Then someone has to publish and distribute the book. That someone could be the author, but it is just as likely to be a publisher who can navigate the ever-changing world of modern book production and distribution in electronic, print, and audio formats. I’ve been privileged to work with dozens of word lovers who have chosen coaching, editing, graphic design, marketing, printing or publishing as a career path. I am grateful to all of them. For without them, everything I’ve ever written would be languishing in notebooks and computer files.

Publisher Van Velzer Press

It is impossible to name the dozens of people who have helped get my words into print since my first article was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer back in 1968. Allow me to introduce you to one of my teammates. Trish Lewis, the founder of Van Velzer Press, is the publisher of Mary Brewster’s Love Life: Matriarch of the Mayflower.

Publishing runs in Trish’s family. Her great-great-uncle, F. C. Van Velzer, and his father, as well as his father’s father, were traveling newspapermen. They traveled from the East Coast across the expanding United States in the 1800s, leaving behind them a trail of small-town newspapers. They stopped in towns lacking any reliable contact with the outside world and stayed long enough to establish a local paper. Then they traveled to another town in need of a paper. Eventually, they settled in California, near San Diego, where they launched another weekly newspaper in 1902.

Connection to Walt Whitman

Trish says her family tree includes Louisa Van Velsor, the mother of Walt Whitman. Trish is carrying on the family business by publishing books. “We are proud to continue the family business in the art of literary magic. Van Velzer Press concentrates on our glorious country that boasts of such a rambling, brave, innovative history.”

I met Trish at a Vermont writers’ event, where she was available to assist six of us authors competing for a publishing contract. At the time, I was working on Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. I found her suggestions insightful and helpful. When I decided to write a second Mayflower historical novel from Mary Brewster’s perspective, I asked Trish if she’d be interested in publishing it. We both thought Mary ought to come out of the shadows of historical obscurity into the sunlight of appreciation for her role in the fledgling Pilgrim community.

Mothers Who Research Family History

Trish and I have in common mothers who put in the long, tedious hours required to trace our respective families’ heritages. Trish credits her mother and her grandmother, a dignified lady Trish knows as Grammy, for populating her family tree with names and details. I have my mother to thank for her detailed notes, which connect our family to William and Mary Brewster, who were part of the Mayflower voyage.

Aware of the strong publishing background in her DNA, she launched Van Velzer Press in 2019. “Yep, right before the pandemic hit, and tossed all my plans for my first year up in the air. No one but my husband and my mother encouraged me; everyone else just gave me a side eye and stayed quiet. I forged on ahead.”

Trish earned a Bachelor of Science in Sociology in Pennsylvania, which has helped her prepare for her current vocational passion. She’s over halfway through the credits required for a double master’s degree in of all things Microbiology and Political Science. It helps that she worked as a book editor for nine years before launching her own publishing business.

Joys and Challenges

When I asked her what gives her the greatest satisfaction from publishing, she told me, “Creating a quality book involves a heavy amount of research, even fiction, and lots of time rewriting, fussing, and rethinking. So, when authors hold their galley copies in their hands, it is like a Christmas present. I love to see their joy. I also like helping produce stories that have an overall positive energy to give to the world.”

Trish says her greatest challenges have been access to good software and the high costs of printing and distribution. Like the authors she publishes, she finds the creative stuff a breeze and the rewarding part. I asked her if she could start over and if she’d do anything differently. “Like planting a tree, I would have started earlier. I had the skills long before I realized I had built them up strong enough to be a publisher.”

Words of Wisdom for Authors

She has advice for authors about working with a publisher. “Many authors think their stuff is great right out of the gate. Well, it is not.  Authors write for themselves, and that is great.  Publishers then help shape the final book for readers, which means a decidedly different end product. The craft of writing — the skills — is something most hopeful artists fail to spend enough time perfecting. So, an author needs to know there will be changes to the manuscript. They need to enter into the process with a spirit of teamwork. Then it is all happy days and golden sunshine.”

I know many people who dream of writing a book. The difference between a dream and an accomplishment is the willingness to put in the hours required to learn the craft and produce the product. Trish’s advice to would-be authors is “Start by writing your story and not worrying about a thing.  Then, don’t be lazy – do rewrites and rewrites and rewrites until you think your manuscript is perfect. Then laugh when you see all the red a good editor puts on that screen for yet another rewrite.”

Editors as Advocates

It helps if an author can send his or her ego on vacation when the book is ready for serious editing. Red ink is not a grade about the author as a person or the value of the author’s work. Instead, it is rather a professional’s opinion on how to make a piece of good work better. Anyone who does much reading at all can quickly spot books published by authors who tried to skip this step of writing a book.

