Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

publishing

Under Construction

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It’s fun watching big chunks of concrete wall disappear!

The house shakes as portions of a concrete wall come tumbling down, leaving gaping holes for future doors and windows. Upstairs, plastic sheeting covers a new patio door that will lead out onto a deck. The back yard is one big pile of dirt. The vegetable garden is a way station for stacks of pipe. Welcome to the wonderful world of remodeling.

The first few weeks, hubby and I left the house to escape the noise, but I’m tired of taking refuge in a coffee shop. I like to break up my writing tasks with exercise or housework in between, so I’m learning to ignore the sounds of electric saws and forklifts beeping in favor of keeping a regular routine. Yesterday I did an exercise DVD, and hubby didn’t even know it. I had squirreled myself away in a spare bedroom and turned the iPad up loud enough to hear over the banging and clanging.

I don’t like to complain. After all, once the work is done, I will have a home with

I don’t think I want to go tumbling down these steps!

plenty of room for overnight guests and entertaining. One side of the basement will have spectacular water views, and we are creating a wonderful, restful refuge for friends and family. My yard will no longer be an unusable slope, but instead a set of terraces with flowers, shrubs, and stone. I’m darned lucky and darned grateful. These are the kinds of problems people dream of having.

Still, it’s unsettling. As I write this, a radio blares downstairs so that the workers can whistle while they work. It’s hard to concentrate, since I normally write in silence. And there is something odd about seeing the basement stripped of walls, ceiling, and floor, and fireplace brick nothing but a pile of rubble. I tread carefully to avoid tripping over electrical cords and temporary drainage pipes, all extra hazards to an already-challenging set of downward stone steps to the garden.

Pardon our dust! Flowers coming soon.

I feel a bit like the work in progress that is my home. New to this part of the country, I am learning to garden all over again as I adapt to a new climate. I’m meeting new people and learning a culture that’s community oriented, as opposed to rugged Texas individualism. Once anonymous in a city, I am now exposed in a small town. These are the adjustments I wanted, but they are adjustments nonetheless.

As the book industry continues to roil and shift, I’m having to adapt, studying the craft of marketing and sales as well as writing. Despite having three books under my belt, it all feels brand new. Every aspect of life calls for patience, which is hardly my strong suit. I do a lot of deep breathing, and sometimes I just need a good sob to discharge discomfort.

Still, the strawberries are ripening, and so far the broccoli and onions look sturdy. The leaves of potato plants are spreading in one of the beds, and beets and tomatoes are making tentative progress. I’ve planted herbs in pots to sit on my living room windowsill. One of the terrace walls is basically done, and the guys have started work on the second. We’re turning the corner, moving from destruction to rebuilding. Amidst the cacophony of construction, progress reveals itself, bit by bit. My paradise may be under construction, but it’s paradise nonetheless.

I’m 50 pages into the first draft of a new novel, and I’m revising Blood & Loam one more time. I’ve just signed up for Joel Friedlander’s Self-Publishing Roadmap course, starting from scratch to construct a better foundation for producing and marketing my books. Over time, this will mean more changes: the look of the blog, where and how I sell my books, and the way I roll out new work.

I know that nothing is ever finished. We are never “there.” The destination remains a moving target, and there’s always something to learn, something to fix, something to discover, something to revise. There are always new ideas, and life, including publishing, will always be in flux. All we can do is take the journey, enjoy what we’ve built, and, if necessary, tear it down again.

In spite of it all, the Spanish lavender is in glorious bloom.

A Writer’s Labor and Birth

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While 50 pages of my novel sit at the agent’s office, waiting to be read, I am busily doing one more spit and polish on the manuscript. My editor had made recommendations, which I followed, but I want to make sure that all my latest changes make sense…either in case the agent wants the rest of the story, or I decide to query other agents, or I decide to self-publish again.

As I get closer to the end, though, I feel a familiar sensation, one that hits me every time I finish a project. That is, a fear of death emerges. Now, I hesitate to some degree to talk about this, but a few years ago I learned that I’m not the only writer to feel that way, so I might as well tell the truth. It’s not as bad as it used to be– it’s one of the main reasons I didn’t start writing until I was 39. These days I just say, “Yep, here it is again.”

Thing is, every time we write a book we are reborn in some way. Maybe it’s a piece of myself that I don’t need anymore that dies, and that’s what I struggle to let go of, but finishing a book is a bit like having a baby, except you’re not dealing with diaper changes, cries, and sleepless nights.

