Be a Part of It

I was in New York City last week for a breathless round of wine and pasta meetings. It was my fourth visit there, and I felt like I'd arrived at a new level of familiarity with the city. I walked the streets at breakneck pace, ploughing my way through crowds, hailing taxis left and right, just to show I that I could. In my black trench coat, you'd have taken me for a native New Yorker, right up until I'd come to a crosswalk with a blinking hand, and stop short, like a good Canadian, to the great irritation of the surge of jaywalkers behind me. Sorry about that, New York. I'm just not going to follow you blindly into traffic. How do I know what kind of day you're having?

My schedule left hardly any time at all for sightseeing (or as New Yorkers call it, standing in the goddam way). Or shopping, which was just as well, since I'd converted all my spending money to carbohydrates my first night there. It wasn't until my last day that I realized I'd be without any photographic evidence whatsoever of my trip, and got busy snapping. I give you the highlights:

Central Park

Museum of Modern Art

The Empire State Building

F.A.O. Schwarz

Thanks to my friends at Cool Mom Tech, there is corroborating documentation that it wasn't all a dream. It's also thanks to them and their sponsors that the kids weren't the only ones who got cool souvenirs from my trip. Patrick, Ultra-Dad in my absence, got some very nifty tech gadgets.

Me, I suppose I'll always have these three extra pounds to remind me of a very exciting, whirlwind time.

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First Time in the Rodeo

So my book got listed on Amazon some time last week, and that was pretty exciting:



When I went back to look at it on Friday night, I scrolled down and saw that it was ranked #66 in Parenting Humor books. Ahead of books that were already published, by famous people, with actual cover designs, and everything. Crazy, I know.

I checked several hours later, and it had gone up to #55. At this rate, I would be in the top 20 by Saturday morning. I woke up, and raced to the computer, eager to accept my new status as "beloved family humorist." Roll over, Erma Bombeck.

(Who probably did, God rest her soul.)

I scrolled down to the Product Details, and alas, it was all over. A rating in the hundreds of thousands for popularity overall, and not even ranked in Parenting Humor titles. I clicked backwards through the listings, wondering how far into obscurity I had fallen. Far enough to soon get tired of clicking past my betters. Dang.

I had flown too close to the sun.

Then this morning, it was back up, to #55 in its category, and was in the top 60,000 of all books on Amazon. By lunch, it was down again, out of the top 100,000 and ranked #79 for Parenting Humor.



What I've decided is that the Amazon rankings are twitchier than a polygraph and nowhere near as truthy. And however high or low the numbers on the bottom of the page may get, what's most thrilling to me are three little words up top.

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Ready for the Close Up

Publishing a book is like being adrift in a raft at sea for months and months, and then waking up to find a super-freighter bearing down on you at 25 knots. At least that's how it's felt the last several weeks, scrambling to supply various kinds of promotional copy for the Riverhead Summer 2011 catalog and line up a photographer to take my author photo. The latter came together the way everything with the birthing of this book has come together: the exact right person appearing at the exact right time. By chance or destiny, I stumbled across Whitney's blog one day, and knew I'd found someone with the eye--and the heart--of a storyteller.

We met for the first time last night, but I've never had more fun or felt more at ease with a photographer. It didn't hurt that I had two of my best friends along to make me smile, and look out for unzipped zippers and rogue cowlicks. God knows, it takes a village.

We wrapped up at dusk, feeling celebratory. I can't wait to see and share the results. In the meantime, here's a few behind-the-scene peeks, and a bonus feature--the official, oh-my-God-it's-really-happening title of my book:

(drumroll please)

Planting Dandelions: Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life.

By me, if you can believe it. I hardly can.

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Adult Swim

And then, just like that, it's over.

We sent the kids off to school yesterday. Or, I should say, schools--plural. My eldest began sixth grade at middle school. Yes, middle school. With P.E. and buses and sixth grade girls, and other things to keep a mom awake at night. Much more on that to come, I'm sure.

Back to school for them means back to work for me. As much as I've enjoyed being with the kids all summer, I'm ready. I've got several writing projects lined up, including a whole index card full of blog notes. If I can decipher any of them, I plan to post with something approaching regularity this fall. And if I can get a meeting with the web designer I'm married to, you might see kyranpittman.com roll out before the end of the year.

It's like I told a friend the other night, in one of my classic idiom mash-ups, "The doctor's kids always go unshod."

Whatever. It's six of one. A dozen of the other.

Have a great weekend.

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A blogger is a person in your neighborhood.

"Boys! BOYS! BOOOOOYYYYYZZZZZ!!!! YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!

(Goddammit.)

