Proof Revised, Second Proof on the Way: A New, Maybe the Last, Crow Brothers Ditty

A Crow Shivaree: Image by Google Gemini, altered and edited by me

Well, dear readers, after Kellie and I both went over the first proof of Walk with Words, we discovered a lot more errors than the ones on the front and back covers and some font discrepancies. I had left out words. I had put "to" for "too" in at least two places. I had extra commas, missing commas, periods in the wrong place, lines that made no sense, etc. Let me give everyone some advice that I give my students on "review and revision" day every time a writing assignment is due. Always let someone else read your writing if you are submitting it or sharing it! Always! Your mind will see what it wants you to think is there, and you will not see your own errors. Your brain is incredibly lazy. It always wants to do as little work as possible, and you must trick it into helping you revise your writing. Sometimes, you cannot fool it into seeing what you have actually written, and you must let someone else confirm what is written for you. Always get someone to review and revise your work if you intend to share it.

Having written that, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate Lulu.com and its self-publishing format. As you may know, I worked with the traditional publishing firm Austin Macauley on Atheists and Empty Spaces (for sale now on Amazon for $3.55!). I worked with their artistic team for the cover, their copy editors on the text, and their publication editors on the final product. It was a very uncomfortable experience, and I am not happy with the final product (The poems are some of my very best though!), but I will spare you the horrific details. The main problem is that weeks and months would pass from the time I emailed my ideas or edits to Austin Macauley and when they would get a proof back to me. One time, it was five and a half months. With Lulu, I control the artistic vision of the covers, (The cover-creation tools could be better.) the copy editing, and the revision times. When I have edited or revised, I hit "Send Proof," and I get one within two or three days. I did three or four proofs of Uncle Boog and the Dogfight in a couple of months. I hope that I do not have to proof Walk with Words more than once, but it will not take long if I do because I control the time spent on the project.

Oh! And I am not a shill for Lulu.com. However, comparing it to traditional publishing, I find Lulu a far better experience. While Lulu does not market a product for you, Austin Macauley has done basically no marketing of Atheists and Empty Spaces since the initial publication. Well, I think it is safe to say NONE. Heck, it was #1 in the religious poetry genre for three days on Amazon and AM never said a thing about it. FFFUUUMMMEEE!

Please be very aware of self-published authors, and please help support them by buying their books. Labors of love, especially artistic work, should not have to be money losing ventures. I am a shill for self-publishers.

Anyhow, let's get to the Crow brothers ditty, shall we? ENJOY!

No More Crows to Sing About

I saw at least a hundred crows,

--I do not lie a bit--

Congregating on Knob Hill

In a frenetic fit.

They cawed and flapped, squawked and dove.

They circled round and round.

I don’t know what their center was.

I could not see the ground.

I thought I might investigate,

But the grove is thick with briars,

And the fence, it has no gate,

But it has four barbed wires.

So, I observed without a clue

Until it dawned on me.

The Crow brothers had mated it up,

And this was their shivaree.

Now, I am down not just to two.

I guess I’m down to none.

--No more black crows to sing about--

No, sir! Not even one!

For those who may not know, a shivaree is when a group of wedding guests “serenade” a newlywed couple on the evening of their marriage. In some traditions of shivaree, the wedding guests would simply bang pots and pans together and blow horns outside of the house to keep the honeymooning couple from their “business.” In other traditions, they would “kidnap” the newlywed couple and dunk them in a local waterhole while others spread salt on their bedsheets. I hope the idea of shivaree has gone away by now, but it is still a cool word to say or to fit into a poem.

I am not sure what I am going to do. The three Crow brothers were down to two Crow brothers. Now, for two and a half weeks, I don't see any of them on our daily walks. A couple of new crows were hanging around the city park yesterday. They were not Crow brothers. They were much bigger, more "put together," and I don't think they were together. They were simply in the same area at the same time. The Crow brothers have taken a hiatus before but never for this long and never so abruptly. I wonder if Mama Crow and Daddy Crow chased them off. I'll have to check on the trusty Corvid website to see if that happens. I may get one more poem from their being gone. After that, I would be betraying the process if I kept on writing about them without truly seeing them.

Later.