My friend Judy Dulberg and I got together because our dead fathers were conspiring with each other in the afterlife. We don’t have proof of this–but we’re pretty darn certain that’s how it went down. I doubt you could convince us otherwise–so you should just go with it. Judy and I have only known each other  a couple months, but we’ve quickly learned that good things happen when we talk to each other and share our unfiltered thoughts. So, that’s what we’ve been doing. Even though, some of what happens between us seems sort of ridiculous sometimes, we’ve just decided to go with it because it seems to be working. In fact, one of the most recent and biggest surprises, that’s come out of our hanging out together at our local SCBWI Shop Talk meetings, has been that Judy got inspired by all the amazing people around her and started Center Rock Publishing, LLC an Independent Publishing Company. Very exciting! And most recently, Judy wrote me and said–I wrote this yesterday and I’m not really sure why….

Keep the Book Avoid the Booze

Written by Judy Dulberg

 

Storytelling is an art.  Support of the arts in the United States has dwindled over the last several years.  Everyone wants to purchase a good story as a gift or as a keepsake or to read while on vacation.  However, few realize the emotion, agony, excitement, frustration, elation and millions of other nouns that an author goes through to make that story happen.  If we don’t support artists, we won’t get great stories.

 

Relationships are draining and take a lot of work.  Storytellers need to be in a relationship with characters.  We have to flirt with them and love them.  We have to hate them sometimes and even change some of what we love about them so that they can fit in socially.  We have to wake up in the morning and say “How you doin’?”  (Like Joey from “Friends”).  Sometimes they’re not doing too well… they are limp and lifeless.  Like a good partner we have to help them thrive.  Maybe we need to shake up their lives, take them off the page and send them on an adventure… or send them away completely, like the saying says – “If you love something set it free.  If it comes back to you then it’s yours.”  If it doesn’t come back, it did not fit the story.

 

Writing a story is like holding a new life.  You are excited.  It is endearing.  Then it shits on you.  What?!  I know, it sucks and it is something that your friends without a book in draft form can’t understand.  It keeps you up at night, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes just because you think it “needs” you.  You fuss over it when sometimes it just needs to be left alone.

 

Oh and the advice.  “Why don’t you just give the character wings and he can fly away from the problem,” or “why don’t you just send him to France where he can see her again and reunite after 50 years?”  You want to tell them “Well clearly if you understood ‘Johnny Goombatz’ you would know mafia dons don’t fly and he can’t just get out.  He would have to disappear!”  You might get the all too recognizable eye roll.  What they are likely thinking is “Relax.  He isn’t real.”  If he isn’t real to you then let him go, because no one else will believe him either.  This is when belonging to a writer’s group is important.  It’s group therapy.

 

At my last writer’s meeting one of the writers, Michelle Mead, told me she sometimes feels like she is there for an addiction meeting.  When we go around the table to introduce ourselves and what we are working on she has a compulsion to say “Hi, I’m Michelle, and I’m a writer.”  It’s true; we need a support group for this.  No matter what you are writing, sometimes you have excuses that no one wants to hear.  No one wants you to tell them that you were late for soccer practice because Ollie Octopus plays soccer and you could not figure out if tentacles are legs or arms and he might be in violation… So you made him a monkey, but the name Ollie doesn’t sound right anymore, and the only name you like “George” is taken.  Queue eye roll.

 

Writers always keep a healthy dose of anxiety about “the book,” or “the article.”  This leads people to say, “Take a break.  Maybe you should stop doing this.”  Suffice it to say, as Michelle pointed out, it’s an addiction.  As with any addiction, we crave it and love it, so be patient with us, because something good will come of this addiction.  Trust me when I tell you, if we give it up, we might replace it with a more extreme addiction.  Nobody wants that.

 

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I read Judy’s piece and I said…this is a blog post! Do you have a blog yet? Because I’d love to use it as a guest post on my blog. Well, she was more than happy to let me share it with you AND she started a blog DIARY OF AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER. Head over there to read more about Center Rock Publishing and follow Judy’s journey.

 

 

Center Rock Publishing, LLC

You can also connect with Judy on Facebook.

Anyone else have experience with an Independent Publisher? Do you have a favorite and why have they impressed you so much? Any advice for Judy? Do you think of writing as an addiction? Isn’t the Center Rock Publishing logo adorable?