Start the New Year Write

What do you plan to write in 2017? Are you setting writing resolutions for the year?

I gave up setting formal New Year’s Resolutions decades ago, but I still do spend some time thinking about what the year may hold and what I’d like to get done. My intentions for 2016 were to get settled in a new home and new community. That included finding local writing community.

The year unfolded just as I’d intended. As 2017 rolls in, I do feel settled. I still have a few embellishments to complete, but my previously adobe-colored office is now a cheery pale lemon ice with yards of white shelves on the walls. It has become the comfortable, creativity enhancing “room of my own” that I’ve always dreamed of having, and I no longer share space with the laundry.

Sure enough, community roots are spreading. I found a wonderful book club at my local library branch. We’ve connected with several neighbors in our larger community. We’re enjoying family events.

Starting to teach again…
I was unsure whether I wanted to return to teaching after our move, but Olga Wise, a writer friend I made at the 2008 Story Circle conference, insisted I get involved with Austin’s Lifetime Learning Institute (LLI), the rough equivalent of the Osher programs I was involved with in Pittsburgh. I’m forever grateful to Olga. That energizing experience reminded me why I love teaching lifestory writing.

You know how sometimes things seem preordained? I began mentioning to people I met in random places that I was teaching a lifestory writing class. “When are you doing it again? I’ve been looking for something like that!” I told them about LLI and took their names. I already knew demand is high. LLI offered three classes on some aspect of life writing last fall, and all were filled to capacity. Mine had 19 sign up with a limit of 18, and nobody here knew who I was.

That obvious enthusiasm nudged me to contact the program manager for Austin Public Libraries to explore possibilities for setting up library sponsored lifestory writing groups in branches. We concurred that starting small makes sense. Valentine’s week I’ll begin leading free, six-week classes in two library locations, with the stated goal that they’ll transform into self-sufficient, self-sustaining, ongoing writing groups when the classes end. We’ll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, about half the fall LLI class decided to keep meeting and they have become an officially sanctioned library group in a third location.

What about you?
What writing projects do you envision starting and/or completing in 2017? If you leave a brief comment about your hopes or committed plans, you’ll strengthen the likelihood you’ll actually  get them done.

If you don’t already have a project in mind, I have a suggestion: Finish an anthology of two dozen stories and use CreateSpace to print copies for family holiday gifts next year.

What have you accomplished in 2016? Toot your horn in a comment!

Amy Cohen Discusses The Fountain at the Crossroads

Earlier this year I published A Humble Story Lives On, a post based on the work of Amy Cohen, a distant cousin of my husband’s. Amy has been busy over the last several months lovingly publishing a posthumous memoir written by Ernest Lion, another shirt-tail relative who survived the Holocaust at Auschwitz.

Amy asked for my guidance in preparing the manuscript for publication, and I became intrigued with her project as well as the story. In this post Amy explains how she came across the story and why she decided to publish it. I find it especially intriguing that a story written late in life with no known plans for publication could be found and brought to the world by a stranger. It just goes to show that you never know where your words may end up.

SL: Amy, how did you discover The Fountain at the Crossroads?

AC: I was researching the family of one of my Schoenthal cousins—Rosalie Schoenthal. She was one of only two siblings of my great-grandfather who did not immigrate to the US from Germany in the late 19^th century. She married Willie Heymann. All but two of their many children left Germany and escaped the Holocaust. The two daughters who stayed in Germany were killed by the Nazis. In trying to learn more about the lives and deaths of these cousins, I found out that one of Rosalie’s granddaughters, Liesel Mosbach, had married Ernst (later Ernest) Lion. Although Liesel was killed at Auschwitz, her husband Ernest survived. One online source included a link to a memoir written by Ernest Lion.

I clicked on the link and printed out the 200+ page manuscript. I read it in one sitting over the course of a day, tears streaming down my face, unable to put it down until I reached the last page.

SL: What did finding the story mean to you?

AC: Although the fact that Ernest was a relative initially drew me to his book, I quickly realized that his story is the story of more than six million people. It’s the story of how the Germans tried to strip them of their humanity and lives. But Ernest, like countless survivors, refused to surrender his humanity or dignity. The narrative brings you into his experiences and also his mind, allowing the reader to understand the reality of life at Auschwitz and perhaps even more importantly what it was like to survive during and after that experience.

