Offering My Gifts to the World

My 1996 book of Alzheimer’s narratives has been out-of-print for a long time, so my current project is revising it as an eBook. This project, The Third Floor, has its ups and downs, and my outlet for expressing the vicissitudes is an “Artist Check-In” conference call which I make weekly. (An article describing the Artist Check-In, published in the fall 2012 issue of the SCBWI Bulletin, can be viewed here. artist check in article

This week on the check-in call, I reported on the steep learning curve I’m climbing to enter the world of e-publishing and promotion. I ticked off the research I logged this week on digital book cover designers, online stock photos, mail manager services, and Kindle Singles. I spoke to my midweek slump, when the project seemed worthless and impossible, and to the renewal that came from a friend who had read the original book I’m now revising.

My colleagues listened deeply as they always do. One thanked me for being out in the Star Ship Enterprise exploring where she had not yet gone. One gave me a link to Lynn Serafinn’s groundbreaking book, http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/And my reframing of marketing as offering my gifts to the world was clearly reflected back to me by another colleague. Their listening and feedback helped me understand — writing to change the world means I dare not skip the steps of learning how to get the writing into that world. Giving goes nowhere if I don’t do the work of identifying and finding my receivers.

What would I do without these sister artists? Lynnn Serafinn and Sherri L. McLendon (www.professionalmoneta.com), my local guru in mindfulness approaches to marketing, and Tami Simon of Sounds True. (listen to her being interviewed by Krista Tippet of NPR’s On Being show last week, 5/30/13)

Grateful to the max, I don’t have to do without them. And you don’t, either.