Well, sometimes we still get the sleepless nights, but it’s not the same. Like a baby, though, the book needs nurturing even after it’s “born.” We send it around to publishers and agents, announcing that we have the cutest baby book ever. If someone says our baby is ugly, we take offense. And, we must care for it, revising, resubmitting, getting feedback, etc., to help form it into the best little citizen book we can. We don’t know what it will be when it’s grown up, or how others will perceive it.

In the meantime, though, we wring our hands and fuss over it, doing our best and wondering where the damned manual is–because for all the books that exist on the craft of writing, there is no definitive way of creating a novel. In fact, I have already learned that each novel has a life of its own. I’ve finished two and started a third, and each one takes a different path, just as each child does.

We learn, in the end, that some efforts, despite our best intentions, are stillborn. They don’t quite work, they languish unpublished, or they don’t sell. It hurts, and we grieve. Sometimes we wonder if we’ll ever be parents at all! Still, we proceed with determination, like everyone who wants to parent a child, and we keep trying. We learn that when we allow ourselves to love, whether it’s a child we have or a book we write, we may die a little in the end. We may be disappointed. But we will not be sorry that we allowed ourselves to love in the first place–for that is where life’s magic resides.

 

Thoughts from 2011 #WLTcon

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The Writers’ League of Texas held its annual Agents and Editors conference this past weekend in Austin, Texas. I, along with a few hundred of my new best friends, made the trek to attend workshops, make new friends, and pitch to agents. This was my second conference; I attended two years ago. In those two years, a lot has changed!

Much of the focus has moved to social media as a way of branding and marketing a writer’s work. A “tweet-up” allowed attendees to tweet their questions about publishing, and I learned that many agents LOVE Twitter. I’m still not sure about it, but if the agents are using it and sharing publishing information, I’m happy to dive in. Previously, my tweets were occasional, uncertain, and inconsistent. Now, I’m in the know–at least a little bit! I’m now following several attendees, including said agents, and it’s a great way to get information about books, blogs, agents, and writing workshops.

When I attended two years ago, I was trying to decide if I wanted to publish Patchwork and Ornament traditionally or independently. I am glad I chose the latter because it allowed me to print the book before my father-in-law died, allowing him to see and feel the book, read the reviews, and watch it win an Indie Excellence award. I made a fundamental mistake, though, in not hiring a PR service to help me market the book.

When I published When a Grandchild Dies, I had a built-in audience. Between Amazon and Centering Corporation, a publisher and seller of bereavement books, my first self-publishing efforts were more successful than many, and I took it for granted that I had some PR skills. However, Patchwork has not fared as well. Now, having attended WLTcon, I have some leads on PR firms that can help me market my current project and perhaps resurrect Patchwork. These firms work specifically with authors and small publishers, so I will look into them further now that I am home.

I had my first-ever pitch session with Amy Burkhardt of Kimberley Cameron & Associates. Amy represented The Safe Food Handbook by Heli Perrett, where I learned never to eat raw sprouts–just in time to hear about the German e. coli outbreak attributed to raw sprouts. But I digress. The agency also represents women’s fiction, including Free to a Good Home by Eve Marie Mont, which I loved. Amy comes across as reserved and quiet, which helped put me at ease, or at least as at ease as was possible. The good news? She asked for a partial manuscript! Read the submission guidelines, she advised me, and I heard this message frequently throughout the weekend. Agents will not review manuscripts where the author could not be bothered to read the guidelines.

The best part of the conference, other than hanging with other writers, was the optimism of those representing the industry. Times are tough, and it’s harder to sell books these days, but a lot of dedicated people are keeping the faith and working hard. Their passion remains strong, and for that I am grateful.

 

 

 

So, What Else Do You Do?

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My late mother-in-law, Jenny Feldman, left behind an extensive body of artwork that she made long after she gave up the dream of getting recognition as an artist. Even when her hands hurt too much to make large works, she adapted by making little spiral-bound books of drawings. At some point in her life, though, she tired of what she called the “fine arts slog” of promoting her work and instead, made art that pleased her. Some of that artwork covers our walls, and we are proud to show off our Jenny Feldman Originals.

I shared her writings in Patchwork and Ornament: A Woman’s Journey of Life, Love, and Art, in part because I loved her, in part because I found her writing compelling, and perhaps, to a larger degree, because I wanted her to have some of the recognition that eluded her in life. I wanted that for her because I want that for me. Perhaps that isn’t the highest and best motive, but I think any writer or artist would understand.

