I’ve never been a great organizer. Organization doesn’t come easy to me. I’m a dreamer with lofty goals, stellar purposes. When it comes to putting plans into action, I’m an excellent starter. I’m also a persistent person with the ability to carry through to the finish line. Organizing a project, however, has been known to separate me from the wheat.

Allow me to illustrate. When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to attend Princeton. I liked the sound of the name. The Ivy League was highly impressive to my sensibilities. The problem was multidimensional. My parents wouldn’t have cared if I went to Princeton or Penn State or Allegheny College or a trade school for wanna be mechanics. In fact, the latter would have been preferred, if I were to be educated at all beyond high school. I don’t think I ever mentioned my goal of going to Princeton. We were at best a middle class family and there were no savings. To make Princeton a reality, I would have needed to organize a strategy to greatly improve my grades. I would have had to enlist help from certain teachers, primarily those in the mathematics and science fields, to bring me up to speed in my areas of weakness. I would have had to develop excellent study habits to make the most of my academic abilities. Then, I would have had to have learned how to apply for a scholarship and done my best to impress those who would grant me one. I wasn’t up to any of it. I didn’t improve my grades. I didn’t take the SAT’s. I settled for going to business school to learn to be an accountant.

When I was 23, I made good on a long-held dream of traveling around the United States. I had this trip in my sights for about three years, but my planning was fairly weak. I bought some camping equipment and a car that was newer than the one I had. I bought it from my used car dealing uncle and felt confident I would have a reliable vehicle to drive around the country for a year. I left in the spring when the weather was still chilly in Pennsylvania and I headed directly for Florida, where I could visit some relatives and stay for a week or so. At my oldest brother’s place, I was showing him something in the trunk one day.

“Hey, you don’t have a jack in here,” he said in amazement.

Catching the wave for a funny comeback, I quipped, “What do I need a jack for? I don’t have a spare tire.”

Although proud of my clever response, I was telling the embarrassing truth. I was taking a long trip without a spare. How do you organize a year’s trip without taking the basics, which brings me to the point of these stories. When you’re charting a journey, it’s best to plan it out carefully.

As a writer, I’ve taken the advice of my teachers and others who suggest we carefully research and outline our stories or books. We know the ending before we start writing and we write from plot point to plot point until we reach bring the story to a conclusion. When I was much younger, I wasn’t as disciplined with the writing process and would paint myself into a corner sometimes because I just wanted to write and didn’t properly construct the piece ahead of time.

In the book A Writer’s Coach by Jack Hart, he states clearly how important organizing is to the process. “Failure to organize produces a long list of consequences: missed deadlines, excessively long manuscripts, formulaic writing, slow and unproductive writers. It may be the most dangerous failure you risk.

“Organization should come dead center in the process, after idea development and reporting, but before drafting and publishing. In their work with writing coaches, Roy Peter Clark and Don Fry report that most writing problems occur in the organizing stage.”

Mr. Hart stresses that “writers who skip over the organizational phase typically find that writing is agony. If you have no guideposts to help you through confusing material, progress can be painfully slow. Every piece of writing degenerates into a stressful series of false starts, detours, and wasted effort.”

This isn’t to say that a writer can’t be spontaneous. If the unfolding plot takes an unexpected turn, feel free to follow it. Let your imagination fly from moment to moment while still steering the vessel to every port. But mapping your way and giving yourself the means to sail along are vital to bringing your hero back from a perilous journey.

At the risk of alienating those who deny the existence of God or those who just have serious doubts about the existence of a being who created all of this, I’m nonetheless doing this piece about spirituality. I respect those who don’t agree with my views on religion. I’d better, considering my own set of beliefs probably place me heavily in the minority on such matters. I would like to think we can agree there’s more to this animate existence than its gross physical nature, but to those who would accuse me of magical thinking, I plead guilty and hope there is common ground on how the arts can elevate us to more profound states of mind and emotional euphoria.