Thank you, Trish Lewis, for being part of my team and adding your red ink to my efforts.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Share it with a friend or sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen. I will not sell your information. Select a monthly newsletter and/or weekly articles about whatever’s on my mind that week.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster
Autographed copies are available on my website.

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Getting It Right

The cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke says, “It’s not about being right. It’s about getting it right.”

Kathryn knew The Mayflower Chronicles required extensive research to ensure the inclusion of everyone’s facts and voices, including the Pokanoket people the Pilgrims confronted upon their arrival in Plymouth. On the other hand, I thought I would write a funny little book about moving in with my father when I was in my early sixties and he—a retired U.S. Army full colonel–was in his eighties.

My real-life and social media friends and followers thought my posts about life with Dad were great. They thought my father and I were hysterical together. They posted about how we were a model adult child/parent combo. Sometimes, they told me my stories made them cry. “You should write a book,” they said. “I wish I could have that kind of relationship with my father,” they told me.

The Incomplete Truth

Based on what they read on my pages, they were right. I wrote humorous, poignant, and sensitive snippets. I programmed tasty and easy to swallow bites on my social media feeds. They only saw what I wanted them to read because I controlled the narrative. I was truthful. But I did not provide all the facts.

I avoided some topics like why I moved in with my Dad, how he knew I needed to before I did, and what it took to realize the shape I was in before making changes.

Before I make it sound like my memoir will reveal deep, dark secrets, let me be transparent. My father was not The Great Santini. My family was ordinary in some contexts and extraordinary in others. Like all families, we had our joys and dysfunctions. But as a military brat, I grew up spending only about fifty percent of my childhood with my Dad around. Then I lived away as adult children tend to do for over 40 years.  So why, when I moved back in with him, was I surprised that we did not know one another as well as I had assumed?

Getting To Know You – Again

Once I moved in with Dad, we started to have tea each afternoon. He began to tell me about his childhood. We shared our memories of the times and places we lived together. We talked about what it was like when he was not with us and stationed far away.

I realized that I did not know as much about him as I thought. He seemed genuinely surprised by many of the things I told him. It took some time before I realized that the personal narrative that I had constructed to explain my life was inaccurate because I did not have all the facts. My story needed some verification.

When an author creates fictional characters, she creates their stories, personalities, triumphs, and traumas. But she must consider each of them within the entire cast of characters she composes. The people in my memoir are not fictional. They have lives, emotions, dreams, and disappointments. There was so much I did not know despite assuming I did. I began to doubt my own story.

Family History

When I confronted the character from the personal narrative I had internalized on my memoir’s pages, she startled me.  Some days I was ashamed. Some days I wanted to be gentler, more compassionate. There were times I laughed at her. And there were times I was proud and amazed that she was still standing. The distance the words on a page must travel to one’s mind and heart allows time to process and distill the truth.

I finished Tea with Dad, sure that I had told the entire story and had all my facts straight. But as fate would have it, I was wrong. As I share in the book, Dad let me know that a family story about my great uncle was not true.

“Uncle Al was not a polygamist. That’s ridiculous,” Dad said. “He had three wives, but not at the same time.”

Family Connections

Last month Uncle Al’s granddaughters, Erin and Eileen, met us for the first time on Zoom. As they compared notes, Dad cleared the air (just in case they were worried, which they were not) by correcting the rumors about Uncle Al.

“He only had three wives,” he told them.

“Oh, there was a fourth one,” our cousin Erin replied. She was so unphased. She went on to let us know that they had documents—the announcement of the annulment of the third marriage and then her grandmother’s divorce papers dated after the annulment announcement.

“There’s a fourth?” Dad asked, surprised. “She slipped in before…”

“My book is wrong!” I gasped.

“A fourth.” Dad was stunned. He shook his head.

“My book is wrong!” I repeated. No one paid any attention to me.

Get It Right – Again

I have decided to view this philosophically. Erin and Eileen provided us with information we did not know. This meant a lot to my father as he was so fond of Uncle Al and his young cousin Jacqueline. There is documentation. We will edit the family story though it is too late for my book.

I did the best I could to get my book right based on the information available to me when I wrote it. History as we know it changes as new evidence appears. As someone else said, “If you don’t get it right the first time, keep trying until you do.”

Tea with Dad is being published by Green Writers Press and is for release April 27, 2021. It is available for pre-order now at Amazon/Laird Young. Nancie lives in Maryland where she writes and continues getting to know her Dad better.

