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  1. How to Eat an Elephant: A Rare Glimpse of an Artist’s Success

    April 23, 2013 by admin

     

    Today I received an email from a writer whose novel will soon be published by the Pronghorn Press, which last year published my Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    To share in this writer’s raw excitement and arrival in hard-earned book publication is nothing short of exhilarating.Spring Mill 035

    Dawn Wink shares her journey to publication with an openness that is entirely beautiful – beautiful because in her tremendous accomplishment she exposes the hard and messy process of writing and her own jagged edges that, in effect, forced her to turn to her craft.

    She is human. She wrestles and tugs to create beautiful art in the midst of an upended life. And when she succeeds at it, she wants her whole world to know.

    How can that not be inspiring?

    “Meadowlark was the book that should never have been written,” she writes. “Too much happened in my life as I wrote. Too much upheaval, too much transition, too much pain. And yet, I couldn’t stop writing. Like Gretel following the bread crumbs, I stumbled through the forest of my life, focusing on that next bread crumb …”

    In Dawn’s journey I am reminded of three things:

    1)      Writing is and can be such an act of discovery.

    2)      A life story can hold tremendous, mind-boggling power. If you have a strong story to tell – be it yours or someone else’s – the words must find their way out. Even when you don’t think you can go on, even when the noise of life is so loud you can hardly think straight, the story wriggles itself free. And, as Wink learned, the power of story can be a writer’s biggest ally during times of personal hardship. “I believed in Grace and her story,” she writes, “when I had lost all faith in my own.”

    3)      Times change, and circumstances change. We are tested by many hardships in this thing called life, moments of intense heat in which we, like hot iron, are bended and shaped. We won’t be in the furnace forever. But those trying times are the nuggets that test our true character. Writers count these times as gold for their craft – moments and emotions that provide foundations for creating riveting stories.

     

    Now, as Wink finds herself “in a place of family, stability and home … a place where I can at last settle in deeply to love, live and write,” she is able to reflect back with a sense of celebration.

    During a recent upheaval of my own – a new book out right alongside my second child being born – I clung to my mom’s persistent wisdom. How do you eat an elephant? she’d say. One bite at a time.

    As writers, we have to keep on keeping on. There will always be too much. Too much going on. Too much to worry about. Too many balls in the air. But we have to put our heads down and charge ahead in the business of artmaking, one bite (or one sentence) at a time.

    At its base, Dawn Wink’s journey is a story of beautiful persistence. If you’re a true writer, you can’t ever give up. You have to want your words to succeed so bad you can’t take your eyes off the prize. You have to obsess over it and sweat over it and cry and pound your fists. And when you break through into the light of a hard-won success, you have to wholly and entirely celebrate it.

    Well done, Dawn. And best of luck as Meadowlark soon finds its way into the hands of readers.

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Feel-Good Stories, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  2. To Write Again: A Return to the Sweet Life of Art Making

    February 21, 2013 by admin

    So. Days melt into days, and weeks into weeks. Across five states and two time zones, from a place that perpetually feels like summer back to a place where winter is in full force and (amen) the weather comes and goes in seasons. It has been a long road from southern California back to Kansas City, the challenges of moving with two young kids fierce and at times unrelenting. Yet we have pulled through it, and in all the chaos, things are beginning to make sense again.

    Finally, we are emerging into a new normal. We are putting down roots here fast and hard. Desperately, we want them to stick because if we’re honest, this life of mobility, of pulling up our lives every one to two years to begin again in a new place, is just plain tough. It was the life of adventure five years ago, when we were still relatively newly married and without kids. Now, with two little boys in tow, we simply crave to be settled. For the wellbeing of our kids. For the wellbeing of our family.

    As I write, the wind outside is fierce, hurling hard snow against the upstairs windows. My little Eli, who was born in sunny California just seven months ago, can’t take his eyes off of the mean white stuff. I finished nursing him this morning, and he lay his head on my shoulder and snuggled into me, quiet. That’s odd, I thought. And I said out loud, ”Why are you so quiet?”