Participating in the arts by passive or active roles can give us great pleasure, insights and inspiration. When I have to do a task that I have not surrendered to or appreciated for its intrinsic value in the moment, such as washing dishes, I like to put on some lively music that might energize me. When I’m feeling anxious or unpleasant in any emotional way, I’m inclined to watch a good comedy that can make me laugh out loud. Even if you are a cynical sort, you should be able to recognize that these art forms are capable of bringing about a transformation of mental energy from negative to positive. They lift your spirits, one might say.

So, one being entertained by the arts can take part in them by simply experiencing them. There’s nothing wrong with that. I would be shocked if there’s a musician or writer or any kind of artiste that doesn’t enjoy the aesthetic work of others from time to time. Even the most unkind critics admit to being deeply affected occasionally by the creations of those for whom they dip their poison pens. The portal to which I refer in this blog headline is available to all lovers of artistic work. I do believe, however, the greatest potential for a spiritual connection comes to those who actively practice their chosen labor of love.

One of the most obvious connections is found in the world of music where singers chant their way to a blissful state. I have attended Self Realization Fellowship services where a song is chanted repeatedly to bring about a sense of union with God. Peace and love are easily generated with these chants, and as Elvis Costello sang, “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” The mantra is related to this use of sound to open the portal, so to speak. Encyclopaedia Britannica’s website entry on Buddhist and Hindu mantra describes it succinctly. “In Hinduism and Buddhism, a sacred utterance (syllable, word, or verse) that is considered to possess mystical or spiritual efficacy. Various mantras are either spoken aloud or merely sounded internally in one’s thoughts, and they are either repeated continuously for some time or just sounded once. Most mantras are without any apparent verbal meaning, but they are thought to have a profound underlying significance and are in effect distillations of spiritual wisdom. Thus, repetition of or meditation on a particular mantra can induce a trancelike state in the participant and can lead him to a higher level of spiritual awareness.”

The point of these activities is to at least bring us to the here and now. This is where the portal can be found. One of my favorite quotes on this subject is from Eckhart Tolle’s Practicing the Power of Now. “When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. The realm of Being, which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you., an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.”

Our creative works, arising from that innermost core, have the potential of bringing you to a connection with all of which you are a part, transcending the coarse and shallow level of existence to which we have become accustomed. There’s nothing magical about this. When you’re fully involved in the creative process, bringing something into existence from nothing, tapping into an energy source you don’t even understand, you’re reaching through the portal. I choose to believe that is the Divine. Whatever you choose to believe is up to you, but it’s truly special…beautiful…brilliant…full of love…accessible. May we use our gift of the arts to its fullest.

The world’s first novel was not The Handmaid’s Tale. Nor was it Tom Sawyer. No, it wasn’t Don Quixote. Generally considered to be the first was The Tale of Genji, penned by a Japanese noblewoman named Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century. That was 1000 years ago! It was over 400 years until the first novel in English would be published. The honorable Ms. Shikibu did her writing on a scroll and probably with a bronze stylus.

That first novel was a bit of a soap opera, telling of the many romances of aristocrat Genji during his life in the court of Japanese royalty. Not much has changed in that regard. Check Netflix or Hulu for a few minutes and you can find a similar theme from the days of yore. Twain once said, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” Still, the voices of these many writers through the centuries were unique. Twain himself was a classic example of that. Sage and sagacious, funny and wickedly acidic, lovable and detestable. His style seems fresh even today.

The great ones somewhere along the line provided pearls of wisdom that transcended their times. Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, penned many notable quotes in Middle English. A couple we still hear are, “All good things must come to an end” and “Mercy surpasses justice.”

Authors of fiction often send their messages with subtlety not found in the brilliant treatises of Aristotle, Confucius and Voltaire. The story can make the point. Characters, in their struggles for good and evil or their search for truth versus folly, bring light and understanding to the complexities of our lives while entertaining us. My favorite writers are those who have mastered this process of conveying deeper meaning to human existence.

Obviously, there are many of these gifted wordsmiths. By using a few of them as examples, I am leaving out many who deserve to be on any short list of the greats. Nonetheless, I bravely go forth with the knowledge I slight not only them but any readers who won’t be able to believe I didn’t mention their own favorites. By no means do I suggest these are the very best authors, but their voices have indeed continued to echo down through the ages. The truth is that I haven’t even read some of the most respected writers. I present the following based on my own experience and the impact certain writers have had on my own development. In their own words, maybe you can hear their unique voices.