This book reveals both the darkest and best of human nature. Ernest’s ability to persist, to escape, to build a new life in a new country, to find love and purpose is inspiring and deeply moving.

SL: How did you decide to publish it?

AC: After reading the book, I felt strongly that it needed to be read by others. But aside from a few links to the rough manuscript, there was no way for people to find this 200 page manuscript. And with no chapters and crude formatting, it was difficult to read.

So I decided to see if I could get permission to edit and publish the manuscript to make it more readable and publicly accessible.

SL: What challenges did you face?

First, I had to find out who had the rights to the book. I knew Ernest was deceased and that he had a son, but I had no way to contact him. Ernest had acknowledged a number of people in the book, including Randall Wells and Suzanne Thompson, his writing instructors at Coastal Carolina University. Through the university, I got in touch with them and got contact information for Ernest’s son Tom. I soon learned that Tom was the sole heir to Ernest’s estate and thus owned the book’s copyright.

Tom liked the idea of making his father’s book more accessible, so I began editing the manuscript. Wanting to preserve Ernest’s voice and leave content intact, I did nothing but add chapter headings, fix typos here and there, and reorganize one section so the chronology flowed more smoothly.

 
The second greatest challenge was figuring out how to publish it. That’s where you came in, Sharon, with advice on how to create a professional looking format. Your important suggestion that I use CreateSpace made the process of getting the book on Amazon in both print and Kindle format relatively easy.

SL: What are your hopes for this volume? 

AC: I hope that a multitude will read the book. We set the price low to keep it affordable. Our hope is that readers will gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and human nature.

 
I am hoping that schools and libraries will put the books on their shelves. I am hoping that the book will be reviewed in places where it will draw the attention of history buffs. We need help spreading the word.

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Fountain at the Crossroad is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. You can find them here. Whatever small profits may accrue will be donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in memory of Ernest Lion.

For an extensive array of family history stories collected and written by Amy Cohen, visit her Brotmanblog: A Family Journey.

Secrets of Saving as PDF, How and Why

You’ve seen links like the one above. You’ve probably clicked them and know they produce PDF files. Did you know you can save your own files in that form? Did you know when and why know you should? Here are three compelling reasons:

1. If you share a Word document with someone else, they may not have the same version as you, and they may not have the fonts you use. Your document may not display right for them. By saving as a PDF, you can embed the fonts, and the file will look the same on a Mac, a PC, or an Android based device.
2. If you share a Word document, others can copy from or edit it. PDF files are more secure. Few people know how to copy text from a PDF file. Fewer still have a clue how to edit them or the special software to do so.
3. If you upload to an online printer, like CreateSpace or any POD publisher, they require PDF files, and they must have embedded fonts and be formatted with the right paper size for your project.
4. For long-term storage, PDF is the archivist’s best bet. PDF files from twenty years ago still display just fine. That’s definitely not the case with word processing documents.

The good news is that this conversion is easy to do and if you don’t already have software to do it, it’s widely available for free.

So, you say, “I’m sold. How do I do this?”

The tutorial below will walk you through three different paths, starting with the simplest one first.

Save as a PDF with Word (or OpenOffice or most any word processing program)

1. Whatever program you’re using, select Save As. They’ll all be pretty much the same as what you see here.
2. Click the tiny arrow on the right of the Save as type field. Select PDF from the flyout menu.
   
   
3. Check the options. First check that your file is optimized for printing if you are uploading to CreateSpace or have other plans to print. If it’s primarily for onscreen viewing, select the Minimum size option.  Then click the Options menu to the right and make sure the box, Bitmap Text when fonts may not be embedded is checked.
   
   
   Word automatically adjusts page size (in case you are saving a file with pages some size other than 8.5” x 11”) and embeds fonts. Some commercial fonts can’t be embedded, at least not without a special license. This option ensures they’ll be readable on the other end.

LibreOffice, based on OpenOffice, has an Export as PDF function rather than Save As. For POD publishing, select 100% for JPEG compressions. Other tabs include lots of bells and whistles, but nothing important for our purposes here.