    Then I saw why. His eyes were wide open, staring intently out the window at the onslaught of blizzard.

    Snow. Something completely new to him.

    As I ease myself back into these waters of a writing life, I feel more and more at home. To be honest, I don’t know where my work will take me next. We have started over yet again, in a new community, a new place. Ideas throw themselves at me ruthlessly, and I snatch at them as if trying to catch beautiful butterflies in a net, wanting to keep them, study them, turn them over in my hands and then release them into the world again.

    I revisit old essays, wonder why some of them have remained untouched deep in a folder for so long. But the answer comes quickly. Mothering. Family. Life.

    Most important right now is that we have weathered a stretch of tremendous transition and upheaval. In this new normal, this new place we so much long to call “home” for the long haul, I am writing again. And dang, it feels good.

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Travel, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,, | 5 Comments

  3. Putting Down and Pulling Up Roots

    January 8, 2013 by admin

    Pulling up roots hurts.

    It’s a reality we face every time we move, and we find ourselves facing that pain once again, as we prepare to move back across country from Los Angeles to Kansas City.

    The news came quickly, as it usually does. Christmas was three days away, and we were plunged into packing for a holiday road trip to Seattle. The road trip was adventure enough: a long drive up Interstate 5 through some spectacular country, stopping in cities we’d never visited and showing our two young boys a new slice of the world. The adventure only exponentially grew when the phone call came that my husband had been assigned to a new construction project back in the Midwest. They wanted him there mid-January.

    We took deep breaths, opted to continue our Christmas plans and deal with the details of the move when we returned. Our foundational attitude through the whole thing: Life is short.

    Now back in California, we relish the conversations with loved ones, lingering in the church parking lot for drawn-out goodbyes, gathering around our dinner table (the legendary piece of Purdue University furniture, a former lab table we bought for 50 bucks) for a final meal with friends, pounding down slices of lemon cake in the living room. We talk about home, where and what it looks like. I say if moving so much has taught me anything, it’s that “home” is not a question of where you find yourself but who you find yourself with. We talk about what it means to bloom, digging hard and fast into a community as soon as we settle into it, because lingering over tough goodbyes when it’s time to yank up those roots is so much more worth the pain than having no good-byes to say at all. One friend comments that it takes a lot of risk and courage to so wholeheartedly immerse yourself somewhere when you know that “somewhere” is not permanent. We say we have no choice; it’s simply what we must do.

    So now comes the tough week. The good-byes have started. The list-making is well underway. Among the book of lists are titles like, “Stuff to clean,” “People to call,” “Things to take with us.” Under the list, “Things to take with us” (identifying those items not to be handled by the moving company) is the ivy plant, which my mom gave to me 10 years ago following the death of my Uncle Ron. She clipped a budding green sprig from his casket at his funeral, rooted it in water and planted it in good soil. The thing has survived six moves and six states. The vines are strong and happy now, twisting and growing and sprouting new leaves all the time.

    All it takes is rich soil and some tender loving care.

    Those old roots are my inspiration now. As I anticipate the new soil we will soon be sinking ourselves into, I can only look forward with a bright anticipation. Back in the Midwest, we will reconnect with old friends, rekindle treasured relationships, and find new ways to immerse ourselves in the community we call home.

    Home. With my Bryan and my boys. There is no place like it, no matter where that place is.

    Category Family, Home, Inspiration, Life, Place, Travel, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  4. Seeking Story in Tradition

    November 21, 2012 by admin

    Tradition.

    It’s an idea we all find ourselves coming back to this time of year. Be it falling into the comfort and warmth of old traditions or seeking joy in starting new ones, we all crave the same thing: something to celebrate.

    I find it intriguing the way years come and go, how some holidays are busy and exuberant and bouncing with life while, in other years, they are quiet and mellow, low-key. One only has to map the ups and downs of life through a single holiday to see how time works: how people come and go, how places transform, how we, ourselves, grow up.

