Balancing Act

The most dreadful thing has happened since publishing my debut Novel [in June]. And while it's a scary admission to make, the truth is I no longer seem to be so much a writer as I'm called upon to be a marketer. A particular problem considering that I'm not so good at it - selling that is. Okay. Maybe. But not breaking any records that I know of or have read about in the local newspaper.

Three months ago, newly minted book nearly in hand, I did have a multitude of plans ready to implement as soon as my book became available, ready to wave the same banner of enthusiasm which had carried me though the long process of publication.

But all that was before I came face to face with the fact that Authors are not on the same playing field as Rock Stars or Reality Show celebs -- maybe not even in the same galaxy. The public does not shell out mucho $ for books by debut authors nearly as freely or willingly as they might for Jersey Shore and Guidette T-shirts.

What's more (and this one hurts) your mother might actually only want ONE copy of your book on her coffee table, and even then, it's pretty shabby if you didn't actually sent her the single copy that she does have. (Causing you to miss out on a one hour jump on your rank, had she instead bought it on Amazon.) It's all just another of those surprises that sneak-up -- chortle madly -- then dash away before you can manage to grab the damn thing and choke it's neck.
Publishing --it sure as heck isn't about writing anymore.

A Day in the Life

Thursday Night: Already thinking ahead to Friday. Hubby is working second shift for awhile. The promise of a quieter evening, relaxed dinner hour... just the sort of change in ritual that could help redefine my tragically dragging (mostly nonexistent) writing ritual.

Thursday Night, part II: Hubby's new boss calls to say that in light of an impending snowstorm in the forecast for Friday - Saturday, 2nd shift employees will report to the 1st shift Friday morning. 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM. Okay, a change in scheduling. I can still work with that. I'm excited to get at to my novel in progress, so will just make some adjustments to my plans. I still have all afternoon.

Friday Morning AM: Stayed up late watching Celebrity Rehab (I'm hooked, no pun intended.). Pushed the snooze button a few too many times already, so now I've gotta scramble to pack-up hubby's lunch, son's breakfast, then pack his lunch as well since a fourteen year old can't be trusted to prepare a meal or pack a brown bag lunch unless there aren't any issues with them surviving on pop-tarts and potato chips. (And I do have issues.)

Friday Morning late AM: Work-out finished, showered, dressed, ready to run out to the store for "storm supplies," since this winter snowstorm is actually looking like a whopper and there are few things more dangerous then being trapped in a snowbound house with two males and unacceptable stores of edible items.

Friday Morning late AM, part II: School calls to announce that students will be dismissed at 12:30 PM in light of aforementioned impending storm. Argggg...don't know if 14 year old son who has his own key actually remembered to carry said key with him. Have to take off immediately if I hope to have shopping done and arrive back home before potentially keyless son does.

Late Friday Morning: Drive like escaping bank robber, bolting from store to store in quest of necessary items on list. Now have everything minus one particular item. Three grocery stores do not have Fennel, and I really MUST have fennel. (Inspired to try recipe for Fennel/Lemon cleansing tea.) Store number four proves to be the charm. Tear out of parking lot, race home. Make it back before boy - who it turns out DOES have his key.

Early Afternoon: Haul in grocery bags, then begin the chore of loading firewood into the house for wood stove (essential for survival in 130 year old uninsulated house), as son ushers in friends he's invited home after early dismissal to play video games. I continue hauling wood, ignoring as best I can the weird popping noise I've heard - and felt - in my lower back.

2:00 PM: No writing yet, but morning dishes I didn't have time to wash before the marathon shopping trip are now washed, dried, and put away. I cannot write in a messy environment, so now I'm ready to get to it.

2:15 PM: Last dish goes into the cupboard and son appears with a request to bake chocolate chip muffins for his STARVING buddies. Baking supplies quickly accumulate on the counters and in sink.

2:30: Son offers friends chips and cookies to tide them over until muffins are ready.

2:50: Muffins baked, slightly cooled and instantly consumed. Grinning son appears in kitchen to put empty muffin plate in sink.

3:00: Laptop is whining, then screaming for my attention. Despite the very distressing sound of son and friends continuing to devour the newly stored collection of "Blizzard food supplies," I am nevertheless determined to write something. Something! Just SOMETHING!

3:20ish: One of the friend's is leaving before the snow starts. Which, btw, a single flake has yet to drift down from a fuzzy grey sky.

3:25: I continue to get up now and again to stuff another log into the fire, but I'm writing. Still writing. I think my eyes might've accidentally closed for a couple minutes, but I wasn't sleeping. I'm writing...still writing.

4:00: Friend #2 is leaving too now. Son comes in to check out the weather channel. Where's the snow storm? Still, not a flake,but the reports of what's to come are ominous.

4:15: Here it is. A little something seems to be drifting down. Still writing, but this is it. Hubby on the way home, son back in the cupboard. He's tall and slender as a blade of grass, but forever hollow.