Print as a PDF

Aside from word processing programs and maybe a couple of others, you create PDF files by “printing” them to a digital page. To do this you use a printer driver much like the one for printers that use ink. This means that if you find an error and need to fix it, you go back to your source file, i.e. your Word document, make your change, then “print” the file again, just as you’d do with paper.

Many PDF printer apps are available for free download on the Internet. The ones I’ve looked at all use print setup interfaces similar to one of the two types I’ll show below. I’ll begin with Cute PDF, but first a caveat about downloading any free software:

It often comes bundled with add-on apps. You do not need these add-on apps. They probably aren’t malware, but why take the chance? Only download specific programs that you know you need, want and trust. The add-ons keep the software free, but you can avoid them by paying close attention. Reputable software publishers today offer you the opportunity to opt out of add-ons. If you see any window that asks you to click to install anything other than the app you selected, look for an opportunity to Decline, or a button that says Next. If you don’t see any option like this. kill the installation and find another app. If you accidentally download something you don’t want, on a Windows machine, use System Restore and go back to the a time before the download.

Now a second caveat: I’ve used both the apps in the examples below and they are both satisfactory. They are not necessarily the best or the latest. The field keeps changing. Do a search for PDF conversion software, then check reviews before selecting one. You may want to try two or three.  And don’t be fooled that you need to buy anything unless you want to edit PDFs. If you don’t know, you don’t need it. The conversion engine will be free.

Using the Cute PDF Interface

This interface has been around for years and is shared by many of the free apps.

1. Find your way to the Print menu for your file. Click the arrow on the right and select Cute PDF (or another of your choice) as your printer.
   
   
2. Click Printer Properties to open the printer setup dialog.
   
   
3. Click Advanced on the Document Properties menu.
   
   
   From here you can change the page orientation, and select color or grayscale from the Paper/Quality tab. Advanced gives you more options, including embedding fonts.
   
4. By default most PDF printers substitute device fonts to keep file size small. Play it safe over the long run. Embed your fonts by selecting Download as Softfont in the TrueType font line.
   
   
   
5. Change paper size. This won’t matter if you’re sticking with standard letter-sized paper. For books and other special projects, you need the Paper Size option.
   
   
6. Monitor Print Quality. This app saves images at 600 dpi by default. CreateSpace asks for 300 dpi, which also works well on home printers. Nothing but file size is gained by saving them at higher resolution.
   
   
7. In the fly out that opens when you click the Paper Size field, check to see if your page size is listed. If not, scroll down to PostScript Custom Page Size. A new menu will open.
   
   
8. Enter your page dimensions. These should be identical to the paper size you designated in Word.  You will probably use inches, but millimeters and points are also options. Don’t concern yourself with the rest.
   
   

That’s it. Click OK as many times as you need, then click Print. You’ll be asked to specify a file name and location the same as saving any other file. Remember, this is a digital page, so it’s stored as a digital file, just like your Word document.

Using the Foxit Phantom PDF Printer

This app uses a newer interface with fewer options. Don’t concern yourself with what you don’t see.

1. Select Foxit Phantom PDF Printer and click on Printer Properties as above.
2. On the General tab, select Quality and Color. For publishing, you want High Quality Print. For other purposes, standard works fine. Don’t concern yourself with the confusing options behind that Edit button.
   
3. Alter page size if needed on the Layout tab. Click the Custom Page Size button.
   
4. Enter your page size. As above, this needs to be identical to your document paper size.
   
   
5. That’s it. Click Okay and print as above. You can add document properties information as you wish. If you’re saving for widespread public distribution, this is a way to ensure you retain credit for your work.

You may find slight variations in software interfaces, but these three examples should be enough to guide you through any of them. Now, go forth and fill hard drives and cyberspace with your work!

Triumph at the End of a Rocky Road

The note above shows one of a rapidly growing list that Carol B has received from family members after privately publishing a volume of family history laced together with relevant aspects of her personal story. She swells with happiness at each one. These notes are more than usually rewarding. The road to this outcome has been rocky. Her stories sizzle with intrigue. That eventually presented a problem.

