Yes, they were one-of-a-kind. I’ve been in shops in all price ranges, in a zillion locations since then, and they still stand out. Reaching for that is reaching pretty high!

Friar,

I was waiting for you to come ask for a group hug. (A bit shocked you didn’t!) Clearly Thanksgiving threw off your game. Hope your turkey was tasty.

Graham,

I love that movie! Oh, yes. You and I are on almost the same wavelength here. Not that it’ll turn a person into Salieri, ho ho, but isn’t there something to having one’s sights adjusted in a more useful manner?

Janice,

Oh, that’s a great article! I love that a broken jaw basically spurred his ambitions. Thanks for the link.

Aha! Now we do this! Thinking about metaphorical broken jaws now…

Graham and Janice,

There was more value for some great writers, but *far* more obscurity for all the rest. It does all work out, in a way.

(And To Have and Have Not rocks. Thank goodness for Hemingway’s lousy stuff.)

Alex,

I don’t know which is better, but now I’m jealous of the house guest you had this week!

I guess in that case, you have to be careful to reach for an appropriate star. Raul can enjoy Martha Stewart, and (forgive me for going completely American with my references) you can reach for Rachel Ray.

Me, I was Martha for most of my life, but in the past five years, wow have I mellowed. Now I’m planning good fast meals so we can hang out and drink wine instead of worrying about whether the candles compliment my dinnerware.

Of course, they do! But I’m not worried about it anymore. LOL.

Until later,

Kelly

Which is better? On the surface Raul’s way is “better”, but if being made to feel “one of us” is more your thing than my way is “better” – the best is actually a combination of both (making us a killer pair of hosts)

That’s what I was looking for. I love “To Have and Have Not”, and it always tickles me to see that Faulkner is one of the screenplay writers….I wonder what he was paid?
I have friends who get $20,000 and $30,000 per magazine article and always wondered how that ranked with our Hemingways and Faulkners kind of pay.
Not that it is about money at all. More about what the market is like, what people are willing to pay for good stories. Like that.

But yes, it was a much different time. Fitzgerald, for example, made almost all his money from short stories. At his height he was getting like $3,000 — in 1920′s dollars — per story.

Today even the most well known writers couldn’t get that for a single short story. But then there are other avenues today that there weren’t back then like TV writing and a bigger marketing industry. So I guess it all works out…

~Graham

Graham,
Was Hemingway always Hemingway? He started somewhere didn’t he? Was it him, or the times he lived in?

Kelly,
Something Chef Raymond Blanc said came to mind when I was thinking about this, he was talking to someone about their food and said , “I don’t see the heart in it. You must always cook from the heart. ” He sees good food as the center of a good life. Made it his mission to bring that to everyone. It was imprinted on his heart as a child.
Now every one may not be in the chef business, or the arts, or in writing, but if you choose a business that suits your philosophies and gifts, ( work from the heart) alignment would be a no brainer wouldn’t it? And then the how high has less diluted energy, more aha, and now we do this, aspect to it perhaps ?

Here’s a little article on Raymond Blanc about his success. He started as a waiter. I think you might enjoy it. (And yes, He is on twitter too. His twitpics are so much fun.)

http://raymondblanc.com/Portals/14/docs/Info_raymond_blanc-1.pdf

It’s something I struggle with too. Without sounding too highfalutin, I was thinking this past weekend about myself as a writer compared to Hemingway. If I’m not a better writer than Hemingway (and I suspect that if put to a vote, most would find that to be the case) what’s the point anyway?

Sure you could say the doing is in the trying, the fun’s in the journey and not the destination, and blah, blah, blah. We all know that despite the shred of truth in these platitudes, they’re basically consolation prizes doled out to the Salieris of the world.

But what about this. Instead of “reaching for the stars”, why not just reach for one? It takes more than one star to make a constellation, and more than one constellation to make a sky. Being part of that, I would think, is something great on its own.

Once you are there, that’s when you start worrying about who’s star is higher or brighter…

~Graham

Mag-NO-lias

Alas, I never experienced anything close to what you had written – thanks for sharing! It’s nice to know some businesses really do walk the walk they talk.
Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach´s latest blog… Internet Marketing for Your Mom (what YOU need to know!)