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++++++++++++++++++++

“Go Write That Book”

By Christine Eberle

I was on a Philadelphia bus one cold afternoon in college, standing next to an elderly woman bundled in a colorful hat and scarf. When we reached her destination, she turned to me and said, “Goodbye, dear. Now, go write that book!” Her words came out of the blue. I don’t recall even exchanging pleasantries; I’m sure we did not discuss my authorial aspirations.

She was right, though. I’d been yearning to write a book since I was old enough to read one. My father preserved my earliest effort in a folder in his filing cabinet. The Story of Tommy Carrot was a terribly-spelled, brief tragedy about a root vegetable that I wrote at age six. I have my own folder of subsequent attempts and false starts from grade school, including a short story about a widower who dies of a broken heart when his son’s letter turns out not to be the anticipated invitation to move in, but a recommendation for a retirement facility. Clearly, the joy, sorrow, and brevity of life have been persistent themes for me.

In my freshman year as an English major at Saint Joseph’s University, I channeled my inner Dickens by publishing a serialized “novel” about my high school boyfriend in the campus paper. (Don’t ask.) The next year, I got involved in campus ministry, and in junior year picked up theology as a double major. I earned a graduate degree in pastoral ministry at Boston College and never looked back, spending 26 years as a college campus minister.

If It Delays, Wait For It

I continued to write. Once bitten, I don’t think the writing bug ever leaves a person. I wrote seasonal meditations, fundraising appeals, blessing prayers and brief remarks for the university president. I even published four articles on spiritual topics in Liguorian magazine. But I never carved out time to go write that book.

In 2016, the resignation of a colleague pursuing her own dream jolted me out of assuming I had to stay with my beloved but all-consuming day job forever. When I received an invitation to a retreat called “New Life Directions for Women over 50,” I registered in a heartbeat. On that retreat, I shared my dream of becoming a “freelance me” and committed to taking concrete steps to move my dream forward. That led to beer and pizza with someone who later forwarded me a Facebook sweepstakes announcement for four nights at When Words Count, a Vermont writers’ retreat. I went—which may be one of the few recorded instances of Facebook’s changing a person’s life for the better!

When Words Count (WWC) provides the space, time, and encouragement writers need to get serious about their work. Sitting in a comfortable couch overlooking the snowy Green Mountains, I fleshed out my idea for an Advent devotional. Each evening, WWC founder Steve Eisner invited us into the den and encouraged us to read samples of our work aloud for feedback. I noticed that my writing seemed to touch people regardless of religious affiliation, whether Christian, Hindu or even “Jewish agnostic.” My new friends urged me to broaden my audience beyond those likely to shop for an Advent book. That is how Finding God in Ordinary Time got its name, and its message.

A Two-fold Audience

At WWC, I realized my target audience is twofold: I desire both to feed the faithful and to offer spiritual nourishment to people skeptical or weary of religion. I come from a deeply beautiful religious tradition with lamentably cerebral ways of expressing things, so in my book I strive to make faith more accessible. I do this by sharing four weeks of daily meditations based on true stories, highlighting places we can experience God’s presence, hidden in plain sight. Each chapter has a relevant Scripture quote and concludes with questions for personal reflection.

It occurs to me I have always gravitated toward the practical. That’s why I chose pastoral ministry over theology for graduate work. Now it is summed up in my tag line: Connecting Scripture, Spirituality, and Everyday Life.

It Will Surely Come

In February of 2017, I left Vermont committed to finish this manuscript in time to enter WWC’s Pitch Week. This is a writing competition in which a panel of judges determines who will be selected to have their work professionally published. The Pitch Week was coming up in October. Preparing for it required a significant investment of time and money, but without it, my dream would still be only that. Through the Pitch Week process, I got to work with Peggy Moran, an incredibly skilled editor, and Asha Hossain, a talented cover designer. I was forced to think through things I had never considered, like a marketing plan and elevator speech. Although I did not win the competition, one of the judges was Dede Cummings of Green Writers Press (GWP), who loved my book enough to publish it anyway. Dede was a book designer before founding GWP, making the finished product lovely to behold.

Finding God was published in September of 2018—47 years after I wrote Tommy Carrot and almost 35 years after that mysterious bus passenger uttered her prophetic message. This reminds me of the words of the prophet Habakkuk: “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it. It will surely come; it will not be late” (2:3).

My advice to aspiring writers is simply this: keep writing and rewriting. Whatever the literary task at hand—be it fundraising appeals or brief remarks for a president—work to make it sing. God wastes nothing. When you finally carve out time to write what you really want to, you will have been honing your voice and perfecting your craft all along.