But they were already well out of earshot, having split the second I uttered, "okay...," to their request to visit the adult pool, not waiting for the instructions that were coming with my next breath, taking the six-year-old with them, and leaving me to carry all the wet towels and crocs, as I hobbled after them, alternately yelling their full names and cursing under my breath. I was between yells when someone walked up beside me.

"You're kind of famous, huh?"

One of the teenage lifeguards.

"We saw you and your kids on the cover of the magazine by the front door," she said. "So, what's that about?"

I'm a representative of the simple joys of motherhood, I thought. And I'll tell you all about it as soon I get through screaming at my horrible children.

"I'm a writer," I told her. "And a blogger."

"Cool!"

"Thanks," I said, managing to give her a sincere smile. "It really is."

And it is, though lately I feel more conspicuous than ever, with the boys' faces and mine shining out at us everywhere we go this month: the supermarket, the library, the gym, people's coffee tables and pool loungers. Now, Little Rock is a small town at heart, and every one here is conspicuous to some degree, but I'm lately experiencing more than the usual level of checkout lane regret, wishing I had at least put lipstick on, or thought to brush the kids' hair.

But I meant what I said to the lifeguard, and I hope she (and you) received it as gratitude, and not complacency, or worse, a boast. It's all incredibly, unbelievably cool. My manuscript is about to be typeset, and the mighty rudder of book marketing has begun to swing toward me with all its mysterious, thrumming, awesome power. It seems crazy to think that that people are scheduling meetings about me that aren't taking place in a principal's office. I'm probably driving my editor and agent nuts with all my greenhorn golly-gee goofiness.

Now that the book is done, I've got new things in the works with Good Housekeeping, which makes me very happy. There's lots to love about that gig, but my favorite has to be the emails I get from people who picked up an article or essay of mine in a waiting room, and were touched by it in some way. Enough to take note of my name, and google it, hours or days after they've finally seen the mechanic or doctor. Listen, I don't care how nicely decorated a waiting room is, or how big the plasma tv, they are horrible, soul-less places. To think that anything I wrote can offset the suction in some small measure, that's a great feeling. What writer doesn't live for that, to shine a little light into the dead zones?

(And then I paused in drafting this, and took the kids to the craft store, where I got cranky because I didn't get my way, and cashed in all my karmic reward points on making some poor cashier's day a little more sucktastic. I'm all about balance, see?)

Anyway, my point is, it's all good. And it's all relative.

I'm pretty sure I write some variation on this theme every six months, but the relativity of achievement is something I keep having occasion to revisit, like when I read this post by Fawn, about working through her feelings on not being included in the "13 Bloggers You Should Read" list that accompanied the Little Rock Family article. I know that she wasn't only local blogger who felt left out. It's inevitable with that kind of thing that someone will be. Actually, it's inevitable with nearly every kind of thing.

I know that feeling so well. Not from way-back-when. I know it today. At every level of accomplishment, lurking behind every wild dream come true, there is always a list I didn't make, a party I wasn't invited to, a person I wish would be my friend but won't, a trip that left me behind, an opportunity I wasn't offered. There is always a reason to ask, why not me? It always feels crappy. If anything, I get my feelings hurt more often, because my exposure is greater. I'm left out of better parties, more exciting trips, more prestigious lists.

What changes, what gets better with all this torture valuable practice, is that I've gotten pretty good at letting go of both the question and the crappy feeling. As Fawn concluded so wisely and bravely, it's not helpful. It's the opposite of helpful. It's quicksand. You've got to learn to get out of that shit as fast as you possibly can, because, believe me, you are going to be continually stepping into it.

I've been tied up the past week or so with the Author's Questionnaire, which is some kind of publicist's intake form (and is way more fun if you administer it to yourself in the manner of James Lipton). When asked to list my literary influences, I had to credit poet Gary Snyder, with something he said in a Q&A period after a reading of his I attended years so. I've absorbed it so completely, I no longer have the original words, only the transubstantiated thought, which is that it's an honorable and important thing to write for your own community, whether that happens to be a few people, or a few million. I believe he used the words "sacred" and "tribe," because Gary Snyder is a buddha ninja wizard or something, and can get away with talking like that.

That truth entered my being and never left it. Writing is a service vocation. It's not about serving my ambitions or ego, though I possess plenty of both. It's not about the blog traffic, circulation numbers or the Amazon sales rank, though I am far from above those concerns. It's not about convincing people "out there" to notice me, applaud me, love me, though I crave all that. It's about adding something to one person's day: what author Dan Pink calls "leaving an imprint." It's about giving somebody something to smile about as they drink their morning coffee, or something to ponder in the car pool line. It's about illuminating the waiting rooms.

