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From the mouths of babes and their favourite shirts

It was a Sunday morning fight I just didn’t need. Morning comes too early anyway, and the battle between my warm cozy nest and the rigid hardwood of a church pew was raging in my head long before Youngest Daughter twirled proudly in her self-made Sunday best: jeans and a T-shirt. Now, I have accepted that my willfull third-born will no longer tolerate the sweet dresses and matched outfits of toddlerhood. Main goal today is to get her to church with a Christian demeanour still intact. The Lord doesn’t care how you look as long as you show up, echoes in my head. Jeans I could live with. The shirt, however, was another story – a tiny pink tee with Tootsie candies proclaiming Let’s Roll!, guarded defiantly by its eight-year-old owner despite its faded fabric, cracked decal, and seams meant for a torse two sizes smaller. Bravely, I suggest another shirt. Eyes darken and lips extend in a pout that will ease only after someone cries. With a single bead of optimism, I align three lovely shirts on the bed, extolling their virtues as an auctioneer wooes his audience. This one has a butterfly, see? And this one is purple; you love purple. A glimmer of hope, and the pout relaxes. Maybe purple would be okay. It is my favourite colour, and the Advent candles are purple.

She wriggles out of the Tootsie Roll into a long-sleever with the word PEACE descending on its front. “You know,” she offers shyly, smoothing her hand over the letters, “the other shirt was getting a bit small. I just didn’t want to tell you.” I know, I reply. it is your favourite shirt. it’s just that you’re growing, and things change. She gazes at me. “This feels a lot better,” she chirps, eyes bright now in relief. You can keep the other one for play, I smile. She dashes to her room, then calls to me: can I put it in the bag to give away? You bet, I reply. We have pictures of her in her favourite shirt. That’s what is important.

What I saw in her lithe little body, adorned in polycotton that respected her new size, was relief not from the fabric but from the secret. To admit her shirt didn’t fit would mean to lose it. Say nothing, and no one would know. But her body knew and in our moments tgether, her mind realized it as well. In the safety of our conversation, she could reveal her secret, and learned that good things come when sharing a burden with someone you trust. Our mother-daughter relationship has been growing since she was conceived, and touchstones like these tell me we’re doing okay, and life is that much easier when we have places to share.

The author-reader relationship can also be an important arena for sharing. As writers, we help characters share their secrets and in the process, share a little bit of autobiography as well. As readers, we often shed our secrets in the safety of pages, in other people’s homes, lives, and realities that mirror or remind us of our own. As authors and readers, we find success when we build and protect that trust and strengthen the ability to share. We write and we read because it is important to us. It takes time, costs money, and insists we invest our feelings as well as our thoughts, but we continue to do it. We write and we read because as painful as it can be, it feels oh-so-good when it’s done. The secret is shed, our trappings swapped for something that fits and feels better.

There will be more shirts, and always, there will be memories.

Thanks to the reminder of a smart little girl, I’m pumped for more words as well.

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No time to talk, my brain is getting a massage

That is what I told myself the other day when a crowbar couldn’t wedge another event into my calendar. Massage was the most soothing word I could think of to keep my brain from dissolving into quivering globs of gelatin.

The rush began before sunrise, when my children descended from their cocoons sleepy, hungry, and demanding. I have no clean gym pants. Sign this permission form. Where is my clarinet?  By the time the yellow bus appeared I was ready for wine but the teenager needed a drive to school, across town and through road construction that has been half-done for six dog years and costs an extra half-tank of gas, each way, before heading into a publisher meeting where over liquid breakfast (tepid coffee) we generated a to-do list for me that outnumbered his list four-to-one, including item 5. Write next book. Then, it was off to a job that actually pays money, where I spent two hours listening to a new government program that could do great things if – yep – I started another to-do list. Lunch was at the junior high as an in-school mentor to two eighth-graders.   Still swallowing my sandwich, I dashed to afternoon crafts with a lovely group of ladies set to sip tea and stitch holiday pillowcases, until I had to leave mid-stitch to meet the yellow bus and refuel the youngest for dance.  Then pickups, supper, dishes, laundry, baths and an hour of TV before the house was finally quiet and I collapsed into bed.

