Weather permitting, I will be reading from All on Account of You on Saturday, September 6th, at 3:00 p.m. at The Storyteller’s Bookstore in Wake Forest, as part of the store’s Grand Opening event. Please come by if you can! Here is the schedule:

Author Readings and Storyteller Events

Saturday, September 6, 2008

10-11am              Anita Stone, I Never Met a Flower I Didn’t Like
11am-12pm         Roz Grace, Trina’s Family Reunion
3:00pm-3:30pm  Elaine Klonicki, All on Account of You
6:00-7:00pm       Storytellers Ron Jones and Claire Ramsey

Sunday, September 7, 2008

3-3:30pm             Alice Osborn, Right Lane Ends
3:30-4:00pm       Sharon Wood, Writing From the Authentic Self

Drew Bridges, owner of the store and a semi-retired psychiatrist, opened the store in order to return to his English major roots. Drew Bridges describes himself as an “early career storyteller.” He is well known around the Wake Forest area, having performed at charity events and at local events including Herbfest.

Drew emphasizes his belief that, “Even in today’s world of iMax and iPods gee-whiz technology, there is still room for a more personal form of entertainment.”

The store is designed with open areas for activities and is furnished with a grand piano and a red leather antique barber chair, the “storyteller’s chair.” Paintings and photography from local artists adorn the walls and are for sale as well.

The Storyteller’s Book Store is located under the bridge, at 100 E. Roosevelt Ave, Wake Forest, NC.

For more information about the grand opening or other programs and activities at the store call 919-554-9146 or send an email inquiry to storystore@nc.rr.com.

I’ve been having a pull-back week this week. It’s kind of like a mental health day, only longer. On emotional overload after my uncle’s funeral, and after seemingly every one of my close friends has had some kind of crisis, I finally had to pull back. To limit phone calls and emails and invitations in order to process some of what I’ve taken in. Death often causes us to do this. To look at how we’re living, to see if we have our priorities straight and our “house in order,” even to the extent of updating our wills and health care powers-of-attorney.

Before I learned about the death of my uncle, I had been struggling with a career decision. An agent expressed interest in my first book, Thinking About Therapy. She wanted to try to sell it to a mainstream publisher–every self-published author’s dream–except that, in her opinion, re-marketing it would require pulling it off my website. At first glance, it seemed like a no-brainer. I could have an agent! One who doesn’t intimidate me, is passionate about my topics, and returns my phone calls.

On the other hand, I had a visceral reaction when she mentioned pulling the book, especially after the enormous effort that went into redesigning my website last fall. Add to that the fact that I’m getting some traction on various fronts online, and the timing felt completely off. It would have meant switching gears, perhaps even backtracking. In the end I decided to decline the offer, although we left the door open for working together on future projects.

Then, this week, the webmaster for an online magazine for women responded to my request to blog on their site. A few weeks ago they had put out the word that they were looking for bloggers, and, in a high-energy moment, I had signed up. They sent me an application, and asked if I was interested in writing a regional or national blog. As my husband likes to say, “Is that a trick question?” Don’t all writers want as much exposure as possible? At any rate, the application asked me to explain what I thought I could offer to their readers.

Isn’t it amazing how hearing the right question can set your brain straight to the task of answering it? Part of my emotional funk this week has been due to a lack of focus. Self-published authors face a dizzying list of shoulds. In order to build an audience and sell books, we are told that we should blog, set up book signings and speaking engagements, send out books for review, write magazine pitches and sell articles, create book trailers, mine the web. And, oh, by the way, write the next book. I’m guilty of switching haplessly from one to the other, sometimes getting overwhelmed in the process.

Which brings me back to the “What can I offer?” question. I know the big-picture answer because I’ve done a lot of work in this area and I have a personal mission statement: “To inspire others to live a more joyful, purposeful life.” I want to share my personal experiences with other people, particularly women, in the hopes of saving them some of the emotional struggles that I’ve been through.

I just needed to be asked the question again. Refocused, I know where to put my efforts going forward. I have a feeling that, as a result, next week is going to be one of those pull-ahead weeks.

