Pay It Forward Blogfest - Oct. 14, 2011

Today, I'd like to share with you links to 3 of my favorite blogs. Thank you, Jessica Bell, for mentioning Appalachian Morning on your blog and Matthew MacNish for the info on how to participate in this Pay It Forward Blogfest.


Note: I love every one of the Lucky Press authors' blogs, so in the interest of fairness am excluding them from consideration on the list below, as well as any of my wonderful freelance clients. If you want to see their blogs, you can find the complete list at this link and freelance clients under "client list" or "references" at this link.


1. Art-related blog: Drawn "Your daily source of inspiration for illustration, animation, cartooning, and comic art." This blog was responsible for my recent purchase of the entire set of Famous Artist School books on ebay!


2. Photography-related: CyberKen  "Here you will find easy-to-understand articles and videos about inexpensive and in most cases free tools for Web productivity." I love the way Thomas C. Davis explains things and offers tips.


3. Writing/Book-related: Rachel Simon The author of "The Story of Beautiful Girl," "The House on Teacher's Lane," and "Riding the Bus with My Sister," shares generously with published-writers-to-be, readers, and people interested in the disabilities and sibling communities about writing, marketing, speaking, disabilities, and basically the ins and outs of a busy, successful writer's life. Rachel's blog is inspirational and informative. 

Emptiness as "the beginning of everything"

On Saturdays when I visit my son, Bryce, especially in the early summer months . . . when the air is just warming up, yet not laden with moisture . . . I keep the windows rolled down on the drive over and listen to “This American Life” with Ira Glass. I love the program, the way a story is woven, up down back forth, through the circumstances of an individual. Not dissected as in Vanity Fair. Not marketed and sensationalized like CNN or “Dateline.” Simply told, much like a welcome guest tells an interesting story. Think Meryl Streep as Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa: “I tell stories.”

A good storyteller invites, rather than seduces with sensationalism or bullies with fear. A great storyteller not only captivates with plot, but with the art of description. The words themselves and the sounds of the syllables create an audible prose that elicits a response from the reader: intrigue, disgust, anticipation, empathy, pity, anxiety, peace, jealousy, understanding . . .

I am not Ira Glass; not a gifted storyteller, noted journalist, nor best-selling author. I’m a woman who works with words and lines and color for a living. Who treasured books as a child and now more accurately values them as an adult.

I am a mother of two sons, a sister to two women, a daughter and, most recently, a lover and wife. I’m an editor, designer, friend, client, patient, painter, vendor, customer, consumer, crocheter, baker, movie watcher, dog lover, writer. I love flowers, houseplants, yarn, make-up, good stationary, my husband’s laughter, our dogs’ personalities, my younger son’s skin, smell, voice, and humor,and my older son’s eyes, eyelashes and quirky pragmatism.

I treasure my mother’s encouragement and my sisters’ belief in my abilities. In my son, Jesse, I see the future extending like gently rolling farmland on a spring day. I won’t live to know it all, but I trust it will be there. That alone makes me happy.

With all this, there are still times I silence the ringer on the telephone, head to the couch or bed, and lie there stunned, thankful, and bewildered. Anxious – even fearful – a dozen emotions at once in a mix that gently blends as I relax. And all these feelings and thoughts and memories and hopes become one thing, but even that one thing is not my soul. It is, however, my story.

In my story I walk down the coldest, longest, concrete and marble corridor to a stark confining room of plexiglass, metal, and stone; down a hospital hallway to give birth; down an aisle to be married (at 22) before I was mature enough to make such a decision.

I walk into a store, 29 years later, a woman who knows something about herself, and love, and who is found by a man who will love me, and with whom I can love and build a new life.

I’ve walked into dog pounds, county jails, doctors’ offices, courthouses, X-ray rooms, banks, nursing homes, car dealerships, airplanes, and post offices more than I wanted to.

I haven’t painted, written, photographed, organized, questioned, or filed as much as I wish I had. But there’s still time.

I love this time in my life. I love my family and my place in it. How did I get so lucky?

