Rooftop Musings

Here I am, seventy-four years old – and female, to boot – and I’m up on my roof squeezing a bit of tar under loose shingles. I check them once a year, before the monsoon season swoops in and blasts us with wind and water. Standard maintenance any homeowner should know to do, but my neighbors think I’m crazy to get up here myself.

Done, I sit on the peak, enjoying the view from my rooftop and musing about life. My cabin’s across the street from the reservation, so it’s nothing but Ponderosa Pines as far as I can see to the west.

I grin, thinking of the view from the farmhouse where I grew up, on the hill overlooking Lake Erie. We’d watch thunderstorms come across the lake from Canada, about fifty miles away. I didn’t need to be on the roof to see that. In fact, I only ever went up on the mudroom roof. It was attached to the house but only one story high. That’s what makes me grin. I’d stand up there with an old fishing pole with a big homemade kite attached to the line, catching the wind that was just enough up there to make that kite soar.

Parents would probably get into trouble letting a kid fly a kite off a roof today, but I wouldn’t swap those times for anything.

My young grandsons have probably never been on a roof. I hope they’ve flown kites. They seem to spend most of their time staring at one screen or another. It’s a touchy subject to address, though. My son would like to get them outdoors doing more, and Lord knows he had his own adventures growing up. I’m pretty sure his older siblings sent him to the roof for an errant Frisbee, then took away the ladder and had him jump into a pile of leaves. I never knew about that until they were grown. Fortunately, the roof wasn’t high and there were a lot of leaves. He didn’t need the emergency room that time.

The mother of his boys isn’t too keen on our stories from his youth. He did tend to go into things head first. I remember the ER doc stitching up his seven-year-old knee, amazed that the kid was arguing with him about the color of the thread instead of crying hysterically. When the doc said so, the kid said, “It’s nothing compared to a golf club to the head.”

That head injury was my first helicopter flight with him, not the last. It’s amazing his brain never suffered permanent damage. The boys’ mother doesn’t understand those stories are a celebration of good luck, resilience, and living life fully.

Dang, the sun is starting to set. I’d best make my way down off this roof before dark.

If you want to listen to this, go to my substack post.

Memory - fact or fiction

Several years ago, my kids and I all went to a concert and expected to meet the performer after the show - but a rude person blocked that from happening. We were all together for the holidays and that incident came up. My daughter said, "But we did meet him - we ran into him on the way out, all of us." I was sure it had never happened - so I asked her brothers. They agreed with me, it never happened. But their sister is just as sure that it did.

There's no way to go back and prove whose memory is accurate - we aren't on a TV show taping our lives - so whose version should be accepted? Does majority rule?

The last time I saw him, my brother mentioned how awful it was that our mother died alone in the hospital in the middle of the night (decades ago). I told him I was with her that morning, drove home where my husband said they'd called to say she was gone, and drove back. We both had clear memories of the day and his wife's matched his. However, two things backed me up: my (now ex-) husband and an official document with time of death that morning. We decided my version was probably more accurate.

This is one of the reasons it's so important to verify facts from multiple sources when writing non-fiction.

Memory may be fact or fiction.

Copyright Sheri McGuinn

When It's Okay Not to Revise or edit

When is it okay not to revise or edit? When you are the only audience. If you are writing a diary or journal, and have no plans to share it with the world, there's no reason to be obsessive about your grammar and spelling unless it matters to you. Since you're the one doing the writing, you will probably understand your train of thought easily, though if you read it again years from now, you may shake your head and wonder. But it's all yours, so that's okay.

It might be okay not to revise or edit if you're pulling together a memoir or a book you always wanted to write, and you're just going to print a few copies for friends and relatives. In that case, you don't have to worry if it's rough reading - as long as you don't mind putting them in the uncomfortable position of having to lie or risk hurting your feelings with the truth.

If you have published a book after intensive editing and revision and you find a few typos scattered through hundreds of pages, you may decide to revise and upload a new file (especially if the errors are in the first pages) or you may decide it's okay to leave it alone. Traditionally published books by famous authors often have one or two typos. It's okay not to be perfect.

However, if you are going to self-publish and have your book available for sale, you are hurting every self-publisher when you put out work that is poorly constructed and clearly not edited. You make it less likely readers will try new, independent authors.

If you don't want to take time to revise, if you just want to get it done and into print, please, just work with your local printer to get a few copies made instead of pretending to be a professional.

Amazon's CreateSpace used to allow people to upload files and buy author copies without "publishing"- so no one else can purchase the book. We did it for a K-8 yearbook and I helped a woman do it for her dad's book that he'd worked on for decades, but was not suitable for publication beyond family and friends. CreateSpace is gone and Amazon now does print books with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Currently, it's not possible to get author copies from KDP without publishing except for PROOF copies - so labeled with a big banner. There's some discussion about KDP going back to allowing author only printing - if they do, I'll let you know.