This past weekend I spent time at The Virginia Festival of the Book. It’s a yearly event that pops up every March, bringing readers and writers together to share their love for words, books, and the pleasures of writing. Once I was a participant when I did a poetry reading with the members of my poetry group. But that was centuries ago and being in a group of other poets, I didn’t feel terribly vulnerable. In the past few years I’ve been an attendee taking note of what is happening in the world of writing and publishing.
As I considered and then started writing my memoir over the last few years, I wanted to know what the climate was like out there. Being shy, anxious and intimidated by experts, I’d spent years working extremely hard selling my visual art. I also self-published an instruction book about an obscure rug hooking technique long before self-publishing became a hip thing to do. Within the art community, I found other artists, agents, and galleries to be a very mixed bag of friendly and unfriendly beings often with noses stuck up high in the air. I hated making cold calls to galleries, museums, and trying to get myself noticed. It went fairly well and I was showing my work across the country. But feeling overwhelmed by having to be a sales person, which I wasn’t, I signed up with an agent who claimed she’d get my career of to a great start. A couple of years later, having paid her up front for work that wasn’t helping me much, I fired her because she was all about making money for herself and not considering me, her client.
On the other hand my book, Australian Locker Hooking: A New Approach to a Traditional Craft, which I originally published back in the ’80s, was very successful because I knew who to market it to. At the time I had a small flock of sheep and angora goats. I spun their fleeces into yarn, dyed the wool with natural dyes, and wove or knitted the yarn into sweaters and a variety of other goods. I knew other weavers and spinners all over the map and belonged to all of the organizations weavers and spinners belong to. It was the hippy, back-to-the-land era and I bet on the fact that this particular technique would turn out to have a hot market. I went to conferences, wrote articles for magazines, advertised to the niche I belonged to and ended up reprinting that book a number of times. I sold a total of eight thousand copies to shops and individuals all over the world before being a book seller got old. I wanted more out of life. I tried getting a publisher interested in taking it over but found no one game to take on this “small” project.
A few years ago, when I was told that writers had to build their own platforms and do their own marketing, I was not a happy camper. I wanted to write, not put myself out there even before I finished writing my intended book in order to sell it. I had been there, done that. Entering my 70th year I wanted to have time to do a bit of traveling and simply enjoy life. I had mistakenly believed that once a book is under contract with a publisher, that entity takes over all the dirty work like marketing.
But being passionate about getting my story down on paper and believing it has the potential to help readers who find themselves traveling down the same road I had, I decided I’d move forward with the project. Even through the darkest of days, I made myself believe that my book would happen and that someway, someday, it would sit on bookstore shelves and sell.
As I pull the pages of my first draft together, I need to think ahead and begin exploring whether or not I will self-publish it, as I originally intended, or send it out to a few small publishers which several people have encouraged me to do. Either way I’ll need to do most of my own marketing. Both options have pros and cons.
That is what made the Festival of the Book, so valuable to me, this past week. I talked to a small, nearby publisher, I talked to agents, and independent publicists to see what was what. I talked to other writers, some of them at the same stage I’m at. They were all friendly, helpful, and encouraging. But what amazed me the most was my own behavior and reactions to them. I was not shy. I was not anxious. And I was not intimidated as I had been just a few years ago, when my inner critic told me I was stupid if I thought I could write a memoir. I suddenly realized those experts were in the same ballgame I’m in. They want to sell books and I want to sell my book. I’m looking at them the same way they’re looking at me, trying to judge whether working with any of them would be a fit.
Part of me had been dreading opening the publishing can of worms, but this past weekend I found it exciting to be doing the work. On Sunday, when it was all over, I found myself, feeling low and let down. I wanted more. As intimidated as I felt signing up to attend a nonfiction writing conference a few weeks ago, I’m now excited and can’t wait to get there and see what happens.
In the meantime, I’m happy but wondering what the %$#? happened to my former self and who is this new person living in my body now? Isn’t change great?
