KUDOS TO FOUNDER MARY PIERCE BROSMER!!

Mary's book, Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide to Creative Transformation is NOW AVAILABLE!

Mary will be selling and signing copies of her book and we will be celebrating on November 7th from 1 - 4 pm. Please join us.

I am reprinting the following from MARY'S BLOG from earlier this month. Mary writes about her first book tour and her feelings about bringing this dream of hers into reality. You can read and subscribe to Mary's blog HERE.

I'm aware as I write that the first copies of Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide to Creative Transformation are on their way to Grand Junction, Colorado where I am visiting WWf(a)C, Grand Junction*, and where I will see my book for the first time ---finished.

First let me say how excited and grateful I am anticipating the publication of my first book, one which could effectively be titled: what (and who) I really love!

And now for the ambivalence.

Take I: Journal entry, September 12, 2009

Some knowing is emerging about why "publishing a book" makes me anxious.

What I have treasured about writing is its becoming-ness, its dynamic, emergent, epiphanic quality. Its teaching-me-as-my-hand-moves energy. Its aliveness. Its playfulness, its making me vulnerable = alive!

What I celebrate about the "completed" work is the possibility that its wholeness will be a place of rest and reflection, a place where I will meet readers to make more meanings. What I told Bob Hamma (Sorin Editor) about wanting to publish when we began to talk about my manuscript was--and still is--that it might open doors to rooms in which I have something to give and something to receive, rooms from which I have been barred for lack of the credential "published author," even though I have been a writer, a teacher, a social entrepreneur , and consultant for thirty-nine years of reflected-upon experience.

What I dread most about completing a book is closing down around the meanings--how can I say it---not the editing and revising, these are practices of stewardship to me, of making more life possible. No, the pressure in our culture to secure everything lest the intent of goodness with which I wrote get contaminated by mistakes. Mistakes in attribution, for example, which would open me to accusations of what? disrespect? plagiarism? lying? Mistakes in grammar or syntax opening me to not being taken seriously because obviously "I don't know the rules."

Securing is lawyer's work, bodyguard, warrior, gate-keeper's work----and I am none of these, not to mention the fact that security is fool's gold anyway

I thrive as a writer in the fragile space in which the chaotic spill of words becomes something "interesting and organized" and before it slides into something "lumpish and fixed." (Who knew I would find images I needed this morning from my late night reading about complexity theory?! See Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger, p. 29)

What I dread next about publishing a book in which so much of my life force was spent is readers wanting to engage with me as if the meanings are fixed, final---and oh, sweet mother, far worse, wanting to pick away at the unsecured threads for the sake of argument. I deserted that battlefield long ago and have no intention of being dragged back.

Robert Louis Stevenson said he "hated to write, loved to have written."
I love to write, and I love to have written for the sate of well-being I experience, as if after dancing, making love, or walking in the woods. Somewhere in the process, I touch
soul, one of the best definitions of which I heard from theologian Martin Marty when he talked with Bill Moyers: soul is the integrated, vital energy source of any body.
.
I would hate to have "having written" fix me in the amber of others' needs--or my own need-- for security.

Take II, Nightmare September 27, 2009 3:00 am

(I feel as if I've run a marathon dreaming this dream.)

I arrive in Grand Junction for Ann's *five year anniversary party and Founder's day event. Before the gathering I notice that someone is reading what looks like my book, though not quite, and I nearly grab the copy from her hands as I have not seen one yet.
My first reaction is "oh, wow, it's hardback and I was expecting paper."
The second, "oh, I was told to expect 7 x9 size and this is very small square book."
When I touch the book it seems to shrink until I'm holding a tiny square pink and red, kitschy cover, as if a valentine and it can't possibly hold all the words I remember writing.

Nothing about the book feels familiar and I am panicked as to what happened to the book I actually wrote, the beautiful fanciful butterfly cover in warm, Mediterranean red and yellow. To add to my shock, some copies of the book seem to have various marketing chatkes attached: cute yellow umbrellas and gardening (totally useless) tools in one "boxed set," junky cologne du feminine (like the eau de cologne we bought in dime stores in the 50s) attached by monofilament line to another.

I am panicked and we are only a few minutes from my needing to speak at Ann's event, but I try to raise someone at Sorin / Ave Maria but no one I have worked with: Bob, Mary, Julie, or Amanda is there and I speak to one of those people who just keeps repeating the same thing over and over to me as if I'm an idiot in response to my repeated questions and pleas.

I have a rage reaction, smashing a huge pink Plexiglas jackhammer (sometimes a jackhammer is just a jackhammer, hopefully) into a concrete wall over and over again.

Knowing I have only a few minutes, I try to put myself together, at least comb my hair. When I look in the mirror, I'm a man wearing a black ball cap, my features are outsize, coarse, masculine, swarthy. GEESH,can this get worse?

When I get to the event, it is the usual WWf(a)C setting: warm space, lovingly decorated, greeters welcoming people, low buzz of good conversation. Now it seems a blend of our Grand Junction and our Bloomington schools, as Beth, Amy, Kim, and Greta are in the crowd, and I am wondering how I can talk about the book, or read from it as all I have are these freakish book packets cum chatkes made in China, and no real text to consult. And, how can I speak the truth of the situation when the Sorin team has been so good and helpful to me, and (now it's Indiana) they are only a few miles over there in Notre Dame, and, and. . . . .

When I try to speak, I realize there is no container for doing so, as it's kind of a party and I don't know how to quiet them and I can't find anyone to help me, but I try.
And, as I speak, I thank the publishing team who made this possible AND I speak the truth of having my book made into some bad "chick-lit" package . I start ripping the chatkes from the books---which (books) by this time are beside the point, pointless, as they contain few of my actual words.

A very weird segment of an already weird dream happens when a man, I realize to my horror, an academic of some stripe, begins to read aloud from the book, and he's reading arcane botanical descriptions (have I used these as metaphors?!) and I'm panicking on a whole new level, have I used them correctly? accurately? For a while it appears so as he is chuckling appreciatively, then another academic man behind him begins to quibble about a term, and I am standing at the podium in what has become a kind of hell realm.

That's all, as if that's not enough. Hoping to get back to sleep as I have to drive my rented Prius across the great divide tomorrow toward Grand Junction.

*Ann Leadbetter, owner, Women Writing for (a) Change, Grand Junction, CO
www.womenwritingcolorado.com