Carol, her parents, and a family friend (I omit her full name at her request to protect her family’s privacy), spent decades gathering stories and documents from county records and other sources, documenting purchase and sale of property, births, deaths and marriages, police and jail records, newspaper articles and pictures. Piles and piles of pictures. She took careful notes as relatives chewed the fat at family events.  She even sought out help from her local historical society to gather added information.

Eventually she wove memories and facts into stories. Lifestory writing group members pointed out unclear areas, missing material and more. Her strong writing grew polished in both content and structure. Then forces of darkness emerged.

Her family’s history includes mayhem, madness and murder. It’s all a matter of public record, and mostly forgotten, though ripples remain in family attitudes and traits. Still, she was loathe to publish it all without warning the family. She told everyone whose names appeared in the book what she was up to and asked their permission to share stories relevant to their immediate family members. With the exception of one person within her family, she was offered nothing but support and encouragement.  She did not have anyone else read her book, as she was not willing to write a book by committee.  As it turned out, the faith that family members had in her was almost unanimous. Others showed their trust by giving full permission to use their names and their particular family stories.

However, there was one family member who, without even reading the book, objected on principle. “There is no reason to dig all that stuff up again.”  Said Person would not discuss it with Carol and did not respond to numerous requests to be named in the book, then cut off  direct communication.

Carol’s inner critic went nuts. What if I’m sued?  Maybe I’m too critical. Maybe my book is too negative.  Even if I do expose the people in my book to public scrutiny, these are the stories of my family. What should I do?

Her voice had the sound of defeat as she told me, “That person has gobs of money and can afford to sue me on a whim. Maybe that will happen. Maybe I should just drop it. Maybe I should just share the Word file with anyone who wants to read it.”

“You’ve told dozens of people you’re doing this, and they all want to see it finished. What about them? Will you be letting them down? You’ve set aside funds to see it through. How can we work around this?”

Note to readers: don’t try to handle this alone. Get plenty of perspectives. 

“Do you think I’ve been too critical?  Is my book too negative?”

“NO! But I’m not always the best judge of emotional tone. Let’s get one more opinion.” I recommended another writer I know who excels in this area. Her response was supportive. Carol regained her grip.

She decided she would proceed with the project with these caveats:

• She omitted all references to Said Person beyond a couple of picture captions where she cites the relationship without a name.  She decides to include a vintage photo of Said Person, but includes only a first initial and maiden last name.  To do otherwise would have made her uncomfortable, since she did not want to purposefully leave anyone out of the family history.  She also decided to mail Said Person a copy of the family history book. To date, there has been no acknowledgement of receipt though communication on other subjects has been resumed. 

• In the Acknowledgments she states: “I have remained faithful to the stories that were passed down through the family and relied on my own memories and those of other family members for additional tales. Throughout the process, I maintained my belief and intention to cause no harm.”

• The back cover includes a disclaimer of sorts: “… For decades she has collected stories from relatives and public records. She compiles those stories with personal reflections to tell the family’s story with truth and honesty to the best of her understanding.” 

She also firmed up her decision to keep publication as private as possible.

This last step required thinking out of the box. Carol is facing serious health problems and wants to ensure that her extended family will be able to independently order additional copies for years to come.

In line with her decision to keep the book private, she vowed to avoid all promotion and publicity. She is eager, however, for others to know of her experience, even though they won’t be reading the book. Buoyed by the outpouring of gratitude from family members, such as the note above, she has asked me to share that story, hoping to inspire others who battled doubts about sensitive disclosure to persist and find their own way around obstacles.

I’m happy to oblige, emphasizing to readers that publishing privately with limited distribution can be a strong and rewarding option for those who shy away from telling all to the world at large.

As the fan letter notes, Carol is hard at work on a second volume, a personal memoir. Will this one also be kept under wraps? Who knows? If she opts for open publication, you’ll be among the first to know.

Points to Ponder: What tense material might slow down your writing project? What creative workarounds can you come up with? Who can you turn to for support and fresh ideas?

Points to Ponder: What tense material might slow down your writing project? What creative workarounds can you come up with? Who can you turn to for support and fresh ideas?

Photo Scanning Tips for CreateSpace

My heart nearly broke when I checked the resolution of a photo in a client’s family history/memoir I was preparing for upload to CreateSpace.com for printing copies for family members. When I copied the document photo and pasted it into IrfanView (my favorite free photo editor for low-end needs), I saw that the resolution was only 72 dpi (dots or pixels per inch). That’s a small fraction of the pixel density CreateSpace requires. This was the case with nearly all the several dozen photos in the book.