The beautiful thing--the sling-and-arrow-proof part of it--is that you don't have to wait on anyone else's okay to accomplish that. If you have a blog, and you have even a few regular readers, embrace them as your tribe. Write for the people who've already given you the honor of their attention. As if they were the most important, influential readership you'll ever have. As if it were sacred. They are. It is.

And enjoy anonymously yelling at your children and wearing no lipstick in public while you still can.

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We are Family

I'll admit, picking up a national magazine in the checkout lane or at an airport newsstand, and seeing my name in it is pretty cool. But there's something extra special about being recognized in my own community. My kids think so too. They shrug every time I show them a photo of themselves that happens to be lying around a doctor's waiting room, but they almost knocked me down to grab the first copies of this months's Little Rock Family magazine out of my arms. The article that accompanies my cover boys' shot begins on page 20. The uncut version of my tips for bloggers can be read here. Bonus feature: every time you catch me contradicting one of them, take a drink.

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Ordinary Lives

Houston artist Kirsten Ufer made this beautiful print that hangs above my desk. It was part of the Mom 2.0 Summit auction to benefit Haiti, and I bid on it thinking I would give it away to a reader, but it turns out I'm kind of greedy, and I had to keep it for myself. My preshus.

The text on it is a quote pulled from a piece of mine that appears in Kirtsy Takes a Bow, an anthology of womens' voices online. (In spite of being greedy and all, I can't seem to hang on to a single copy of that book. I keep replacing mine, only to give it away.) The quote is, "Life is rich and interesting and full of story. It's okay to write it down."

I wrote that in response to a snide comment I read in print about women who write about their lives and publish it online. You've all seen or heard some variation of it. What makes you think your life is worth writing about? Who do you think you are? Why should anyone care? Etcetera.

The thing is, those are interesting and valid questions when they're not hostile. In the course of introductions a few nights ago, a friend mentioned that I had a book coming out. The guy wondered what it was about, so I gave him the short answer, which is that it's a memoir about family life.

"Why is your story important?" came the question. In another tone of voice, it could have tripped my defenses, set off the mental alarms that warn, "ATTACK! ATTACK!" But his expression was sincere and interested. He wasn't trying to be the provocateur; he was just curious.

The answer came so quickly and easily, it sent lightning along my spine. I don't think it came from me at all. At least not the me that sits in the control booth behind my eyes.

"For the same reason yours is," I told him.

I try to keep a lid on my expectations of this book. Now that it's written, my attitude toward it is that of a mom, sending her grown child off into the wide world. Good luck, let us know how you're doing. Send money when you find work. Its success or failure is largely out of my hands now.

The book is about belonging, about becoming a family. It roughly covers a ten-year span. When Patrick read the manuscript in full for the first time, he said he couldn't believe how much we had lived through in those ten years. Nor could he believe how much didn't make it into the book. Not just trivial things, either. Big stuff, whole chapters, left out because there wasn't room, or it simply isn't time.

Life is epic. Mine. Yours. It begins with birth; it ends with death, and in between is a hero's journey: love, agony, comedy, horror, struggle, victory, defeat. There are no ordinary or extraordinary lives. There are only ordinary and extraordinary storytellers.

If I could ever be counted among the latter, may it always be in service of the former. Because what matters most to me, what will make my book "important," is not whether the critics are impressed, or the academy, or even other writers I admire. What matters is that it makes people believe that their own story--told or untold, written or unwritten, published or unpublished--is just as important.

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Your Blurb Here

When I was a kid at St. Gerard's Elementary School, I had to go door-to-door once a year schilling pencils or chocolate covered almonds to raise funds. I'm still not sure what the funds were being raised for, since in Canada, unlike in the U.S., "extras," such as teaching materials, are included in school budgets, as part of their socialist brainwashing scheme. We did have a pretty fancy set of velvet stage curtains, though, through which I gave my star turn as Lucky, the Christmas Elf. Maybe the pencil and candy money got us those.

I didn't care if it was going to build a stairway to heaven. I hated being forced to sell stuff, and I hate it when my kids are expected to do the same, especially when the pressure to do so is packaged as a FUN-WIN-NEAT-PRIZES competition. If I can, I just write a check. If I can't write a check, I'll try to give some time. If I can't do either at the moment, I trust that I can make up for it down the line.

I was thinking about those damn pencils this morning, as I contemplated the unpleasant task of soliciting blurbs for my book. My manuscript is at the copyediting stage, and my editor says it's time to start thinking about marketing. I'm to fill out something called an Author's Questionnaire, which I imagine will go like this:

Q. How many famous writers are you best friends with?

A. None.

Q. How many authors do you know who would not mark your email "spam?"

A. I'm afraid to find out.

Q. How many near relatives (by blood, adoption or marriage) do you have who occupy powerful positions in media?

A. Does editing the annual family newsletter count?

Q. What makes you think anyone is going to read this book, anyway, you big loser?

And so on.