Of course, I don’t like everything. Although I once wrote a poem with lines about my memories, which “tap, tap, tap with unselfconscious ease/until I learn to cherish every one/that’s made me what I’ve finally become/someone who though once seemed so small/saw herself and forgave all.” Now I can be more forgiving of others because I’ve had enough time with myself to recognize my imperfections. And, like choosing the right hair color (Clairol Nice-and-Easy #103A) or the best dress length (just below my knees), I’ve learned how to recognize my assets. But back to the couch . . .

When I am there, and the mix of happy and sad thoughts and memories begin, sometimes tears form and creep along my Cover Girl-covered face, and, moments after they wet the pillow I’ve rested my head on, I fall asleep. And in sleep there is no heaviness, no sense of dread, no fear of what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone. No pressure, no memory, no want, no regret. I walk down a mental hallway of nothingness, and, in that brief moment of time before my dreams begin, I learn what nothing teaches.

Nothing is the silence before you say words that will change someone’s life forever.

Nothing is the pause before someone says “I love you” back.

It’s the lack in your bank account, or in your heart.

It’s what you didn’t get from your parents.

Nothing is the emptiness, but also space.

It’s lack, but also freedom.

It’s the opposite of more, but not the same as less.

Nothing is what existed before you painted that painting, wrote that letter, baked that pie. It’s a blank slate. Nothing can hold promise or acceptance. Nothing includes everything we could have said and done, but didn’t.

Nothing is not very memorable – we seldom remember what we didn’t do, unless we are filled with regret. Then nothingness taunts us like a schoolyard bully. But then it is more of a something than a nothing.

Personally, I have an affinity for nothingness. It’s everything I don’t need. The nothingness is the white space that makes everything else in my life appear more vibrant than it otherwise might.

In A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (Doubleday 2007) Guo describes a Buddhist stra, given in the book in Chinese letters and explained in English as follows: “it means the emptiness is without form, but the form is also the emptiness. The emptiness is not empty, actually it is full. It is the beginning of everything.”

When I read this I knew that I was not the only one to value nothingness (oh naive Midwestern girl still inside of me). Or to contemplate it.

Perhaps part of appreciating all I’ve experienced and “gone through” is valuing the nothingness. I can only describe the nothingness to you by the something surrounding it: The person who could have been angry at me, but forgave instead. The not waking up on time and going to the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. The date who said “I could rape you” but didn’t. The man who said “I could kill you” but didn’t. The letter I threw away before sending. The candy I didn’t eat. The slap I wanted to give my son, but didn’t. The hatred I chose not to feel. The resentment I knew I couldn’t let take root. The television show I didn’t waste my time watching. The street I didn’t go down that might have taken me somewhere not best for me to be. The harsh words I didn’t say. The words I heard and chose to forget. When I forgot, there was nothingness, and that nothingness was good for me.

I don’t know where these thoughts of nothingness will lead, and how they tie in with the idea of a good story; but there’s something there that holds my attention. And like so many somethings and several nothings in my past, I feel compelled to look closer.

Have you thought of the nothings in your life? Do the things you haven’t said or done ever take on the same significance as something that existed. Did you ever find emptiness to be “the beginning of everything”?

--Janice Phelps Williams, copyright 2007, revised 2011.

All photographs on this page copyright by Janice Phelps Williams. All rights reserved.

Serendipity and Social Networking

My son, Bryce, is profoundly hearing impaired. Recently, I was searching online for related information and stumbled upon Stephen Parrish's blog and Jan. 14th, 2011 post "The Sound of Running Water." It was a very interesting post on his sudden deafness (from a virus), which doctors have told him is temporary.

I then saw that Parrish is the author of The Tavernier's Stones. Being interested in all things book- and writer-related, I contacted him on Facebook and asked to be his FB friend. This morning, his acceptance greeted me, while the collosal winter storm "enemied" Chicago.

I clicked on Parrish's profile page on Facebook and found my way to his website. Listed there are many reviews of his novel and this description:

When the well preserved body of a seventeenth century cartographer suddenly floats to the surface of a bog in northern Germany, a 57 carat ruby clenched in his fist, the grisly discovery ignites a global race to find the Lost Tavernier Stones of popular European folklore.

