Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

Dream to Reality: I’m Publishing a Book With My Grandmother!

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This pandemic has given me something: the ability to identify what truly matters to me. What I need around me and what I don’t. Who matters to me. What brings the most joy. How to uplift myself. What to keep. What to let go.

This morning I signed a document for publishing services for a children’s book that my grandmother illustrated and we both co-wrote. The book “Dreams of a Rocking Pony” will be in print sometime during the spring of 2021!

Several months ago, pre-pandemic, Peggy (Peggy is my grandmother’s name, which I’ve always called her by) and I loosely inquired about getting “Dreams of a Rocking Pony” published. Peggy is a fine artist by trade, who works with acrylic, and she’d sent Autumn a book she wrote and illustrated (pictured above) around the time of her birth. I got to fiddling with the wording some more and the next thing you knew we’d created a children’s book together! We didn’t pursue the book contract at the time, we weren’t sure how much we wanted to pay for our little project. And then the pandemic happened, so it was like whatever.

Fast forward to now. The long, drawn out months of the pandemic have given me more time than usual in my writing den (an office Steve and I share overlooking the sheep in the meadow). I kept coming back to the “Rocking Pony” project. Publishing a book with Peggy, what a neat thing that would be! Peggy, who is 86 now, still lives near Tucson. But we talk just about everyday.

So now, without her knowledge, but with her previous blessing, I reached out to the publishing house in Eugene, again. Only this time I submitted the illustrations, text and contract for the publication of a children’s book!

This surprising turn of events is inspiring me to think outside-the-box more. To try to see what’s already there. To celebrate the accomplishment that sat right in front of us: a playful exchange of art, morphing into a marketable book for children. A thing to reverberate our love out into the world. To prove that we were here, together.

You may not know, but along with my stacks of personal essays and boxes of memoir, I have two children’s books. Those manuscripts were written during a passionate period of writing in my twenties, and I hope to someday find an illustrator to complete them for publication. (But more on those later.) I know Peggy won’t be that illustrator. In the past four years alone I have seen her eyesight and mobility escaping her more and more. The “Dreams of a Rocking Pony” painting series (the illustrations are copies of a larger work) may end up being one of her last.

Between now and the end of our three month publishing deadline, I am sure to be dreaming of the joy I hope will come after revealing this surprise to my grandmother. (Of course I couldn’t get it together in time for Christmas. Doh!)

More about “Dreams of a Rocking Pony” when it’s published! NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has been good to me this year, I’ve been extra focused on editing and publishing, and have another title in the works. Send a prayer for Peggy, this pandemic has been unkind.

Love,

Mama Bird

I Survived My First Camp Out with NaNoWriMo

Dreams, Inspiration, Memoir, Prose, Writing, , , , ,

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Bar graph provided by NaNoWriMo. When you click on the line it tells you how many words were written that day. Notice the spike near the end.

Proof of what a procrastinator I am. Or not. Notice how the bar graph spikes once I learn that can rewrite 10,000 words in a day, instead of just 1-2,000. Plus, pressure. Plus, full days off. Plus, momentum and flow. Plus, I didn’t think I’d be saying it, but I did it!

Sure. Writing a book is hard. Writing a book is hard whether it’s over the course of 2 and a half years or the course of one month. Over the course of a lifetime or a weekend. What’s difficult about it isn’t the number of words. I’d bet there could be a compelling masterpiece that was only 50 pages long. What’s truly difficult about it is the emotional terrain one covers.

I suppose I can only speak for memoirists in these regards; only no, I am certain writing horror stories is draining in it’s own way. All the closing of the blinds, the paranoia, the bumps in the night. When you are writing you are in that place–you are in childhood or jail or both.

As you can see I barely reached my goal today. I ended at 50, 817 words but three days ago I was way down at 27,000. I cannot explain it but: magic. And those other things I mentioned above and the fact that, yeah, I’m not a quitter. I am not bragging but when things matter to me, they matter to me. If they matter enough to me they will happen. Years ago, I am unsure if I would have accomplished this. Not out of lack of talent or drive but out of FEAR. This time, FEAR almost stopped me dead in my tracks too. Save the fact that I have learned that FEAR has a bigger bark than bite. Little by little, bit by bit, bird by bird–that’s how I navigated the first 28 days of NaNoWriMo. Then I panicked, was provided the luxury of two days off of work, and busted the shit out.

It may sound difficult but I basically kicked it into high gear seeing that I wasn’t going to make my deadline on time at the rate that I was going.

Wanting to be a WINNER I rolled up my sleeves and dug in deeper. This determination, paired with the grace of my story loosening its grip on my heart (the material was highly emotional in the first part of my memoir, then lessened as I got closer to my 50,000 word goal) gave me the boost I needed to reach my goal today.

Fact: my memoir is a lot longer than 50,000 words, so my work is not over.

Fact: because of NaNoWriMo, I have a kick-ass third draft of my memoir (well, almost).

Thanks, NaNoWriMo.

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NaNoWriMo 17

Dreams, Freedom, Inspiration, Memoir, , , , , , ,

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NaNoWriMo.

