Writing my life - and leading with my heart

I'm in the process of negotiating a contract for the memoir I've been working on for, oh, two decades or so. When I started writing it, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea of what memoir was, and no real understanding of how to tell the story - hence the very long gestation. I describe this as "a book of my heart," and it's true. It's taught me who I am in many ways, what I care about, what motivates me, and why I live the way I do. It's a story about love and life: how I nearly lost both, and how my relationship to nature, the living world that nurtures us, gradually brought me back. Back to life and love, and most importantly, back to myself - to believing in and loving who I am, just as I am.

There was a time when I was sure this was a "big" book, a book that would bring me a contract with a big publisher and get me the kind of exposure all of us dream about. I thought it was my chance, my corner, my way to finally get my due. And I couldn't figure out why I struggled with the story. It sounded too heroic, or too stilted, or too forced. It just didn't sing.

A few years ago, on my way to a residency at the Mesa Refuge in California - two heavenly weeks of time to write uninterrupted, I read a slim book called Faith, by Buddhist author Sharon Salzberg. And I had one of those "Duh!" moments. I realized that I had been going about the story all wrong: I couldn't write it with the idea that it would bring me recognition or mention in the New York Times Book Review or big advances or being published by the right publisher because that's not what I believe in. That's not why I write. I write because I love the world, because I want to spread my own ocean of light over the ocean of darkness, because I hope to touch people's hearts. I write because I believe, as author and psychologist Mary Pipher said in The Shelter of Each Other, "Good stories have the power to save us."

I write because I want to tell the kind of story that can save me, you, all of us, and this singular living Earth, the only planet we have ever known.

So when I finished the memoir - when it finally sang, beginning to end - I didn't sent it to the hot-shot agent who read an earlier draft and loved it, the guy who doesn't take a project unless he can earn money from it, or to the pair of agents who love great stories and who loved my proposal, or to the editors at big houses who had said good things about earlier versions of it. I sent it to the editor-in-chief of University of Texas Press because she loves my work, she's market-savvy, and she publishes beautiful, thoughtful books. She has time to talk to me and she believes in what I have to say. She cares about the work as well as the bottom line. So I picked love over prestige and money.

That's not to say I don't intend to sell as many copies as I can when it comes out next year - I want those books to fly off the shelves! But if I don't live what I write about, the story won't work or touch its audience. I have to be the person I say I am, all the way though the process. This is truly a project of my heart, so I'm leading with my heart as I send it out into the world. I can hardly wait!

Writers passing through

This month, Richard and I have hosted a succession of writers coming through Salida. First was Ellen Marie Metrick, poet of place and heart from Norwood, in southwest Colorado, here to teach poetry and perform at Sparrows, Salida's annual poetry festival. Ellen blew in on a cold March wind and brought us sunshine and warm weather - and left us Tonics For Disembodiment, her mini-chapbook of words from land and home. Here's a sample:

ii. Moon
The canyon walls vibrate
with bat calls
rattlesnakes
spiral
beneath cooling boulders
earth's spin
reveals celestial bodies
this is not the time
for sleep
keep our eyes open
This old poem
always has something new
to show us

Next in were Donna Druchunas, driving her chrome yellow Mini Cooper and Deb Robson, in a lipstick red PT Cruiser, both from Fort Collins. They came to participate in The Arts @ The Library, a series that brings artists of all sorts to speak at the Salida Regional Library. (The series is co-sponsored by Art Works for the Heart of the Rockies, a non-profit that aims to "weave the arts into the fabric of our community" and "make the arts accessible to all.")

Donna is the author of the best-selling knitting book, Arctic Lace, a story that twines knitting patterns with memoir and the history of qiviut, the downy fiber of musk ox, and the cooperative of Alaska native women who knit exquisite and ethereal creations with this rare yarn. How could you not want to read a book with a preface titled "Following My Obsessions to the Arctic"? If you've never knitted in your life and never intend to, read it for the history of a luxury fiber that has to be felt to be believed and the women who work against extraordinary odds to bring it to life.

Deb is her publisher through Nomad Press, a one-woman press fired with a passion to bring traditional fiber arts the attention they deserve. On her web site, Deb says Nomad is

a small, fiercely independent publisher. . . . that honors and teaches traditional creative and artistic skills and processes with a strong emphasis on textile crafts, especially knitting.

She also publishes a select group of young adult novels. (The connection makes sense when you read the books!) For those of you who dream about publishing your own or other's books, here's a sample of what it's like to be an independent publisher and freelance for other publishers:

Several fall-release titles from several publishing companies have been landing on and being launched back off my to-do list, my desk, my computer. On some, I'm the writer; on some, the editor; on some, the production department, marketing department, and publisher. Because these projects are associated with a variety of companies and topics, their schedules are not even remotely coordinated.

She's crazy. But it's publishers like Deb that bring voices like Donna into print and books like Arctic Lace to life, giving us all a wider and richer view of the world.