The Hows and Whys of Daniel

Two weeks ago, nearly to the minute, I made a decision.  A big, scary, and, honestly, ill-advised decision.  I was going to self-publish a silly little story I wrote last fall.  And I was going to do it by the end of the weekend.

There were at least two reasons for this big, stupid goal:

1. My family needed the positive cash flow, no matter how small.
2. I had something to prove.  To my husband, whose favorite greeting is, "You finish that book yet?" (Grr!).  And to myself, who rarely asks myself if a book is done because she knows how annoying that really is.

Let's get one thing straight: I'm not afraid to share my stories.  Against all common sense, I'll type the last words of a first draft and send it off to someone, anyone, who wants to read it.  That's not the way it's supposed to work, so other writers tell me, but it's the way I work.  The excitement of sharing and getting that early feedback from the poor shmoes who have to slog through my typos--well, it's what makes this writer thing feel more like a village and less like solitary confinement.  Not that I have anything against solitary confinement.

Two weeks ago, "Daniel the Draw-er" was literally half the story it is now.  Like, 6k words to its now-finished 13k.  I knew the story needed to be more substantial, size-wise, but I didn't know how to do it. Some friends who read through pointed out some plot issues, mainly having to do with resolution of the various conflicts in the story (Daniel's mom's desire for Daniel to make more friends, Daniel and his best friend Annie's argument, etc.) and how the timing was way off.  Story structure.  It's a thing, apparently.

I would save myself a lot of time if I just learned how to outline.  Know where I'm headed, what needs to happen, that kind of thing.  But nooooooo.  My imagination insists on working free of the constraints of detailed lists, especially when I'm operating as a nine-year-old boy with a magic pencil, where the sky is the limit.  They call someone who doesn't plan out their writing a "pantser", meaning they're flying by the seat of their pants (versus the more serious and responsible "plotter", a. k. a. People I Don't Really Get).  The fun part about zero planning is that every single thing I write is a surprise.  I make myself laugh a lot.  Sometimes my weirdness scares even me.  But, anyway...

For a week and a half I spent night and day working on the story, holed up in my writing room in the basement listening to Bon Iver on repeat and eating cinnamon Fire Jolly Ranchers (!!).  My friend Courtney sat across from me and dished out tough love ("draw a plot diagram," she said. I threw a tantrum like a two-year-old, no lie). I spent almost an entire day working at a Panera Bread.  Two of my doula babies were born.  We said good-bye, for now, to a beloved family friend.  Life happened.  A whole lot of life happened.

This story is important to me in a much different way than my others have been.  "Daniel" came to be when I participated in an online writing course called The Story Cartel.  Our assignment was to identify the audience we felt we were writing to and write a short story with them in mind.  I didn't want to write a short story to teenage girls and bored housewives (you know who you are.  I am one of you!), I wanted to write a book for my boys like Tolkien wrote his classic tales as bedtimes stories for his children.  Like Dav Pilkey without the constant references to bodily functions and underwear. So I turned to my eight-year-old and asked him a good name for a main character.  He picked Daniel.  Then I wrote on, with my son peeking over my shoulder and laughing at all the funny parts.  He soaked up every word, waiting for me to peck them out in my usual slow manner, until it was late and I had to send him to bed. This story is my nod to my boys--the introverted Daniel who doesn't mind having only one friend.  The boy who hates meatloaf but loves pizza.  The boy who fixates on capes (for us, it is hooded sweatshirts).  The endless sketches of made-up creatures.  That's all of them lumped up in one fantastic boy.  That's why.

And now the "how". There are many facets to self-publishing that most people don't fully consider beyond just writing a story. Here are a few major points:

Editing 

Like, thorough editing.  It's best to use someone who edits as their profession, but I didn't have that option (see Reason 1 above).  Instead, I recruited a handful of people to read through and make sure I caught typos, punctuation, that kind of thing.  Then I gave it another read-through right before uploading it to Amazon and CreateSpace.  I'm 100% positive I, and my troop of beta readers, still missed errors.  I take comfort in knowing that even New York Times' bestsellers still have errors undetected by the people paid to do so.

