Self Publishing, Ebooks, and Emotions

My wonderful spendiferous husband surprised me this past Christmas with a Kindle Fire, which I'm loving to pieces. And for my birthday he bought me an Amazon Prime membership which has lots of perks that enhance my Fire. One of those perks is access to the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, where once a month I get to pick an ebook to download, read for free, and then return to get a new one next month. I'm not one to pass up perks, so I wanted to make sure that I'm using my membership to the fullness of its capabilities. 

I perused the list of available books and found one that sounded interesting. It was rated 4.5 stars, I read the sample and the story seemed a little off but decent so I used my monthly allotment and got it. As I continued to read the story was pretty good. There were some grammar mistakes and I thought it really could have used a better editor. But I've picked up lots of books from the library that fell into a similar category (I tend to like these books, just because they make me feel my publishing dream is not a pipe one). Then I got to the end of the book and was reading the acknowledgements. Toward the bottom of the page there was a note that said something like "Thank you ______ for introducing me to the world of self publishing" and it made sense. It felt off and like it needed an editor because it didn't have one and needed it badly. I thought that maybe just because the author could publish the book, didn't mean it was ready to be read. I believe there is value in editors, and agents, and publishers.

As technology advances there is a lot in life that changes. During those changes you have to decide if you are going to embrace the new things and discard the old, or dig in your heals and shun the new things to cling to the old, or find some happy medium somewhere in the middle. In publishing right now there are huge fights between those embracing the new and those clinging to the old. I hope that in the end we have some sort of happy medium.

I love ebooks because they are fast, don't take up physical space, and I can carry my entire library with me wherever I go. But I also love physical books.

I love that this book on my shelf was my mother's.

                                                                                          

When I pick it up, I love that this one

feels different than this one.  

I love looking through my box of books in the basement and how I can remember the person I was the first time I read them just by seeing the cover and picturing where they sat in my room. I love seeing books at my parent's house with the spines split in half so that they could both read the book at the same time. I love to read and part of that is the emotional connection created between me and the stuff the book is made of. I hope that in the change of technology that piece is never taken away from me.

You are loved

Since today is the inaugural posting on Mom Advice Mondays I thought I'd share the #1 thing I want my kids to know every time they leave my house. I learned the power of this lesson when having a tough sit down with my poor oldest one.

I call him my poor oldest one for a couple of reasons. He is the oldest and I don't have a clue what I'm doing with him most of the time. And the poor kid is about 98% his dad (no that's not what's wrong) and only 2% me. The part that he got from me contains all my worst traits. Things that I've struggled to fix within myself and haven't be able to touch yet. So when we are having a disagreement it is like I'm arguing with that stubborn unteachable part of myself. Arguing with myself is taxing and I am much less patient than I could be. So take one doubly stubborn child and one mom totally devoid of patience and you usually end up with both parties in tears.

It was during one of these talking/crying sessions that I learn this very important lesson. At the time the oldest one was not able to see his worth and was in a downward spiral of "Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Guess I'll go eat worms." Having been in that place many times myself (see above re: bad traits) I wasn't sure how to help him feel better. The words that came to me were not my own though I have quoted them often since. I asked him this question, "Who loves you?" Of course in his fragile state his reply was "Nobody." Then I started to list all the people who loved him. He has a mom and dad, and grandparents, and aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. I listed them by name and said, "All of those people love you." When I got to the end of the list I added (again totally inspired) that he also has a Heavenly Father who loves him. Heavenly Father wants him to feel loved and He wants him to be happy.

Today's lesson is simply this - When you are feeling down in the dumps you need to remember how much you are loved. Even if you can't think of even one Earthly person who cares for you, know that Heavenly Father loves you. I believe feeling loved is the first step in discovering how absolutely wonderful and talented you are. Feeling loved gives you confidence and courage to face the unknown.

Do your kids know they are loved? Do you tell them often? Do you show them often? Do you know you are loved? 

Of all the many things I am thankful for, knowing I am loved is one of the most powerful. Because I am loved I know that I can do hard things. Hopefully I've been able to carve into my children's hearts the knowledge that they too are loved.

Introducing

Every writer's journey is varied and unique.  When I started writing I wrote for myself.  I wrote about things that interested me and things I needed to get off my chest and nonsense that attempted to be too much like the books I read.  But once you venture from the world of writing for yourself into the world of someday I'd like people to read this, you have to start considering what other people want to read.  The trick is to take your unique voice and make it just enough the same as what's available that people will be able to find it.  And just enough different than what's available that it interesting and new. 

While you are trying to hone who you are, not only do you have to fit some sort of "mass market" mold while still being an individual, you have to decide what type of writing you are going to do.  Then you take all of these pieces of yourself and wrap them up together and edit and rewrite until you think you have something wonderful.  In the course of discovering the something wonderful, sometimes you realize that clippings of the things you love were left on the floor as you got the wrapping just write.  Or you've abandoned things that did pretty well in order to find a greater number of readers.

The novel I'm writing was initially a series of funny true life stories followed by a lesson I had learned.  However I realized that as I'm not famous and, though the stories were funny, they weren't dramatically unique and that project was going to be really hard to sell.  So I switched to fiction because if I was going to work this hard at something, I wanted more people than just my mom to read it.  The other day I was looking at all my clippings lying on the floor and I wasn't quite ready to throw one of them in the trash.  And while in the shower, because that is were all my brilliant ideas come from, I realized a way I could do both and Mom Advice Mondays were born. 

