The Great Recession & Me

It's been awhile since I last wrote. So much has happened since October 2008. For many people worldwide, our relative security collapsed. We stumbled through the hours dazed and confused. Rational planning seemed useless because of the employment situations, market plunges, and the nauseating feeling that we, individually and collectively, were teetering at the edge of a bottomless abyss.

For many of us, non-recession shocks kept piling on, heedless of our percarious balance. That wrenching feeling of utter loss of control can make babbling lumps of the most competent people we know.

An independent business owner loses one client after another at the same time her health insurance premiums shoot up. The 39 year old single mother of two is confined to a wheelchair, yet dozens of tests and doctors cannot nail down which type of neutopathy is responbile, therefore no treatment can be given. It's 0 degrees on a December night in St. Louis. There's a sleeping two-year old angel in the back seat; the car overheats for the first time ever; and there's no one to call to come and help. Spinning out out control...

And yet we cope, and don't do so badly after all. Hindsight can be so comforting!

Enduring, and continuing to deal with, such reversals in life have taught us a lot both about our own strengths and about becoming more flexible in our problem solving. Lately, I've come to realize that much of what we've learned is worth passing along - both to each other and to future generations.

With that in mind, I'll be writing my own ruminations about practical, empowering actions, attitudes and mantras for a few months, as well as the solutions and toe-stubbings others have experrienced.

It would be wonderful if you shared yours with us by way of "comments." Your stories might just be the help the rest of us need in the future.

More ruminations coming soon ~

Linda

Why I Chose to Publish My Own Books

As promised, here's the story behind me opening my own publishing company, first to self-publish, then to publish other authors' books as well.

Around 1990, my writing partner, Bev, and I were on a creative tear. One of our projects dealt with dealing with the recession on the home front, and we needed an agent to present the manuscript to the Big Houses (the large publishing houses in New York). First we searched for one who specialized in nonfiction. Then we bent our brains around writing the most intriguing query letter we could create. (You have to convince an experienced agent to even read your manuscript. And the legitimate ones will not charge a reading fee!)

Mike S. in Massachusetts asked us to send "the book" to him. (Holy mackerel!) But there was a standard, fairly rigid book proposal format in which it must be submitted. Off I went to Barnes & Noble to buy the then-bible of formal proposal writing, and we embarked upon the long and I think grueling process of of producing said proposal which included:

• A brief summary of the book.
  
• Table of Contents with Chapters and subchapters.
  
• A brief author bio, emphasizing the credentials qualifying him/her to write this book.
  
• Two or three sample chapters.
  
• An exquisitely tasteful but irrestible sales pitch.
  
• A comparison, title by title, of similar books on the bookstore shelves and the popularity thereof.

Those were the primary points, and of course had to be the most near-perfect writing we'd ever done! It ran about 60 pages.

Then we had to take the whole thing to Kinko's and have 5 copies run and comb-bound.

After a couple of tantilizing nibbles, he finally got a letter from an editor at Fireside (Wow!) saying that it was "well done and marketable," but they felt they already had titles that would complete for the same customer dollars.

Did you get that? Fireside Press thought the book was well done and would sell ... but they still wouldn't take it! Well, friends, that just felt so wrong. If it had been poorly done or was otherwise a poor excuse for a book, it would have been one thing. But well done still wasn't good enough.

A few years later, I began writing the divorce books -- books that were meant to help people who were going through the painful and confusing process of ending their marriage. But it couldn't help anyone until it was on the bookstore shelves (or on the Internet). So I studied and went to seminars and meetings and read about a dozen books and learned how to set up a publishing company. Was it hard work? You bet. But it was the way I could get my helpful words into the readers' hands in a reasonable amount of time.

And that is the story of the birth of Pen Central Press, the publishing division of Pen Central Communications. I thought you'd like to know ...

Happy writing ~

Linda

More on Writing Friends

Time spent with writing friends, especially those who are at approximately the same point in their careers as you are, can produce exciting Aha! moments. One writing friend and I always have our notebooks open at the lunch table and our pens at the ready. Going back over those brief notes renews the creative boost we got in the first place.

Sometimes at such get togethers, though, the ideas start flying before we've unholstered our notebooks. At that point, you're too wrapped up in the moment to start a search. So you cross your fingers and hope you'll remember the Ahas when you get home.

(This is the authoritative voice of experience speaking ...) As soon as you get back to your desk, write out all you can remember. Then email or call your friend, relay your notes and see if he/she can recall anything else. Two heads and all that good stuff ... Corral those gems before they get dead-filed with the day's junk mail.

It's a great way to relish your mutual growth.

Happy writing ~



Linda