Formatting  

I write most of my novels using Google Drive because I insist on making my friend read along. Amazon and CreateSpace want authors to upload Microsoft Word files (or one of their other preferred file formats).  Most of that formatting process wasn't a huge deal because I've been training myself to be better about indents and all of that mind-numbing detail.  I did spend about three hours one night doing battle with Word 2011 about page numbers and section breaks while my family went to the school carnival.  Bummer.  Although I did hear, in great detail, about my eight-year-old's meltdown while waiting 45 minutes in line for a balloon animal.  So, I'm chalking it up as a win in my column, even though I wanted to hurl my Macbook more than once.

Cover

Not surprisingly, the cover of any book might be the most important thing ever.  I drew what I thought was a pretty cool cover, a cat with a pencil in his mouth.  The charcoal on a plain white page was pretty drab, so I flipped it into a negative and thought it was good to go.

Except it frightened kids and adults, alike, so I had to draw a second cover.

And then I had to bug my brother to do about a million things to it until it was ready to upload at both Amazon and CreateSpace.  Poor guy.  If it had been up to me, the thing would never have a cover.  Never, ever.

Marketing

I'm still in the middle of this, and it's all trial-and-error because I should have done things different, if not for the self-imposed time constraint.  Cover reveal?  Psssh.  Blog tour?  Ha!

BUT, you can buy a digital copy of Daniel the Draw-er here.
You can buy a paperback copy of Daniel directly from CreateSpace here. (In a few days the paperback option will be live on Amazon, just not yet).

Book reviews are very helpful, too.  Even if you didn't buy your copy from Amazon, you can leave a review here for future readers.
If you use the Goodreads app/website, you can leave a star rating or a review for Daniel there, as well.

Side note:  I am open to other methods of marketing, as I'm reaching the end of my friends and family and need to figure out other avenues of getting the book noticed.  If you think of anything, comment here or contact me the way you know how.

So there you have it--a little peek into my hyper-accelerated process for the debut of my novella, Daniel the Draw-er.  While it's certainly no War and Peace or Harry Potter or anything, I'm hoping it leads to bigger and better things in the future.  I'm hoping Daniel is my little bit of magic.  

The Tapestry Of

When I posted my rant about wishy-washy birth partners the other day, the call to arms I so cleverly titled "This One's For the Fellas", I never dreamed that 100+ people would read it.  I imagined a few would skim it and the husband hate mail would begin piling in, but never 100-something sets of eyeballs on my frustrated words.

So far so good on the husband hate mail.  I'll give it time.  And, no, that's not an invitation.  I love you guys, really.  Just not as much when you're being a pain in the behind.

On my Facebook wall, where I originally posted this, I explained to my friends that I'd written "This One's For the Fellas" over a year ago when I'd had the displeasure of meeting a couple of particularly unsupportive husbands.  One man completely belittled his wife (and, frankly, myself) in public and then left abruptly in the middle of our interview, leaving her to blush and apologize for him when she needed an apology from him more than I did.  Luckily, for as many clueless, borderline abusive relationships I've come across in my life and in my work as a doula, I've been blessed to know so many really connected couples and birth partners who go above and beyond.  It's amazing to see this first-hand, but really a wake-up call to me when I come across a crumbling situation.

As a doula, I don't have a psychology degree.  I'm not qualified to help these families in any way other than preparing themselves for birth.  But I still see it.  The very primal essence of birth brings all of these emotions to the surface without any effort.  If there's a rift in your marriage, I probably will get a good glimpse at it.  If you have fear or scars from past abuse, I can guess they exist based on how you bring your baby into the world.  Maybe it's science or something else explainable, but I prefer to think it's intuition and knowing after watching a hundred families interact.  Or not interact.