To get my mind off it, I decided to answer a bunch of reader emails that I've very rudely and shamefully neglected to acknowledge in a timely manner. I read each one as I received it, but reading them all together was so wonderful. If you've ever taken the time to reach out to a writer and tell them you appreciated their words, please know it was a beautiful gift, even if it does go unacknowledged in direct terms. I keep all such emails in a folder called "moral support," and I must have hundreds of them by now. I'm not naive about the business of blurbs; as a reader, I look to them myself to help decide if a book is up my alley. But I wish I could use the kinds of messages I read today to adorn my book cover. To a stranger in a bookstore, they might not mean as much as the recommendation of a big "name" author, but they mean as much, and even more, to me.

P.S. If you are a famous author, are close personal friends with one, or are owed a large sum of money by one, I'd love to send along an advance copy. I'll even throw in a box of pencils.

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Lines in the Sand: Redefining Boundaries in New Literature

Patrick has been stepping out in social media lately, and he knows it's making me a little anxious.

"You think I'm sharing too much?" he asked me this morning, just to humor me.

I considered his recent updates.

"Well, relative to publishing a book about our entire marriage, I guess not," I said.

It may seem like a contradiction for a memoirist to claim to be a private person, but I really am. If anything, my concern with privacy control has increased commensurately with life becoming more public. My husband and close friends will tell you it borders on paranoia. I don't mind getting personal, but strictly on my own terms.

The thing is, I'm always redefining those terms. I keep entertaining this idea that one day I'll have the boundaries mapped out just so--the blog for this, Twitter for that, Facebook for something else, and all my content and relationships will stay tidily within their assigned compartments. But if you have any kind of online life at all, you already know that's like trying to draw lines in the sand with a tide rolling in. Social media defies compartmentalization.

I got a very timely email last week from a long-time reader, Janie, who is hoping to publish her own book, and is pondering the place of social media in an author's career. She kindly agreed to let me post the crux of her query here:

It seems that any writer today who hopes to be published needs to have a blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to build a presence, a following, and a community...How do you balance the personal/professional aspects of all this social media?

Funny she should ask, because in between folding laundry, supervising 5th grade field trip, and getting caught up on lunches with ladies, this is exactly the same question I've been mulling over. As Janie notes, the boundaries between personal and professional writing have never been more fluid. Citing authors Justine Musk and Chris Guillebeau, she observes

it seems that it's all just One Big Thing for them - personal and professional rolled into one

I'd never heard of either of those authors, but I was taken with this post by Musk that Janie passed along, which makes a case for integrating a writer's output under the roof of "personal brand." I've long been allergic to the word "branding" as applied to human beings or the arts, but I've decided to write it an exemption under the rule of Lack of a Better Word. I can get behind the concept, if not the semantics. And I like how Musk says we should just quit trying to make new media fit the old floor plan. Knock out the walls, she seems to say. Embrace open space writing.

I've been planning to launch a new website for some time, and am excited about the opportunity to build a new online space as an author. In case you've been wondering, I do plan to continue to journal online, though there will likely be a change of address and some renovations. I think of Notes as my sketchpad: I'd no sooner be without it than a painter would be without paper and a bit of charcoal, or a photographer without her Polaroid. It's how I capture the fleeting thought. As you'll see when the book comes out, many of the quick studies drawn here are elaborated there. But I'd like to bring the online journaling under the same virtual roof as my print writing. It doesn't feel right to be a blogger, here; author, there; magazine writer, somewhere else. It's time to bring it all together.

That's more of a "me too" than an answer to Janie's question, I know. So let me volley it over the net to you. Do you follow any authors online? Does having a sense of a relationship with a writer enhance your relationship to their writing? What if there's an apparent incongruity between their online voice and print voice? Is that jarring, or dynamic? And in which direction do you travel: does print prompt you to go looking online for the author, or does the online presence drive you to read the book?

More specifically and selfishly, how do you like the idea of going to a website for, oh, I don't know, a PERSONAL MEMOIR, and being able to pull up related digital memorabilia-- snapshots, letters, marginalia, etc., like the "extras" section on a dvd?

I would love your thoughts and questions. I bet so would Janie.

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What's next.

On Sunday, I hiked with my nine- and eleven-year-olds up the hill we call Pinnacle Mountain. We spent thirty minutes or so at the summit, catching our second wind and taking in the spectacular view, and every few minutes, I would panic, because my five-year-old was missing. Then I'd remember he was with his grandmother, hunting for alligators at the base of the hill, and my heart would start again.

