Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

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patchwork and ornament book

The Home Stretch – And the Starting Gate

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The 14th is looming…this is the day I’ve selected for uploading the Patchwork and Ornament file to the printer. Until that moment, I will continue to proofread and to make sure the pdf meets their specifications. I’ve learned a lot this week about imbedding color profiles and all kinds of other things I really don’t care to know. I wake in the night thinking about a particular page or essay in the book, thinking of something else I need to change or clarify. This will go on, I’m sure, until the files are uploaded. I’ve been on this path before, and, well, this is how I roll. I will be making changes until the last minute. This is why I have to set timetables for myself, or I would never get anything done.

Nagging in the back of my brain is all the marketing tasks that are already overdue. If you’re going to write, whether or not you use a traditional publisher, you will have the number one responsibility for marketing. Daddy Publisher no longer provides this support. As a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, I have access to some excellent resources, and I also study the work of Dan Poynter, Peter Bowerman, and John Kremer for guidance. There are endless tips on writing news releases, optimizing websites, maximizing social media, and more.

This is an odd time. On the one hand, I am about to complete a very big project. On the other, it’s really just beginning. I will take a few days to shift gears and regroup once I send the files off…then it’s off again for another run!

Packing the Right Suitcase

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My husband and I love to travel. Because both of us require only a computer keyboard and, in his case, an Internet connection, we have the good fortune to be able to work–and play–in many different locations. This fall we will experiment with a month-long trip to Switzerland and Provence, where we will hike and bike our way throughout the region. Henry will work three days a week, and I will shop in the markets, using my rudimentary French to buy fresh food for cooking…I’ll add here that cooking is, for me, a relaxing activity, especially when I am not loaded up with other tasks.

When I’m rejuvenating in the presence of nature, new ideas spring forth without effort. Almost as soon as I leave Houston, that “still small voice” begins to chatter away like an excited child, and I can barely keep up. Since I’ve been spending my energy almost entirely in book production lately, I welcome the opportunity to experiment with new material, and perhaps spruce up some drafts that I have lying around.

Today, in preparation for the big trip, we are taking a smaller one to Estes Park, Colorado. We have practiced using our new trekking poles and want some real-world practice, away from Houston’s flat, concrete sidewalks. We have thoughtfully equipped our backpacks to account for weather changes and longer hikes. Of course, this means that packing the suitcase is a different experience. Despite my best intentions to pack lightly, all the equipment takes up a lot of room. It meant choosing a different suitcase. It meant taking fewer changes of clothing, with the intention of re-wearing certain items. It took extra time and care to account for these deviations from my typical packing routine.

Each writing project feels a little like that. Patchwork and Ornament has given me the experience of a book containing visual imagery as well as text. When a Grandchild Dies required me to develop interviewing skills. Exodus demands a deeper observation of the inner self. Blood and Loam, my first novel, provides numerous writing lessons, especially “how not to write a novel.”

As I finish packing my suitcase, I find that in the end, it is packed, complete. Ultimately, if I take my time, everything I need will fit comfortably inside. I may feel a bit clumsy at times. I may worry about whether or not I “did it right.” Sometimes I’ll wonder if I can get the darn thing closed, if I can get everything to fit.

Once my suitcase is filled, I can then travel. Each book’s journey provides an opportunity to meet new people, to learn to skills, and to improve confidence. When I wrote When a Grandchild Dies, I had no idea what a unique and special journey I was about to undertake…and I am looking forward to all the future travels.

Printers, Photographers, and Photoshop Gurus

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Some time ago I pondered when and how to let go of a task and allow someone else to do it. I think I’m getting the hang of it! And it only took 50 years! Part of the problem is that I love to learn, and thus sometimes get into the weeds of projects that take me away from my primary purpose.

This time around, I caught myself after viewing a photograph, before and after it had been worked on by a Photoshop guru. Given that Patchwork and Ornament is full of color photographs (images of artwork, travel, and family), this particular photo caught my attention. It was a picture of a little boy next to someone dressed in a bunny suit. In the after photo, some of bunny’s ears were cut off…and the photo looked great. I never would have crossed such a line. This is when I knew I was out of my league.

My husband, Henry, sensing my panic, swooped in and found a guru on Craigslist who, for a reasonable fee, could remove shadows, lighten dark areas, and brighten colors. All the things I don’t know how to do and don’t have any business learning in this lifetime. We met with her, and I felt instant confidence in her abilities. Moreover, she cares about the project, which is important to me.

Henry also re-shot photographs that I had taken. His equipment and skill level are both well beyond mine.

In less than three weeks, I will send all of this to the printer. I’m confident with my layout–I think I’m doing a darn good job. But it feels good to let work go that someone else knows how to do. My job, I remind myself, is to write, edit, and publish. I’ll have to remind myself again and again, I’m sure, but for today I get it.

Excerpt from Patchwork and Ornament: A Woman’s Journey of Life, Love, and Art

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by Jeanette Feldman

Dear friend, I have your recent letter in hand and have read it several times.

You ask how is it that I can write a vivid, positive, hopeful poem like Hans Hoffman’s House and yet write intensely, bitterly, negatively about my career failure as a painter, work so painful that I cannot read it or show it to anyone, not even my family. I find that this question has provoked some thought, a question that I can answer only with visual images.

Picture a ballroom in an old and seedy hotel in a small eastern city. It is a high school reunion. The people at the reunion are near the age of fifty. Their high school prom was held in this ballroom. It is bittersweet for them to listen to the musicians play Glenn Miller and to understand that the men and women they are now were boys and girls of years ago. They dance stiffly and formally on the wooden floor.

Above their heads, a great ball of small glass squares revolves. The great ball turns slowly, catching light from little spotlights trained on it. The couples dance, the ball revolves, and the images reflected on the ball are never the same, as both ball and people are always in motion. Their reflections move across the mirrored squares from dark to light, above and below, and back into dark nothingness.

I see myself as one of the people dancing my dance of life under the slowly revolving ball, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the light, my reflection shattered in many pieces but never the same, never in the same place, many parts of one being never the same twice but always in flux, always in change. I too dance at times in the dark, an then there are times I dance in the light.