Looking Up, Letting Go

There's a lot I've discovered the last four months since my book was published. Really, enough to fill up many, many blogs posts, which I'm determined to write. But here's my topic for today: people buy books and don't read them. Even I do this.

There's, of course, the absolute wonder and amazing fact of people buying a book you've written at all. That I want to express gratitude for. To labor and struggle, buried like a hermit in my office year after year, agonizing over the structure, the stories, the right balance of humor and tragedy, and then to press that awful "publish" button and to have my book find its way into people's homes? That's been amazing.

The vast majority of people buy the book, read the book and finish the book, as far as I can tell. A lot of amazing people have even contacted me about the book. But what I've learned is that some people just own the book, they don't read it. They put it in a pile that's teetering somewhere near their ceiling, blocking out the sun, and every once in a while they reshuffle this great pile, reprioritzing it, or, like me, moving some out of that pile and into the "I'm never going to read this" pile in my actual bookshelves.

And, believe it or not, it's not personal. They have a plan and it involves finishing certain books that have been started or projects that have been started and then dealing with the towering stack of books. Believe me, I understand. I have several piles myself.  

There's this horrible fear I had before my book was published: that no one would ever read my book. Then, little did I know, but there was this horrible fear I had the second it was published: that someone would read it.

My book came out in paperback about a month before its Kindle edition so no one could get it instantly, they had to wait for delivery. Immediately, my most loyal fans ordered it: my blogging buddies, my personal friends, my grown nieces, friends on Facebook. Then I sat in my house on pins and needles wondering what they thought of it. I hoped no one had gotten overnight shipping. I was actually hoping they all had ordered the "covered wagon" shipping option from Amazon, so that it would take months to get to them. I counted off the days for mail time and reading time. I wondered if there was going to be that awful dead silence when people don't want to say anything bad and so say nothing at all? 

Then a nice comment came in. Okay, it was from someone who's related to me by blood, but still. Honestly, it was a relief just to breath again.  

Please visit Kristen over at Motherese this week as she's giving away a copy of Looking Up this week. She posted her review of the book on Monday and will be posting an interview with me on Thursday!

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You can buy Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie on Amazon.com in Kindle or paperback versions, on Barnes & Noble.com, in many libraries and in Changing Hands Book Store in the Phoenix area. 

Frozen Here in Bookland

Oh my gosh, am I sick of this book. I am so sick of spending every day hiding from it, procrastinating working on it, finding a zillion things to do instead of it, and then, at like midnight, wandering in here and then still figuring out something else to do.

There are so many problems. I'm sitting here changing names but the more I change the names the more I worry that I'm turning it into a work of fiction. I worry about the names I'm using - which is true to the person, true to the time period. I have my Jewish book of baby names open to the Bubbe and Zayde names for the people of my mother's generation and the aging baby boomer section for people who were kids when I was. Then there's the Dictionary of Jewish Names from which I'm getting surnames. What a nightmarish hassle. And I can't just use the search option to find and replace the names when I am changing them because my computer is like a comedian: if I'm replacing the name Gale it will also replace the word "regale" and then I'll have a big problem. So what do I have to do after I'm done with this name stuff? Another read through!

Then I started looking up the PDF conversion process again tonight and can't remember how and so I went on the Amazon discussion boards and it's like, guess what Linda? You're never going to be able to figure this out! Really I just need to choose one of the midline pricey options they offer and let someone do it for me. I have to accept my stupidness. I'll end up with pages half printed and a book numbered from the highest number to the lowest, from beginning to end backwards!

So I'm frozen here in book land. I can't blog (this one's a diary, right? Right?) I can't write for salon right now. I can barely write an email. I'm keeping up with Poetica. I'm managing to cruise Facebook at all hours of the day and night and, I have to say, my desk and workspace area looks wonderful since I procrastinated writing all day today and reorganized it!

Onto tomorrow. A committment then: I will finish these name changes. Monday read through the entirety. Tuesday reset the margins and chapter spacing and write the back of book blurb. I will not think of anything but the task before me.

Beware the Procrastinator

I'm not going to go into all the reasons I'm self-publishing my book, and soon. I won't bore anyone who actually might read this with the blah blah blah of the breakdown of the publishing industry, the control over my book, the fact that it just needs to get its butt out into the world. Oh yeah, and I guess I had some pretty well-timed psychotherapy that convinced me that what I was seeing as a pile of negatives maybe was actually all good. I have a book. Agents wanted it. It's still mine.

So I'm doing a once-over to check that the whole thing complies with my "do no harm" motto. I've heard before that I should always try to judge my words by whether they are kind and necessary and true. Also, since there won't be a major publisher behind me, guess who would get sued if I didn't? Right.

So I'm doing that, right? Well, it's 12:08, like midnight, here right now and I haven't done it yet today. And I'm tired. And it's just sitting, minimized on my computer IN FRONT OF ME waiting for me to click on it. But what am I doing instead? Blogging (on a blog I haven't been on for nearly 11 months), measuring the chair I'm sitting on because I'm sure that if I got a better chair I'd be able to write more comfortably, I'm on Facebook, I'm on hotmail, I'm googling stuff. I'm not doing my edit. And I think I know why. After the last pages I have to go through, I have no idea how to self-publish!

I mean, I'm on CreateSpace and everything and so far, so good, but still. I have to embed images and "make them flat." I have to make a firm decision about the book cover, not to mention the subtitle. I have to write the back cover blurb. How can someone like me, who wants to fly into every possible brain that could read the book and anticipate their reaction, do this?

I'll tell you, or tell me, how I'm going to do it. I'll remember that I have two main goals in publishing my book: first to get it the hell out of my head so I don't have to think about it anymore and have it following me around and tormenting every minute of my life and, second, so that I can print off one single copy of it and hand it to my mother and tell her, "Here is your story." My Holocaust Survivor mother, who asked all the days of her life for someone, anyone, to write her story, will finally have her wish.

And when those two things are accomplished, I will, indeed, be accomplished too.