As much as I yearned for sleep, my creativity flowed like sap from a maple tree. I longed to write. Why?

The day replayed again, except this time instead of a horror movie I saw a documentary and before I knew it, I learned something.

The time lost sitting in road construction was gained in conversation with my teenaged son, who chatted about music and braces and his excitement about the Christmas holidays.

The publisher’s coffee was lukewarm but our conversation was sizzling with the release of our new book and the possibility for our new ideas to take shape.

The government meeting: there was money and the will to use it. Time to propose a marriage of groups who for the first time are seeing the value of working together?

Mentoring: teen girls giggling with hopes, fears, and compassion for my attempts to master my new iPhone.

Craft afternoon: the generation gap really does shrink with age.

Immersed in sunshine then chilled in darkness, sap from the maple tree flows watery and colourless, with only a hint of the sweetness within until boiled and bottled, it becomes liquid gold.

Immersed in the moment, chilled in the air of transition and boiled by the constraints of time, the brain is massaged to savour each experience and reveals its sweetness in a flood of inspiration.

There is a point to the busy schedules. It just may take some boiling to find it. And a whole body massage or two, just to be sure.

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What I Missed in 24 Hours

… And how I made peace in my battle of solitude vs. parenthood

I enjoy travelling, always have, but it was a nice-to-do rather than a necessity. Once my first child was born, I didn’t set foot on a plane or foreign soil for over a decade. Two things have since happened to rekindle my travel opps: our increasing ages and my increasing awareness as a writer. My three children are now school-aged, intrigued by the world around them and fun to travel with (seriously), so our family trips have expanded from day trips to month-long treks west and a week in the sunny south. At the same time, with hands and time freed from diaper bags and baby carriers, I discovered that solitary travel -be it for an assignment, conference, or self-imposed retreat – provides a focus and rejuvenation that can complement but cannot be found in the daily grind of life.

With an empathetic and capable spouse at home, I can leave my family for brief periods with a clear conscience. My husband travels for work as well; we function as a team, whether home together or pinch- hitting in the other’s absence.  However, even though my children at 13, 11, and 7 are increasingly self-sufficient, a recent overnighter for me brought home how much can change in their young lives in a mere 24 hours.

I left home on Friday afternoon. That night:

  • My teenager played a piano sonata flawlessly, after struggling with the ending for  two months
  • My tween and her dad put the finishing touches on her costume for the school play, transforming her into a 19th century country schoolgirl and cementing her love for the performing arts. They emailed the picture, her grin wider than the brim of her straw hat. I smiled, stretched languidly in my pillowy queen bed, and then wished I was home.

On Saturday:

My youngest got to be, and I quote: “Door-Holder Girl, Put-the-Chairs-on-the-Deck Girl, (as they unpacked and set up our outdoor furniture), Miner Girl (crawling under the deck for the plant pots) and then,” her voice lowered for effect, “Senior Miner,” where with bike helmet firmly fastened, she tunneled under the deck again to help attach the cords for our outdoor fountain. She was still beaming at 9 p.m., when I hefted my suitcase through the door, home at last.

A few moments in time, affecting no one but those in the room. But, these were also milestones for three young lives, a perfect moment for each of them  in which their entire purpose in life was realized: milestones in which I was a participant, not as Drink Fetcher or Site Boss but as an audience. “Sometimes it’s good to be in the crowd, ” my son said to me once, when his theatre troupe got the night off to watch another cast perform. “You learn a lot being on the other side of the curtain.”

I didn’t miss the pizza: two slices were waiting for me in the fridge.  And I didn’t miss the point right in front of me. As inspiring as lush B&B rooms and seaside vistas and writing workshops can be, so to are the myriad of tiny little mundane moments that I spend a large portion of my days trying to cope with or work around. I can’t see the forest of aha moments for the trees of “I need …” and  “When’s supper?” and “Where’s my ballet skirt?” until I leave the forest. But just for a little while. The trees still need their mom. And I will always need their words of wisdom.

Do you have a need for solitude? How do you balance it with the demands of life? I look forward to hearing from you.

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When did my elders get so smart?

When did my elders get so smart?

