Author Program at Retirement Homes

This last week I gave talks at two retirement communities. I continue to be impressed by the involved seniors I meet at these programs. On Friday during the question and answer session, several people described their memoir-writing group. One ninety-year-old woman came up to me and presented a copy of the manuscript she had written for her family. It’s a wonderful account of her life and experiences. This is something we should all do for our children and grandchildren.

Book Cover for Living With Your Kids Is Murder

Here's the cover for my second Paul Jacobson geezer-lit mystery novel, Living With Your Kids Is Murder, which will appear in April, 2009.

The Mature Mind

Yesterday as a member of the Aging Advisory Council for Boulder County, I attended a “Create Our Future” celebration. The keynote speaker was Dr. Gene Cohen, author of The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain. His talk countered the traditional view of only focusing on problems of older people by looking at the potential of what older people accomplish, not despite their age but because of their age. He had had an opportunity to interview George Burns and shared several stories about the comedian. When asked what his doctor said about his drinking and smoking, George Burns replied, “My doctor’s dead.” George Burns also quipped that he started asking for applause in advance. Gene Cohen described how the old view that the brain doesn’t produce new neurons has been dispelled as well as indicating that the brain continues to sprout new dendrites and form new synaptic connections. He described the “new senior moment” being not one of forgetting but one of doing something creative. He gave an example of his father-in-law who when faced with a snow storm and no taxis in Washington, D.C. had this solution. He went into a pizza shop and ordered a pizza for home delivery. He then asked that he be delivery home along with the pizza. Cohen also cited research that older people use both sides of their brain more than younger people. Older people may be slower at solving certain problems than younger people, but they possess something that is gained over years: wisdom.

Big Sur of the Rockies

On Halloween evening instead of donning a costume and giving out candy, I attended the Big Sur of the Rockies Children’s Writing Workshop. Although I missed out on candy treats, I filled my writer’s bag with lots of goodies over a weekend of intensive critique groups and writing. I workshoped by middle grade novel in progress, Jennifer Jacobson Private Eyeball, and received great feedback on things to do to improve the manuscript. Since children’s writing is new for me, I learned a great deal about the different forms: picture books, chapter books, middle grade and young adult. Over the weekend I participated in four critique group sessions where I read sections of my novel and received oral and written critique as well as giving feedback to other writers. On Saturday afternoon we had time to revise our manuscripts, and I pounded away on my laptop for two hours. Another key benefit was the opportunity to speak with agents, editors and other writers in a relaxed session. When we broke on Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted but went home with pages of notes to fuel the rewriting I will do over the next several weeks. Jennifer will be much more beautiful as a result of this workshop.

Getting Older

What’s wrong and right with getting older? On the downside we get medical ailments, our friends die, we move slower, we forget things and we may need naps. But naps aren’t all that bad. I’m currently writing a geezer-lit thriller. The tag line is, “Saving the world between naps.” On the positive side as we get older we become seasoned veterans with a lot more experience than the young whipper-snappers. Let me give you an example. When I played tennis as a kid, there was one old guy named Winslow who drove us nuts. He was build like a fireplug and stood with his feet planted in the middle of the court with a cigar butt handing out of his mouth. He chopped and cut all his shots with no orthodox style whatsoever. We would blast the ball at Winslow and he would chop it back with a weird bounce that would cause us to overhit the next shot outside the court. We relished our youth and energy, but Winslow beat us with his experience and cunning. The need for elders goes back to our tribal heritage. The youth had the speed and power to track down game but the elders had the wisdom to know where the game would be.

Road Trip

My wife and I have just returned from a driving trip to Southern California to visit two of our kids and our granddaughter. While in Los Angeles I did some research for a geezer-lit thriller I’m writing, so in addition to visiting family members, it was a worthwhile trip. Also on the way there and the way back driving through the whole state of Utah, my wife took naps and I started plotting a future geezer-lit mystery novel in my head. Whenever we took a rest stop, I’d jot down my ideas in my notepad. By the end of my trip I had pages of notes and the last morning before we hit the road again, I got on my laptop and wrote an outline. Who says road trips can’t be useful for authors?

Police Training

I had a chance this last week to join in another police training exercise and participate in three scenarios. In the first I played the role of one of two complaining neighbor who hear a loud argument in another apartment. Two police officers arrived and we pointed to the apartment where we had heard the people fighting. The police go inside and find an angry belligerent person. Upon searching they also find in another room a person lying “dead” with a gun on the rug. The correct procedure is for one of the officers to calm down and interrogate the shouting roommate and to handcuff that person if violent and the other officer to search and find the “body” and remove the gun. In the second scenario I was part of a group having the Thanksgiving dinner from hell. Six of us were in a room arguing and shouting when the police arrived. The objective was for the police officers to calm us all down and separate us. In sitting us down there was a gun under a cushion on one chair which the person sitting in that chair draws. The officers need to either take that person down or “shoot.” One of the lessons learned involved checking the cushion before having someone sit there. The third scenario took place in a disco where a number of us were dancing and two people get into a fight. The police arrive to break up the fight. In all of this, no citizens were injured because all the “take-down” roles were played by police trainers with body-protection padding. The bottom-line for me seeing the police operate in these training exercises was the importance of being observant, using forceful language to move people who are causing problems and being prepared to act when a problem occurs.