Sitting each day at my computer, I write new work and polish existing work, knowing that much of what I do may never see the light of day. My work is less visible than Jenny’s, stored on computers and websites, but it’s a body of work that continues to grow. Will it sell? I don’t know. I will do what I can to make it so. I will make the best work I can and, if I don’t find a publisher, will put it online as e-books and podcasts in hopes of building an audience.

Whenever I meet someone knew, and they ask me what I do, I explain that I’m a writer. They always ask, “What do you write?” closely followed by, “And what else do you do?” When I went to an office every day, miserable though I was, no one ever asked me “what else do you do?” They accepted that I had a full-time job. Well, I work harder as a writer than I ever did on the job. Each morning I get up and work, writing and polishing. I contribute and submit to a critique group. I read writing books. I read endless novels, some of them not very good, to learn my craft.  I blog to get in more writing practice. My husband, a playwright when he isn’t writing computer programs, understands. Writing is a profession and a practice, but for many of us, the work that we do goes unnoticed, even by family and friends.

So why do it, if there is, for most writers, little respect or money involved? What keeps us going when we have little to show for our efforts, including recognition of those efforts?

The other day I received a note from a grandmother in Massachusetts ordering a copy of When a Grandchild Dies. Her granddaughter, she explained, died at six months, and would I please send her a copy of the book? I knew that though my audience is small, I have felt much affection for those grandparents who sent me notes and told me their stories. People have told me that they passed the book around in their family so everyone could read it, and it helped them get through the pain. These grandparents may never realize how often their outreach to me has pulled me from a writer’s funk.

Today I pulled out a notebook from a novel writing class I attended a few years ago, and some loose pages fell out. When I looked at them, they were lists of possible agents, more people to research and query. Despite my moments of discouragement, I still felt hope when I saw the names. I took it as a message from my teacher, and perhaps a greater teacher, not to give up. Publication may never happen, but what if it didn’t only because I didn’t try hard enough? I don’t have enough rejections to say that I’m done.

Mostly, though, I write because that’s what I do. That is how I was hooked up from the beginning of my life, though it took decades for me to understand this. I feel better. I’m less cranky and more loving with my family. I feel alive. Maybe no one will ever know my characters, but I know them and love them as though they were real people. I laugh with them, weep with them, and sometimes get angry with them, but I can’t wait to get together with them when I get up in the morning. When I fall asleep at night, I ask questions about the story so that my mind can work in my sleep to come up with answers to plot dilemmas.

This morning I finished yet another draft of Change of Plans. Two weeks from Friday, I attend an Agents Conference, and I will share my novel, and my beloved characters, with an agent. I feel shy and afraid, but I know these women, these imaginary friends, inside and out. I will tell their stories in the hopes that the agent will agree that others will love them like I do. And, if I don’t get the message across, I have these lists of agents that fell onto my feet this morning. Hope springs eternal!

Riding (or Writing) the Bike that Matters

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My husband bought a hybrid bike some months ago and has recently taken it out on several long, hilly rides. After years of riding, he can move pretty fast. “You would really be something if you had a road bike,” people tell him. Well, he does, but he chooses the hybrid instead. For him, though, it’s not about how fast he can go. It’s about building strength and getting the heart rate up. I love this about him, this willingness to do what’s right for him versus what’s popular.

We have both eschewed the typical quest for success in favor of quality of life, and he’s not the only one who’s gotten questions or comments. The one I get most is, “Oh, so you’re a writer. What else do you do?”

I’m a little sensitive to that question. It takes time to write, to read the work of others, and to study the craft. There are days when the blank page intimidates and refuses to fill, days when the prose is boring, days, when plot problems don’t resolve. There are the works that change midstream, requiring a complete rewrite or even total destruction of what came before. Yes, often writers work day jobs out of necessity while they build their reputations, but it doesn’t come easily. After years of writing on my lunch hours while coworkers considered me antisocial, it’s nice to spend my days writing. I schedule my work as I did my previous jobs, with daily to-do lists and schedules to keep me on track. I have to limit phone calls and e-mails to avoid distractions. The good news and the bad news is that I am my own boss.

I have a lot of ideas, and I’m doing my best to get them all on to the page. As I revise Change of Plans and Blood and Loam, a new manuscript, Another Ordinary Day, has popped onto the screen and demands some attention. I manage this blog and Art of the Garden. So when I get thrown off-track from time to time, I tend to fret.