“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”–Herman Hesse

“He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”–F. Scott Fitzgerald

“…and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”–John Steinbeck

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”–Charles Dickens

The timeless aspect of their words demonstrate their wisdom. Remember them always.

To begin, I want to point out I am using a wide definition when referring to the arts here, including writing, music, visual arts, performance, culinary and more. Whatever you do that involves the creative process qualifies in my world.

To be deeply engaged in the arts is a labor of love. Being rich and famous doesn’t really matter to a person working on their craft. They want it to be absolutely stunning in its beauty or its uniqueness or its inspirational quality. I’m sure most of us do enjoy it when our work receives praise. It validates our belief in the quality of our work and it does stroke our ego a bit, but the basic impulse to create doesn’t arise from a wish to be placed on a pedestal. The sculptor wants the sculpture to be placed on the pedestal. First and foremost, the envisioned completed piece is its own reward. That is where the true satisfaction lies.

In order to achieve this undertaking, we can’t allow ourselves to fall into a rut. Once our skills have been developed to the point where there is some quality in what we produce, we may inadvertently allow our work to become stale. Perhaps the longer we practice it, the more we are subject to having this happen. Many musicians’ songs fall into sounding like the ones that were written earlier.  A painter’s style is prone to becoming routine. An author’s stories can fit into one niche until the end of that writer’s life. Success can breed complacency. Failure or at least lack of acceptance may be the best outcome for the artist dedicated to honing his craft. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be like that. I can think of certain musicians, authors, filmmakers and performers who have reinvented themselves consistently and who have become icons of their particular artistic persuasions. Let’s take a look now at how to keep it fresh.

1. With each project, look for a new approach. A fantasy writer does this by creating a new “universe.” A painter could try new color schemes or move from watercolor to acrylic, for instance. Robert Plant was the lead singer of the hard rock band Led Zeppelin. When they broke up, he went to a soft, smooth style. Later, he even teamed up with Bluegrass/Country icon Alison Krauss for an album of Americana music. It was met with acclaim and popularity.
2. Dare to be different. When I was writing comedy screenplays, my partner and I came up with a type of visual and verbal comedy–beyond slapstick and vaudeville shtick–that we fell into naturally. It was different than anything we had seen before, with word play and sight gags that twist perception of reality in a way that was hilarious in our estimation. After completing scripts for one short and one feature with far too little promotion of them, we saw a new hit movie that beat us to the marketplace–Airplane! The groundbreaking comedy style of that movie was something we were already doing. We dared write and present a mode of humor that was outlandish. Be outlandish, a la Picasso and Seinfeld and Mozart.
3. Reach down deep to find the most meaningful way of expressing yourself. If you’re a good dancer or chef or writer, you have trusted methods that work for you. You know how to construct your art form in a way that pleases those who partake of your creations. But deeper can be found a concept that conveys what it is you truly want to show and all you have to do is intuitively find it. It’s waiting to be found. I believe you know where it is and if you but search, you will find. It could be huge, but it may just be the perfect word for the sentence you’re writing. It could be a slight change of a melody to make it truly special. A stroke of the brush, an unexpected ingredient for your recipe. When you get in touch with these expressions, you’re practically walking on holy ground.
4. Strive for a higher level of excellence with each piece. If we don’t try to improve on our previous best, we may as well be cranking out molds on a production line where every piece we make is standard–like every other one manufactured. At the core of the artist’s being is the intention to create the most magnificent work of art she has ever done. Enjoy that with no pressure. Do it with joy.
5. Create with a servant’s heart. We do what we do in the arts to have a positive effect on those around us. Let us humbly serve others with the gifts we bring into this world.

Considering the foolish mistakes and wrong turns I’ve made in my years, I feel I’ve lived a rather charmed life. Far more has gone right than wrong, I’ve learned many lessons along the way and the losses have usually been few and far between. This year, 2017, has been the exception. In this one calendar year, I have lost an aunt, a sister, a brother, too many iconic musicians and a few people on the fringes of my life. They all count.