4:30: Stationed at the stove, stirring the turkey/tortellini soup, preparing the filling for the sausage-egg-cheese Stromboli. I try to pretend that I'm really not finished sorting through words for the day. But I know that's it. There's too much excitement building over the coming storm. Hubby has work tales, son is chatty and actually not eating at present. Alas it's Friday evening and overall it's been a productive week. Tuesday marked the first day in 6 months that I worked on this novel and it feels fantastic to be back at it. Here it is Friday and though I've rewritten the same two pages for four days, they're starting to look like two really good pages! (Or at least until the next time I look at them.)

8:00: Day is done, snow is really starting to pile-up. Within the hour I'll be in my soft and comfy pj's, settled in for last night's installment of "Project Runway." All in all, I'm feeling a lot like Rocky, (I love this guy! He's me, but with really big muscles!) slammed around, pummeled, and gut punched, but still, I went the distance and that's all that matters when the final bell rings!

8:26: Next week will be different...

Just one word at a time

The scariest thing happened to me this past weekend -- or maybe it was just sobering enough to feel very scary. It was innocent enough, I'd just popped into a local store to pick-up a particular brand of toothpaste to send to Chelsea at college (a story in itself, since yes, they do sell toothpaste in New Orleans!) when I found myself immediately drawn to a $3.00 sale table heaped to overflowing with BOOKS - stacks and stacks of beautiful books!!! It didn't take long to fill an arm with must-have tomes, but it was in flipping through the pages of a charming little book filled with literary quotes, that the shocker came crashing down. Because as I glanced over the words - beautifully composed and magnificently constructed sentences - the thing that all at once stuck my browsing eyes, was the horrifying conviction that I could no longer do this. That over the course of 6 months, when I'd foolishly ignored the keyboard, I'd forgotten how to write! Now, I'm not exaggerating here. Sure, I'm pretty certain I can sit down at any time and write SOMETHING, but what I'm referring to here is REAL writing. The kind of sentences we agonize over like a brain surgeon extracting a tumor.

In an attempt to be fair to myself, I haven't abandoned my novel in progress out of disinterest or laziness. It's more about temporary abandonment in order to immerse my confused brain into the convoluted mess that is book publishing and marketing. As my debut novel, The Secret of Lies, is a single season away from lowering the landing gear and hitting the runway, this other stuff seemed (and assuredly is) of immediate importance. As I pour over the particulars of "Early review copies, preparing media releases, book trailers, etc" the essential ingredient I've left out of my plan is the necessity to keep writing! An hour for this, an hour for that, it all needs to fit in. So to those who have this time management game sorted out - I'm impressed and enthusiastically applaud you! I, on the other hand, need an intervention.

And so, for the first time since June 2009, I sat before my trusty laptop computer this afternoon and opened the long sleeping file of said novel-in-progress and wrote. Squeaky, squeaky, rusty, rusty, popping up and down for snacks and refills of coffee, anything to avoid the screaming blank page. But then at last - a sentence (later deleted, but a nice collection of words nevertheless)! Followed then by a couple more, and at the end of an afternoon, two pages (which I will likely delete tomorrow.) And it feels good - great actually - to be wiggling back into my groove.

It's your baby

You've dreamed it, nurtured it, groomed, and coddled it, and now at long last you're sent your darling creation out into the world! Your not only excited (ecstatic really) and proud, but that pretty baby is all you think about. You've put yourself out there at enormous risk of all you hold precious, simply because it's so important -- so essential to your heart and soul. And just as you've hoped, your family and friends tell you how happy they are, how proud of your accomplishment. They know you've worked hard and aimed high. They've seen the struggle and applaud your achievement! You glow like a perpetual firefly...basking in the light of a dream achieved. But then something shocking, terrible, and truly dreadful happens. These very people who just a moment ago were popping the corks and toasting your perfect and beautiful novel, do the unthinkable - they set down their glasses, wave goodbye, and just like that, return to their own lives. And it is altogether startling to turn and see that just as you've been throughout the writing process that carried you here, you are once more alone -still celebrating, still obsessively thinking over your baby. Disappointed, admittedly maybe even a little horrified, that the world has not stopped revolving on it's axis so that you might bask in the perfection of all you've accomplished.

And therein lies the truth -- the truth that your writing milestones and achievements will never be as important or consuming to any other person as they are to you. If you're honest you'll know that of course that's the only way it can be -- that it would be more then ridiculous for such consuming love to come from anyone other then yourself. It's a truth we claim to know and understand, but which disappoints regardless. And this is where you need to stop and remind yourself that while determination, stamina, and perseverance are essential ingredients for reaching the goal of creativity fulfilled, this glorious prize of dreams obtained is really a solo trophy; one that will occupy a place on your mantel once the fabulous party is over and everyone else has gone home to continue dreaming their own dreams.

Mission Accomplished, Now what?