I had the gut-wrenching task of explaining to my client that she had a choice: I could resample the existing images to trick CreateSpace into believing they were 300 dpi . . . or she could rescan them.

How I wished that she, like the majority of people scanning old family photos, knew all along about scanning at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Here’s why it matters:

CreateSpace will sound an alarm when it analyzes an uploaded document and finds even one image of less than 300 dpi. For good reason. Lo-res images will look even worse in print than they do onscreen when zoomed above 100%. Ignore that warning at your own risk.

The left photo above is scanned at original size at 72 dpi. The image on the right is exactly the same picture, scanned at 300 dpi. Notice the crisp, clear detail in the high-res version compared to the blurry approximation on the left. That’s the sort of result you can expect with any image printed at 72 dpi.

My client wanted her volume to be top quality in every respect, so she opted to rescan as many photos as she still had available. For the rest, we stuck with small sizes and I resampled the existing photos as 300 dpi to stabilize them for printing. That turned off the CreateSpace alarms, but nothing could recreate lost detail. Still, those photos add value to the story and they are better than nothing.

Many of us scanned hundreds of pictures fifteen or twenty years ago when scanner technology was new and file size a concern. A 3” x 4.75” photo scanned at 300 dpi produces a file larger than the 1.44 megabyte capacity of the 3.5” floppy disks we used back then. We scanned at 72, or perhaps 96 dpi. I have a few hundred files like that myself, with the originals clear across the country, as many of hers are now. Those low-res files will work fine for eBooks and online viewing, but they are not print-worthy.

The tips below will help you get the best possible results for your publishing projects. If you decide to have someone else do layout for you, getting the photos right before you hand over the file will keep costs down and save you lots of aggravation.

Terminology

Resolution – the number of dots or pixels per inch. At 72 dpi, a square inch of image will have 72 pixels horizontally x 72 pixels vertically for a total of 5184pixels. At 300 dpi, that will be 300 x 300 for a total of 90,000, allowing for more than 17 times as much detail.

Resample – this word carries a touch of magic. If you change the resolution of an image, software uses samples from the image to calculate how to best condense or expand information to cover the desired amount of space. Increasing resolution spreads existing information thinner and is unable to add more detail.

Tips for preparing photos for publication

Scan at 300 dpi and 100% resolution – or higher. If you have a photo that’s 2” x 3”,  scan it at 600 dpi or higher to give you a high quality image printable at larger sizes so you can enlarge it enough to let people see detail. 600 dpi will allow you to double the size of the original in print. 900 lets  you print up to three times larger. Most old film photos lack the crisp resolution needed to successfully enlarge more than that.

Resample and enhance. If you aren’t able to rescan those old images, resample them to 300 dpi turn off the alarm.

Size in Microsoft Word to fit space on the page, then copy the image and paste into IrfanView or another editor to check resolution. Resample to 300 dpi at the precise size of the image in your manuscript. Replace the “temp” image with the resized one.

This matters because Word does a poor job of resampling, and images resized within the document generally look terrible when printed. This is partly due to changing the resolution as you resize in Word. Resizing is a nuisance, but worth the effort. I’ve tried not doing it and the results were not pretty.

Crop images with a photo editor. You  can do this in Word, and it might be okay, if you start with a 300 dpi image and don’t change anything else about its size. Check the quality of the image in your proof copy of the finished book.  For best results, crop in IrfanView, Photoshop Elements, or something similar and check to make sure the final image is 300 dpi.

Use an image editor to convert color images to grayscale if you plan to print in black and white. You can print from color or use Word’s image editing function to do this, but it’s not your best choice.

I’ll do another post soon on using your scanner interface. For now, scan big and pose questions in comments.

Write now: take a break from writing and scan a photo or two. Insert it in Word and play around with sizing. Download IrfanView and practice resampling. Tip: Resizing is on the Image menu. Ctrl+R will get take you right there. Have fun!

