“The Dog” Journal
Welcome to the Dog Journal, a blog where I periodically share my best finds for taming those puppies that gnaw at your planner.
Could be a quick time management tip, a smell-the-flowers moment, a comment overheard on the elevator. Whatever the inspiration, I hope you’ll blog right along with me by commenting and sharing your tips and stories for taming an overbooked life.
Book Festival: Quite A Weekend!
I had no idea what to expect when I headed downtown Saturday for the Columbus Downtown Library’s first-ever book festival. The first day did not start well.
Before I left home, I had already scalded my right hand, testing my “leak-proof” coffee mug for the ride. Good thing, I reasoned. Otherwise, its loose latch might have ruined my entire inventory.
With my wares in a pull-cart, all I needed was to show up at Staples when it opened at 8, so I could make color copies of my newly designed “sign-up sheet”- a last-minute inspiration from a more experienced writer.
“For e-mail addresses,” she said.
Unfortunately, bright red metal bars covered the glass doors of Staples at 8 AM. Contrary to what I was sure I read online, Staples didn’t open till 9, and I’d heard there was construction on the way to the festival. I heard right. Orange-and-white barrels and barriers everywhere. But on the other side, a helpful librarian who made the color copies.
In fact, once I was there, the whole place was filled with helpful librarians who dispensed maps and cardboard fans and water even to us authors in the giant Indie Alley tent in the library’s topiary park.
You may think of librarians as book nerds, but I can’t think of a better group to cover details. I suspect they were behind the scenes quietly planning the Normandy Invasion and hopefully are hard at work on climate change.
I was no less inspired by the entrepreneurial instincts of my fellow authors. Some hung giant posters behind their tables and giant vases of flowers on top. One, who wrote a children’s book about a hedgehog, brought a live one along for show and tell.
(For a nano-second, I was tempted to recruit some child’s hamster on a wheel to help sell Best of Balancing Act. But remembering the coffee and Staples and the construction, I thought better of it.)
Still, after two days, I left the Festival with just one book remaining. And since a friend mentioned she’d hit a detour on the way to buying one – but still wanted a signed copy – I’m tempted to call it a sell-out.
In case you also hit a detour and would have liked to sign that color-copied Sign-Up sheet, you still can. There’s a newsletter sign-up on PatSnyderOnline, or just send me a Facebook message. And if you missed the chance to buy Best of Balancing Act in person, you can still get your copy on Amazon.
Balancing Act Reaches Out
It became apparent to me as I wrote the “Balancing Act” column that one reason my life went out of whack was that I bought into the superwoman myth. Over the years, and now with this collection, I’ve been cheered on by women whose sometimes comic missteps are also caused by a culture that still expects women to do it all and often for less pay than their male counterparts.
For that reason, I’m pleased to announce that I’m contributing some of the proceeds of Best of Balancing Act to the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, which is committed to gender equity and supports a variety of grant partners.
So if you purchase a book, you may be doing more than lightening your own mood. You may be lightening someone else’s load as well.
Right There With Colleen Hoover
I never expected to be featured alongside Colleen Hoover, but sure enough, it has happened.
The organizer of our neighborhood book group, reading Hoover’s It Ends With Us, also waved around a copy of Best of Balancing Act at our monthly conflab this week.
Maybe that will start the magic, and voila! Some literary giant poking around Amazon will discover my book of local newspaper columns and before long, I’ll be right there with Colleen Hoover on the book table at Target or Costco.
Meanwhile, our Beechwold book group this week pondered what has catapulted this originally self-published author to the New York Times best seller list, where she has held 6 of the 10 top spots, and why she sold more books last year than Dr. Seuss.
Having read only this one selection, I can say two things. First, she knows how to tell a story. And when all is said and done, most of us love a good story, especially when following it does not require us to sketch out a timeline or family tree as we go. Life is already complicated enough without that.
The other thing I can say is that Colleen Hoover apparently never test-drove the recipe for the chocolate chip cookies that Lily, the narrator, said were the best in the world. Her teen-age boyfriend Atlas made them extra crunchy by flipping them over in the oven after the first five minutes.
Hoping to bring a book-authentic treat to the meeting, I tried the Atlas method, which has taken the Internet by a storm. I can report first-hand that it is completely impossible to flip a gooey cookie after five minutes and completely impossible to do it without burning yourself even after eight.
I will not go so far as to say you’ll get more balance in your life by reading my book than Colleen Hoover’s. But you will definitely get more balance if you don’t try the cookies. I didn’t take a survey, but I suspect at this meeting another bottle of wine or dish of mixed nuts would have done just as well.
For me, it was another reminder – and I seem to need a lot – that a reliable ingredient for life balance is keeping it simple.
Book Is Balancing Act
How long could it take, putting together a collection of columns? After all, they’re already written. At least, that’s what I told myself in late February, when I started down the road of self-publishing a book.
Apparently, the phrase “24 to 72 hours” stuck in my mind as the time it would take to have a book up on Amazon via Kindle Direct Press (KDP). I hadn’t focused on the first three words “when the book is done.” Done turns out to happen after all the columns have been located, after someone else has proofread it and someone else has designed a cover and formatted the interior in book-like fashion.
This is not to say that DIY efforts are out the window – only that I’ve never found a typo or grammatical error of my own that I could catch (and there may still be some – sorry) and that I have absolutely no graphic arts talents. For these tasks, a friend suggested Reedsy and Fiverr, budget-friendly online marketplaces of eager freelancers around the world.
After keeping them all straight on a chart, I found a proofreader in NYC, a cover designer in Austria, and a formatter in South Africa. It is now an international project! Happily Austria and South Africa are in the same time zone. Happily, KDP has a phone and chatroom, and these freelancers are very patient. On the verge of being ready – I think – to start the 24 to 72 hour clock, I keep remembering my tech-y friend who said, “It’s not brain surgery. Everyone is doing it.”
Too bad. I was planning to feel absolutely brilliant at the moment of publication.
