run!, stem from her experiences living in West River during the 1970s.  If you’ve been looking for a humorous, pleasant read, you might try this one.

The second book from Midwestern Books is a young adult novel I wrote called Cosmic Background Radiation. This book appeared on Amazon.com today, which explains my shameless use of this blog to promote it. The book tells the story of Josh Cooper’s struggle with grief over his brother’s untimely death, grief compounded by his parent’s near divorce. But suddenly, to reconcile, his parents move from their home in Portland, Oregon, to take over his grandfather’s farm. This move lands Josh in South Dakota, where his struggle with grief, faith, and rural culture folds into a series of bizarre “dreams” that transport him back 2,500 years to life in ancient Jerusalem. In these episodes, he finds himself living in a household identical to his 21st-century family, except his brother is alive, and a young lady he has just met in his new school is mysteriously present. This book was inspired by my wonderful experience teaching youth at Heritage Lutheran Church, and it attempts to address some of the issues they thought important.

So, as you can see, the problem of how to order my days has been solved.  It’s a good feeling and gives me a reason to surrender the whole bed to my wife in the morning. That makes her happy, and you know what they say about a happy wife. . . So now I’m ready to deal with the ever-pensive Hamlet and his annoying question. . .  Dear Hamlet, I choose to be.