Anyone who knows me, will nod in agreement when I say I'm not exactly a techno inclined person. Aside from my admitted preference for hanging my freshly washed clothes out on my mile long clothes line strung taut between house and carriage house rather then tossing them into a clothes dryer, or hand washing my dishes (because renovating the kitchen in our 130 year old house meant carting away the dishwasher in lieu of an old cast iron double sink) even my writing life is a reflection of my old-fashioned sensibilities. Although I love and cherish my lovely pink laptop computer now, it was a long time in coming. For years I was a yellow legal pad girl with a fistful of ballpoints. Not until it was time to produce a submitable copy of a finished manuscript, would I borrow a friend's electric typewriter just long enough to translate my scribbles to neat and tidy white pages. While I still compose on yellow pads at the beginning of any novel project, I welcome the transition to the computer when the time comes to fine-tune, rewrite, edit, edit, and edit.

Nevertheless, it was altogether intimidating and just a tad bit horrifying to consider putting together my own author website. But even so, I am certainly pragmatic enough to face the facts and know when the time comes to roll up my sleeves and jump in. (The facts being that I have neither hundreds nor thousands of dollars to pay someone else to design my site for me). So, imagine my shock, surprise, and eventual awe when I actually did take the leap and found myself swimming rather then sinking as I'd envisioned. My website, www.barbaraforteabate.com has been created and launched in patient wait of visitors AND my novel's release date (as yet to be determined). It's certainly exciting, wonderful, and thrilling...but something else as well. Something I hadn't expected and can only hope is temporary, which is to say I'm feeling a strange sense of "over exposure." To think that I haven't even had the experience of book selling and full-on promotion yet and already I'm questioning how long I can personally deal with so much "Barbara." Is this normal? Temporary? (As one can only hope, since this is no way to savor the joy of a dream realized.) Is it merely a normal, temporary, state of overload for someone far more accustomed to the quiet life of a working writer, as opposed to the inyourface author pushing her baby out into the world with the underlying fear that no one else will find her offspring quite as beautiful as she does?

Procrastination Hell

Any writer who's done their research can tell you the great importance of self-promotion in the rather fragile world of unknown, debut authors. Not only can they explain the essentials point by point, if they're properly prepared they will also have a detailed business plan that's been as thoroughly written out as their book. An ideal plan they are fired-up and eager to launch mucho months before their book's release. It's important to get it right. Necessary in fact, should said writer aspire to have anyone other then their mother click-on Amazon to buy it.

So, yes I do know and understand this and have conscientiously diagrammed my business/promotion essentials on detailed pages. And now, while my book contract is still young I've highlighted the next step on the master plan - which is to thoughtfully list (done) and prepare (not done) mailing envelopes for those reviewers I intend to send copies of my book galleys the very instant they are available from the printer. But rather then having this mostly uncomplicated task completed and checked-off the list - ready to move onto the next ingredient charted on my list, I have too easily fallen into the shameful trap of procrastination. Back-burnering necessary tasks in favor of the 30% off coupon from Kohls - and then three days later returning to the store to cash in my "Kohls Cash" (bonuses earned from the purchases of the previous weeks shopping trip.)

And I have to wonder if running parallel with the elated sense of accomplishment that comes from arriving in sight of the goal line, is some unanticipated sense of uncertainty (fear?) as to the next stage once the marathon's been run and the finish line crossed.

Regardless, whatever temptations may be tugging at my attentions, I know too well the danger of surrendering to those seemingly innocent urges to vacuum the house (there are entire colonies of dust mites reproducing in those carpets!), rake the leaves piling-up in the yard (they're 3 feet deep! it's gonna kill the grass!), shop (but it's 30% off for Pete's sakes!), or catch an afternoon nap (ten minutes is all I need...). To give in makes it that much harder to start-up where I left off. But that's how it is, we start-up and we keep going, because we have to. It's what we do.

My Great Publishing Adventure!

My contract is signed, author photo snapped, manuscript heading into pre-production, promotion plan is in order and slowly cranking to life. I am excited, thrilled, ecstatic, and yet few people as yet know about it. That in itself is difficult to explain considering I've been working toward this milestone FOREVER, though maybe that's the issue. Although not superstitious, I am cautious enough that I never count my chickens before they hatch, never cross an intersection against the taboo red hand (well maybe on ocassion, but rarely), never announce "potential" good news until it's a done deal that's been wrapped and tied with a bow.

Even so, I think my reluctance to shouting from the rooftops that "my novel is coming, my novel is coming!" at this point in time must be for the truth that I've been a writer far longer than I've been an author. Author, as in published; sentances bound between two covers, neatly shelved amongst the other pretty volumes on a bookstore shelf. Or maybe my slow motion response to declare my own unbelievable and amazing news is due to simple wonder and awe that the dream is at long last cranking out into a space in real life where it will have an actual existence beyond the simple confines of my own head.

Wonder and awe is no exaggeration either. Over these past several days since signing on the dotted line (November 9th - the BIG day), I find myself continually amazed by my own news. So much so that more and more I catch myself while in the midst of conversation, watching tv, at a doctor's appointment, all at once picturing my beautifully finished novel open in a stranger's hands (unlike friends and relatives that are REQUIRED to purchase and read my book) -- unknown fingers turning the pages, eyes following the words, thoughts holding my story.

So, here it starts - or in truth continues - my great publishing adventure. The flag is down, the race is on!