When Less is More

Ruthy here, and the best of mornings to you!

How can this be a bad day? How can this possibly be anything other than a rise up and give praise and sing out our joy in this gift called life?

Ruthy theory #1:  How you view the day affects your day-long perspective. Which means if you're Negative Nellie, knock it off. Shake it out. Shake it up. Behave yourself and grasp joy. Which usually means getting our minds OFF ourselves.

Less is more.

This came to me as I was cleaning for Easter, and that made cleaning therapeutic and a tax write-off, right?

I have to say a big fat YES on that!  So I can pay myself to think-as-I-clean and subtract the cleaning bill from 2012 taxes. 

A tax professional may find fault with that, but it makes perfect sense in Ruthy-world.

Less is more.

My mother-in-law started me on this track years ago, when she told the story of her ironing board.

It was a gift, given to her by her young-and-broke-like-so-many sister-in-law for their wedding. She remembered Aunt Jeannine apologizing for how small a gift it was, obviously embarrassed.

Mom said, "I've had that same ironing board set up in the basement for nearly forty years. Ain't nothin' small about a gift that lasts like that."

Less can be more....

An aunt gave Dave's mother a pretty rectangular dresser scarf for their wedding. Simple. Sweet. Embroidered. This was post-Depression, World War II era, when tin foil balls and gas tickets were daily  reality. Scrap drives, tire drives, air-raid sirens, hints of the coming Cold War...

This isn't the one Mom gave me, that one is at my daughter's now...

Mom gave me the dresser scarf about ten years back and when she handed it to me she said, "You like old things, and this would look nice on your grandma's dresser in your room." (My grandma was an orphan train child who ended up as a serving girl/foster child to a lawyer in Rochester, NY. The dresser in my room was one of the dressers her lawyer benefactor gave her when she married my grandfather).  Mom looked at the dresser cloth and said, "Folks gave simple gifts then, but I used that pretty piece on my dresser since Dad and I got married. First on the old set, then when we saved enough for the new."  (The new is now forty years+++ old)... "And if you can love something for all those years, it's not so simple in the end."

Dave is fond of saying that if our house caught fire, the first thing to be saved would be Great Grandma's stool.

He's right.

Grandma Herne was a tough cookie, strong and active. Her daughter, my Aunt Isabelle, was just like her.  Hard-working. Ambitious. Face-forward. I think that's where my tough side came from. But they always told me I was special, and how crucial that is in the life of a child. "Understood Betsy" type crucial. To feel special amidst the rubble.

So the old red stool was given to me by my mother before she died of cancer. She understood I'd never let anything happen to that stool. Its history was in a Civil War era kitchen... Lawyer Brown (my grandma's foster father and benefactor) got it next, passed on from his grandmother. Aged, old, bent and worn but with lots of good service left it it, he passed it on to my grandma as a young bride.

She left it at our house when she moved into my aunt's home when I was about five...

And now it lives here, in my always-needing-patching farmhouse and it fits perfectly. Me and the stool are copasetic, a little aged, but well-worn and feisty.

Old-oak solid.

I'm perched on it now, typing, wondering how many shucked peas, shelled beans, peeled peaches, and womanly stories went before me. Over 160 years worth....

Generations.

What has this got to do with writing, you ask? What great awesome lesson is to be learned by senseless Ruthy-chatter (over very good coffee which I've brought to share...) about dresser scarves, ironing boards and stools?

WHY AM I STILL READING, YOU SHOUT!!!!!

(Hey, that's your problem, not mine, I'd have stopped after the first paragraph. Maybe two. Then I'd yawn, make yaddi, yaddi, yah finger motions and eat chocolate from Easter. Why are you still here????? Oy.)

:)

Many famous authors (Nora Roberts is one of the few who do not do this) fall in love with their own voice. Sales numbers allow them latitude.

They take it.

And then some.

They prattle on about facts, figures, psychology, lecture, and they know their editor will let it slide because their numbers ALLOW THAT.

Don't do that.

Ever.

Let's make this our solemn pact, that if we make it big, if we turn THAT corner, where the editor's influence is directed by the marketing team, let's make a solemn pledge to NOT PRATTLE ON FOREVER ABOUT STUFF THE READER DOESN'T CARE ABOUT.

Or...

In simple writer terms:

When we're allowed latitude, we will use our common sense to draw back... Just because we're allowed to breach rules, doesn't mean we always should. Sometimes the BRILLIANT move is to write less. 

Our natural inclination is to push, push, push.

That's not always the smartest or right thing to do.

And is this opinion?  Yes.

But it's common sense, too, and that brings me to:

Ruthy-theory #2:  All people should be required to spend at least two years in a service job, dealing with the public. Waitressing, retail, counter service, etc.... Two years to realize that you're not the most important person in the world, and that the world is full of real people with real problems and you should be on your knees thanking your creator for more things than can be humanly listed on a blog.

Doing this takes you back to Ruthy-theory #1, that our world view, either positive or negative, whiny or accepting, gracious or degrading, kindly or self-serving is reflected in how we greet the gift of each new day.

Alleluia.

He is risen!

Thanks be to God!

Hey, not for nothing, here is a pic of MY NEW COVER FOR "A FAMILY TO CHERISH" !!!!

It's available for pre-order HERE

And it's a delightful book... Are you not TOTALLY LOVIN' ON THIS COVER?????

I might just sit here and stare at it  a while. That's Sophie with the dark hair and her little sister Rachel with the blonde.... Two little jocks, finally getting a chance to be little girls.

I just love it!

:)

HEY!!!  HEY!!!!! HEY!!!!!!!!!

Here is Julie Hilton Steele's antique Peacock Fireboard:

Jules, I'm so glad you sent it along! Isn't this gorgeous?  I love it, Julie. Totally!!

Coffee's on! Breakfast is served, Dave's bringing home muffins from the Tops Bakery. And we've got your choice of any Ruthy novel as a give-away to some lucky comment-type-person today. You can have a North Country book or a Men of Allegany County book.... And feel free to bring some of your Easter candy inside. We are lovin' us some chocolate here in Seekerville!