Loss comes in many forms that can take their toll on the psyche. Loss of a job, a relationship, your sanity, stuff, money and on and on. Much of it is minor while some of it is earth-shaking. There are times when we lose ground on some aspect of our lives and we wonder if we will ever fully recover. We might be satisfied just holding onto what we still have, hoping to not lose further ground. This is not healthy. Fear can creep in, potentially paralyzing us. Before we reach that point, we have the option of finding the gain in the loss.

That is obviously easier said than done. It may even seem insensitive to think that in times of loss of a loved one or times of major catastrophe we should just suck it up and look on the sunny side of life. I’m not suggesting such an approach or an off-handed dismissal of gut wrenching challenges. However, I find the old proverb useful that states “all is grist for the mill.” When we’re faced with these times of adversity, we can curl up into the fetal position and check out until it’s all over or we can step into the fire of self-discovery. We can assimilate what we’re experiencing to our full capacity. We can dive in to help those who are suffering along with us or rise up to recover and mend the tears in relationships or whatever needs mending. Mere reflection in times of trouble can shed light on truths we missed previously. A Chinese proverb expands on this simply and concisely: “The gem cannot be polished without friction.”

There’s also a story told by Jerry Stemkoski which I found in Everyday Greatness. “One early spring day I met an old farmer. It had been a rainy spring, and I commented about how good it must be for the crops to have so much rain early in the season. He replied, ‘No, if the weather is too easy on the crops now, the plants may only grow roots on the surface. If that happens, then a storm could easily destroy the crops. However, if things are not so easy in the beginning, then the plants will have to grow the strong and deep roots they need to get at the water and nourishment down below. If a storm or drought comes, they are more likely to survive.’ Now I look at rough times as an opportunity to put down some roots to help me weather future storms that may come my way.”

The goal, then, is to deal with loss or other adversity in such a way as to meet it head-on as best we can and to grasp what it has to teach us. Mel Schwartz of Psychology Today wrote an article in October of 2011 that discusses this.

“Growth and fundamental levels of change only tend to occur when we are out of our comfort zone. We can refer to this as being far from equilibrium, where certainty and predictability no longer reign supreme. So we might look at the crisis as a blessing in disguise, albeit an unwanted one.

“Steve Jobs might have felt self-defeated and victimized himself after he was fired from Apple many years ago. He chose otherwise. After his dismissal, he grasped crisis by the horns, seeing opportunity where others did not. He went on to lead a small animation company and turn it into the juggernaut that is now Pixar. When The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006, Jobs immediately became the largest shareholder in Disney. The moral of the story is unwanted change happens; look beyond it and embrace the discomfort.

“The crisis is but a snapshot of a moment in time, and one we’d prefer to avoid. But to achieve self-empowerment requires looking beyond that snapshot and envisioning what door of potential has just flung open.”

When a loved one has departed and leaves a void beyond anything we could have imagined, perhaps we can look into the void and gaze upon the “unfolding potential of change”, as Schwartz puts it. We have reached a turning point and our attention should be on the future. By placing a new activity, an exciting quest or additional friendships into the gap, you increase your chances of finding your continuing destiny that seemed to have ended with a tragic loss.

To truly connect with your readers, your writing has to be honest and from the depths of your being. Sweep aside that surface emotional drivel. Dig beneath the glib intellectualism meant to make you sound clever. Root out the core of your subject that picks up your pulse, makes you feel gritty or makes you want to cry from the suffering or the rapture. Pull it up and touch its palpable substance. Examine it from as many angles as you need to feel it. Then get it on paper and work it until your feeling jumps off the page.

I wish to share some tips on this topic that were written for addicted2success.com by Tim Denning. These excerpts strike a chord with the essence of my message. You can find the full article on that website under the title, “How To Write From The Heart: You’ve Got The Words To Change A Nation.” Here are the highlights, in my opinion.

