Marketing 2

Inadvertently (while learning how to post pictures on this blog), I deleted my last post about marketing my novel at the "pitch slam" in NYC. So for those who didn't get a chance to read it, I was stressing over the fact that I had to distill ten years of hard labor into one tiny paragraph. . . And that it would have to be me that made the sale, rather than the novel itself, to the agents. . . I've really only ever sold things that sell themselves: records, grilled cheese sandwiches, flowers. . . my husband is the one that can sell ice to Eskimos. . . he's the talker, I'm the writer. . . But I had to step up to bat and do the best I could this past Tuesday at the Writer's Digest Conference, and I was surprised by how calm I was. . . I took the advice of many and just spoke from my heart. I believe in this novel. And I believe I conveyed it to the agents I spoke with. Time will tell now if they have the passion I do for the characters I've lived with for so long.

Volunteers

It is that time of year in the garden when all the little volunteers start popping up--plants that were self-seeded from last year, blown in the wind and scattered seemingly willy-nilly. Last year, after the daffodils were done, the entire patch became a bed of daisies, all volunteers from nearly half-an-acre away. Easy money one would say, unless the volunteers drown out a more valuable crop, but this rarely happens. It is as if they know where they can unobtrusively take up space, where they have the best chances of thriving: i.e. shade loving plants never self-seed in the sun and visa versa. Volunteers are not weeds, as the original plants were cultivated and planted at one time, such as a theme in a work of art that proliferates--in the garden of words they are the repeated motif. Once planted, the design will continue to emerge in the work, a subtle design that doesn't wish to over-power, just provide that nuanced color of meaning.