Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!

May 2024 be full of love and joy.

May you be healthy and safe.

May each day there be peace in your heart.

May God pour His blessings on you.

May you share your smile.

May you receive their smile back.

May you appreciate each day you have

May you use it to love others.

Blessings to All

BIRTHING A BOOK

By Sandy Richardson

Countless writers have compared writing and publishing to giving birth. And while most  mothers would say, “No way,” I agree that taking a book from conception to delivery is in some ways a similar process.

Guys, please don’t stop reading. This post is not for women only.

           

THE CONCEPTION

Eighteen years ago, a friend and I shared a chocolate (what other kind is there?) dessert one rainy day. We had met a few years before and formed a solid relationship as writers, readers, and women.

I have always lived in South Carolina. But my friend, while born here, was a military child and had lived all over the world. She returned to South Carolina to teach at a major university. I was Caucasian; she was African American. Married for over twenty years, with children in high school and college, I returned to the university to pursue my passion—writing. She was, comparatively, a newly wed with a toddler, and was my professor.

We discussed many things that day, but when the conversation turned to family, our mother-in-law stories crossed the lines of coincidence. How could that be when our backgrounds were so different? Did others have similar stories? Were most mothers-in-law horrible people? Or was there the possibility that the bad-rap about them could be challenged?

We wanted to know, and right there over chocolate, our book His Mother was conceived.

Later, my friend found she would not be able to participate in the book, but glowing with the idea of a new project, I continued.

TAKE AWAY: Don’t close your mind as to where book ideas can originate!

THE PREGNANCY

I needed contributors like a pregnant woman craves food. I wanted both published and yet-published writers, who loved the project as I did. I wanted writers with diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, and nationalities.

I crafted emails outlining my specific wants for the submissions. I contacted writers I knew personally. I asked them for recommendations. I contacted groups and placed submission calls on select writing websites.

Waiting on responses, I prepared my book proposal using models from books and publishers’ guidelines, paying specific attention to books on the market that might compete with His Mother.

I focused on how my book differed from these, what it offered that others did not.

I narrowed the hundred responses to eighteen suitable to my focus. Then, I began revising and editing. 

TAKE AWAY: Develop a writing network. Join writing groups and associations. Get active in the writing community.

Be specific about your REASON for writing a book, whether fiction or nonfiction. You must have a focus for writing whether you are a pantster or a plotter, or your manuscript will become unmanageable.

Seek the best advice and models for what you write.

Research the market.

REVISE and EDIT SEVERAL TIMES. Your work grows stronger in proportion to the time you allot to this.

           

THE LABOR

With the sample stories in shape and the proposal done, I prepared a list of agents and publishers, and sent out the proposal. Then I waited.

Several rejections later, a flutter of interest occurred. But it came to naught.

I re-submitted the proposal, sent in full manuscripts when asked, and waited again. More rejections, another flutter, but again, it proved false.

Years passed. I grew tired. Frustrated. I distracted myself. Worked on other books. But the urge to get that book out was ever-present.

I revised and resubmitted, again.      

Then one fine day, when I felt totally out-done with the project, a contract offer arrived.

TAKE AWAY: (You already know it): DON’T GIVE UP!

THE DELIVERY

After more revision and editing, all was ready, but then came a complication. Three months before the scheduled release, the publisher closed its doors.

But no way was I going to stop the momentum we had built. I owed my contributors. I decided to open my own publishing company, and His Mother debuted right on time.

TAKE AWAY: (Again) Do not give up. Be creative in your solutions to today’s publishing challenges. Believe in your work. Find a way. This business can be painful, yes, but it can also bring immeasurable joy.