Starting next week, each Monday you'll be able to find a little bit of mom advice I've learned, usually from doing things the wrong.  I'll relate some stories that I can laugh at now and hopefully you'll get a chuckle and a little bit of encouragement to keep on truckin' along the never ending road of parenthood.  We'll even have a few guest posts so if you've got a little bit of mom advice to share let me know.  See you next week.

Sometimes it's okay to get the thing you've always really wanted

So I haven't been super consistent about the posting on my blog stuff like I'd planned to be when I started this a year ago.  And I haven't been super consistent about my writing in general for a while now.  I'm supposed to be spending the year working on being brave, but it's hard to be brave about your work when you aren't consistently writing anything to be brave about.  Now you have the backstory.

Here is the middle story - I belong to this great writer's group with people in my ward.  We've been meeting every month for over three years.  Everyone is writing different things and is at a different stage of their writing, but in the last six months or so we've become really productive at our meetings.  My favorite part is that we each get to set our own goal for the next month and then report back to see how we've accomplished it.  No one is judgy or pushy or naggy, afterall this is a Relief Society midweek activity so we all love each other, and I'm judgy/pushy/naggy enough for 12 people (just ask my husband, he'll tell you great stories).  So knowing that I have to report back on my goal is usually sufficiently motivating that I work toward it.  In the past I've set all types of small basically meaningless goals (IE try to schedule time to write, or try to schedule time to write, or try to schedule time to write.  Are you noticing a pattern here?)  But brave people don't set meaningless goals.  Brave people set goals that are achievable and even a little bit hard.  After all if you can't judge/nag yourself who will?  At our February meeting I set the goal to write more consistently, specifically to write 5-6 times per week and track it on a calendar.  What I found was this, I think about writing sometimes and I pickup my little pink notebook even less than I think about writing.  The days I do write are productive in spirit but produce small results.  Lesson learned: if I want to finish this endless 1st draft I'm working on, I'll need to work a little bit harder.  Now that I know I need to work a little harder than just thinking about the next scene while doing the dishes and singing along to Pandora I wanted to know why I was struggling to actually sit down and be productive. 

I emailed some of my friends in the group about my dilemma and what they said helped a great deal, but didn't completely solve my problem.  Then in talking to my mom about a completely different subject I had a huge epiphany.

New backstory - One of the 1st things you learn as a new mom bringing home a helpless baby from the hospital is that your needs are now secondary.  This is reinforced when you bring more babies home.  So that by the time you have 4 babies at home you quickly learn the luxury of an uninterrupted shower or being alone for more than 30 seconds in the bathroom. (again we have a theme here)  When having learned this lesson you decide to quit your job and try to live on one income and at the same time pay off a bunch of debt you learn all the things you can truly do without.  If your journey to manage children, money, and get out of debt takes a few years you might tend to end up stuck in a holding pattern of saying no to yourself.  I even wrote a song to help.  It is sung to the tune of the "Just keep swimming" song from Finding Nemo and it goes like this "We have no money.  We have no money"  Well, you get the picture.  It does help when you really don't want to cook, and it would be easier to have Dad pick up pizza on the way home.  But it can also put your head in a very unpleasant place.

New middle story - We are doing well with the awfully long pay off the debt plan.  In the last few weeks we've fixed the broken van for less than we thought and finally refi'd our mortgage so we have a little tiny bit more money each month.  So when the super pushy salesman can to my door (or followed me into my garage) on Monday I actually listened to what he had to say and four hours later we had a newly installed thermostat, smoke/CO2 detector, and alarm.  And I was happy.  But I wasn't just average Liz happy I was giddy dance around the room happy, over an alarm system.  Insert someone here saying "What the foo?  That is sooooo sad."

And finally the end . . . . .

The next day I called my mom, as I often do when things make me happy, or sad, or scared, or confused, or I just want to talk.  Seriously I have an awesome mom.  Oh wait I told you I this was the end.  Anyway, I was telling her all about my great new system and all the fancy things it does and you can program it from the internet so the next time we go on vacation I can turn the lights on and the air conditioning off and stuff.  And I told her how it might be silly but I'd always wanted one. Then she told me about a television commercial that gave me nightmares for weeks as a child that showed a burglar peeking in a window.  I remember this commercial.  It still sounds creepy.  And she says it was probably for an alarm system.  So yeah, I've wanted one really bad since I was like 4 or something.  And now I have one and it makes me happy.  Then the kicker, the moral of this very long and involved story (frankly I'm a little surprised you're still reading this) she says "Sometimes it's okay to get the thing you've always really wanted."  Or something profoundly similar.  And I thought . . .

You know she's right.  Sometimes it is okay to get that thing you've always really wanted, or to do the thing you've always really wanted to.  I realized that it was okay to leave the dishes in the sink and go to the park and write in the sunshine while the kids play.  Or lock myself in my bedroom and not feel bad about missing family time.  Or generally be okay that the thing I most want to do right now is write a story.  So if you see me around and my nose is buried in a notebook please don't be offended if I don't start chatting right away.  I'm taking a few minutes to enjoy doing that thing I've always really wanted to do.