My father could always be counted on for the difficult questions. “Do you make any money at it?” he enquired of my book writing habit. “I try not to lose money!” was my response. And, to be honest, I never do that kind of reconciliation, because it just is what it is. I love to write and I think that some people like to read my writing.
If I worried about how many books I sold and whether the math ever made sense, I would likely be very under inspired to continue my craft. But that’s the point — it is not a job; it is a passion. If I don’t write, I feel unfulfilled, empty, incomplete. When I publish a book, I feel satisfied in a way that money cannot buy.
Looking back over the years, I have always been a writer. There are still, in existence, notebooks of stories from when I could first put a sentence together. My sister was clearing out her house of 30 years and just uncovered a diary from 1979 when I was at boarding school in England. Funnily enough, I have just started work on a recounting of my years at boarding school (1974-79) and the concept of boarding schools as a whole. This was kicked off by my granddaughter asking me what I did wrong to get sent away to school at 9 years old. And there we go — another book is in the making. I can’t help myself.
I was sitting outside listening to the bird song, and I pondered how many species used my backyard as their sanctuary as I do. From there the seeds of another children’s book were sown. And I worry a bit, as I get side-tracked from large projects and off track from current projects on the desk, that I may die before I get all these books inside me written, since the derailments from the beaten track are frequent and insistent. What’s the solution? Beats me….
At the end of this month, I am officially launching my children’s book “Tales from the Forest – The Adventures of Madame Dragonfly” at the River House Book Shop in Carmel (a wonderful destination book shop!). I think this will be my ninth or 10th publication. I’m excited to share Madame with the world, plus reveal to you the creatures we encountered on our travels to Montana and Wyoming. I am happy to be able to offer her on Kindle as well, though the author makes beans from that. (Obviously that is not the point!)
Next month, I take the book show on the road to my hometown on the East Coast of England and launch “Chip, The Naughty Seagull” — illustrated by my artist friend Theronda Hoffman. Chip has about been put to bed, as it were, but then there is the marketing of the show to be done, the prep for the book signings and so forth. It’s a whole machine that needs to be ready to go after the book is published.
I envy, a little, those writers that have the machine prepared for them. All they have to do is write the book and everything else is done and they have the comfort that the check will soon be in the mail; but then you lose your autonomy and I’m not sure how I would feel about that. As granny would say, you can’t have it every which way. I write what I want, when I want and no one can tell me the cover doesn’t work or chapter 3 needs to be brutally edited. I ride my own horse, and I do love the freedom that it affords. Don’t ask me if I make any money at it!
The writers who make it these days — or, at least, do more than break-even — are the ones who get their books picked up by movie houses or, increasingly, the likes of Netflix, and their babies are bought by the filmmakers and, likely, often butchered. I wouldn’t mind, one time, someone wanting to make a film of my book, but I would also need to give myself a good talking to, if I were to allow it to happen.
Maybe a future project — a thriller about coming to America in the ’80s — might be the one to make me a household name — ha, ha — or the one after that, the story of my complex family tree. And I’m sure there will be others.
As I put one project to bed — and send off to the publisher — others are always brewing. All it takes is the flutter of a bird, or a comment from my granddaughter and I’m off on another tangent. I must have paper and pens in my purse in order to scratch down the next greatest idea, because it can hit me in the head at the strangest times.
“How do you write a book?” someone asked me one time. “Oh, goodness, it’s something inside you that you have to do!” I replied. (Perhaps not the best response.) “You just start! Get a seed inside your brain and go.” Fortunately, there are many ways to self-publish these days, even if you are not techy like me, but the illustrating part can be tricky if you’re not a graphic designer — I’m not — but the likes of Shuttlestock or Adobe can make life much easier on you for a price.
When I published my first book of columns, “Window on the World” back in 2011, I was so clueless. The Soledad librarian at the time, Angie Lopez, had told me I needed to put my copious newspaper column collection into a book and so I did, without doing any research. It was a bit of a fiasco and it’s out of print now (should I re-do, another question of myself), but it opened the gates to my author life of creativity, building stories out of a seed, a memory, a page in the diary, a comment from my granddaughter.
No matter what you do as a job, hopefully you like it most of the time and it makes you a living, but the more important thing is what you do to make a life — the things that fulfill you, make you whole, keep you whole. My children and grandchildren may not have the time or inclination to read my stories now, but they will likely make the time when I am no longer of the planet. That’s a bit of a consolation because some of my life stories are gone with me and they are pretty darn gripping.
Now, what am I going to write about today — apart from this week’s story, which is on deadline as we speak….
“Tales from the Forest – The Adventures of Madame Dragonfly” will be officially launched on Sunday, March 29, 2 to 4 p.m. at the River House Books in the Crossroads Center and I’d love to see you. It’s also now available on Amazon.com if you can’t make the signing. Thanks, always, for reading. Your comments and encouragement really do help me.