Lots of people have been asking "How does it feel?" to have completed my manuscript. It feels just like that. Brief interludes of satisfaction, punctuated by the sudden, gaping certainty that something Very Important is missing.

I'm also being asked, "What's next?" I've so far resisted responding with "Next, I smack you right in the mouth," because I am practicing my interview skills for when I go on Oprah*.

What's next is making a birthday cake, shaped like a dragon, for my newly-minted six-year-old. Putting on a haz-mat suit, and cleaning the bathrooms. Helping my 5th grader with his science fair project, and taking him shopping for a shirt and tie to wear for his graduation from elementary school. Sewing the new Bear patch on my cub scout's uniform. Taking a deep breath and a hard look at the bills I've been rotating to the back of the stack, the to-do's that keep getting carried over from one day's list to the next and the next.

What's next is doing the same job I've done every day for the past sixteen months, book or no book, but getting to do it without feeling like I'm supposed to be doing anything else. At least until I hear from Oprah.

---

* I joke. All my hairbrush interviews are with Terri Gross and Craig Ferguson.

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Take a Bigger Piece of My Heart

It's been increasingly apparent to me that becoming a book author is going to change the way I approach blogging, though how is still not entirely clear. But some things are coming into focus. For one thing, I'm not in the business of blogging. Which is an enormous relief, since I've never been that adept or that interested in the business end of social media. Many bloggers I know and admire have made online publishing their business, and I am really excited for them. It makes my head spin sometimes to see how rapidly a small group of people blogging for the hell of it has evolved into a serious, professional enterprise; a force to be reckoned with. I'm very proud to be associated with it in any marginal way.

Me, I'm a professional writer, and an amateur blogger. It's so freeing to accept that blog ads are never going to do more than pay my domain registration fees, that I never have to understand what SEO is, and that I can continue to cheerfully ignore my sitemeter (as I have done for months and months upon end) and all the other acts of due diligence a pro blogger should rightfully heed.

This blog has always had a small but extremely dedicated following of really fabulous people, and I'm perfectly happy for it to stay that way. I am on the masthead of a magazine that is read by millions of people every month. I hope this doesn't sound like I take them or you for granted for one fraction of a second, because I don't, but I don't think I need a strategic plan for my blog. The strategy is to let it be what it's always been: a personal creative space. My notebook.

One small manifestation of this clarification is moving to full feed posts. I so much appreciate being able to read other people's blogs in my google reader (in fact, it's the only way I do these days), that it's only fair to return the favor. So, please feel free to subscribe to blog posts here , though I certainly hope you will continue to click through to comment.

There are some other technical changes coming down the pike, principally, a shift to an eponymous domain, under which Notes will be nested. I sometimes think I need to move to shorter posts in the interest of energy and material conservation, but honestly, I'll probably just continue to post what I feel like, when I feel like it. I hope you like it too.

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Visions and Revisions

Late with manuscript revisions, and almost every night I awake in a panic attack, convinced that the next morning will bring word from my agent and/or editor: "Know what? Never mind." Instead, they've been nothing but patient and supportive, though we are all eager to be finished, and none so desperately as me. Like a mirage, I always think the end is closer than it is, but I'm closing in.

Some days it's great, and others it's like trying to walk a stubborn 80-pound Lab, who keeps wanting to stop and roll around in something dead. In other words, I'm not entirely in control of the process. As I neared the end of the first draft, back in November, I realized I was trying to tell two stories at the same time, with two distinctly different themes and tones. My editor concurred. Making the necessary revisions was like separating conjoined twins. Not easy for this Mama to do. I don't know if the thousands of words I cut out will develop into something else down the road, but I do know that the surviving story is much livelier now, and more fun for me.

Some people find enlightenment in exotic places; I seem to find it at cub scout meetings. "Do Your Best" is a powerful insurance policy against 3 a.m. panic attacks. As I've printed off each revised chapter, I've felt the satisfaction of knowing those pages are the best I can make them (at least until my editor shows me where I can make them better). It's powerful, because so much worse than the fear of blowing it by not being on time, or not selling books, or getting bad reviews, is the fear of putting something half-assed out there. I feel like I can face every other worst-case scenario as long as I know I did my best.

I hope to be able to give you a publication date very soon. Thanks for checking in.

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Dream Girls

One of the amazing things about having my dad for a dad was watching him pick up a piece of blank typing paper (or a No. 9 envelope, or a cocktail napkin), pull out his black ballpoint pen, and start scribbling notes. It was amazing, because you knew something was taking shape on that scrap of paper that was going to gather people and energy to it, until it became real: a book, a television show, a concert, a dinner party. My father was one of those people who could dream a thing into being.

