“I was so excited to hold my book in my hand,” a friend of mine told me. “It’s just marvelous to have it here, done, and ready to be shared with the world. I can’t even believe how heavy it is!” The awe in her voice was shining in her eyes, and I couldn’t help but share in it.
Ciaran has produced a masterpiece of fiction that is full fof act, insight, story, education, and illumination. For instance, what does adoption look like in the US, compared to … oh, say, Switzerland, where there are no shelters or strays. Where you have to take a 4-hour course before getting a dog. Where… well, watch the video and learn more about the differences between them and us and… why WE, as a country, as a dog loving community, as a society, can finally win the war on puppy mills.
There I was, this frightened and fearful teenage, sitting at my dining room table with pencil and paper, pouring her soul into stories with happy endings, where the heroine always got rescued, knowing there was no rescue for me, in my home. But the very act of writing gave me the courage and determination to get through an other day, and another day, until … I didn’t quite know what the ‘until’ was, but I knew there had to be something. Something else.
Tom here, to share my thinking behind this bit of marginalia. Here’s what I wrote aside a paragraph on “active learning” in the new book, Uncommon Sense Teaching: […]
Today I’m going to share my Book Writer’s Road Map to Publishing Success. In six steps. Doesn’t that sound easy?
As an acquisition editor in traditional publishing, owner of a publishing company, and as the digital rights director for a large literary agency in New York City, Julie knows firsthand what makes some books soar and others fail to take off. Her goal, she tells us, is to demystify the often obtuse and discouraging world of book publishing and help writers succeed in producing, publishing, and marketing their books.
“Write what you know,” the professor admonishes. Because none of us have imaginations to write what we don’t know or to invent what we would like. That would be…what? Interesting? Creative? Insightful? Oh well. Don’t do that. (she said with tongue in cheek because yes, you should do that, just not right now.)
I asked her how she came up with the title and she told me, “People get emotional about their work. They often get to a point where they think it’s just a bunch of yuck.” Well, she wants you to lean into that yuck – accept the challenge. Move on from whatever mess or disorganization is holding you back. It’s exactly when your book is not matching your idea of a perfect experience, that you need to lean into it and keep working.
Our conversation was sort of all over the place because there was so much to talk about! We talked about individual people having talents and being put on this earth to use those talents. We talked about success and how sometimes, being silent in success, or not so flamboyant that you attract media attention, is better because you get more done.
Years ago, Marda Stoliar began telling Sheila Rittenberg about her students and their special reasons for learning to bake – from wanting to be free from society’s expectations (willing to start a cultural change in their community) to desiring a way to help others, family members sometimes, become more than even they thought they could.
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