That’s right – my memoir has been selected for Amazon’s Prime Reading program, which means that the eBook will be available free to all Amazon Prime members for a limited time. The book can be read on a Kindle or any other device using one of Amazon’s free apps.
This newly expanded version is nearly twice the length of the original book and contains eight new chapters. Download your free copy today!
It was the spring of 1989. I was sixteen years old, a junior in high school and an honors student. I had what every teenager wants: a stable family, a nice home in the suburbs, a great group of friends, big plans for my future, and no reason to believe that any of that would ever change.
Then came my mother’s psychosis.
I experienced first-hand the terror of watching someone I loved transform into a monster, the terror of discovering that I was to be her primary victim. For years I’ve lived with the sadness of knowing that she, too, was a helpless victim – a victim of a terrible disease that consumed and destroyed the strong and caring woman I had once called Mom.
My mother’s illness took everything. My family, my home, my friends, my future. A year and a half later I would be living alone on the street on the other side of the country, wondering whether I could even survive on my own.
But I did. That was how my mother – my real mother – raised me. To survive.
She, too, was a survivor. It wasn’t until 2013 that I learned that she had died – in 2007. No one will ever know her side of the story now. But perhaps, at last, it’s time for me to tell mine.
Found this on Writer’s Digest, courtesy of Jennifer Frost at GrammarCheck. It should prove useful for anyone who has ever been confused by the differences in English that exist “across the pond.” I know it took me forever to figure out that when the British say they’re doing “maths” it’s not an error! Hope it helps you Brits understand we Americans a little better, too :)
This infographic is courtesy of Jennifer Frost of GrammarCheck. Visit them online at grammarcheck.net or check out the free online grammar checker at grammarcheck.net/editor for proofreading help. Any Specific Marketing Material You Want Included in the Post (include its URL to the shop): Baihley Grandison is the associate editor of Writer’s Digest and a freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter @baihleyg, where she mostly tweets about…
Last year I participated in the Story Shares Literacy Project, an innovative program that seeks to make unique reading materials available to teens and young adults who struggle with reading. The concept behind the project is to create short books on subjects that would be of interest to readers in this age group, but at the appropriate skill level. You can read more about my experience with the project on the Story Shares blog:
Recently I read the following Q & A on Sarah Brentyn’s blog Lemon Shark. She, in turn, had found it on Little Lodestar, where writer Kristen had posted a series of questions entitled Nine Things I Wonder About Other Writers. Well, Sarah asked her readers to post their answers, and as mine, I thought, were too long to leave in the comments, here are my responses:
Do you share your work with your partner or spouse? Does it matter if it’s been published yet?
Very, very rarely. Every once in a while, I feel as though I need an opinion from a non-writer, usually pre-publication. My boyfriend will read my work if I specially ask him to, and he generally offers some pretty solid opinions. But he isn’t really a reader – his idea of compelling literature is homebrew magazines – so it’s unlikely that he’ll ever read any of my novels. To me, this is probably just as well. Some of my work might raise questions that I’m not sure I want to answer!
How much of your family and/or closest “friends in real life first” read your stuff…let alone give you feedback about it?
I somehow manage never to tell anyone when I’ve had something published, so it’s rare that this happens. In fact, up until a few months ago, when I formally announced that I was releasing a memoir, most of my friends didn’t even know I was writing. Somehow it just never came up. Again, to me, this is just as well, because some of my work might raise questions that I’m not sure I want to answer!
What do you do with the pieces that continually get rejected–post on your blog? Trash? When do you know it’s time to let it go?
So far, I only have a few pieces that I’ve given up on all together. For the most part, I believe that getting work published is mostly a matter of finding the right market. However, for those that repeatedly get rejected, I do reconsider whether they’re just difficult to place because of their subject matter or nature, or whether they actually stink. Stories that I still think are good I might post on my blog or story-sharing sites. Those that I suspect are completely unusable I would like to one day post on my blog, and solicit opinions as to why they stink.
Are there pieces you write for one very specific place that, once rejected, you just let go of, or do you rework into something else?
This has only happened to me once so far. Very early in my writing career, before I even had any publishing credits, I wrote a very long article – nearly a paper, if you will – analyzing the marriage penalty as it applies to taxation in the United States. It was a subject in which I was interested, anyway, and I had hoped to be able to get it published in one of a handful of financial magazines. However, I never received a response to my first query, and in the meantime, I had moved on to other things. Well, in the interim, a new year rolled around and there were tax law changes that affected some of my numbers. I would have had to rerun numerous scenarios in order to update the article – which was heavy on figures – and by then, I was having work published regularly and was no longer so desperate to garner credits. However, I still wouldn’t say I’ve given up on the idea. I may still revisit it two or three or five years from now, when I feel like sinking my teeth into something more academic again.
What is your main source of reading-based inspiration (especially you essayists)? Blogs? Magazines? Journals? Anthologies? Book of essays by one writer?
That’s an interesting question. Reading it, I realize that I very rarely – if ever – read magazines or journals or anthologies or books of essays by one writer. Nowadays, I do read blogs with a fair amount of regularity, but I still wouldn’t say that those are my main source of reading-based inspiration. In fact, if I had to identify one, I would probably say that more of my ideas come from nonfiction. I very much enjoy reading history, and it’s actually quite rare for me to read a whole book of it without getting at least one new idea.
What tends to spark ideas more for you: what you see/hear in daily life or what you read?
It depends on the type of work. Most of my novels contain characters inspired by people I know in real life, and the settings in which I place them often mirror my own life scenarios. This is why my books’ pivotal events tend to transpire at beer festivals or while camping, because, evidently, I write what I know. However, for the other half of my writing life, in which I blog, write flash fiction and short stories, even essays, I tend to find more inspiration from what I read.