It was a blue day: not in weatherman terms, with a cloudless sky, but in writing terms, where doubt oozes from every pen and blank paper stands ready to mock any futile efforts at recording anything worth repeating. This is part of the vocation, along with wine at 10 a.m. and perpetual poverty.
As a modern writer, who couldn’t find the corkscrew, I turned to the anonymous comfort of the Internet, hit StumbleUpon and sat prepared to be taken away.
Instead, I see this:
I beg you … To have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to live the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you could not live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future,you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer …
I was introduced to German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who wrote of hope in love and solitude, setting down the exact words to needed to see 100 years before I realized I needed them.
Blue day inches to blue evening. Conversation with fellow author friend sinks deeply into purposes and responsibilities of life. Can a human being ever truly be happy? Can one truly belong to anyone or anything in the world in a body seemingly called to solitude? These were conversations leading to moods far too deep for any volume of wine to buoy. My friend, drawing on her benefit of years, offers me a gift.
Enter Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In my youthful naïveté I knew her only as the wife of Charles Lindbergh. In fact, she forged successful aviation and artistic careers not on the heels or even at the side of her famous husband, but independent of his vast shadow, charting her own destiny which included her devoted roles as wife and mother, but did not end there. In her struggle to make sense of the demands and choices in her busy life, she took refuge at a beach and wrote Gift From The Sea. Its analogy of a woman’s life cycle to the common yet mystical creatures de la mer was exactly what I needed to put words to my confusion. She wrote this in 1955, more than a decade before I was born. And, she quotes – wait for it – Rainer Maria Rilke.
My discovery in a day when I expected to find nothing spanned 100 years, two continents, and the prophetic genius of writers with the courage, foresight, and talent to preserve their thoughts.
This is what writers do. This is what the world needs not only to survive, but to thrive.
I do not expect my offerings to have the power or longevity of Rilke or Lindbergh.
But I am expected to try. With their help, I will write another day.
If I find my corkscrew, I may even write another year.

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For whom the jingle bells ring: testing the craft show market

Our Christmas craft show season begins with the first whiff of Thanksgiving turkey (October in Canada, eh?), but seasoned pros spend the entire year stockpiling inventory, planning displays, and banking vacation time from their ‘real’ jobs to enter the frenzied lottery that is the craft fair market.

Can booksellers tap this market? As a new author (first adult novel out a year ago, second just released), I am still learning to swim in the choppy waters of self-marketing, and took the plunge to find out. My test venue was an urban show of nearly 400 vendors that drew about 20,000 people.

The short answer is, I spent three days selling all of four books. Here are my numbers:

Cost of table: $410.00

Cost of travel: $37×3=$111

Cost of meals: $20×3=$60

Cost of supplies/decor: $50

Total Cost: $631.00

(prices do not include GST/HST as our company receives a rebate against tax owed)

Revenue from sales: $86.00

Revenue from sharing table/expenses: $250.00

Total Revenue: $336.00

Net: – $295.00

I lost money even though I found a fellow author to share the table: an author, by the way, who has been writing children’s books for years and sold 40 copies across her five available titles, more than paying her expenses. As ,umm, disappointing as it was watching her titles move while mine stared plaintively at folks who picked them up, admired them, then set them back down, that was a lesson in itself. In addition to my table mate’s voice of experience, here is what I gained in ‘qualitative revenue’:

– industry contacts: in my case, two other publishers who were in attendance. One in particular had a wealth of knowledge on new technology and sales trends.

– sales experts: trade show veterans offering advice on best shows, booth arrangement, crowd control

– market research: watching what people buy, what people are attracted to, how traffic flows. At this show, hot items were food, baby clothes, wooden decor, flowers, and more food. Most shoppers had young children or were shopping for young children. Very few were shopping for themselves; fewer still were avid readers.

– exposure: I know, writers can die from this if there is no money attached, but as a new author, there is no substitute for the hours of physical presence needed to build book, name, and brand recognition. For every book sold, I gave out dozens of business cards, practiced my pitch, and smiled, chatted or nodded to hundreds of more who passed by.

Comparison costs:

To reach this audience via print media: $400-$1,000.00

Broadcast ad: $2000.00 plus production

Market research: $10,000.00

Signings are free, but typically don’t draw crowds in the thousands, even if you’re an established author.