These past few days I have lived with some severe fatigue. A new gym opened up down the street, and I overdid it, I’m afraid. Some years ago I had some health problems that, while healed, still cause my body to complain from time to time, and I have to focus on sustained, consistent effort rather than the “no pain, no gain” philosophy. This last week I pushed a little too hard, and now I’m paying the price.

I used to hate these enforced periods of stillness, but now I see great value in them. I can’t just spit out pages of new prose…I can focus only on one sentence at a time. This slows down the page count, but strengthens the sentences. As I rest and stare off into space, my characters come to visit. We have a leisurely lunch at a French restaurant rather than a quick run through the McDonald’s drive-through and as a result, I get a clearer picture of their wants and needs. I let go of my idea of the story in favor of what the story wants.

Also in these moments, I ask myself the hard questions about my life. Am I living authentically? What do I want from this writing life? What matters most? I’ve discovered, to my surprise, an inner voice that wants me to continue working independently, as opposed to seeking traditional publication. Now, I want to make sure this comes from a genuine desire for independence, and not fear of rejection. So I go through the exercise of sending queries, and just this morning I signed up to meet with an agent in June at a conference. I intend to continue the process for a while to test this new information.

Part of me wants the “validation” that traditional publishing provides, even though I’ve read some awful books that make me wonder how they were ever chosen. There are people who believe that self-publishers do so because no one will have them. Yes, that’s true in many instances, but I also know several talented, though unpublished, writers. But does that matter to me?

Truth is, I write for the same reason that I breathe. I can’t live without the words any more than I can live without air. I never cared about fame or getting on the bestseller lists. It’s more about expressing myself and hoping to find some people who like to read what I write. Sharing the writing is my way of interacting with the world and building relationships. Do I need a publisher for that? Not really.

Some years ago I participated in a cognitive therapy program to help me work with anxiety issues. As part of that program, I had to keep a journal, which my therapist then reviewed and returned to me the following week. In the margins of some of my entries she wrote “WPT,” or what people think. She pointed out the many ways that I would stray from my soul’s path because I was concerned about someone else’s opinion of it. Over time, I learned that I still care what people think, but I can still choose actions based on my needs, desires, and personal truth.

I may be surprised. I may go to Austin and fall in love with the idea of getting an agent and going the traditional route. I suspect, however, that I will choose to stay independent. I think it works better for my personality and way of going through life. It’s the hybrid versus the road bike. Neither is “wrong,” but one suits us better than the other.

 

The Path to Wonder

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The backyard calls to me. My blueberry bushes are starting to wake up, with tender new leaves starting to unfurl and reveal themselves. The proud pomegranate displays its many tiny leaves like it is bragging. A precocious lemon tree requires my persistence so that it doesn’t produce fruit too soon. I wait, impatiently at times, to see what the grapevines are starting to do. And now I have a pile of concrete half-blocks to create a raised bed where the vegetables will grow. Wednesday, the new soil arrives so I have something better to plant in besides the stubborn Texas gumbo. I am a novice gardener, taking a class through Urban Harvest, but I have always known that I love digging in the dirt…and I love creating. I am delighted every day as I get to know my plants, and from them, myself.

For many years I talked a lot about life, but didn’t do a whole lot of living it. I thought I would write a book someday, but I somehow never found the time until a long illness taught me how precious and fragile dreams are by taking from me, for a time, a God-given ability. Now, two books are out, a third one is finished and ready to query a publisher, and a fourth one, which I will publish for free online, is close to completion. My writing dreams, as well as many other more personal dreams, are coming true. What has been the difference?

One thing I know for sure: following my dreams has been scary. Each creation has brought up inner fears and doubts. I think that’s why many of us spend so many years just talking about them, and making excuses for why we don’t git ‘er done. When push comes to shove, it’s not lack of time or money that stops us–it’s fear. I haven’t yet found a project that didn’t scare me at some level, but as I study the lives of other authors, I have discovered that this is pretty normal. The difference is that fear becomes a reason to do something, not an excuse not to do it. Fear becomes excitement, because it is my signpost that I am on to something interesting. I am an explorer. The work of creation becomes its own reward, and the completed project, while rewarding, more of a byproduct.

I spent the last month focusing on a move, hence the wonderful back yard with new life developing. Now, settled in, I’m ready to work again. Ready to write more. Ready to finalize a few projects. Ready to query that novel. Ready to work, ready to be scared, ready for wonder.