Six Things I Learned Going from Memoir to Fiction

Invited guest post by Carol Bodensteiner

Long time readers may be surprised to find a post about writing fiction on this blog about life writing. While it’s true that my focus is on memoir, lifestory, journaling and other forms that draw upon actual experience to express personal truth, sometimes the freedom of fiction is more effective in conveying truth. Carol Bodensteiner found this to be true. She has successfully written in both genres and her experience moving from memoir to fiction has lessons for all.

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I’d been a business writer all my life, so I was used to working with facts. Memoir was a logical first writing step. Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Girl, tells the stories of my childhood growing up on a family farm in the middle of the United States, in the middle of the 20^th Century.

When I finally raised my head from writing, publishing, and marketing the memoir, I looked around for what I’d write next. I turned to family-inspired fiction, which I’d never written before.  My novel, Go Away Home, which I indie published in 2014 and was acquired by Lake Union Publishing (an imprint of Amazon Publishing) later that year, is the result of that effort.

The road from memoir to fiction brought many adventures and a lot of learning. Here are six things I learned along the way.

1) A family story can be a great launching pad to fiction.

Go Away Home was inspired by my maternal grandparents. My grandfather died of the Spanish Flu in 1918. Throughout my life, I’ve been intrigued by my connection to this major world event. As someone used to writing from facts, a family story gave me a starting point: A story I cared to write and people and places that were familiar.

Writing the story as fiction was necessary for many reasons. One was that I didn’t have enough facts to write it any other way. Of course I never knew my grandfather and even though my grandmother lived until I was well into my 20s, I never asked her a single question about him or their lives together. And she was not the type to share. So though the story began with family, it is fiction.

2) Don’t get stuck on the facts

Once I got into writing the story, one of the biggest challenges was letting go of the facts. Since the genesis of this story rose from people in my family, and I knew a bit about the people, places, and events, my inclination was to use those facts. But I quickly found that the facts didn’t work for the story I was ultimately telling. They didn’t create a good story arc. There was no drama. On his website, Write the Truth, Robert McKee said, “The weakest possible excuse to include anything in a story is: ‘But it actually happened.’”  Having gone this route, I believe him.

3) Do get stuck on the facts

Since Go Away Home is historical fiction, research was critical to creating the time period accurately. Clothes, transportation, hairstyles, technology, colloquialisms. The list of topics I researched and fact checked was long. Readers of historical fiction really care about the details. Writers must, too.

Research also helped shape the story. One example: Family lore was that my grandmother went to a sewing school. Research revealed that the town in question didn’t have a sewing school, rather that young girls apprenticed with seamstresses as a way to learn an important life skill and to meet a man to marry.  The idea that seamstresses were invited to their clients’ house parties had terrific dramatic potential, so I ran with that.

Another bit of fact to fiction. My grandmother took pictures, but the whole part in the book about the main character’s work for a photographer and her relationship with him is entirely fiction.  Most of the book is that way. Tiny fact. Huge fiction.

4) Planner vs. Pantser

Writers fall into two general camps: Planners and Pantsers. I wrote my way into Go Away Home, discovering the story through countless re-writes – by the seat of my pants. I always knew the end of the story; I didn’t know how we got there. In the first draft, the story started in 1900 and my main character Liddie was 10. In the second draft, the story started in 1915 and Liddie was 19. In the published draft, the story starts in 1913 and Liddie is 16. Believe me – those changes create seismic waves throughout the story.

Having used this highly inefficient “pantser” approach once, I’m reasonably certain that I’m a “plotter” at heart and will be more plan-ful in future writing.

5) Fiction is freeing

While I thought it would be easier to start with some facts because that was what I was used to, the reality was there was great freedom in starting with nothing. As the story developed (pantser), it became clear that connections were missing. I needed a scene to show my main character’s inexperience with men. No problem. I made up a guy. I found it was great fun to let my imagination run. Over and over, I filled holes with scenes that met a plot need.

6) New craft to learn

I learned a lot about creative writing as I crafted my memoir, much of which was also applicable to fiction. Dialogue, scene development, visual characterization – all come into play in both genres. Plotting was a new challenge in fiction writing, as I noted earlier. Developing multi-dimensional fictional characters was another challenge.

