Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Gift Day

Yesterday I received a wonderful gift from my mother: a clipping of an article from the Christian Science Monitor which she'd written in 1953. In the article she described how she'd bought and trained a budgie to take to her grandparents on a visit from her apartment in New York to their Seattle cottage. During the long train journey across the US, passengers took a shine to the parakeet as she tried to teach it to speak. 'Cheerie' refused - until he arrived at Grandma's house, settled in, and began to sing "I love you Grandma" and "I'm Hughie's bird".

I'd been down in the dumps that day. June's upon us, and that's when I switch out of writer to childcare expert and chief play wizard. I hadn't got as much published as I'd hoped in the previous nine months, and couldn't understand what I'd achieved. Mom's article cheered me up, particularly her large vocabulary and her clear style. I remembered how she took such great care to teach me interesting and difficult words, and to pronounce them correctly. I know that my large vocabulary, easily handled, has to be due to this childhood training, as well as our daily study of the King James Bible and Science and Health - a book with tortuous and awesomely difficult words for a child.

After reading Mom's letter, I opened my email to doggedly face the work I felt I'd failed at, and wonderfully there - an acceptance! The Christian Science Monitor had taken a piece I wrote about our trip to Tuscany. As I looked again at Mom's article, I noticed publication day was May - the same month as my acceptance.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Agent & Editors List

If you're looking to publish a novel, non-fiction or young adult book, and you've done the groundwork which makes you ready to approach an editor or agent, then subscribe to Publisher's Lunch. You get an email digest for free, and if you subscribe (tax deductible remember!) on a monthly basis you have access to a database of editors and agents which you can search by category or with keywords.

At the moment Pub Lunch is advertising the BEA in New York, and if you click into the writer's conference and scroll down to the pitch slam, you'll find a list of editors and agents listening to pitches. These people are actively trawling for new writers to boost their lists.

I've archived my list in my email in-box under editors/agents. I'm also archiving everything cwropps (the contest bulletin board) sends. Then I will search my email by keyword and up will pop lists of editors and agents looking at manuscripts this year. Then I can search on their names and see if they match what I write. Pub lunch makes this an easier process because of the category function.

Ok, you twisted my arm. Here's the Pub Lunch list of editors and agents listening to slams at the BEA. Have fun!

Linn Prentis
Lynne Rabinoff
Jenny Rappaoport
Jessica Regel
Janet Rosen
Rita Rosenkranz
Emma Sweeney
Olga Vezeris
Cherry Weiner
Ted Weinstein
Larry Weissman
Jennifer Weltz
John Willig
Michelle Wolfson
Caroline Woods
Helen Zimmerman Marilyn Allen
Janet Benrey
Daniel Bial
Regina Brooks
Sheree Bykofsky
Debbie Carter
Jennifer Cayea
Adam Chromy
June Clark
Donya Dickerson
Jen Dunham
Stephany Evans
Grace Freedson
Mollie Glick
Emily Sylvan Kim
Jud Laghi Michael Larsen
Meg Leder
Julia Lord
Jonathan Lyons
Michael Mancilla
Sharlene Martin
Paul McCarthy
Jeffrey McGraw
Laurie McLean
Jackie Meyer
Peter Miller
Michael Murphy
Colleen O'Shea
Lori Perkins
Alicka Pistek
Elizabeth Pomada

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The Art of Happiness at Work for writers

The good news: returned from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) conference brimming with ideas and a pitch to-do list that made me sing. The bad news: what's happened to my time? How can I be working so hard and standing so still? Time, like money: where's it all gone?

Then when I hit the page after accomplishing so little, I feel the mountain of work left to be done is just that, a mountain. My friend calls my method of writing "drip drip" - like Chinese water torture.

I'm reading the Dalai Lama's "Art of Happiness at Work" and loved the insights. Flow, defined as the state of losing yourself and track of time through focus on work, is apparently psychologically unachievable on a regular basis. I thought in order to be a proper writer, I had to achieve flow every day. I get frustrated when I don't. But this says that if you achieve flow a mere six to seven times a year, you're going very well.

But it also pointed out that "flow" people can be pretty grumpy curmudgeons. Can you be a people-pleaser and an achiever at the same time? I really struggle with trying to carve the time and space to write while still managing a family, keeping healthy friendships and being energized enough for a successful healing practice. It's a huge balancing act and very often I fall off the beam, frustrated.

What is this frustration? It's fear. Fear that I'll never live up to my pre-kids potential as a writer; that the hiatus I took from a writing career was a full stop, not a comma. Yet I look at the way my work flows now, at the power, the purity, the effortlessness of the language and I know that's due to the time out I took to develop my character, to walk with integrity in every place in my life.

Another insight came from a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the author Howard C Cutler, MD, on how people see their work: as a job and timeclock, a career with attendant ambition and jealousy, or as a calling.

His description of careerists as ambitious, jealous, and competitive brought to mind my years as a reporter, when I chaired the Women Writers' Network, and wrote my first two novels. I collapsed due to exhaustion and inspirational burnout. After re-orienting myself through growth as a healer and subsequently opening a practice, writing also needed to shift into a calling. But first my healing practice went through a smaller version of the same process after I realized I did not want to be a career healer, making a living from classes, workshops, healings and how-to books.

Writing as a calling sees the body of work. It sees the growth of the writer, through skill, deepened experience, and for me through a broad range of contacts plus cuttings and books that show maturity. It's about curiousity, and other people's stories. It's a celebration of where we are on the planet, in this incredible time to be alive.

During the transition out of career writer, I wished to be able to read other people's books without jealousy, and love them for the light of new ideas they bring into the world. I can. I wished to be hungry to write again for publication. I am.

And now I wish to be able to integrate my calling for writing and publication into a very rich and diverse life that I lead as a person.

I will.

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