My very dear friends at Kirtsy are also those people. Sometime ago, they got the idea to put a book together that would celebrate the way women are telling their stories online. And now we have this:



I'm really proud to be a part of this book. I can't wait to hold it. It's available today, through various outlets, and launches are planned around the country. I hope to get to at least one of them. In the meantime, why don't you go to Laura's blog, and congratulate the ecstatic mamas?

Speaking of Kirtsy, I will be teaching a free 101-level social media seminar for small business, courtesy of Kirtsy and Microsoft Office Live, at the public library in Maumelle, Arkansas this Thursday. If you have a small and/or home-based business in the area, and aren't using social media for business yet, come out, and find out how you can and why you should. There is also a session in Hot Springs on the same date, being led by Susan Payton of Egg PR and Marketing. We'd love to see you at one or the other.

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Cracking the Code

I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a while, and they asked what I've been up to.

"I've been writing a book."

"Oh, that must be fun!"

Yes, if by fun you mean being dropped into an iron soul-compactor formed by two walls of pressure, external and internal, bearing down on you for ten months.

"It's...ah...been an interesting process."

At times, it has been...well, fun is a stretch. It's felt really good, at least as often as it's felt really hard. I turned in all but the last few chapters on Thursday, and have a few more weeks to get happy enough with those to turn them loose. Patrick has also been under the gun of several big projects, so it's been pretty crazy around here. The kids go to bed, and the coffee pot goes on. The emotional climate is completely different, but the physical tension is weirdly similar to the way it felt two years ago, when we were about to lose our house. I guess in the body, stress is stress.

We try to stay in gratitude. I walked through his office late one night on my way to refill my coffee, and saw how exasperated he was with the project he was working on. I stopped to rub his shoulders, leaned down and kissed his head.

"Two years ago this October, you were up all night, staring into your computer because you had no work."

"I know, I know."

He managed a smile. He does the same for me, when I've lost perspective.

Sometimes it is granted in other ways. Our last date was a month or so ago (I've completely lost track of time--when did summer turn to autumn?), and we spent part of it wandering around the big chain bookstore, with coffees in hand. He stayed in the graphic novel section the whole time, while I strolled around. A bookstore like that is one of my favorite artist's playdates, but I have to be careful to keep it playful, or it can quickly turn into a busman's holiday. For example, I have to avoid the memoir section right now, which is usually my favorite, because I can't help but do market analysis. I stick to cookbooks and travel guides lately.

I was on my way to the magazine rack when I passed the writer's reference section, and it almost stopped me in my tracks. I had forgotten how much time I used to spend there, trying to crack the code. I spent so many Sunday afternoons by that shelf, thumbing through books telling me how to write, how to pitch, how to get published. I spent far more time circumambulating writing than actually writing. It's tempting to harbor regret for all the lost years, but it just wasn't time yet. No amount of my strategizing and studying was going to hurry up time, either. It happened when it happened, not a moment too late or too soon.

I could almost see myself there, running my fingers along the spines, looking for the way in, like it was a secret door.

I see myself also in the queries I get lately--a couple a week--from people who are looking for the same elusive opening. I feel very inadequately equipped to answer these. "I really don't know much about pitching," I responded recently. "More about dreaming." I'm afraid I disappoint, that they go away thinking I am willfully shutting them out. I very well remember feeling that published writers and the most well-known bloggers had magic wands they could wave over me if they cared to. All I needed was an invitation to the ball. If only they would link to me, or mention me to their agent, or put in a word with the editor. Access was the key, I was sure of it. I'd be so despondent when I'd learn that someone got a book deal only because (I thought) they "knew someone."

Access is key, but it doesn't work the way I thought it did. Publishing isn't the Junior League. It's not as simple as having someone vouch for you, and you're in. People say that publishing isn't a meritocracy, that it's a crapshoot. I think that's only partly true. There are best selling books by people who can barely string a sentence together, and there are talented, dedicated writers who may never make it out of the slushpile. But those are the extremes. In between, I believe most authors work for what they get, and get what they work for: a book. It may not be with their dream publisher. Chances are, it won't make Oprah's bookclub or win the Booker. Fame and fortune is a crapshoot. When you see how much people love to hate Elizabeth Gilbert or Julie Powell, you really have to ask yourself what you're in it for, because the best case scenario is being publicly loathed and snarked at by thousands, and the worst case is being publicly loathed and snarked at by dozens.

But if you know all that, and you still want to get published, it's hardly an esoteric mystery. For what it's worth, here's everything I know:

• Write. There came a day when I stopped reading about writing, and I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote things that embarrass me now, and things of which I'm still proud. I wrote when it made me feel good and people approved, and I wrote when it made me feel foolish and exposed-- worse, when it made others feel foolish and exposed and I felt like Edward Scissorhands. I wrote when there were no words for what I felt. I wrote when no one but Patrick and my mom was reading, when I was sure it was no good, and no one but Patrick and my mom would ever give a damn. I wrote when I read how impossible the odds were of someone like me ever being noticed, when I heard stories about editorial assistants whose job it was to keep letters from unknowns ever getting past the slushpile, when I was told that blogging was an utter waste of time. I wrote for the same reason Patrick and I stayed together through the darkest time of our marriage. Because there was nowhere else to go.
  