We are a hopelessly intricate tapestry woven with the bitter threads of daddy issues and doubts and insecurities.  Each one of us are beautiful and tragic works of art.

I cannot fix a lifetime of problems in a few short months.  But I can hold witness to it.  I can say, yes, I see it.  Yes, it happened.  You aren't crazy.

I do not expect to right the wrongs of a thousand inattentive partners in a few short paragraphs.  On the other hand, I do not wish to rile up all of the volatile pregnant women, either.  But this matters, what you are doing as a unit.  You are creating a new person who will be a confusing, glorious jumble of threads from you and your partner.  This baby deserves your very best, not only for him or her, but also for your relationship.

Families leave me short weeks after baby arrives, and our communications usually go the way of the buffalo.  But I always wonder what becomes of the struggling partners after our silence is established.  What becomes of the wriggling child I watched gulp its first breath of being?  Is this as good as it gets, this outpouring of love and joy at the birth of this child?

I hope not.

2013: The Best of My Worst, The Worst of My Best

I'm in my pajamas on New Year's Eve.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.  Say what you will, but pajamas make nearly almost everything better.  Even Wal-Mart.  Pretend you don't agree--I won't believe you.  

My stomach is protesting for the fourth day in a row.  I'm afraid to eat the salad with Italian dressing I'm craving knowing salad is never awesome the second time around, knowing I hold no interest in becoming a human Salad Shooter.

A pain throbs between my eye sockets and the base of my skull.  I've seen movies like this, where a person's head splits in two, revealing the sparking, beeping innards of the robot menace within.  I'm hoping there's a robot menace within, at least, because I have a busy weekend ahead and the human menace (me) doesn't want to deal with the holiday clean-up that this dumb virus has delayed.

It's probably dehydration.  Darn.

Two Advil and a lot of water later and the headache's not getting better, so I pull on my sleep mask while Mr. Ohboy watches Moonshiners.  Seriously, Moonshiners.  I can't get behind this show, even with a main character, a full-grown adult named Tickle.  No.  With the twangy lullaby of sweaty gentlemen wearing overalls and no t-shirts, I'm asleep by 8:30p.m.

An hour later and the unofficial neighborhood fireworks wake me up.  I proceed to text my friend Allison, who always seems to get the "Seriously?  Fireworks?" texts from me and I don't know why, other than to also stress her out because now she owns a horse who may or may not appreciate said fireworks.  We quickly established that my age bracket is sliding closer to that of a Medicare recipient than its rightful place of 35.  (The fireworks and random machine gun firing awoke me again just after midnight.  Happy New Year!  Huzzah!)

On New Year's Eve I like to write a blog post reflecting on the past year.  It's not happening tonight. The pressure of my pillows against my head and my back make me feel nauseated and sore.  I'm in a bad mood.  I'm uncomfortable from the tippy-top of my head to the ends of my toes.  I feel sorry for myself, which makes me cry.  Sad me is sad.

My guitar hangs from a peg on my bedroom wall.  I'm mediocre at so many things, but I especially struggle with the guitar.  While my youngest was still in the womb, I took lessons with a little old Irish guy at a local music shop that has since gone out of business.  In the hands of my teacher, my guitar sang like a heartbroken lover or a carefree dancer.  In my stuttering hands, my guitar hesitates and falters.  Practice makes things perfect, usually, but I haven't been able to bring myself to practice in a couple of years.  Last night, so lost for something to do, I pulled the guitar down and tuned it.  I thumbed through a few easy melodies, single notes, no chords.  As I pick away at a phrase, my baby boy, now four years old, walks in and watched me.

"What are you doing?"  He asked, sucking in his lower lip beneath his front teeth.

"Do you remember when I used to play guitar when you were in my tummy?"

"Yes."  He says.  I don't know if he really remembers, but I want to believe it's true.  That even my imperfection means something to him.  Even the best of my worst (or the worst of my best) tickles his memory of a time before.