I’ll admit, my pride was stinging more than my back was aching as I lugged out nearly as many books as I had carted in. That sting was eased with the knowledge that I was also bringing home real-life experience on what does and can work for selling my books, and what does not: in other words, my expenses were not lost revenue but tuition for a real-life course in marketing and promotion.

Will I do it again? When my anguished pride completely heals and the cash flow recovers, I’ll weigh my ability to pay with my chances of improving the odds, and decide from there. At least when I do next year’s marketing plan, I will have much more information to work with. And if anguish is the writer’s fuel, I’ve got a full tank and then some 🙂

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Trick or Treat: What this writer is really afraid of

It’s the season of scare and I’ve already had my fill. Goosebumps erupted with a vengeance at the sight of snow on my deck during Sunday’s nor-easter. My hands gnarled in torturous anticipation of having to turn my demanding 10 year old into a watermelon superhero using nothing more than a shirt, a pillowcase, and an obscure prayer to the Patron Saint of Costumes.

But that is nothing compared to the terror we authors live with every day. So today, in honour of this most spirited celebration of the frightful, I invite you deep into my writer’s lair for a peek at what this author is really afraid of.

1. Not being read. It’s like high school all over again, throwing a party and the only ones who come are your grandmother, your brother because your parents paid him, and the creepy kid down the street who picks his nose to make his own pets. Except now you’re an adult, your grandmother’s passed on, your brother’s number is unlisted and the creepy kid is a lawyer charging $300 bucks an hour for public appearances.

2. Being read. After all, if people read your book, they may not like it and will forever ridicule you. Simple trips to the grocery store will become dashes through volleys of ‘you call that a book?’ and ‘you write like a girl.’ Okay, so the second one is actually a compliment; I make no assertions for the intelligence of said critics. On the other hand, if folks read it and actually like it, they will expect you to do it again, except better and in time for the next holiday gift-giving season. Who can possibly be creative under that kind of pressure?

3. The silence. It’s classic horror movie fare: no sound at all, until a sudden crescendo of horns, strings, and gushing blood hurls you from your seat and into the popcorn you’ve just sprayed around the room. But in the book world, the silence never ends: minutes tick to hours which drag to days of no one liking your facebook posts, no new follows on Twitter, no comments on your blog … you dash with newfound hope to the ringing phone, only to be hit up for a blood donation. As if you haven’t already given your heart and soul: they want your fluids as well.

4. The uncontrolled emotion. The Vincent Price-like laughter that erupts whe people ask how much money you make as an author. The writhing sea of green that churns every time the author on the news isn’t you. The tears that threaten to drown you and the wide-eyed ingenue who gushes: ‘You’re a writer? You’re living my dream.” Embarrassment and potential legal action aside, these outbursts pose great difficulty when trying to sucessfully find one’s way home, or trying to ensure one’s children don’t go dashing to the neighbours again because ‘Mommy’s got her writing face on.”

5. An end to the insanity. Because when the tears are dried, the book is written and every last drop of wine is drained from the bottle (and sucked from the cork), the writer’s life is one that chooses us, and that we choose to accept. I mean, quite frankly, in what other profession can all your fears fuel something as cool as a woven tapestry of the written word?

So bring on the monsters. Mine are bigger. Might as well have fun with them.

Happy Halloweeen, everyone!

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Mommy, Where Do Novels Come From?

Writing a novel has often been compared to childbirth. Having birthed three children and written one novel, I think the comparison is a bit of a stretch – no pun intended 🙂

However, as Finding Maria finds her way onto shelves, into stores, and in the hands and discussions of readers, I have to admit that I am considering a sibling. Perhaps it is the thrill of seeing a book come off the press, or maybe it’s the great excuse a book launch provides to have a good party. More likely, it is that the characters in Finding Maria have just begun to feel the sun on their faces, and are bursting with more stories to tell.

Whatever the reason, I am excited about the prospect of writing again, but a little timid of entering into the solitary writer’s lair that can be the creative process. This time, I I’m going to try writing with the office door open, just a little, in case you’d like to chat, get a glimpse of a work in progress or learn a bit about this process that gets a novel to paper. Snippets of new creation, reflections, or whatever the day brings will be posted here. I invite you to share as well.