Your Weekly Dose of EEE #1: Choose Wisely
Also, a resurrection of teacher anxiety
Hello, and Happy Friday!
Welcome to your first dose of EEE, where I share what’s exciting, entertaining, and enlightening me this week.
Exciting
Grab your free ticket to the virtual launch party, happening 2/27 at 2PM EST via Zoom! Meg Elison, author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and icon in this space, will be joining us as a special guest, and there will be giveaways and other fun activities!
This weekend marks my first actual author event, and it’s a somewhat unconventional (but super fun!) one. We’ll be doing a treadmill workout at STRIDE Fitness, followed by a book signing. STRIDE has generously purchased books for all class participants!
When We Were Mothers has made it into its first local bookshop! Lowell Book Company will be carrying the book on consignment, and I’ll be setting up an author’s table there on March 11, from 1-3, where I’ll be signing books and chatting with readers!
I’m starting to get reviews from people I don’t know! That’s such an exciting milestone. If you’ve read the book, but haven’t reviewed it on Amazon/Goodreads yet, I’d very much appreciate if you’d do so!
The first issue of my column in the Writing Cooperative came out yesterday! The column is called My Self-Pub Life and hopefully in its complete form it will serve as a comprehensive resource for novelists who wish to self-publish.
Oh, also - I started prewriting for the sequel to When We Were Mothers this week. Follow progress on TikTok or whatever other social media platform you like. My handle is @kadilakwrites everywhere.
Entertaining
TV
I’m so lame. Aside from one episode of Chopped, The Wire is the only thing I got around to all week. We’re deep in Season 4, which is widely hailed as the greatest season of television of all time. You’ll laugh, but the show actually reminds me a lot of When We Were Mothers in the way it follows both the law and those on the other side of the law. I really like this kind of storytelling, because it makes the story less clear-cut—which is how life is. Nothing is uncomplicated. Nothing is all good or all bad.
Also striking to me is the plight of the inner-city teacher (and any teacher). I can talk for days on this topic, but for now I’ll just say this: It is SO HARD to acknowledge children’s situations and their very adult responsibilities while also holding them to high expectations and giving them the individualized attention they need. So far, Prz is doing an OK job of it.
Also, my level of sympathy-anxiety for the new teacher standing in front of a bunch of kids who don’t trust you is through the roof during these scenes.
Books
I finished Hoover’s It Starts With Us and Chan’s The School for Good Mothers last weekend.
Hoover’s book was fine. I didn’t like it as much as It Ends With Us, but I definitely didn’t agree with the one 1-star review I read. I will say that not a lot actually happens in the book. I know it was written in response to demand from fans, and I think the Lily-Atlas fandom was probably pretty happy with it (“The happy ending they deserved” was common feedback in reviews), but there was never really much of a plot.
The School for Good Mothers was really good. It was recommended to me as a comparable title for When We Were Mothers, and I do think they have a whole lot in common. The book raises a lot of questions about who’s in charge, who makes decisions for the public good and upon what they base those decisions, how much cultural bias comes into play in those decisions, and much more. There’s actually a talk by the author coming up at a local book shop that I am going to try and attend.
I’ve been listening to the audio version of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo for my book club. I really, really like it. It’s not exactly a comp to WWWM, but it definitely overlaps in the area of “female empowerment.” I’ll finish with it this week, and then it will be on to…I don’t know yet. What do you recommend?
Music
When I was writing Wednesday’s essay, I created a station on my music app based on “If I Ain’t Got You” to get myself in the 2004 zone. I haven’t turned it off since. Not all the songs are contemporary, but I haven’t heard one yet that I don’t like.
Enlightening
I’m in a place right now where it’s easy to feel incompetent.
I’m no stranger to the world of writing, but there’s still plenty I don’t know. It’s my first time publishing. First time self-publishing. First book. I have so many questions. How do I get more people to know about my book? How do I figure out who would want to read it and where to find them? How can I be a business owner (which is what everyone insists we writers are) and also have the time to write?
I don’t know what I don’t know.
And the hundreds of people offering solutions, both free and paid, to my problems—they know that. Or maybe they don’t, but each of them has come up with a new angle to “help” people like me find our “ideal customer” and “have success in [our] business.”
Most of these people mean well, but they have made a mess of my brain. (In fairness, I have also made a mess of my brain by being a teacher/journalist/fiction author/children’s book author/nonfiction author/probably something I’m forgetting. All these things require a different subset of skills, which is what makes all the opportunities so enticing.)
So, I made an agreement with myself. I will only accept opportunities that align with what I’m doing right now. Right this second. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. There will be other opportunities that address those things. But, for example, I’m in the post-launch phase of my book where I want to keep selling the book and raising awareness about it. So that’s the only kind of information I’ll be looking at.
I made this rule, and I broke it immediately when I signed up for an author collaboration summit last week. “You never know, I might learn something worthwhile” was and apparently still is my motto. I’m just so afraid to miss out on that one game-changing bit of information.
I did learn a lot of worthwhile things, and I’m glad I attended. But there were so many resources. I’m no stranger to hoarding resources, either—I still have a storage bin full of activities from when I left my job teaching kindergarten in 2009. but what I decided to do, proactively, was to not look at any of the resources. I organized them all into folders and web browser bookmarks, and I am going to leave them alone until I actually need them. And then I unsubscribed from all the mailing lists that came with them.
No longer will I passively consume content that comes to me. Instead of “click[ing] to learn more,” I will happily X out, delete, and otherwise ignore things that do not have immediate relevance to my life.
I’m hoping that will shut out some of the noise and allow me some peace.
I’d love to know what you’re reading, watching, listening to, thinking about, and excited about. Drop a line in the comments (or, if you’re reading in your inbox, you can reply to the email) and let me know!
Until next time,
I have loads of videos and ebooks about how to make it in self-publishing, having acquired them (for free) because I also think "Well there may be that one nuggett....". I haven't looked at any of them. I think just getting on with it, and dealing with each issue as it comes up is the best strategy, especially for people who are incredibly busy. Congrats on your book. I hope it's successful.
I have no idea when or if you ever sleep!! I do hope that you can quiet the "noise" and add some peace back to your day. (Just a sliver for you)
I am excited to hear about all you are doing and the processes you employ to maneuver through each phase. You are inspiring me to do more and to try harder to be supportive to other creative people in my life; whatever their creations may be. I have given your book title to many of my friends and will hopefully get down to our local bookstore and ask that they carry it as well. I'll keep doing it until everyone reads it!!
I recently finished "Rabbit Cake" by Annie Hartnett - loved it! she put an entirely different spin on the grieving process through the life of a young girl and her "crazy" sister. Heartwarming and very relatable characters. They all feel real and appropriately sad but they are muddling through at the same time. Reading this book helped me realize that life is messy for everyone but there is love and beauty in the mess.