Tag: KN Literary Services

The Bookee

The way I see it, if KN Literary Services is a purveyor and “booker” of book coaches, then I am a “bookee.” Yesterday I had the long-awaited ZOOM consult with KN Literary Services. It was productive. I met with Publishing Consultant Sarah Bossenbroek. I was heartened when our fifteen minutes expanded to half an hour without protest or polite dismissal.

Mutual respect is essential to a fruitful working relationship. My conversation with Sarah felt like a promising start in that regard. Sarah went over the challenges she sees in my writing project that we both feel I face when writing this memoir.

To start, the acknowledgment that there is much too much material. To address this, she advised me to think about this memoir as step one and park the remaining eras on the back burner once I’ve wrung all the juice out of one of them.

Sarah identified three distinct “eras” and stages in my life that she feels will be worth exploring: 1) Childhood 2) Young adulthood 3) Early days of parenting.

Each of those life chapters presented unique challenges and lessons for me. All were teaching experiences, eventually. Exceptionally well-disguised at first. What I took from Sarah’s summary was that creating an outline would be an effective place to start. I could then make lists of scenes, stories, and incidents from which I can pick and choose. I get to decide which scenes to develop and which to leave on the literary cutting room floor. I have to say that sounds like it would be helpful. I’d been leaning that way anyway.

I was also heartened to hear Sarah already has someone in mind with whom I might be a good match. Once I put a deposit down on our contract, Sarah will connect me with her and see if we are a good fit. If her first book coach pick doesn’t work out, Sarah assures me she will seek out another. And so on until I have an official book coach and partner

This book-writing project is getting real, folks, now that there is money and a contract involved. As my husband said to me early in our courtship, “You know a man is getting serious when he lays money on the table.”

I have moved out of the giddy excitement phase about starting off on this book-writing path. I am moving inexorably into the “real work” phase. It is odd how my mind processes words differently when it knows one day there may be in front of an external reader out there. I am having more internal discussions about what to include and what to exclude from the narrative. What moves the story along. What is extraneous and what is interesting enough to keep in.

Earlier I made a comparison between book writing and making a cake. The “birth-day” is today. I have to assemble the ingredients. I need to decide if I will proceed with KN Literary Services to commit and engage a book coach.

Where I did say earlier that engaging a book coach might be premature, I now believe the investment might be the difference between getting the book done or not.

Going forward, I will let you know what I decide. Full disclosure, I am leaning heavily into the “onward” camp. I’ve come this far.

Poor Bird

Missed my 3X Weekly Writers Group ZOOM meeting yesterday. I was wrung out. I slept poorly the night before. Woke up at 4 AM on Sunday morning. Sat down in front of the computer to make myself sleepy again. Got sleepy. Fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after the noon hour. Our group meeting starts at noon.

The bloody domino effect. I had been awash in nervous tension all week around a decision I needed someone to make in my favor so I could travel. The decision was not made in my favor. In fact, no decision was made at all. In any case, that nil decision completely upended my plans for this week, travel and otherwise

I am not 100% certain how to rebalance myself but it does seem like a “learning opportunity.” (Thank you, Oprah, for that emotional exit strategy.) I started by letting go of the outcome over which I had no control anyway. That was easier said than done. And it appears my psyche didn’t get the memo. Otherwise, I would not have been up in the middle of the night fretting and fitful.

So it goes. Now I have a brand new set of tasks ahead of me this week as I try to recover what I lost in losing out on the travel plans. So there’s that. Lots of busy work ahead.

After this is posted today, I have a 15-minute consult scheduled with KN Literary Services. I need help. They want money. Seems like a marriage made in heaven. KN Literary Services is the brainchild of author/publisher Kelly Notaras. Her book title is pure marketing genius. The Book You Were Born to Write. There is not a budding writer in the world who hasn’t frequently wondered if, and how, to scratch their book writing itch. Notaras nails it.

As a bona fide twenty-year veteran of the New York “big house” book publishing scene, Notaras is now embedded in what appears to be a mutually fruitful collaboration with the Hay House publishing company. My current focus is on writing a book proposal to submit to the Hay House Writer’s Community publishing contest (Deadline: May 5 or June 5, 2023) depending on the power of the procrastination phantasms. (I was looking in Merriam-Webster for an alliterative synonym for demons. Phantasms is way better than phantoms in this context, don’t you agree?)

I had already put off this consult with KN Literary Services twice. I feared I was not focused enough on what I wanted to write about to have that conversation. I feel I am clearer now but I expect they will tell me. I write a series of scenes dutifully each day, then save them to my computer in a file called “SCENES.” The so-called narrative “arc” of my memoir is building. Salty-sweet, let’s call it.

It is about the struggle of getting from where I was sprung to where I am now. A place of peace. That was the most implausible of dreams in my youth, but here we are. There is a whole literature devoted to society’s tendency to “blame the victim.” What I didn’t expect was to experience blame from a parent for violations that happened to me on my parents’ watch. My mother (my primary antagonist) had a number of memorable sayings. One I remember that is germane to this discussion: “It’s a poor bird that shits in its own nest.”

Maybe in writing this memoir, my mother was right. Come to think of it, Poor Bird isn’t a bad working title. At the very least, I can thank my mother for that.