  There are times writing has made me miserable. But those are nothing compared to the misery I would suffer and inflict if I weren't writing.
  
  
• Risk. We gave up our house. We gave up our savings, benefits and security. We lost sleep, sanity, and serenity. We almost didn't make it. Any rational person would have cried uncle, and gone and gotten a job when things took a nosedive like they did for us in 2007. We could have a predictable payday and two cars in the driveway instead of a budget based on anybody's guess, and a six year old minivan with which we play Korean roulette every mile. I find it best not to pursue that line of thought too far, so I'll move on. But rest assured, you can stamp my dues statement paid.
  
  
• Persevere. Eventually I found agents and bloggers who would answer emails from unconnected nobodies like me. All it did was give me some more personalized rejections. Access turned out not to be the magical, mythical thing I thought it would be. I pitched, charmed, networked and sometimes just hurled myself at the door, but not ONE of those things is what gave me my first break. You know what was? See the top item: I wrote. I got rejected, I cried, I turned to my silly blog that no one read, and I wrote. And one day, opportunity stopped by without me knowing or engineering it, and there was a whole body of work for an editor to find. There was awful drivel, but there was also my best stuff, that people told me I shouldn't just give away.

So, there I was, "discovered," and the seas just parted before me: magazine articles, agent, book deal, code cracked, right?

Not quite. I just get to keep doing it all over at a different level. Write. Risk. Persevere. Repeat. The stakes and expectations get higher with the rewards. I try not to complain (much). If it doesn't ever get any better, if it all falls apart, I've still got Patrick and my mom. I'm good.

In my wildest dreams, I'd be that bestselling author whose influence is so great that I can make agents and editors read things that I think are wonderful and deserving, and have Oprah's number on speed dial. "Here's a blog I think you should read," I'd say to my agent, and a star is born. It would be fun to pretend it worked that way, so that people might try to buy me with candy and flowers, but in reality, my agent doesn't read my blog. She's busy selling books to publishers, which is exactly what you want an agent to be busy doing.

A lot of my regular readers have shared with me their aspirations to be published. I hope this doesn't discourage anyone. I hope you stick with it. I hope you have someone in your life who believes in you, no matter what. And I hope you believe in yourself, when it feels like no one will ever give a damn. If you don't have that foundation, I recommend Jen and Andrea's online class about dreaming big. I haven't taken the class myself, but I've been on the receiving end of Jen's infinite faith in possibility.

I'm very happy to answer any questions or read your insight about writing and publishing in the comments section. I'm not doing a great job with keeping up with email lately, and your query or experience might help someone else.

Posting will be very light for the next few weeks, but I'll be around. Thanks for all the good mojo. xo K.

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In and out of weeks and through a year.

Nearly there.

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Correcting Posture

Less than two weeks to my book deadline, and all three kids have come down with strep. I could crack walnuts between my shoulder blades. My son works beside me, and reminds me how making something is supposed to feel.

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Dare.

Notre Dames des Victoires, Quebec

Did you know there was a sequel to the Artist's Way, an "intermediate" course for people who are doing their art? Neither did I. It's called Walking in this World, and I'm listening to an abridged version from audible.com. (Did you know about audible.com? You should.) I hate abridgments, but I don't have time or attention span for the workbook right now, so I'll settle for the gist.

So far, it's reminding me of all kinds of things I'd sort of forgotten. Like the power of audacity, how the universe inclines itself toward daring like a satellite dish toward a clear and strong signal. I shouldn't need reminding. In the time since I began this blog, my life has been manifest evidence of that truth. I've been going back through my archives a lot in the shaping of this book and I come across posts that make me cringe. I've really put it out there sometimes: hope, hurt, fear, desire. Did I really put out an a.p.b. for my dream agent and editor? And did I really pray that I wouldn't have to go get a job, even as I was getting form rejection letters and our home was about to be foreclosed on?

Gah, says the inner critic. I can't believe you did that. Let's take it all down when the book comes out, and hope no one remembers what a dope you were.

But the dreams came true. The prayers were answered.

Well, don't push your luck.

I don't think it was luck.

The book could be a flop.

I know.

There are others who are more deserving of the opportunity.

Without a doubt.

And you're fat.

Thank you, that will be all.