At first, all the letters just ran together, they didn’t make sense. I fumbled on the pronunciation when speaking with my grandmother on the phone. “Anyway,” I told her. “It’s a good thing. The idea is you write a novel in a month.”

I was at Target, talking on my cellphone while browsing the “school supplies” section. I absentmindedly placed a white wire wastebasket in the cart. It was a good deal. $5. Then I took it out–nobody as broke as me needs to be spending money on something as trashy as a wastebasket. But I could just picture crumpling a piece of writing paper into a ball, tossing it into the cute wire wastebasket. Real “writerly”. But I already had a system for recycling paper–a medium-sized Priority box at the foot of my oak dresser. The paper goes in there, uncrumpled, and becomes firestarter. Quick. Easy. Cheap. Not glamorous but not frivolous either.

NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. Nah – noh – rye – moh.

I’d never set big writing goals for November, though I had heard of NaNoWriMo. My novel (my memoir) was written first over many, many years of recounting and recording painful and joyous events from childhood–scene by scene. Then in 2016 I spent one full summer preparing the manuscript for submission to a Portland editor (getting it into chapters). I got the manuscript there within the deadline, but it became apparent that the manuscript still needed a LOT of work! Especially the ending.

I took a few days off-the-grid in January 2017 to work on it. It felt like my coffee had barely cooled before I already had to pack up and go. I didn’t get a lot done. I had barely “tapped into the mindset” before I was thrust back into reality: moving, since my partner bought a home, starting a farm and small business, taking care of myself, working and earning money, and um, using Social Media. You know, RL stuff.

I guess NaNoWriMo kind of takes all of those excuses and RL factors and throws them to the wind. Like a 48-hour film contest or something. You get a lot done in a small (ish) amount of time. In essence: you fucking hustle. Boundaries are set. Word counts are recorded and, importantly, we writers are all in this together. Social Media outlets like Instagram unite NaNoWriMo participants unlike any other previous club. Local libraries support the cause by hosting weekly groups for local writers participating in NaNoWriMo.

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At Target I settled on one large Sketch Pad. Sleek with a black cover, wide blank white pages that opened nicely and stayed down on their own. Some journals are made for looks with cheap paper or kitschy covers. Not this one. I put two in the basket, but at $8.99 a pop, I put one back.

I started really thinking about NaNoWriMo: would I start a new novel? I have a fresh idea rolling around in my head. Do you have to be just starting out with your book? In a lot of ways I am. I have “only” been working on my book for a decade. Some people spend twice that. I can’t see the end in sight: I should probably work on this one then. Wouldn’t you say it has the most potential? Hell, if I am about to write a book in a month it better be the one I’ve been writing for the past 10 years.

Step One: Google NaNoWriMo, again. See that local literary group Wordcrafters is hosting a free event at the Springfield Downtown Public Library Saturday’s through November 1-3 p.m. Record in weekly planner. Write with finest print.

Step Two: Email Wordcrafters to confirm event and “network.” Also this helps make the dream more likely to become reality. Establish accountability, in essence.

Step Three: Pace excitedly a bit. Make coffee and decide today I will “prepare my life for NaNoWriMo”. Pick up a few items around the house, because the dog chewed them up and has strewn them about–mostly gnawed on pieces of kindling. Add wood to the fire. Sip coffee. Plot inside mind. Decide I will sweep,  then clean my office. First, I eat a banana.

Step Four: Start a blog post to share rare enthusiastic rush of inspiration. Write because it is what I do and cannot be contained. (Also: then worry that said writing is getting in the way of “real” writing.)

Step Five: Get an email from Wordcrafters: No need to register. See you on Saturday! Decide it is time to sweep the floor.

Step Six: Music. Coffee. Radio. Broom. Paper. Office supplies. Could leap like a leprechaun today “feeling like a writer.” It is my first day alone in over a week and my last day off before going back to work. I am amazed every time I get a rush of fresh energy and doubly amazed at all that can be accomplished, reset, and improved over the span of one “Sunday”.

Step 7: More coffee. I’m taking advantage of this whole cool-weather thing.

Step 8: Dust desk with damp, then dry, cloth. Shuffle things around until they look feng-shui’d, American-girl style.

Step 9: Face, with a deep optimistic breath, the “memoir section” of my office. Note at least 11 unrelated items encroaching on the scene: local newspapers, greeting cards, and “watercolor pens”. Weed out unrelated materials. Dust again. Lightly finger manuscript for good luck. Smile at the fortune of having an office.

Step 10: Register for NaNoWriMo on NaNoWriMo.org. Complete profile, book title & description, and select a writing “region”. Select Eugene/Lane County, Oregon for my Home Region and San Francisco/Bay Area and Portland, Oregon for my other regions. Review this article written by a more experience NaNoWriMo’er to insure that I know what I am doing. Set aside 4 blank notebooks, The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, a decent ball point pen, a chipped empty vase from Mexico, vessel up; and sit back in my fuzzy slippers, grateful for the permission and support of writers from all over the world who are joining together in their own living rooms and offices to make magic and make words, sentences and waves.

For more information on NaNoWriMo, just Google it. If you want to support my cause, kindly ignore me for the next 31 days. Sending Corn Nuts or Jelly Belly’s is okay too.