#1: The Quarantine Idea
A series of eight blogs about my process of publishing every grain of sand.
My brother’s response to this photo: “You look like you’re thinking, ‘Look at all my boats coming in.’” Do I really look like I’m playing a yachtsman on a cheesy soap opera? Maybe. Am I feeling a newfound sense of pride and accomplishment in being a writer? Definitely.
From the Preface of every grain of sand:
Why this book? Why now?
For my entire life, I have been a secret writer. I’ve filled notebooks with thoughts, ideas, stories, and hundreds of poems, hiding them in boxes, in attics, in basements. I dreamed of publishing them but often slid them into a drawer with a promise of later, not yet. It took a quarantine for me to realize, feeling purposeless and frustrated at home, that this moment is a gift, one I’ve been waiting on for decades. I’m finally making good on the promise to one day edit my short works into a compilation, joyfully closing a loop for myself. Later is now.…
A few weeks into the Covid crisis, I had a major realization. Without any upcoming jobs whatsoever, I might finally have time to publish the poems and stories that had been hiding in my proverbial (and literal) closet.
My friend Angela and I both have time management issues. We have both forged big careers stage managing Broadway musicals and pride ourselves in our organizational prowess, but in secret confess our embarrassing tardinesses and struggles with setting achievable goals to leave our apartments on time to get anywhere. In 2014, Angela very generously offered to read a document I had been compiling with all of my poems. Hundreds of poems. I knew that some were terrible and felt that others deserved considerate revising and should be given the chance to go out into the world somehow, and Angela said she would be happy to take a look at them. Part of me expected never to hear about this again. One year later, in May of 2015, I received an incredible present in my email inbox from Angela: a detailed, supportive critique of all of my writings, with proofreading suggestions and notes about which works she loved and thought I should continue working on. She apologized for taking a whole year, but the punchline is: I didn’t even open the document she sent to me until five years later, in April of 2020!
The number one reason I felt like I would never become a published author was time - and sitting at home in quarantine, there was all the time in the world! With no more excuses, I sorted through hundreds of my writings and found a publisher.
And now, my first collection of poetry and short stories, entitled every grain of sand, will be coming out at the end of September!