_______________________________________ 

Sandy Richardson is the editor and a contributing writer to His Mother! Women Write about their Mothers-in-law with Humor, Frustration, and Love (2016). Her first novel, The Girl Who Ate Chicken Feet, was published in 1998. Her other fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several anthologies.  “Nana’s Basket” (The Pettigrew Review) received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize in 2013. Richardson is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She currently writes from her home in South Carolina and is founder and Editor-in-Chief for Southern Sass Publishing Alliances. Visit Sandy at www.SouthernSassPublishingAlliances.com  Twitter: @Southernsaspub4

Or https://www.facebook.com/Southern-Sass-Publishing-Alliances-164884667274954/

The “R” Word

 By Sandy Richardson

I can hear your sighs loud and clear at the very mention of the word…REVISION. You’ve heard all the usual “why you should do it’s.” You have probably forced yourself to “revise” at least portions of your manuscript. But do you really “get” the necessity of it? Do you know the real reasons why most writers insist that revision is the REAL writing?

In the writing workshops and classes I teach, I preach revision. It is much like a religion to me. Why? Because I know from personal experience that revision gets writers closer to the final product we desire the world to see.

Re-vision. To see again. To think about again. To imagine again. To shape our written words into a re-fined form. Fine. Something valuable. Something desirable. Something to treasure.

In compiling the narratives in my anthology His Mother, I saw firsthand the rewards of the revision process. The re-visioning of my own contribution to the book took place over a period of about 15 years. (No, I’m not advocating for all revisions to take that long!)

I began my narrative in the form of a letter to my mother-in-law. At that time, she was still very much alive and working hard to make life uncomfortable for her family. My initial draft was filled with frustration, hurt, and anger—the typical “mother-in-law-from hell” article you would expect in a book about mothers-in-law.

But with delays in finding a publisher and real-life interruptions, I found myself re-writing that letter five years later. My father-in-law died, and there was much juicy stuff to add to my litany of complaints against the woman.

Another five years passed with more delays and frustrations, and I tackled the piece again, adding a growing list to the “expected” gripes and groans about the relationship. But then, life intervened.  Rather, I should say death; my mother-in-law died, and with her death came the task of sorting through the detritus of her life.

And in that sorting, I discovered much that caused me to re-think my mother-in-law—not  as the person we knew, but as a soul encased in a damaged body, a soul that, dark as we sometimes perceived it to be, was a soul no less. 

What we discovered led me to re-vision my mother-in-law. It was a healing, unexpected and sudden, in its on-set.

These discoveries led me to revise my letter once again to include my newfound perspective. And while my original versions of the piece fit okay in the overall focus of the anthology, I discovered my new vision worked even better to focus my piece toward the whole purpose of compiling the anthology in the first place.

The healing I had prayed for her to receive all those years came about, but not to her, to me. That re-visioning of her allowed me finally to forgive her.

The letter in the anthology fulfilled what the book’s primary focus had always been: that any relationship, no matter how difficult, can have value. Perhaps not in the form we anticipate, desire, or pray for, but certainly, in the healing that takes place when we see relationships outside our narrowed view of them.

My writing critique group members sometimes tease me about living in “revision land.” and I admit to spending most of my writing time there. However, I’ve never heard them say a revised version of a story impacted them less than the previous version.

I’m not a plotter. However, I do begin with a focus for my writing. Revision helps me maintain that standard. It also justifies my belief that timing is everything. If you put writing out into the world before its time, it is going to come back to you, for a reason—the need for you to re-vision it. This is true, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

So take the time to revise. What is the focus of your work? What is your purpose for writing this particular piece? Does your work support that focus? If not, revise and refine it. All it takes is a little time and a new perspective. 

_________________________________________________________________ 

Sandy Richardson is the editor and a contributing writer to His Mother! Women Write about their Mothers-in-law with Humor, Frustration, and Love (2016). Her first novel, The Girl Who Ate Chicken Feet, was published in 1998. Her other fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several anthologies.  “Nana’s Basket” (The Pettigrew Review) received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize in 2013. Richardson is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She currently writes from her home in South Carolina and is founder and Editor-in-Chief for Southern Sass Publishing Alliances.

Visit Sandy at www.SouthernSassPublishingAlliances.com

Or https://www.facebook.com/Southern-Sass-Publishing-Alliances-164884667274954/

Twitter: @Southernsaspub4