Ten months after Finding God in Ordinary Time was released, I finally left my day job to become a freelance me. Now I’m facilitating retreats and leading evenings of reflection. I’m teaching an online seminar for my former employer, Gwynedd Mercy University, helping students reflect on their spirituality and work on their writing. And, of course, I’m pondering my next book. I am profoundly grateful to be able to explore this new way of being in the world.

My ordinary days are extraordinarily blessed . . . and so may yours be!

The post “Go Write That Book” appeared first on How Wise Then.

I did not think about how my writing would get into print. That I learned in the Bowling Green School of Journalism. One professor required us to bring weekly receipts from the post office to prove we’d submitted our work to a potential buyer. By the end of that semester the habit of sending out weekly queries and manuscripts was well established.

Writing Is Only Step One

Today the options for getting one’s work in print are many. Writers can sell manuscripts to print or electronic magazines and blog posts. We can make pitches to agents who will hopefully find a great home for our literary masterpieces. Or we can pitch directly to publishing houses. In this day and age anyone with a computer and Internet access can publish a book. This is a mixed blessing. Authors are no longer blocked from the world of published books and millions of books are published every year by new authors. However, this means there is no quality control on what’s published. Additionally, it’s often very difficult to compete with thousands of new releases coming on-line each month.

I never thought about how much marketing my work would fall to me. When I sold my first book in 1985 the publishing house had a marketing department. I suppose authors like J. K. Rowling, John Grisham, or Danielle Steele still have marketing people to promote their books while they work on their next best seller. The rest of us either pay someone to promote us or get out there and market our work ourselves.

I struggle with the reality that in order to sell books, I have to market them myself. Selling Girl Scout cookies as a child made me a nervous wreck. When the various clubs to which I’ve belonged wanted us to sell things, I usually bought a few and gave them away. The reality that I have to sell my books myself strikes me as unfair. Shouldn’t it be enough to write the book? No, sadly, this is not enough.

Produce, Publish and Promote

I think of this whole process as a three-legged writing stool. All three legs need regular attention.

Leg One: Write. That part comes naturally. I love writing. Writing also includes reading – for pleasure and to study how others write. It also includes studying the craft of writing. This I accomplish through on-line courses, magazine articles, books, and workshops.

Leg Two: Publish. Or try to publish. It’s Writer’s Market for the win when it comes to finding potential markets. Subscriptions to the many on-line networks with links to places looking for manuscripts help in this effort. I recently sold an article to a place I learned about from such a source. Libraries and bookshops make great hunting grounds for places to pitch article length manuscripts.

To publish book-length manuscripts it helps to attend workshops or take some on-line courses about the complex and constantly evolving world of publishing today. The multiple options for self-publishing today make it possible for nearly anyone to publish. This also makes it easy for the inexperienced to be separated from large quantities of money with little return on their investment. Thousands of people make money writing, publishing and promoting today. A few of them actually produce the copy.

Leg Three: Market. Reach out to others to grow a social media platform and develop a writer’s community. Network with other authors to support and encourage each other. Self-marketing can also include cold calling on bookstores, sending out press releases, lining up speaking engagements and arranging for book signing events.

Join forces with people who actually think it’s fun to market what authors produce. Go to writing groups, workshops, conferences, and other networking opportunities. Keep at it. Word by word, query by query and one marketing effort at a time will yield progress over time. Progress in any one area supports efforts in the other two. It isn’t easy, but then few worthwhile things in life ever are.

Grow A Writing Community

Here are links to some people who have helped me along the way:

Sandy Lawrence of Perceptive Public Relations. She helps market authors’ work and offers on-line courses to teach authors how to market their own work. See what she has to offer at http://perceptivepublicrelations.com

Aimee Ravichandran of Abundantly Social.  She is a whiz with social media tips and techniques. Meet up with her at https://www.abundantlysocial.com

Roger Leslie. He not only coaches, he also edits, teaches workshops and is himself a many-times over published author. Introduce yourself and tell him I sent you at http://rogerleslie.com/

Rochelle Melander of Write Now! Coach.  She teaches, coaches writers, leads critique groups, has a helpful weekly writing blog, edits books, and has published books on the craft of writing. Visit her online at writenowcoach.com

Nancy Camden. She creates author websites and graphics to complement blog articles. https://camdenwebmarketing.com

Who has helped you in your writing work? Give them a shout out here so we can expand our network of people who help us get our words out.

Next up – More about Sandy Lawrence and the results she gets from her Facebook launch parties for authors.

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