I've been wanting to read something outside of the genres I typically favor...and I love maps and stones...so I'm going to put The Tavernier's Stones on my to-buy list and look forward to reading it. Here is a link to his book on Amazon.

But wait! That's not all!

I went back to Parrish's blog to see if there was a new post, and then noticed the bookcovers along the right margin. There, at the top, was 41 Things to Know About Autism (Good Things) by Chantal Sicile-Kira. Hmmm.... autism is a subject near and dear to my heart, as many of you know, so I traveled over to Amazon to look up Sicile-Kira's book, which just came out last year in March (one month after Lucky Press published There Are No Words by Mary Calhoun Brown, which features a young girl with autism who travels back in time to save her grandfather's friend).

So, as I now return to Facebook to check the status of a dear new friend who recently had oral surgery, I am struck by the serendipity already in place in this morning. To those who discount social networking as irrelevant and a waste of time (and who may not, I suppose, even be reading my blog), I want to tell them, "No, it isn't. Not for me."

Facebook has brought me in contact with Kim Austin, a wonderful photographer in Austrialia. (Feast your eyes on some beautiful seaside photos here.) It has connected me, better than my initial mailed letter ever could have, with Rachel Simon, a wonderful author I've appreciated for many years but now have gotten to know even better as I read her posts and blogs about the pre-release tour Grand Central Publishing launched her on for the May 2011 release of The Story of Beautiful Girl. I've learned so much from her, much of it through her FB page, which alerts me to her blog posts.

Thanks to social networking I've met so many wonderful artists and writers and readers and people with a connection to the subjects I'm interested in: books, writing, publishing, disabilities, dogs, painting, altered arts, museums, restaurants, photography, creativity, scrapbooking/journaling, and crafts. I've also been able to share information about my business, Lucky Press, and notify folks who are interested in my writing and artwork about the projects I'm working on, as they are discussed on my blog and in comments at Facebook.

There is so much to learn and do in this big, wonderful world and Facebook is just one more tool that connects me to everything I love in life. What's not to "like" about that?

Find me on Facebook.
Follow my creativity blog, Appalachian Morning, on Facebook.
Follow Lucky Press on Facebook (the publishing company I founded a decade ago)
Follow my husband, Mark Van Aken Williams, who is also a writer, on Facebook.

Janice Phelps Williams
Athens, Ohio

My NaNoWriMo Novel Is Coming Together!

Dear Writing Friends and Readers,

I'm experiencing something I'm sure you can relate to. I've been "butt in the chair" each morning, words pouring out of my fingertips as I engage in National Novel Writing Month's 30-day challenge. When I was asked to name a title, I wrote "The Memory Tree" even though I had no idea what that was or how it would fit into my story. I just liked it and went with it.

Then, lots of writing, up to 16,000 + words yesterday. Yesterday morning, I finalize realized (okay, "they" told me) how the various characters would connect with each other and what the Memory Tree was. It sits on The Ridges, a hill which is the main narrator of the book.

Here's a description of what the Memory Tree is (not the novel, but the tree)...

In the woods here on my ridge there is always one tree older than any other; once a sapling, then a young tree that bends in the tornadoes that whip across Ohio; never breaking, never uprooting, growing wider and taller with each passing year, home to all sorts of wildlife, feathered and four-footed. Then, as its branches thicken and its trunk widens and the roots of its being push deeper, past the soil and wrapping around the rocks that make up this ridge, the tree begins to store memories.

Like a human being retains memories for only a season, trees hold the warm-weather memories in their leaves, to float to the ground in the autumn, wiping the surface of near-time clean. But some leaves are so infused with memories that something -- sound or sight or spirit -- seeps into the branches, the small ones first then into the large ones. When the leaves fall to the ground the spirit of these memories infuses the soil and seeps to the roots. Up from the ground and down from the sky, these memories journey, meeting in the trunk, the center of a tree's wisdom, where rings measure not only years but seasons of memory.

If man could devise a machine to measure a tree's memory, he would learn a history unlike that told in any printed book. The tale of everything wild and natural, mentioning man from the unbiased view of observer. A history such as I can share with you, as all these trees on my shoulders have whispered to me their memories with each gust of wind blowing through their branches.

