Having spent some (dozens of) hours going over material, I think there’s enough here to make an entertaining book.
I know I’ve talked about it before, but this time I’m more serious. I remember when Claire put her Hardyville stories between pages, it turned out not half so simple as reformatting some old columns. She had to re-write a lot of stuff, and it will be more so in this case. The book will draw heavily from the blog of course, but I can’t just copy and paste blog posts. For one thing the blog is chronological, and this will have to be organized topically. There’ll be chapters on, oh, all sorts of things. Neighbors, cats, dogs, rats, chickens, water, building, inventing, re-inventing, disasters, guns, food, scrounging…It’s going to take a lot of work. It’s likely to end up rather long. But I think at the end I can make something people would enjoy reading.
This won’t just be a .pdf on the blog. If I’m to go to this much trouble I’ll have to do a proper job of formatting and hopefully selling it.
What do y’all think? And what shall I do about a title?
I think ‘creative poverty’ is a brilliant term…
Go for it Joel.
I kinda like the title as it stands.
Rather than the usual “shit happens and here I am in the desert”, perhaps something along the lines of a survival novel. A SHTF novel and how you survived it. It would be more entertaining than a semi funny how too book by a cranky old fart and more informative than a J.W. Rowles novel. Most of those kind get lost in trying to come up with a disaster scenario or the big picture. You could ignore that (like The Road) and nail the day to day aspect that would interest any would be survivalist.
As for the title, I think the author name would be perfect. “Some Crazy Old Guy in the Desert”. Who could pass up a title like that?:-)
I’ll go with jabrwok… Titles are a hard thing for me to come up with too. I dislike titles that are too long, or that don’t tell me anything about the story. I don’t usually insist on having things both ways, but that’s pretty close to what happens a lot. LOL This title seems to be just about right!
Go for it Joel. I’ll buy it, and review it. 🙂
I’m with C6: Existing placeholder title works.
ML: I dislike titles that are too long, or that don’t tell me anything about the story.
Back in the day, when I was writing stuff for Doing Freedom!, short titles were a running joke between Sunni and myself. I had to force myself not to submit “Simulator” as “Sim”. But I set a personal record with a two-letter title: “DJ” (but that actually pertain to the story [grin]).
I daresay “Insert Title Here” should win some sort of prize for “doesn’t tell me anything about the story.” 🙂
Whatever else happens, the title will not be “Insert Title Here.”
The book sounds like a good idea to me. It’s inspiring to see someone payin’ the freedom bill as honorably as you do. (I’ll want hard copies to pass on to my girls. 🙂
For a title, I like the idea of leaning on the “intentional” or “deliberate” theme. Thoreau said he wished to live “deliberately”, and I see a lot of that concept here. And via my participation in the Guitar Craft project, I have grown fond of looking at and doing things with intention; again, this is a theme I see heavily in these pages. Both are things that much of modern society has largely abandoned, which makes them stand out all the more.
I also like the idea that you chose your poverty. (More accurately, your flavor of poverty, since we all are impoverished somewhere in our lives, whether we admit it or not.) First and foremost you seem to be a fella who knows what he’s about. You’re the first to admit you have drawbacks and a lot of details to learn, but over and over you seem to do things because it fits who you are.
Living in modern society, that’s something worth aiming for.
WooHoo! Where do I sign up to pre-order? And I like that Crazy Old Guy in the Desert for a title. Maybe it’ll even go into a TV show like Mountain Men or Life below Zero.
Desert Rat Tales?
Happiness is a Warm Gulch?
in light of the recent septic update
Dealing With my Own Crap: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Live Free
(for bonus cash, work “sustainable” and “green” into the title and you’ll trick hippies into thinking the book is about composting)
There are better ideas already than any I can come up with for the cover title
I was thinking about something allong the lines of the chinese calander for chapter titles eg, year of the chicken, year of the horse, year of the [mis-stitched pack] rat…
On the subject of rats, my dad has been having trouble with them stealing food from his dog run. I was round there today, and he had a multi catch crow trap ( http://www.solwayfeeders.com/products/multi-larsen-trap-p1399-c426.html ) set with a bowl full of tinned dog food as bait in the middle chamber. There was a rat in one of the chambers – little bugger was hissing and lunging at the bars when I took a closer look. It wasn’t anything as wholesome as a pack rat – just a nasty scabby Rattus norvegicus
Great to hear the book is coming, sign me up too for a pre-order. Will it be ready in time for a winter read? Do all the stories need to be in one book? I like all the title suggestions and the idea of a chronicle of day to day life of intentional creative poverty lived by a cranky old fart in the desert.
I think your idea of putting down the scribbles from this blog into a book is great. I am looking forward to reading it in the, I hope, not to distant future.
As for a title, I kinda like…
Memoirs of a Scofflaw… South West of disorder
Go for it! I just put up my latest book today on Amazon, and I’m here to tell you, if I can do it, you can too!
(Sorry about the delay in getting back to you – the publication process was a bit convoluted this time. Look for a package soon!)
Just A Patch of Desert.
Sounds like a great idea. Put me down for two. The mockup cover is a bit “busy” and hard to scan visually. Perhaps one to three pics and formatting on the title. Oh, and a pictures section inside or to go with each chapter/section.
Thanks for writing my favourite blog.
Something you said to me comes to mind, “you can never really fail” which is a nice contrast to Jack Black’s “You Can’t Win”.
Title 1: Gulchendiggensmoothen (sp?)
(insert picture of same when it was stuck in the wash)
Subtitle: Life in the desert/high desert/New Mexico/Southwest/or etc
Title 2: Chickens is Stoopid
(Insert picture of a chicken with a stupid look, maybe its head cocked (ha!) to the side.)
Subtitle: and more stories about life in the desert/etc
Ok, both are bad, but I devoted 5 minutes of my lifespan to it, so you’re gonna read it.