As Greg Anderson says in his uplifting book Living Life on Purpose, “You have a mission in your life…Truly, the world has need of you…You are here, now, where you are, how you are, given the personality you have, with the unique abilities you possess because this is your moment to contribute to the world.” 

How about you? What can you offer to the world? Do you need a pull-back week to figure it out?

Take all the time you need. We’ll wait.

This is the final installment of my three-part blog from www.triangleareafreelancers.org, originally posted on October 15th, 2007.

 
Remember when you tried to get your first job out of school? More than likely, you were told you needed experience, but you couldn’t figure out how you were supposed to get that experience without a job.

The publishing world works much the same way. You can’t get published without an assignment, but you can’t get an assignment without being published first. What to do?

Now, more than ever, there are solutions, both in print and online.

Most newspapers accept Point of View pieces from readers for their Op-Ed pages. If your newspaper has a community column section, you can submit an essay in the hopes of becoming a guest columnist. Magazines such as Writer’s Digest run regular contests where they ask you to write based on a prompt, and publish the winning entries. There are a number of non-paying print magazines, such as Reminisce, which will publish your story if it is accepted. Some writers’ groups publish anthologies of their members’ short stories or essays.

Online there an endless number of websites that need content—it’s just a matter of matching up what you want to write about with someone who wants to publish on that topic. One way to get started is to post material on a “content” site, such as Constant-Content.com. These are basically auction sites which allow you to offer your work to the highest bidder, but they do allow you to post free content, which may get picked up by a website with a small budget.  

Many startup e-zines are non-paying at first and then graduate to becoming for-pay sites once they gather enough advertisers and readers.

Writing sites which cater to specific genres, such as HumorPress.com, run bi-monthly contests and offer publication and small monetary prizes to the winners. Humor Press then publishes books of the winning essays. 

If you like to write book reviews, you can submit them to online review sites such as Blogcritics.org or BloggerNews.net.

With the proliferation of blogs, you might want to offer to be a guest blogger on a friend’s site. Or you can create your own blog for free on places like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal or OutBlogger. The December 2007 issue of the Writer’s Digest magazine compares the features of these sites.

Finally, you can create your own website using free services such as Geocities.Yahoo.com. 

Once you get a few publications—print or online—under your belt, you’ll feel more confident about writing queries in order to get paying assignments. If you’re a good writer, and you’re professional, it’s just a matter of being persistent. It will all be worthwhile when you get the first “Yes” from an editor!

This is part two of my three-part blog from www.triangleareafreelancers.org, originally posted on October 13th, 2007.

Beginning writers are often told, “Write what you know.” This is because what you know—and especially what you feel passionate about—will roll off your tongue (and on to your computer screen) more easily than a researched topic. If you write about an area in which you have some expertise, your depictions will feel more authentic to the reader, and your words will ring more true.

Some aspects of freelancing are counterintuitive. It might seem to make sense to write about topics with general appeal in order to attract the greatest number of readers. In fact, it’s better to create a market for yourself by writing about what other people aren’t writing about.

This is one of the joys of freelancing. It gives you license to indulge your obsessions, to embrace your inner nerd, so to speak. The most quirky topic or hobby may prove to be the most interesting to a potential editor.

Think about what’s unique about you. What fan clubs do you belong to? What online forums do you contribute to? What hobbies do your friends tease you about? Try writing about your favorite episode of The Waltons, the best Clay Aiken concert you’ve attended, or the farthest place you’ve traveled to attend a Star Trek convention.

As a former columnist for The News and Observer, Don Vaughan, says in his April 20, 2007 column, “Don’t be ashamed – be proud! Stand up and let the world know. By admitting your passion, maybe, just maybe, you’ll open the eyes of someone who has never before experienced that particular joy. And that’s a wonderful gift to share.”

Don happened to be referring to his life-long interest in comic books. I would reveal what my personal obsession is, but I can’t right now. John-Boy’s coming on TV.

I’m having a super busy week–a good kind of busy–so over the next few days I’m going to post a three-part blog I originally published at www.triangleareafreelancers.org.

People often come to freelance writing later in life and from other careers. Some switch from other writing fields, such as technical writing. Others have done business writing, including press releases and marketing materials, as part of their job. Exposure to a variety of knowledge bases can be a boon for a freelancer. The more exposure you have to the world, the more you have to write about.