Who have you read in the past year or two that you feel is completely brilliant but so underappreciated?
Winston Churchill. Seriously, that guy was brilliant, and his writing is amazing. I’m very grateful that he played such an important role in history, and at a time in which voice recording existed. YouTube will keep Churchill’s words alive long after his written work has fallen deep into oblivion.
Without listing anything written by Dani Shapiro, Anne Lamott, Lee Gutkind, or Natalie Goldberg, what craft books are “must haves”?
Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I also find the American Heritage Guide to English Usage to be extremely useful.
Have you ever regretted having something published? Was it because of the content or the actual writing style/syntax?
Not yet. I did, however, have a rather unpleasant moment a while back, when I first began having erotic work published. Most of my erotica is more humorous than dirty – or at least half-and-half. However, there was one piece in particular that surpassed the bounds of my usual work – the kind of story you would never admit to your mother or even your third cousin twice removed that you’d written it. Well, as it happened, I discovered around that time that my boss was reading my blog! Suddenly I felt very awkward about publicizing this particular publication. It wasn’t that I was ashamed or embarrassed about it, exactly – I was simply afraid of being subjected to questions. Somehow I just did not want to have that conversation with my employer – not to mention the fact that it probably would have changed how he looked at me from then on. Kind of a weird feeling. I still took ownership of the piece – in fact, it’s in my collection To All the Penises I’ve Ever Known – but even there, I didn’t want to comment on it extensively. That was when I first realized that I’m perfectly comfortable writing about things that I would never, ever say. So please, no follow-up questions – at least not if you meet me!
How about you? What kinds of things do you wonder about other writers? I know of one question that I’d add to the list.
What is your lifetime goal for your writing? You know, not the hard-headed, realistic version that you tell other people, but the starry-eyed, big dream scenario that you’re too scared to share?
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
I had promised myself that I would do no writing. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Coming from a writer. Some writers have to force themselves to sit down and write. Others have to force themselves not to.
For thirty days following my book’s release, I had intended to do no writing. For months now I have done nearly no writing. Only blog posts and interviews; tweets and requests for reviews. I wanted to complete my media kit and compose press releases; I wanted to post my already-written stories on a multitude of sharing sites, and register my book with the hundreds that offer free promos to authors. I wanted to be able to look back on my launch and know that whatever came of it, I had done what I could to ensure its success.
I didn’t quite make it. I broke down last Saturday – in a very big way. I didn’t even edit, or return to completing one of my several works in progress; I began a new novel. The first day I wrote three thousand words, the day after that, four thousand more. Yesterday I did nothing else and added seven thousand words to the project; in seven days I’ve written twenty-seven thousand words in a book that a week ago I hadn’t even conceived. Today I wrote most of a four-thousand word short story, plus a thousand-word blog post, plus this little one here – I simply don’t want to stop. I don’t want to stop.
I had forgotten how easy it was, how smoothly the words could flow and fly off my fingers, how frustrating it could be to be hampered not by my mind but by the slow speed of my typing and the ability of my back to tolerate being hunched for long hours over a computer. I had forgotten how good it feels to do it, to relax and fall into it, what it means to be working at writing instead of working at promoting my writing.
I forced myself to forget. I didn’t want to remember. I needed to be promoting; I didn’t need to be writing. But now I wonder if maybe I did.
That’s the email you get when your Kindle pre-order goes live. It happens at midnight, local time, all around the globe, at a different time in every market in which your book is being sold. It’s four o’clock right now where I live. This one was for the UK.
My book has been available in Australia for roughly ten hours. It will hit here in five or in eight – I don’t know what time zone Amazon uses in figuring twelve o’clock in the United States.
Only five to eight hours. I confess I’m not ready – not close to ready. Not only because I still have guest blog posts to write, not only because I have yet to make trailers or even my tweets, not only because I haven’t yet chosen what sites I am going to use for promotion. I’m simply not ready to know.
I’m not ready to know whether my book’s going to sell. I’m not ready to learn whether the months of pre-release preparation will have been worth it or a complete waste of my time; I’m not ready to see my book flop, flounder, or fail, or what is most likely, get lost in the shuffle of millions of others that no one will find.
It’s a great book, if you don’t mind my saying. Although, as always, there will probably be some who won’t like it, I expect, in general, that it will be well-read, well-received, and well-reviewed. That is, if anyone finds it, if anyone buys it, if it gets any reviews.
There’s a hollow in the pit of my stomach that visits me rarely; I have few occasions in my life that prompt this response that most people call nerves. My body is tired and my brain is exhausted but there’s still so much to do, so much to prepare, so much to research, so much to write.
I wish that so much of my future wasn’t dependent upon this. I wish that I could write books and not have to sell them; I wish more than anything not to have to rely upon selling them. I wish I were sitting on the beach in Oxnard and that it was warm and that there was sun and that I was writing a book and not trying to sell one.
If wishes were horses…
… I’d grab hold of the nearest stallion and let him run me all the way to Utah.
This ought to be fun, I think, not a day filled with dread, but it’s still better, still better than what tomorrow may bring, or the day after that, or the following week, or the month after next. Still better than knowing what I don’t want to know, still better than facing the fact that countless authors have faced in the opening moments of their potential careers – that it makes no difference if your work is good, if no one ever reads it.
But I’ve still got my rooftop: I’ve still got my greenhouse; I’ve still got my sunshine. And if I still have far too many blog posts to write, that’s all right, too, because at least I am writing. It feels good to be writing. Not good enough to de-tangle my nerves or de-jiggle my jitters or fill the hole in my heart where there ought not to be one. But close. Close enough to keep trying.
Lori Schafer's Short Subjects I Feel Like Writing About 