“Write when you’re full of emotion

I believe everyone has felt it–the trepidation of some crisis in the moment or on the horizon that must be confronted. Walking into certain battle is one moment of truth that none of us should ever have to face, being in the position of having to kill other human beings or be killed. In less extreme examples, there are terminal diseases to be faced, confessions to be made, speeches to be given and questions to be popped. Life presents all kinds of challenges to our courage and every instance could be a negative turning point in our lives if we let it get the better of us.

Simple and plain, the subject of this piece is how we should not let our fears cripple our creative endeavors. There are those who never finish writing a book because no edit is ever good enough to justify putting the manuscript out there for the world or even a publisher to read. There are lovely singing voices never heard in public for fear of humiliation. And there’s a painter somewhere now who wants to show the world his or her world on canvas but is hampered by lack of confidence in one’s own talent. To be hamstrung by our fears is to allow the magnificent mind that should be serving us to navigate this world take over to such an extreme that it practically makes us dysfunctional. Whether it is a general condition or specific to some small part of our lives, it’s unacceptable.

While the focus here is how insecurity in all its forms can render us ineffective in the arts, this goes much deeper and is broader in scope. Periodically plagued by varying degrees of anxiety due to a wide range of stimuli over the course of a lifetime, I have also been fortunate enough to gain knowledge of techniques on how to generate peace and joy for myself. Concentration, contemplation and meditation are wonderful tools for accomplishing this. I have found, however, in the last year that there’s a fine line between bliss and high anxiety. There’s an actual overlapping rush of emotion where the two meet in the heart or mind. When there’s an ongoing battle for the higher ground, I can feel near panic one moment and heartfelt joy the next. They even seem to coexist at times. How can that be?

I have to say it’s at these moments that we have to stand up to the fear and the cause of it to put ourselves in control. Even if that means letting the fear wash over us, perceiving it for what it is and moving on to what must be done. And what must be done can also include doing nothing. However one handles it, pushing through to the other side is the aim. John Wayne had a Duke-esque line that applies here.

We must get in touch with the courage within us or the fears can incapacitate us. The creative spirit can be overwhelmed and suppressed to a faint voice hardly heard from again. We cannot let this happen. In the inspirational book Everyday Greatness, the chapter titled Courage expands on the John Wayne line. “Those familiar with John Wayne can imagine the steel in his eyes, the swagger in his stance, and the drawl in his voice as he made the statement above. While saddling up in the face of fear required John Wayne to step up, courage most often requires us to step out–out from our comfort zones, out from our doubts, and out into uncharted waters.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the awareness that something else is more important. Courage can be displayed in heroic, visible ways, or in quiet, private battles we fight when attempting to conquer inner fears.”

As Anais Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

Another quote that illustrates my overall message comes from If It Ain’t Broke, Break It by Robert J. Kriegel and Louis Patler, “By embracing risk, you will accomplish more than you ever thought you could. In the process, you will transform your life into an exciting adventure that will constantly challenge, reward and rejuvenate you.”

So, I encourage you to throw the curtain aside when it seems too scary to see what’s behind it. Even if it’s just as difficult as you had feared, you will learn how strong you really are and find your lion’s heart along that yellow brick road.

Who out there knows someone who is living a full, flourishing life that is characterized by its simplicity? You know, the stay-at-home mom who maintains a chaotic home with a couple children and a busy husband? Or that self-employed contractor that runs all over the county promoting and operating his business from dawn to dusk? And there are so many of those blissfully retired folks with nothing but time on their hands for whom simplicity is just about driving them up their sterile walls. Okay, okay, it’s not so easy to blend what might outwardly appear to be a formula for a simple life with the practical, healthy need for productivity.

It is my belief that every generation hearkens back at some point to an earlier time when life was simpler. The 1950’s seem simpler. To those in control of the world at that time, the turn of the century probably looked attractive and less complex. I suspect that the demands of society in humankind’s first villages were stressing out homo sapiens who preferred to go it alone or keep it down to family only. Day to day living tends to get convoluted and many-faceted on its own if we don’t keep it simple.