But one pitfall for beginning freelancers is that they often don’t see themselves as writers. New members who come to our group often say the same thing. “I’m not really a writer—I don’t have anything published.”

Although some people have a more natural aptitude than others, thankfully, writing is primarily a learned skill: the more you write, the better you get. There is no acid test to determine whether you are, or are not, a writer. You are a writer if you write.

But thinking of yourself as a writer is a critical step towards being one. If you’re not there yet, you can borrow a role-playing technique psychotherapists use to help people get a jump-start on learning new behaviors. It’s called “acting as if” (known in laymen’s terms as “Fake it until you make it.”)

For example, if you’re uncomfortable in social situations, you can “act as if” you are extroverted. You can walk into a room of strangers, make solid eye contact, introduce yourself, give a firm handshake, and smile warmly at everyone.

People are funny. If they see something that “walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” they think it’s a duck. If you appear to be outgoing, they assume you’re outgoing. If you appear to be a writer, they assume you’re a writer.

One of my favorite anecdotes from Sue Monk Kidd’s Firstlight, which is a collection of her early inspirational writings, is her description of how she announced to the world that she was going to become a writer. (She had had a long career as a nurse.) “The world” turned out to be her husband and two-year-old, who were sitting at the breakfast table eating cereal. Her point was that she had decided.

If you’ve decided you want to be a writer, start “acting as if” — by doing the things that writers do. Establish a space in your home to write, buy writers’ magazines, join a writers’ group, take a writing class, talk to people about what you’re writing, and most importantly, write!

I’m back from vacation and will post an entry about our adventures in a day or two, but today on Memorial Day I wanted to recommend two WWII books to you. Both are excellent, and will give you a very clear picture of what day-to-day life was like for those who served during WWII.

The first is my uncle’s book, Normandy to the Bulge, which I wrote about in a previous post. My uncle was a Pfc. in the army, in the 26th Infantry Division. He and his buddies fought across Europe, enduring mud and rain and a constant lack of food. He was trapped in a foxhole for 17 days, and later helped to liberate several concentration camps. He kept a diary of his experiences, always intending to write a book about them. He finally wrote and published it, 51 years later.

The second book I discovered by accident while searching to see if there were many other WWII books with letters in them, similar to All on Account of You. It is called At War and At Home, edited by Bob and Gale McClung, and contains the correspondence of an entire family: three brothers (one of whom was Bob McClung) who served in three different branches during WWII, their parents, and their little sister. I posted a review of it on Goodreads.com. Sadly, Bob passed away shortly before the book was released, but Gale and I have become online friends.

Last night I watched the National Memorial Day Concert in Washington, D.C. on PBS and was moved by it. It’s good to see that we’re finally paying attention to those who haved served and are serving to keep our country safe, and it’s important that we keep telling their stories. God bless all of them.

Happy Memorial Day.

We’re getting ready to go on a family vacation on Tuesday (Vegas, baby!) and I’m trying to decide which book to take along. I read a lot of nonfiction, but on vacation, I have to have my fiction. While looking through my nightstand stacks, which my husband has been reminding me are overflowing, I noticed one of the most recent fiction books that I really enjoyed. It’s called To Truckee’s Trail, by gifted writer Celia Hayes.

To Truckee’s Trail is a fictionalized account of the first wagon-train party that successfully crossed the Sierra-Nevada mountains and arrived in Sacramento, California. The journey took place in 1884 and spanned 2,000 miles. I posted a review of the book on Goodreads.com, which is a site where you can recommend to your friends what you are reading.

I hope you will all get the chance to do some reading this summer. If you’re getting ready to buy a book soon, consider buying a self-published book online. They are growing in numbers and their authors are working hard to promote them. Print-on-demand (POD) publisher sites work just like amazon. You can search based on topics, read reviews, and purchase using major credit cards. (The books take a few extra days to arrive because they are printed as they are ordered.) The POD site I’ve been publishing with in recent years is Lulu.com. Other top sites are iUniverse.com, BookLocker.com, AuthorHouse.com, and Xlibris.