I've managed a lot of good things in 2013.  I've written two novels and a short story, all of which I hope to edit and do something with in 2014.  I've randomly become a runner and completed my first race, a 10K (6.2 miles) in December.  All good things, but I feel guilty.  In pursuit of any of my goals I've been more withdrawn from friends and family and lately I've been feeling like I'm the reason why certain of my kids struggle in school or my house isn't very clean.  

At the moment, all that I accomplished in 2013 matters little to anyone else, even my family.  My kids don't care that I can run a mile in 11 minutes or that I'd like to try to run the equivalent of a half marathon in one outing before 2014 is through.  They don't care what happens to Claire or Liam, or if Lucy figures out why she's in Mitte.  They don't care if my horse gets ridden every couple of days or if there's manure in the pastures.  Maybe they will care someday, but right now I don't see it.

2013 was kind to me, but I want 2014 to be kind to my entire family.  For the blessings that surround me to surround them, as well.  I want the best of my worst and the worst of my best to mean more to everyone I love.  That's what I want for 2014, not just riding and publishing and miles.  

To mean.  To matter.  To make a difference.

Lightning Crashes

This morning Mr. Ohboy was in the kitchen while the boys got ready for school.  I chose to hide in the bedroom, mainlining chocolate chip cookies for breakfast.  I tried to ignore their conversations as I hadn't stumbled my way to the coffee pot yet.  Then I heard my husband telling our children - the very same children who insist upon wearing noise-canceling headphones during rainstorms - about his grandfather who was struck by lightning on two separate occasions while sitting in a recliner in his study.

He clearly hadn't thought this one through.  The kids already practically burrow beneath our skin when they hear the slightest rumble of thunder.  If there is no longer safety indoors, thanks to Great-Grandpa Ohboy's magnetic legacy, I'm not sure of our next move.  Fall-out shelter?

"STOP!" I yell.  "DON'T YOU DARE TELL THEM THAT STORY!"  Mr. Ohboy can't hear me or he's become immune to the distinct frequency of my nagging.  Perhaps he can't hear me because I've deafened him over the years.  Whatever the reason, he finished his story (and the kids added their own gems about tornadoes ripping off your skin.  Boys!).

On Fridays I visit my grandparents and clean their house for them so they don't have to.  We chat a little as I work, and then talk more when we sit to eat lunch together.  Today I mentioned my family's desire to record some of their stories so we would be able to hold pieces of them long after they leave us.  My grandmother furrowed her eyebrow and declared that it sounded like a lot of work.  Besides, she and my grandpa remembered things differently.

Of course you do, Grandma.  You're married, after all.

Somehow conversation turned to my husband's grandfather, the human lightning rod, and then to my friend's mother who was struck by lightning while milking a cow (is that where fried cheese curds come from?).

"That happened to my mother," Grandma announced.

Before my grandmother came into the world, her mother miscarried another baby.  With no little one to feed, her chest became engorged to the point where fluid gathered in her legs.  They referred to this as "milk leg", and they believed the swelling in the legs was the milk running down and filling up the lower extremities.  My great-grandmother was advised to wear some kind of rubberized stockings, likely some sort of compression stocking, to help with the swelling.

A storm blew through soon afterward, and she ran outside to bring one of the cows into the shelter of the barn.  Lightning filled the air with electric charge and stung the ground at her toes.  Great-grandma's rubber socks saved her life.  In the years following, she would conceive and give birth to a fiery baby girl, my grandmother.

The more I think about the lightning strike, the compression stockings, the baby lost, the branches of the family tree that may have never sprouted, I am amazed.  And this is why we tell our tales - the good, the bad, the seemingly boring.  In the telling and retelling of our stories, we reveal the everyday tragedies and miracles that affect us all.

But, still, Mr. Ohboy probably needs to keep that whole lightning striking indoors thing under wraps.