Wake up an hour early

Silence your phone

Breathe

Slow down at the dinner table

Learn to say “no”

These are excellent basic ideas on which you can easily expand. For Daniel’s full explanations of each of these and more, please check out his article at Lifehack.org, titled 20 Simple But Powerful Changes You Can Make To Simplify Your Life. These will save time in some cases and allow you to enjoy life in real time even when you’re busy. Live it to the fullest, but dial it back to experience all it has to give.

You’ve probably heard the term. It commonly describes the music with which a person identifies as running parallel to their lives. The music heard the most over the years or that which simply meant the most can be thought of as a soundtrack accompanying a lifetime. The songs often attributed to be representative of one’s life are those from the time of youth, perhaps because of the magnified importance of coming of age. Passions ran high and those times seemed so important. The formative years are important, but they don’t necessarily represent the big picture.

Imagine your life as a big picture, that is, a blockbuster movie of epic proportions. It doesn’t matter if yours is an “ordinary” one, as most are, if by ordinary you mean the usual growing up in one place, having an average education, a blue collar or middle management occupation, marrying and having children who aren’t perfect but who make you proud anyway. Every life is unique, most are noble in some way and there are highs and lows that make for all the drama a story needs. Your life is worthy of a soundtrack and you have written the score for most of it already.

Your varied and colorful past started with a glorious or harrowing or sad or some other non-boring birth filled with emotion for you and those around you. Do you know your own story in that regard? If so, you can easily find the music that applies. If not, you can imagine the kinds of tunes that may have been rolling around the mind of your mother before, during or after you exited the birth canal. Maybe she loved music and played it for nine months when you were in the womb. Yeah–you may have even had those melodic images in your own mind as you were making your grand entrance.

As you grew, you were probably subjected to plenty of music in the house, the car, in school and the myriad of other places where music is played for public consumption whether you want it or not. If you had an older sibling, they could have led the way with the music of their teen years and shaped your own tastes. Even if you were raised in a musically silent household and you heard it sparingly because you lived in a remote area or everyone was listening to their own on electronic devices of one kind or another, there is a music that can be added to this movie to convey the feel of your earthly existence. Specific songs aren’t even necessary if you don’t have any that specifically apply or stand out for you. If yours has been an action-packed ride, your music may be upbeat in an exciting way. Be it Beethoven, Beyonce or B-52’s, there’s a style out there that both fits your demeanor and your perception of your own personal journey.

Of course, no one’s life is on one constant pace. You press forward and climb at times, you coast when you can or must. There are many genres that fit these scenarios. For instance, the graduates soar to the music of Pomp and Circumstance when they march in their commencement ceremonies. A death dirge may accompany a funeral service and give the deceased their dignified, somber swan song. Even on a daily basis your musical choices may vary from softer fare in the morning to hard-edged selections in the daytime and evening hours with relaxation strains in the hour leading up to bedtime.

Some believe that eclectic options provide humans with the best opportunity to reap the maximum benefits that music has to offer. “Variety is the spice of life,” the saying goes. The more open and receptive a person is, the more enjoyment is to be had by the the listener. To be limited to listening only to pop, hip hop, classic rock, country, jazz or classical to name a few possibilities is to deprive oneself from the pleasures and assimilation of assorted musical forms. World music, for example, allows you to see through the eyes and ears of many other cultures with their varied rhythms, with their diversified instrumentation. Full ranges of emotion are available to listeners moving outside their comfort zones. They add to life experience in this way and that extends to life in general. Exposing oneself to travel and new experiences broadens the horizons that enrich lives in ways that could hardly be imagined. The soundtrack of your life is still being written. May it be a masterpiece.

I was at a hospital recently on business. I noticed a rack of books in a window of their gift shop. I stopped and saw a sign on the rack that indicated there were inspirational books there. Since my recently published novel, Boundless Trust, falls within the inspirational genre, I thought it might be a good fit. I learned who to contact to have the book considered for their inventory. Ultimately, I was referred to a book distributor. I consulted their website and promptly discovered they will not purchase anything from print on demand publishers. Without any regard for the quality of the physical book or its content, it was ruled out automatically.