In the winter, dark lines against the gray sky form a calligraphy of testimony, as the trees themselves reveal the shorthand of their time on earth. Time that spans the generations of men, of government, of weather. Some of the trees on my ridge are two hundred, three hundred, years old. If you sit under these trees long enough, you might sense their memories too. I wonder sometimes if Bugaboo did. Perhaps that's why he felt little guilt about what he did to Lester Dixtin. No guilt whatsoever, not even for a minute. He replaced any thought of the man he'd killed with a focus on the nurse who was like a mother to him, his brother and best friend, and the plants that were his children.

What Nothing Teaches

The following article was written in 2007, just after a very happy occassion--my second marriage, 16 years after the end of my first. I found it on an CD where I'd saved some of my writing and thought I'd share it. At this time of winter, especially after the nothingness of snow blanketing everything and really amounting to something beautiful, and the blank slate of a brand new year, it seemed apropos. I wrote the following with the idea of a larger piece, a book perhaps, entitled "What Nothing Teaches."

On Saturday afternoons when I visit my son Bryce, especially in the early summer months . . . especially when the air is just warming up, yet not laden with moisture . . . I keep the windows rolled down on the one-hour drive over and tune into “This American Life” with Ira Glass. I love the program, the way a story is woven, up down back forth, through the circumstances of an individual. Not dissected as in Vanity Fair. Not marketed and sensationalized like CNN or “Dateline.” Simply told, much like a welcome guest tells an interesting story. Think Meryl Streep as Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa: “I tell stories.”

A good storyteller invites, rather than seduces with sensationalism or bullies with fear. A great storyteller not only captivates with plot, but with the art of description. The words themselves and the sounds of the syllables create an audible prose that elicits a response from the reader: intrigue, disgust, anticipation, empathy, pity, anxiety, peace, jealousy, understanding . . .

Today is not a Saturday, but a Wednesday. And I am not Ira Glass; not a gifted storyteller, noted journalist, or best-selling author. I’m a woman who works with words and lines and color for a living. Who treasured books as a child and now more accurately values them as an adult.

I am a mother of two sons, a sister to two women, a daughter and, most recently, a lover and wife. I’m an editor, designer, friend, client, patient, painter, vendor, customer, consumer, crocheter, baker, movie watcher, dog lover, writer. I will be even more things as life continues to unfold itself before me and as I say yes to it.

I love flowers, houseplants, yarn, make-up, good stationary, my husband’s laughter, our dogs’ personalities, my younger son’s compassion, strength, brains, style, talent, skin, voice, and humor. My older son’s tenacity, creativity, sensitivity, eyes, eyelashes and quirky pragmaticism.

I treasure my mother’s encouragement and my sisters’ belief in my abilities. In my youngest son I see the future extending like gently rolling farmland on a spring day. I won’t live to know it all, but I trust it will be there and he will make it his own wonderful story. That alone makes me happy.

With all this, there are still a few times a year I must silence the ringer on the telephone, head to the couch or bed, and lie there for an hour or two (with two small warm dogs) stunned, thankful, and bewildered. Anxious – even fearful – a dozen emotions at once in a mix that gently blends as I relax. And all these feelings and thoughts and memories and hopes become one thing, but even that one thing is not my soul. It is, however, my story.

In my story I walk down the coldest, longest, concrete and marble corridor to a stark confining room of Plexiglas, metal, and stone; down a hospital hallway to give birth; down an aisle as a too-immature bride. I walk into a store, twenty-nine years later, a middle-aged woman who knows something about herself, and love, and who is found by a man who will love me, and who I can love and build another life with. I’ve walked into dog pounds, county jails, doctors’ offices, courthouses, X-ray rooms, psychiatric hospitals, operating rooms, banks, nursing homes, car dealerships, airplanes, and post offices more than I wanted to.

I haven’t painted, written, photographed, organized, questioned, or documented as much as I wish I had. But there’s still time.

I love this time in my life. I love my family and my place in it. How did I get so lucky?