This is the kind of purchase you can feel good about. It’s kind of like buying hardware at the local hardware store instead of the Home Depot, or coffee at the neighborhood coffee shop instead of at Starbucks. On behalf of all the “little guys” out there, we appreciate your business!

The Writer’s Digest magazine editor, Maria Schneider, is running a contest on her blog, The Writer’s Perspective. It just started yesterday–here’s her post. You can nominate your website or blog (or another writer’s) and it will be judged based on presentation, ease of use, and marketing effectiveness. Winners will get some pretty cool prizes such as a listing in their October print issue, their e-newsletter, and on WritersDigest.com.

The website must be created and maintained by you personally. (Read the comments to her blog if you’re not sure what that means. She answers several questions about it.) Unfortunately mine doesn’t qualify because I have both a designer and a webmaster.

Don’t be shy–nominate yourself! You may also get some traffic to your site from the people who read her blog. Good luck!

Including our parents, there were ten of us in our household when we were growing up. You can imagine that, in that type of environment, efficiency is very important. You have to do daily tasks quickly, or you’d never get to do anything else with your day. So I learned to speed up, and to utilize everything at my disposal so that I didn’t have to create from scratch or, as the saying goes, reinvent the wheel.

A friend and I were chatting yesterday about writing and marketing, and we were both expressing a similar hope: that if you do something well, and persist, something good will happen. If you believe in kharma, it just makes sense.

I had planned to blog about the subject today, but before I got there, I read Kevin Alexander’s blog, This Writer’s Life. Kevin is another one of the Writer’s Digest bloggers. As fate would have it, Kevin wrote a longer-than-usual post today which includes what he calls his mantra. It just happens to be on my topic. So as not to reinvent the wheel, I’ll include the revelant excerpt from today’s post. 

“You see, I have this theory about writing and writers. My theory goes like this: no matter who you are and where you are from and what your parents do for a living, if you can write and you know you can and you work at it every day and you know deep below the surface in that place where only the truth exists that you’re not just being daft and irrational, you will get discovered. This may take weeks or it may take years or it may take decades, but my feeling is that good, solid writing rises to the top. Editors can spot  it. Agents can spot it. Other writers can spot it. And this is the beauty of the writing world. You always have to fall back on your own talent. Yes, you may get put in a prime spot by things like connections or nepotism or the lottery, but if the writing doesn’t hold up, you will fall and ultimately you will fail. That–more than anything else– is the powerful self-correcting agent in the writing world. And–despite all of my cynicism and my love of irony and all of the other knee-jerk reactive habits infused in me by my age, social standing and penchant for limited edition sneakers– I believe in that. If I had a mantra, that would be it. Good writing rises to the top. It’s not catchy, it doesn’t sound good in a Nike commercial or on a lower back tattoo, but that is what I believe.”

Thanks, Kevin, for saving me time today. You said it better than I could have.

I was having a tough day today, mostly due to the torture I received from the substitute dental hygienist at my dentist’s office, until I saw a blog post by Scott Francis. Scott writes a new book marketing blog for Writer’s Digest magazine called Living With the M-Word: Marketing Your Writing Without Selling Out Your Muse. I had commented on his blog yesterday for the first time, and today he mentioned me in his post. Check it out.

Commenting on other people’s blogs is supposed to help bring traffic to your website. I figured I might as well start at the top. Writer’s Digest is the number-one rated writers’ magazine. I suscribe to the print version, which arrives in my mailbox six times a year, and also read the online newsletter, which is where I heard about Scott’s blog. As he says, it’s all about community, and sharing information.

My day got even better late this afternoon when our daughter Jenny arrived home from college. She just finished her freshman year, and is relieved to have her final tests and papers over with. Earlier in the week, her dad and I helped her edit her paper on the reputation of the Monguls. Jenny struggles with writing, but she’s making progress. She and her brother think I’m unbelievably weird because I’m a writer. They like to tease me about writing what they call “term papers” for a living.

I can’t help it–I love to write. The marketing I could do without. But, like Jenny, I’m getting there, and maybe I’ll get there quicker by reading Scott’s blog regularly.

For now, I’m going to go do some other M-word (Mommy) stuff and nurse Jenny through the M-word (Mono) she brought home from college. Wish me luck.