    My strongest Thanksgiving memories will always center around my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Wyoming, the place where, for so long, Thanksgiving took place with no questions asked. I write about it in Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, this way:

    “Thanksgiving has happened at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s every year for as long as I can remember. The tradition runs so long and deep that no one questions it, even with the family tensions that ripple quietly just beneath the surface: Grandpa’s reckless ways and Grandma’s bitterness – driven, I think, by loneliness – the way he and she seem to like each other less every year, the fact that neither one of them has ever shown up for a school play or a band concert.

    Grandma and Grandpa sit at opposite ends of the table, paying no attention to one another, while my parents and I and my great uncle John fill the spaces between them. I scoop up big helpings of my mom’s turkey and her Swedish corn pudding. I pass on Grandma’s mashed potatoes and gravy because the gravy is an awful brown, and like every other year, I fear she has salted it with a rabbit carcass. She served fried rabbit on the first Thanksgiving my mom spent with them – no turkey. Mom, a wholesome girl from the Midwest, cried.”

    The memories are rich, but so, too, is the story.

    This is a story of tradition. What is yours?

    Later on in this piece, I share what still hangs on as one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories:

    “A cozy quiet hangs in the Thanksgiving afternoon: the ancient dishwasher hums through its cycle, the coffee percolator brews weak Folgers coffee for my mom. Soon, my grandmother will call for a game of hearts and we will gather around the Formica table, pie in hand, for a long game of steering clear of the Old Biddy.”

    I want people to see themselves here. I want them to resonate: with the tension, with the details of tradition, with the desire to bring the familiar to life.

    This Thanksgiving, we will celebrate in a new way, with a family that is not ours in a state where our roots are only temporary. It will be my oldest son’s fourth Thanksgiving, my youngest son’s first. Still, I will make Mom’s Swedish corn pudding in the CorningWare dish. I will bring it to the house we have visited only a few times, an act of both sharing an old tradition with new friends and hanging on to something familiar for the holiday. Will we eat cranberries out of the can? Will there be sweet potatoes? A card game after the meal?

    I don’t know. But I do know there is plenty to celebrate, from the warm memories of the past and the people who are no longer with us to the new friends we’ve made, the new life we’ve created and the new traditions that will blossom from it.

    This holiday season, I encourage you to seek the story in tradition, whatever that means for you.

     

    Category Family, Family History, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  5. Beacons

    October 17, 2012 by admin

    There is something beautiful about a power plant lit up at night. A fixture so strong and sure. We fly past the Long Beach plant – solid stacks straddling a canal that leads to the ocean. Yellow light glows from high up, like halos overlooking the city.

    So much about this place feels foreign to me, I have thought time and again in the 15 months that we have lived in California. The coast and the sandy beaches. The lack of seasons. Freeways that never sleep. That feeling of foreignness is heightened now, having returned from a two-week stay in my Wyoming Rockies. That age-old question arises like a deep yawn: What is home? And where?

    But then there are moments like this: pure, raw beauty that tussles us up, reminds us to treasure the present even as we wait on God to direct our future. We know we don’t want to be in California forever. But what gifts are here that we can live in and enjoy while we do call this place home?

    That beckoning light glows. The waves crash against the shore, and I ask a friend who lives on the beach if he sleeps with his windows open at night.

    “You bet,” he says, and I can only imagine.

    When I pull my three-year-old son out of the car at the end of the day, we turn west to a flaming pink sky. “Look at the pretty sun,” I say, and he agrees: it is pretty.

    A new baby and a changed-up work schedule on my husband’s part means we have lost our rhythm for a while. A schedule of any sort is hard to come by, and in the listlessness I have to remind myself of what truly matters: happy and healthy kids, a happy and healthy family. That rhythm will return. This is only a season.

    I watch those sure lights glowing high in the air. It is a beacon of sorts, a landmark by which to stay grounded, oriented. And in my prayers I ask for a beacon for myself, a guiding light to keep me pressing on: as mom, as wife, as writer.

    Like that light, I want to glow, too, strong and sure and unwavering.