Of course, I don’t like everything. Although I once wrote a poem with lines about my memories, which “tap, tap, tap with unselfconscious ease/until I learn to cherish every one/that’s made me what I’ve finally become/someone who though once seemed so small/saw herself and forgave all.” Now I can be more forgiving of others because I’ve had enough time with myself to recognize my imperfections. And, like choosing the right haircolor, Clairol Nice-and-Easy #105G, or the best dress length (just below my knees), I’ve learned how to recognize my assets.
But back to the couch . . .

When I am there, and the mix of happy and sad thoughts and memories begin, sometimes tears form and creep along my Cover Girl-covered face, and, moments after they wet the pillow I’ve rested my head on, I fall asleep. And in sleep there is no heaviness, no sense of dread, no fear of what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone. No pressure, no memory, no want, no regret. I walk down a mental hallway of nothingness, and, in that brief moment of time before my dreams begin, I learn what nothing teaches.

Nothing is the silence before you say words that will change someone’s life forever. Nothing is the pause before someone says “I love you” back. It’s the lack in your bank account, or in your heart. It’s what you didn’t get from your parents. Nothing is the emptiness, but also space. It’s lack, but also freedom. It’s the opposite of more, but not the same as less.

Nothing is what existed before you painted that painting, wrote that letter, baked that pie. It’s a blank slate. Nothing can hold promise or acceptance. Nothing includes everything we could have said and done, but didn’t.

Nothing is not very memorable – we seldom remember what we didn’t do, unless we are filled with regret. Then nothingness taunts us like a schoolyard bully. But then it is more of a something than a nothing.

Personally, I have an affinity for nothingness. It’s everything I don’t need. The nothingness is the white space that makes everything else in my life appear more vibrant than it otherwise might.

In A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (Doubleday 2007) Guo describes a Buddhist stra, given in the book in Chinese letters and explained in English as follows: “it means the emptiness is without form, but the form is also the emptiness. The emptiness is not empty, actually it is full. It is the beginning of everything.” When I read this I knew that I was not the only one to value nothingness (oh naive Midwestern girl still inside of me). Or to contemplate it.

Perhaps part of appreciating all I’ve experienced and “gone through” is valuing the
nothingness. I can only describe the nothingness to you by the something surrounding it:

The person who could have been angry at me, but forgave instead.
The not waking up on time and going to the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11.
The date who said “I could rape you” but didn’t.
The man who said “I could kill you” but didn’t.
The letter I threw away before sending.
The candy I didn’t eat.
The slap I wanted to inflict on my child, but didn’t.
The hatred I chose not to feel.
The resentment I knew I couldn’t let take root.
The television show I didn’t waste my time watching.
The street I didn’t go down that might have taken me somewhere not best for me to be.
The harsh words I didn’t say.
The words I heard and chose to forget. When I forgot, there was nothingness, and that nothingness was good for me.

I don’t know where these thoughts of nothingness will lead, and how they tie in with the idea of a good story; but there’s something there that holds my attention. And like so many somethings and several nothings in my past, I feel compelled to look closer.

Have you thought of nothing? Do the things you haven’t said or done ever take on the same significance as something that existed. Did you ever find emptiness to be “the beginning of everything”?

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed. - Blaise Pascal

--Janice Phelps Williams. © 2007
Image at top of this article is a colored pencil drawing by Janice Phelps Williams, copyright 2007, all rights reserved. For similar images visit http://www.gallery.janicephelps.com/.

As Summer Turns to Autumn...

I love the advantages of every season so much, it's difficult to choose a favorite. Perhaps even more than the seasons, I enjoy the changing. The sense that something new and different is on the way. The letting go and the moving forward. Important principles that have kept me sane for decades.

Letting go:
As night-time temperatures drop here in the Appalachian foothills of Southeastern Ohio, let's take a moment to remember the summer of 2009. The blessings and the challenges. What we enjoyed and what we survived. Dreams that came true or hopes that were dashed. If the latter, can we find anything of benefit in it? If the former, what's next?

We let go of the lake, the hot sun, the sounds of children playing in the water... we let go of the way a cabin smells, popcorn cooked in a big kettle over an open fire, teenagers falling in love. We let go of languid evenings spent on vacation, or action-packed efforts at waterskiing, biking, rock climbing, canoeing. And now is the time to remember, to print those photographs out and place them in an album... to give thanks for anything good that came our way in the last twelve weeks.

