This morning when I jumped out of the shower to write down a thought, it wasn’t a line for a poem. It was another place where I might spread the world about QUINCE, ROSE, GRACE OF GOD. https://www.fernwoodpress.com/2024/07/18/quince-rose-grace-of-god/ . These are now the sparks that begin my actions. This is what it means to live in beginner’s mind, to be open to the flow of new ideas. In the spirit of such openness, the effort it takes to learn a new skill generates energy. This is where the weight of failure lifts and growth can occur. Once I have a stack of books in front of me, the most efficient way to lift their weight is to give them away or sell them.
This requires a new perspective. When a friend suggested that her writing, and by extension my writing, was a gift to the world, my silent response was, “Yours, sure.” Will I be forever surprised when someone says “Thank you.” when I hand them a book? How could my attempt, to experience a consciousness beyond my daily experience, by submersing myself in words, mean anything to anyone else? At the heart of my urge to write are many needs:
1. To record my life for myself
2. To release pain and resolve confusion
3. To claim a place in each shifting landscape
4. To engage with the work of writers who speak to me
5. To make myself heard
6. To reach out from behind my wall of books to be read and be seen.
To fill at least some of these needs requires that I discover meaning in my words that will make them worth sharing.
To think of my writing as a gift to others means moving into the mind of a child, where “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch.” (from Captain Kangaroo) can become “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” Never mind that I have to take on Southern culture on the issues of a woman’s place and the value of humility.
It took three years from acceptance to publication for QUINCE, ROSE, GRACE OF GOD. I was never sure it would happen. I had no idea that there was so much preparatory work I could be doing. So now that the book is out and I’m just beginning that work, in the background I hear the chorus of “Day late, dollar short.” and “That boat done sailed.”
Research skills I learned during my years at Berkeley’s Masters of Library and Information Studies have been useful. Creative solutions. Family bred stubbornness also comes in handy. I use the long and relatively inexpensive reach of email to send out my messages.
For one brief flash I thought I might even have caught a glimpse of social media nirvana. After a bookstore in the Bay Area agreed to stock the book, I began to let people there know where the book would be locally available. After decades of supporting independents, I thought it was time to share the love around. A friend went to inquire and was told the book had not arrived yet. It was being shipped from Tennessee. (From a publisher in Oregon to a distributor in Tennessee back to the West Coast, that’s a dysfunctional supply chain.)
However, the part of this story that deals with sales nirvana is related to this dear friend’s attempt to talk up the book with the guy at the counter, saying how I have connections with the Bay Area poetry community, etc. She showed him the book’s Amazon page on her phone, and said, “It’s listed 79 in “Best Sellers in Poetry About Places.” She noted that it is currently higher on that list than a bunch of famous poets, like Tomas Tranströmer and Ada Limón!
The whole thing seemed so funny to me that I thought it would make an inspired sales pitch. Humor sells. I quickly posted on social media about my exalted place on the list, while adding that I would never have discovered the connection as I don’t follow popularity contests related to books. I closed by indicating I would check in the morning to see if it had risen to 78 with a bullet!
The next morning I realized that I should have verified the listing on Amazon before I posted. My place in the listing, for any number of unknown reasons, was somewhat less exalted. Back at my postings, with only three responses, I confessed my overenthusiasm, but did not delete the post in spite of feeling a bit ashamed. No blaze of attention.
So I am back to one email at a time, one local open reading at a time.
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