    Category Creativity, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  6. Why Conversation is the Bread and Butter

    October 3, 2012 by admin

    Tough. It’s a word I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as I find myself in conversation after conversation with wonderful, inspiring people over what it means to be tough.

    Wyoming leaves, Copyright 2012 Kate Meadows.

    The past two weeks in Wyoming have been an awesome hurricane of readings, book selling, interviews and writing workshops. Coming up against those Sublette County mountains – my mountains, I am proud to claim – is nothing short of spectacular. Experiencing a Wyoming fall in all its glory was a blessing unmatched – it’s only fair to say I get homesick when the quivering leaves of a yellowing quaking aspen put tears in my eyes.

    Selling a book, this piece of art that has been so close to me for the past four years, is a tremendous and rewarding feeling, it is. But the best part? The best part has been being in conversation with people, real people with dynamic lives and hearts tuned into what really matters. Real people with lives much different than mine. Real people with unique perspectives of what it means to be tough.

    I think of Ashta, the 69-year-old woman from West Virginia who I met in a Jackson Hole bookstore. One day away from her 70th birthday, she told me how she planned to celebrate her special day in the Tetons, her sister and son by her side. She likened “tough” to “strong,” thinking on the term from the perspective of a woman, a mother. That we draw strength from the most unexpected places sometimes.

    And there’s Paul, who walks with a cane now and recalled his days driving cattle with my grandfather before sunrise on an old local ranch. He’s lived in Sublette County his whole life, save for one month, the month he was born so many decades ago.

    And there are the two women I met at the Rock Springs library who own property up near Sublette County’s Warren Bridge. One of them was taking her grandson bowling the afternoon I gave a reading. Still, she made time to stop in and buy a book. The slight woman who has lived in Rock Springs since 1946 and loves to collect as much information, hear as many stories as she can about the region where Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood takes place.

    These people, these conversations, are the bread and butter of what I do. I write, yes, but writing would be meaningless without people to share it with.

    At its base, writing is about communication. My reward for writing is the communication that gets returned, those individuals who stick around long enough to go a bit deeper, who take the time to share with me their own perspectives.

    Part of life’s beauty is the way we meet each other at our various points along life’s path, the opportunities to share our unique views with one another.

    The book sales have been outstanding. Exciting, rewarding, completely worth smiling about. But those conversations? They are the real icing on the cake.

    So? What’s your perspective? How has the concept of “tough” played out in your life?

    Category Books, Creativity, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  7. 10 Things to Love About Fall

    September 18, 2012 by admin

    Across the country, fall begins to creep, soon to burst with its telltale phenomenal color. Starbucks is out with its signature fall drinks. Stores are displaying Halloween merchandise. Leaves are beginning to fall.

    As I come home to Wyoming to launch my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, I am overcome with nostalgia and awe, both at nature’s blazing show and at the little ways my parents have ushered this remarkable season into their own home, my childhood home.

    I walk into a house where a wood stove has already kindled its first fire. The kitchen smells of warm pumpkin and spice in the wakes of burning candles. Fall decorations color every room: scarecrows and wagons and brown and orange figurines with straw hats, placemats shaped like maple leaves, Mom’s favorite. I am so overcome with gratitude – both for the opportunity to be back in my hometown and for the chance to experience this fall season that, now living in California, I so desperately miss – that I feel it in my chest. My throat nearly tightens at the sight of a Swedish aspen with leaves the color of fire. Because I am in love here. I miss the change of seasons so much.

    As I prepare to share snippets of my own childhood here via book readings and writing workshops, I reflect on fall, the season I love so dearly. Here are 10 things to love about fall:

    Pinedale, WY, 2012, Kate Meadows.

    1)      The brilliant color of the changing leaves

    2)      Crisp air, which, compared to summer’s heat and humidity, is somehow energizing and fresh.

    3)      The way a noticeable transition in season can spawn motivation to revisit goals or launch an inspirational transition in your own life.

    4)      The cozy comfort found in warmth: pulling out a sweatshirt that has sat on a shelf for months, rediscovering a trendy scarf, sitting by a wood-burning stove

    5)      Scented candles: pumpkin, apple crisp, cashmere woods. Warm aromas.