The child who grew from kid to high school student. The mother who visited and deepened a connection with grown children. The sister who loves flea markets and always gets us. The flowers -- snapdragons, day lilies, roses, peonies, geraniums... The abundant forest, the sweet small yellow and black birds who love thistle and are the first thing I look for each morning.

The grill, the steaks, the corn on the cob. The tomatoes! The farmer's market. Cooler weather "up north." Summer camp. Riding horses, riding rails. Cheap thrills or expensive indulgences. Graduations of all sorts. Summer romances.

Now it is time for welcoming autumn -- the beautiful, vibrant, golden tease of quiet, reflective winter.

I spent 17 years in Florida and you could not over-estimate how much I missed the changing seasons, the hills, the ebb and flow of life "up north." Now, tucked away on this hillside, the trees and air alone tell me what is next. And it seems each year at this time I'm drawn to reflect on the past and plan for the future. This is when I think of goals, of what I want to do with my life, what I want to do with my time. What went right, what might need some fixing.

Living creatively means living consciously -- aware of not only what is going on around you, but what is going on inside of you. Learning how to let all of life happen around you but not necessarily within you. Protecting that part of you that holds a dream -- not coddling it, but treasuring it, and also asking something of it: What will you do? For any reflection that doesn't close, eventually, with a plan of action leaves us unsatisfied and incomplete. It's the action that leads to our dreams.

Hope is a great thing, but it isn't the thing. The thing, for each of us, is something we can remember, document, tell our kids about, photograph, write about.

As summer turns to autumn, what will be your thing: your hope materialized? And what can you do to reach it? Tap into your personal creativity, and the collective creativity of your place on earth, to make your dreams come true.

On writers, and those who listen to them

In 2000, I self-published a small book entitled What Saved Me: A Dozen Ways to Embrace Life under the pen name, Claire Starr. Only 500 copies were printed; all but a dozen have been sold or given away... and now, ten years older and wiser and many new experiences since, I'm musing on updating the book, expanding it to be about double the size, and incorporating links to sources of inspiration found online. I could then offer the book in Kindle format and through venues unheard of a decade ago.

What Saved Me told, within the confines of a dozen theme words, my individual story. Everyone has one and most of us think ours is unique and worthy of being heard. It very likely is. Certainly there is nothing groundbreaking in my little book; nor would there be in an expanded version. I suppose one could argue that I could, I should, forego the memoir, the "inspirational self-help" book, and stick to writing about pets, to finishing that contemporary womens fiction manuscript languishing in my drawer, to something, anything else. But, those wouldn't be people who know me.

Working with a lot (200 +) of small publishers and self-publishing authors, I can attest that the desire to "share what we've learned" is very high. More people write books, have written books, want to write a book, have been told they should write a book, or have a close relative who's written a book, than you might guess. I edit/design books, and I also publish books by others (see luckypress.com); this brings queries my way. Writers, myself included, often have this balancing of opposites going on within them: "I have something important to say," on one scale and "Will anyone listen to me?" on the other. Perhaps these two utterings are within every human being at the time of birth. Every child's innermost longing: the confidence to have something important to say. The hope someone listens.

Unfortunately, life can take away the confidence and hope. Parents, teachers, mentors, lovers can restore it. It seems to me that in a marriage one of the most wonderful things is feeling assured that when we have something important to say our spouse will listen to us. And, likewise, that is one of the most vital gifts we can impart to those we love.

So, sharing what we have to say--whether as memoir, essay, or nonfiction. Or as a fictional story... is not only an act of confidence and love, but a selfless act of giving and a selfish act of attention-seeking. As writers, we have to be comfortable with both sides of the modern writer's penny. You know, the penny you get for your thoughts...

Side one: Writing is a selfless act of giving...
Writing usually happens when one is alone. Even if you write in a coffee shop. Even if you write with children playing under your desk. Each word that goes from brain to paper or laptop exists, if only for a brief second (in this age of instant blogging and pretty-darn-instant publishing) alone.

Yes, the alone time has changed. Today, it might only be seconds. The seconds it takes to think a thought, then type it. And the seconds it takes for someone to read it on their cell phone, iPhone, or laptop. Or running as a banner at the bottom of Larry King's show on CNN.

