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The Man I Didn’t Mention

By Geralyn Ruane

His name is Bruce, and I didn’t thank him. This past Saturday I received a white rose at OCC because a short story of mine has been accepted for publication. At the podium, I thanked every member of OCC and I thanked my fiancé Ron who sat in the front row and took my picture. But I did not mention Bruce Kluger.

I could not have done it without Bruce, yet I don’t much about him – he has red hair, wrote for Playboy and used to like the Baltimore Colts. But without a doubt, our brief encounter put a spark in my life that wasn’t there before.
Bruce is the editorial assistant for Marlo Thomas, the woman who is publishing my story in her book.

Here’s what happened:
Marlo Thomas is publishing a book of personal short stories called The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2. She was accepting submissions for stories about love and romance up until November 15. I sent in my story “Jane Austen Meets the New York Giants” by e-mail on that Tuesday evening just before midnight New York time. Wednesday morning I got a call from a really nice guy who introduced himself as Bruce Kluger, who worked for Marlo Thomas. He said he really liked my story. Then he said “Unfortunately . . .”

AHHHHH! What, was he just calling to say “Nice try kiddo?” Had I missed the deadline? You mean this wasn’t THE CALL? But I continued listening, as lifeless as a deflated balloon in the gutter.

Unfortunately, he said, my story read too much like a short story, and it needed to read more like a personal essay. Could I re-shape it without losing any of the feeling of the story? I could have until the end of the week. He said he couldn’t even begin to tell me how to go about making such a change, but did I think I could do it? Bruce did offer to help me out by sending me a few of the essays that had already been accepted for publication in the book so I could see what he meant. I hung up the phone with the warm and fuzzy feeling that he wanted me to succeed.

But once I received the essays I was worried. I figured that most of my dialogue had to go – but that was the heartbeat of the story. Yikes! So, I tried to make it more essay-like but I kept a tiny bit of the dialogue. Too much? Too little? Not essay-like enough? I sent off my best effort Thursday afternoon. Bruce e-mailed me Thursday evening. He said he loved what I did, but he’d made some changes – he said he put back in some of his favorite things that I had cut. He put back in the dialogue! I was so happy. He made a few other changes, making it more accessible to those who haven’t memorized Pride and Prejudice. His changes were minimal and beautiful, and he did not step on my toes one little bit. He also wrote that he wanted to make sure Marlo liked it when he sent it to her on Friday. I TOTALLY felt like he was in my corner.

But I did not hear anything Friday morning. Oh, no – Marlo must have hated it! Late Friday afternoon, my fiancé Ron came to pick me up from work. I got in the car and he handed me his cell phone. Bruce had called earlier but hadn’t told Ron the verdict. I dialed. Bruce answered – I was in!!!!!

In fact, when Bruce had called earlier, he and Ron had talked about football for a while then he told Ron the good news but told Ron not to tell me. Ron played his part to perfection and it was indeed Bruce who told me I was published. He said Marlo Thomas’ immediate response to my story had been “Excellent.” I wondered why I hadn’t heard earlier in the day if this response had been so immediate. Then Bruce told me that Marlo Thomas wanted to end the story two paragraphs earlier than I had ended it. Bruce had spent the day fighting for my two paragraphs – he had gone to bat for me. As it turns out, Marlo’s cut made the story even better.

No, Virginia, I don’t think there is a Santa Claus, but there are people out there like Bruce Kluger who are even better. I have been a member of OCC for two and a half years, and I have heard some horror stories about the people in the publishing industry. Were any of you at the Dean Koontz meeting? As a best-selling author, he’s accumulated a bunch of shocking stories about how he’s been treated – AND HE’S DEAN KOONTZ! If a best-selling author can get knocked around, what chance do any of us have? So, sometimes, things can seem pretty dismal, and that maybe things suck over on the published side of the fence. But then there are people are out there like Bruce Kluger and Marlo Thomas. People who respect writing and writers, people who are a joy to work with. Maybe I’m being naïve. Maybe I lucked out. But this much I’m sure of – thanks to Bruce, and the knowledge that people like him exist, I’m not scared anymore.

Making A List

By Charlotte Maclay

I believe everyone, whatever your age, should have some life goals.

I don’t mean your ordinary New Year’s resolution. Those are nice to have, of course, but everyone knows the diet you start on January 1st lasts until, um, maybe January 2nd. If you work hard at it.

And I don’t mean your goal of selling a book or making the New York Times best seller list, although that’s what a lot of us would like to do. But those are goals that we can work toward but are truly not within our control.

I mean the kind of goal you’d think about when you’re lying there on your death bed and saying to yourself, “Darn, I wish I had. . .”

There are just some things in life you want to do. If you don’t think about them and write them down, time will slip by. You’ll be too busy, too old, too infirm, too caught up with job, family and day-to-day obligations until finally you’ll find your chance to experience that particular dream has passed you by.

I learned this from my daughter, who had thyroid cancer. (She’s fine now, thank goodness!) Apparently when the big “C” rears it’s frightening head, it starts you to thinking about your life and what you want to do. Mind you, her life goals are way different than mine. Her first, which she celebrated on her 30th birthday, was to do a bungee jump. (She was thoughtful enough not to tell me ahead of time so I wouldn’t worry.)

Her next goal, accomplished in honor of her 35th birthday, was to climb the back side of Half Dome in Yosemite, no small accomplishment. (You can see a pattern here, right? Unlike her mom, she’s always been a jock.) Her most recent celebration had her jumping (safely, thank God!) out of an airplane!

Needless to say, my goals are somewhat less strenuous, though no less exciting for me.

As I was driving on the freeway to an Orange County RWA chapter meeting about a year ago, my career in the doldrums, when I decided I needed a new life goal. Within about a hundred feet (which can take a long time on the 91 Freeway), I realized I’d always wanted to be a standup comedienne. (It’s something about how I’ve always admired Carol Burnett.)

That afternoon when I returned home, I googled standup comedy classes. To my delight (the fates were clearly on my side), I found one starting the next day no more than five minutes from my house. It turned out learning to write jokes is an amazing art, almost like writing poetry, and it’s harder than it looks. Since that time I’ve had standup gigs for alumnae meetings, senior citizen homes, women’s clubs and writing groups. I’ve even been paid a time or two.

It’s not that I want to make a career of being a standup comic. Heck, I can’t even stay up late enough to watch the Jay Leno show. But, by golly, I’ve achieved a life goal and had fun doing it. (If you’re interested in my jokes, check my Web site at NovelTalk.com. We’ll change the jokes often. I’ll also be teaching an online joke-writing class in September 2006.)

More recently it occurred to me that I’d never ridden on a motorcycle. Clearly, I had a deprived youth. So the husband of my critique partner agreed to help me celebrate my recent birthday (those birthdays that end in “0″ or “5″ are really good occasions to let it all out) by taking me riding on his humongous Harley. What fun! And it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. (Maybe I should have given that motorcycle crowd in high school a closer look.)

I’ve been very fortunate in my life, so there is not much I haven’t done that I wanted to do. But I still have a list.

I’ve seen grizzly bears in the wild, but I’d like to see polar bears too. And I want to hear wolves howling in the wilderness.

Chances are good my goals won’t resemble yours. But that’s okay. You might want to learn to knit, play the piano or be a circus aerialist or clown just for the fun of it.

The point is, you need to sit down with yourself and think about what you’d regret missing out on if that bus barreling down the road suddenly hit you.

Some people advocate you come up with 25 goals. But I say start small. You can always add more later.

Let me know what’s on your list.