    6)      Favorite fall foods. At our house it’s homemade apple cider, sweet potatoes, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

    7)      Pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks.

    8)      Football. Sunday nights. Monday nights. Thursday nights. (Although I have to admit, “Thursday night football” just doesn’t have the same ring as “Monday Night Football.”)

    9)      Rakes and piles of leaves to jump in. At my parent’s house in Wyoming, the back yard is THE grounds for this. And I happen to have a soon-to-be three-year-old who, assuming we can find a rake, might soon just find himself in leaf heaven.

    10)   Tradition and family. You know. Halloween. Thanksgiving. And all of the stories surrounding these days that over time will knit special memories.

    What do you love about fall? What traditions surround your family this time of year?

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Inspiration, Life, Nature, Outdoors, Place, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  8. What is Your Life’s Theme?

    September 13, 2012 by katemeadows

    If you could pull one theme out of your life, what would it be?

    For me, that theme is “tough.” As in, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    I didn’t know this when I first set out to write a series of essays profiling the colorful characters of rural western Wyoming around whom I grew up. That series of essays now comprises my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press.

    The essays were, at first, quaint and almost fluffy, mere sketches of people and experiences in my life that I found interesting. One piece did not necessarily relate to another; they just sort of fell out of me, one by one, like stones. I knew I had to write them – but I didn’t exactly know why.

    It was a long time before a pattern started to emerge, some sort of thread or echo that started resonating within each piece. I realized I wanted to know how these people – people like big-bellied bachelor Uncle John, the rancher-turned-writer woman named Chris, and my wild and impulsive Grandpa Bucky– helped to shape my upbringing and, consequently, shape the woman I am today.

    The resounding thread? Each of the characters I wrote about exhibited some form of tough. And moreover, they displayed senses of toughness I never felt I had. Having to homestead on a desolate landscape so barren that nothing grew? Not me. Driving cattle home at four in the morning? Not me. Spending lonely winters alone in a boxy cabin miles off a main road? Not me.

    Through writing, I started to look hard at this theme of “tough” and ask myself, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    All of these things, yes. But wasn’t there more to the meaning of that word? If not, I realized, I wasn’t tough at all.

    Except I know I am tough. Just not necessarily in the ways a rural Wyoming life demands. Through writing, I realized that my notion of “tough” was narrow. By holding myself up so sharply against these people who had truly lived hard and noble lives, I had for far too long denied that “tough” badge for myself.

    Looking back on the essays prompted me to examine my life via other questions as well.

    If you could re-do any moment of your life, what would it be?

    If you could live one sweet and precious moment of your past, what would it be?

    Thinking about our lives from a variety of angles can help give us a better grasp on ourselves, who we really are. Peeking through multiple lenses can help us to better understand ourselves – who we have been, who we are, who we hope to become.

    The former New York Times and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen writes: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

    I am not yet 30 years old. As someone once told me, “You’re not old enough to write a memoir.”

    But in writing about my younger self, I discovered a powerful theme at work. It’s a theme that, piggybacked with a theme of confidence, I take with me into the wilds now of motherhood. It’s a theme that is molding me now, and a theme I believe will continue to shape me in the future.

    And all because once, I wanted to write about and therefore recall some colorful and strangely admirable characters of my past.

    Look at how these “tough” people defined me. Because of them – and because of the writing process – I am now tougher and more beautiful, a more complete person.

    You can receive a signed copy of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood here.

    So? What about you? What is your theme?

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  9. Book Publication and Birth: A Tale of Two Converging Loves

    September 4, 2012 by katemeadows

    I never meant for it to happen this way.

    I couldn’t have planned it if I tried.

    Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction.

    Here I am, though, with a new baby and two books being published this month. Yes, two.

    How? I don’t quite know, except that life happens.

    Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press, recounts my experience as an only child growing up among the raw and grisly characters in rural western Wyoming. It began in 2008 as a collection of essays for my Master’s thesis in creative nonfiction writing. I knew from the get-go I would go all the way with it, writing the pieces one at a time, piecing them together with a thread of a theme (what does it mean to be tough?), and eventually pursuing publication, sending out query after query until a “yes” finally came.

    The “yes” did come – but, unexpectedly, so did a positive pregnancy test, three days later.

    That “yes,” along with the blue “+” sign on the stick, came while I was knee-deep in work on my family’s small business history. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, commemorates the grit and determination of a small-town service, repair and retail shop doing whatever it took to survive off of a quiet western main street. I began the project while Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood grinded its way through the query mill, back before a pregnancy was even on the horizon. The business history was a grand effort in helping my family carve out its well-deserved legacy. It was to be for me a venture in self-publishing, my intention to learn the ropes of the trade to be better informed and equipped as a writer during this tumultuous time in the publishing industry. I planned to publish the “Bucky’s book,” as it affectionately came to be called, in June 2012.

    Then the nod came for Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    Then I got pregnant.

    In other words, life happened.

    And here I am, with a baby who was born the end of July, a book of essays to be published on schedule by a traditional publisher, and a self-published small business history that, due to life circumstances, was postponed for release until September – the month of the business’ annual grand open house.

    So we leave next week, traveling from California to Wyoming, where for the better part of the month I will be promoting my work. September will be a crazy month. But I can’t wait.

    I go into it with heart racing and eyes bright with excitement. Here are the moments where the hard, dogged work will be worth it. Finally, I will meet the finished products.  Works of art into which I put my whole self. I will get to talk about this craft I love so much. I get to share words, encourage others to share theirs, and talk about the value of preserving life stories and leaving legacies.

    This is work that I love. I am packing my bags now.

    Please, join me if you can. Click here for a list of events.  Stay tuned for upcoming readings and get-togethers in California. And, if you’re interested in using Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood as a pick for a book group, ordering copies of either book, or learning more about the crafts of creative nonfiction writing and/or telling your own life story, please get in touch.

    Writing, at its very core, is about communication. If I can reach people, if I can inspire and encourage, only then can I smile and say to myself, “Job well done.”

    Category Books, Bookstores, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  10. Imperfect Books

    August 21, 2012 by katemeadows

    I have a confession to make.

    I published an imperfect book.

    Why do I tell you this?

    Because, if I’m honest, it’s a bit of a jubilant thing for me.

    I am so much a perfectionist that I miss sometimes the whimsy, the messy and out-of-place pieces of life for what they really are: reflections of reality. I am known to take things too seriously, not laugh enough, not cut myself any slack.

    I had a vision when I set out to piece together the history of my family’s small business. That vision, after a year and a half, is nearly realized. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, is finished. Soon a box of what I hope to be beautifully crafted books will arrive. The moment of truth awaits on the doorstep.

    Will this book be loved by those who have a stake in it? Will it be treasured by those who have already purchased a copy?

    Even with its surefire blemishes – certainly there is a comma missing here, a missed paragraph indent here – I am daring enough to think so. I am also daring enough to say there is no such thing as a perfect book – because there is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect life – and that, in the end, it doesn’t matter.

    You know why?

    Because the readers of this book will focus on the meat of the thing – the language and the real-life stories that have stitched together a half-century of awe and struggle in a slice of small town America.

    The readers will see past the missed commas and indents and any other small slight to what really matters: lasting stories that are communicated on the page, a shared dialogue.

    A writer can work and work and work on a book and still, it will never be fully ready to enter the world. It’s a bit like having kids: you’re never truly ready to become a parent.

    But at some point, you set aside your fear and insecurities, the need for everything to be just so, and you say a prayer and you jump.

    If you can look beyond the missing comma, the stray hair – or, staying with the parent metaphor, the kitchen floor that is sticky with spilled orange juice – you will see a bigger, messier and more beautiful picture that is entirely worth embracing.

    You might smile to yourself, allow yourself a sweet deep breath and think, “Yes. This, this is worth it.”

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family History, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,, | 8 Comments

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