I’ve seen other aspersions of print on demand publishers and have received the impression that certain contingents in the publishing world have a condescending view of print on demand (POD) publishing. This article is the result of my research into the matter and an attempt to compare it to conventional publishing. Perhaps I can provide an unbiased perspective for authors who will be plunging into marketing a manuscript to some traditional publishers or taking the self-publishing route.

The age-old, traditional method of printing books is called offset lithography. It works by transferring ink from a plate with all the letters and figures in place to a rubber sheet. The rubber sheet is pressed onto paper and, voila, we have words on pages. Multiple pages, in fact, are on big sheets and they are cut in preparation for binding. This is mostly how large publishers do it because they have always done it this way and in the long run, it’s the most economical way when you print more than 500 copies. These same companies started using POD around the beginning of this millennium as a way to economically print smaller runs of older books which had less demand for large inventories. With the digital age came the ability to print single or small numbers of copies without the labor intensive and costly use of offset lithography. As I understand it, one machine can print the manuscript and the cover, then collate and bind in 20 minutes or less per book.

Consumers Digest published an article on their website that provides an example of the disrespect shown POD publishers. It is dated 2008, so they may have softened their stance since then, but I cite it as one case of a negative opinion of POD. It is presented as an unmasking of this approach to publishing, warning aspiring writers against it as one might caution them about vanity publishing. They go on to quote Jerry D. Simmons, a former Time Warner Book Group Executive and founder of NothingBinding.com, who states, “The POD companies are printers, not publishers.” That is quite the sweeping generality.

IBPA Independent, an excellent magazine published by the Independent Book Publishers Association, presented an article in October of 2015 titled, The POD Putdown and Ways to Fight Back. Brooke Warner points out that the stigma against print on demand publishing came about during self-publishing’s early days when author’s eager to be published produced poorly designed and poorly written/edited books. They foisted their inferior products on bookstores without making widely accepted concessions such as viable discounts and allowing their books to be returnable. Self-published books were soon scorned for the most part. In the late 1990’s, companies were formed that would serve self-publishing authors, using POD technology, but most of them didn’t do anything to improve the quality of the books they published. They came to be known as POD companies, as I’ve referenced above in the quote from Mr. Simmons, and they solidified the perception that POD meant inferior. Ms. Warner states that a shift followed and authors started producing books better in overall quality. Unfortunately, the industry has not changed its view of POD publishing.

Many legitimate independent publishers have turned to the POD process as a matter of practicality and financial responsibility. In so doing, they have not renounced their commitment to first-rate design and attention to literary quality They should not be identified with the older, unprofessional model cast by the inexperienced.

Black Rose Writing is the publishing house in Texas that published my latest novel. Created by Reagan Rothe, Black Rose gives us an example of a company that is conducting the business of POD book production in a professional manner. I conducted a short interview with Mr. Rothe, seeking answers to questions that were key for me in addressing the attitude toward POD publishers.

He states, “In terms of the quality of our books, our feedback has been quite positive. We very rarely receive notification of a bad batch of books, which could also occur for offset printers. I’m comfortable putting our trade paperbacks up against any printers in the world.”

With regard to the quality of the writing itself, I asked him about the percentage of manuscripts received which are actually published. “At present, we are very much in alignment with the major publishing and indie publishing houses around the globe. Less than 15% of all requested manuscripts are published. While some of the larger presses may receive more queries and agented queries, we still do our best to review each and every query sent our way, and I do my best to respond to each writer personally.” Obviously, the Black Rose team is careful about the quality of the writing. And there is no payment by the author for publication of the book.

Finally, I asked him if there is a clannish attitude in the conventional publishing and distribution fields toward POD publishers. His response: “The stigma is still there, but it’s definitely not as accepted. Many bookstores are realizing that POD publishers are willing to do their best to provide quality authors and titles, same as the big six publishers. I believe the media professionals are also realizing that there are quite a few really good POD publishers with books of equal quality to bestselling titles.”

I see this as only getting better also. There is so much talent out there, from the wordsmith to the designer! It would be a shame to suppress it on the basis of how it is produced. There are voices in literature that deserve to be heard and read, regardless that the publishers are making economical choices in book production. As long as they do not sacrifice quality, they deserve to compete on a level playing field.