But I'm thinking, back to "side one," of those writing a book. Typically, even in 2009, book writing is a solitary endeavor. Apply rear end to chair. Stay there. Stay there a long, long, long time. (See one of the latest issues of Publishers Weekly, where several authors share their process. I noticed one spent 12 years on his novel, the other 6.) It takes some confidence (or perhaps desperation) to do this.

Years ago, before I started in this business of publishing; before I found my voice at all (a whole 'nother story)... I read (to paraphrase) the only difference between Michaelangelo and anyone else who wanted to paint was that he could "see." Also, that the difference between those who succeeded in reaching their dreams and those who did not, was that those who did worked while their peers slept.

Those two ideas: learning to see, and choosing to work, even when there was no sign of an audience, let alone a financial payoff, took root in me and grew, bearing fruit in my life I didn't think possible.

Writing is a selfless act of giving because words are put to paper, the work is done, without (usually) assurance of income. Without assurance of positive reception. Without confidence, even, of an audience. It is selfless in the aspect that giving of one's thoughts, or history, or dreams is a way that we reach out to others and say: you are not alone. I want to connect with you on some level. Let's spend time together. Especially with today's technology, where writers and readers can, and from a marketing standpoint must, engage in dialogue.

Side two: Writing is a selfish act of attention seeking...
If a writer is not seeking attention, by the time they've learned what it takes to write a book proposal, submit it to agents and editors, bring a book to publication, and then, pleaseGodyes, sell that damn book... they will be. They will learn all about seeking attention, gaining publicity, and draining every marketing opportunity, every contact, every lead, and every possible reviewer. Like literary vampires, only a shadow of their former solitary selves, they will drain the lifeblood out of any marketing opportunity, in order to "get the word out" about their book. It can be difficult to watch; especially if you're the one encouraging it.

Fortunately, ?, since most of us want attention, whether we admit it or not, and since any writer who is published now wants to please those who've brought their book to print, it is not a leap to take a writer who writes in solitude and turn him or her into an attention-seeking, blogging, podcasting, Kindling, TV appearing, magazine article seeking, book-signing, seminar-giving Author.

Guilty as charged.

Somewhere between writing the concept for What Saved Me on a length of toilet paper taken from a roll on my nightstand one winter night when I was suffering from a cold and now 200 + books and all their authors later... I too turned from the selfless act of writing, the solitary act of writing, to the modern myth of the Benefit of Garnering Attention.

Attention, dear Reader, can be a two-edged sword.

I learned this in my own, small part of the world, when I was raking leaves on a cool autumn day. A car pulled up with a handyman who had painted my porch the previous summer (and not very well either). He rolled down the passenger window. "Here," he said. "My son likes to write. Wouldja mind readin' this and let me know what you think?" His son, was in elementary school. Not middle school, not high school, not college. Elementary school. Apparently without a teacher to guide him.

I took the papers, procrastinated, marked some thoughts and encouragements on it and mailed it to my best guess as to father's known address. Never heard back.

But, I resolved that should I ever publish a bestseller, I will not rake leaves without wearing undereye concealer and lipstick and having a big dog with me in the front yard.

What Saved Me was not a best seller. It was barely even a seller. Because that's not what I cared about? Maybe. I wrote it as a thank you to those who had encouraged me, and as an encouragement to readers I would never meet but who might need some hope. But, I would be dishonest if I did not admit that some of the motivation stemmed from "I have something important to say. Please listen to me." I mean, really, isn't there a child inside most of us who just wants to be heard?

Somewhere, in my metal file cabinet (the one I'm going to get rid of when my office goes paperless), is a folder containing letters written to me from a prison in Ohio. From a reading group where my little book was read. Women at the local women's shelter were given the book at a "take back the night/antiviolence" gathering. A few parents of challenging children have read it. For those 500 copies, my goal was met.

So, in this day when everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, and where notice seems so easy to garner and regret for not getting it seems so bitter... embrace the selfless act of writing. Have hope that if you do the work, and work the process, that the attention will come.

What else can a writer do?

Here are related links:
http://janicephelps.com
Life is an Act of Literary Creation