I believe in the law of attraction, though not in the way The Secret describes. It's not as simple as cause and effect. But something shifts when you say what it is you really want. Things start happening. I'm beginning to think that the internet has a way of amplifying those signals. All around, I see people emboldened to "put it out there": plucky life lists, passionate opinions, audacious schemes. I think of these posts as little down payments. They leverage big dreams. And not just for one dreamer. Lives are being changed. It revises the idea of what is possible--what, really, is asking for too much?

I bet every one of those posts were composed while an inner critic shrieked "Don't you dare!" They dared. So should everyone dare to get behind their dreams. Why you? Why not you? To paraphrase the guy who paraphrased Goethe*, whatever it is you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. And maybe blog it.

---

*The full quote is "Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." Apparently, Goethe never wrote it. But as they say with regard to the authorship of Shakespeare, whoever did was a genius.

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Push

When I get to the end of writing this book, I could probably write another on the process alone. I am having to draw on every tool I have to manage the pressure, the self-doubt, the self-criticism, the infinite self-made distractions, and every other challenge my internal saboteur can conjure. Maybe I'll develop a quest-style video game: So You Think You Can Write.

A teacher of mine used to say self-awareness happens in a spiral. You think you've dealt with an issue, only to find you've got to work on it all over again at the next level. I must have heard it, and preached it, a hundred times. And still, I've been so surprised to meet enemies of creativity I thought I'd vanquished a long time ago. They've gotten much sneakier while they've been laying low.

It's taking everything I've got to keep moving past them: deep breathing, white noise, a lot of caffeine, a little alcohol, chocolate, and a whole lot of prayer. It's barely enough. But maybe the prayers leveraged some kind of cosmic cheat code. Last week, I came across this thoughtfully written piece, drawing on some of the principles of The Artist's Way. I've written about my recovery from creative jealousy myself, and if you've hung around here for a while, you've probably come across my big prescription pad that is preprinted with that title. I recommend it liberally to everyone. I whipped that pad out again as I shared the envy post on Kirtsy and Facebook, so glad to be cured, myself.

Some people get the sudden epiphany, the burning bush. I don't, and even if I did, I'd probably be all, "Do you smell something burning?" and walk right past it. I mean, it takes me a while to realize that the finger is not just held out for me to sniff, but is actually pointing somewhere. I linked to that post in three places before it occurred to me to ask myself what I have been envious of recently. Like I said, the enemy gets sneakier. It's easy to identify envy in the form of covetousness. Contempt and cynicism (addendum: let's throw in cleverness) are its more sophisticated guises, and unfortunately, they blend in perfectly with the zeitgeist.

Of what or whom I was envious is beside the point. What it pointed to, as the Artist's Way teaches and as the blog post reminded me, is that I have been depriving myself of two very powerful and very basic tools of creative life: play and kinship. AW calls them "the artist's date" and "sacred circle." I have a really hard time with phrases like that, the way my cousin Erika refuses to order gimmicky menu items by name. And that's okay, as long as neither of us starves over it. A little irony is good ballast for flights of imagination. But you don't want so much that you can't budge.

I could stand to cut a sandbag or two loose. I take time to relax and socialize, but how often do I really play? I have wonderful people in my life, but how much do I let myself lean? Not often. Not much. Not lately. I would like to learn to do more of both.

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The Field, Abandoned

My childcare fund ran out before the summer holidays did, so it's been a bit of a scramble around here lately. I've missed flying out the door past the nanny in the mornings and coming home to folded laundry in the afternoons. It is, I am convinced, how life should be. No one will do the folding, or stack the dishwasher, while the boys are back in school this week, and it will likely be chaos on the domestic front for the next couple of months as I move into the home stretch with my memoir, but I can't wait to fly out the door again in the mornings, into the next chapter's arms.

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Cannonball

I should have started work an hour and a half ago, but Mondays...what are you gonna do? So a quick update before I get down to it.

Summer is officially underway. The kids got out of school June 5, and their nanny started last week. She shows up at 8 every morning, and I run past her to one of several coffee shops that are serving as satellite office space this summer. I write all morning and come home at noon. Leaving aside the utter lack of financial security or benefits, crushing pressure, and strangling attacks of self-doubt, I have to say that it totally beats a straight job.

Any of you keeping up with me on twitter know that we have made our vacation plans: we leave in two weeks to drive 5,000 miles to Newfoundland and back. It's utter madness. But it's been thirteen years since I left home, and there's a part of me that wants to feel the distance, know the revolutions of the wheel and the distance spanned. Something feels right about making this trek while I'm writing my way back to the beginning of my American life.

Expect stories. And send survival tips.


Back to it.

P.S. I'm giving away a wonderful summer book for girls of all ages on Noteworthy this week. Go enter.

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