I used a number of techniques that contributed to creating the real, individual people living in my novel. I visualized people I know who were somewhat like the characters I had in mind. Writing exercises helped to identify key traits and to express them in fresh ways. I used Enneagram research to flesh out the positive and negative traits of various personality types.

From memoir to fiction, from craft to research, I will always be able to learn something new about writing, and for me, that’s great fun.

Go Away Home is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook formats.

Growing Up Country is available on Amazon in paperback, ebook, and audio book formats.

Carol Bodensteiner – Bio

Carol Bodensteiner is a writer who finds inspiration in the places, people, culture and history of the Midwest. After a successful career in public relations consulting, she turned to creative writing. She blogs about writing, her prairie, gardening, and whatever in life interests her at the moment. She published her memoir Growing Up Country in 2008. Her WWI-era, debut novel Go Away Home was acquired by Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. It launches July 7, 2015.

Carol’s online links
Website/blog 
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook

Write now: think of an interesting ancestor or other person who has influenced your life that you know relatively little about. Drawing on Carol’s experience, write a short story about how you imagine this person’s life might have been. Don’t worry about facts. Just let that story rip. Have fun with this!

Mini-Memoir – Great Things Come in Small Packages

In a post on the U.S. edition of the British Guardian website, journalist Anna Baddeley cites several mini-memoirs published by celebrity authors. In conclusion she opines that mini-memoir is “An exciting trend in journalism that one hopes will soon take off over here.” I hope so too, as a reader (what's not to like about a book you can finish in three hours or less), as a writer (what's not to like about a book you can finish in two or three months rather than years?), and as a teacher (more of my students can publish!).

So what is a mini-memoir? Basically, mini-memoir is the non-fiction equivalent of a novella. To date, this short form has not received much attention, though you can find a few in Amazon if you search on that term. One of the titles that pops up on this search is Adventures of a Chilehead: A Mini-Memoir with Recipes, by Yours Truly. The term seems to be used in two ways. Some use it to recount memories limited to a tightly focused topic. Some overlap the definition of mini-memoir with flash memoir, the topic of my most recent post.

I couldn't recall hearing the term before when I popped it onto the cover of Adventures of a Chilehead. As far as I knew, I was coining a phrase, one that seemed apt for a concise collection of short stories crafted around a unifying theme.

Here's how the book evolved: A dozen years ago I wrote two stories featuring adventures I’ve had eating hot chile. About four years later I wrote a third, "Great Balls of Fire," within days of the featured event, almost before my mouth quit burning. I considered that story to be my declaration of independence from stomach-scarring scoville levels.  For eight years I referred to these three stories as my "Chilehead Trilogy." I wanted to do more with them, to turn them into what I refer to in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing as a "story album" (otherwise known as an anthology).

Last year the light dawned. I could publish that trilogy as a Kindle book, just for the heckuvit. Just for fun. When I began working toward that end, I thought of more stories. Three stories evolved into ten chapters, plus the section of recipes. What began as a simple Kindle compilation expanded enough to work as a print version.

Weaving the eight stories into a cohesive whole, ensuring adequate background without repetition was a challenge, Drafting the introduction and concluding chapters even more so. But as typically happens with memoir, while massaging those stories and reflections, my love for this pungent fruit grew even deeper, along with my understanding of the way it grounds and roots me in the land I hold dear after  fifty-some years away.

Aside from the subject matter and recipes, this book differs from full-length memoir in an important respect. It's focused more sharply. It's about chile and me. Nothing more, nothing less. I mention relatives and relationships, but they stay in the background. I mention place, but only in passing. Yet within that strict focus, you can see changes in my thinking. Learning and growth did happen. I wrote as much as I have to say about chile, and let it go at that rather than forcing the issue and straying from truth, chasing elusive word count.

Just as tiny memory fragments power flash memoir, themed memory clusters illuminate mini-memoir, a great hit with busy readers. With Kindle and maybe CreateSpace, you can transform stacks of loose stories into themed mini-memoir for friends and family — and the rest of the world if you wish.

Write now: pull together an assortment of related stories. Look for the common thread linking them together. Find a logical order, reduce repetition and add elements to showcase that thread. Share with friends for feedback, add a cover and the requisite promo material and you're good to go to Amazon.

Lessons Learned on the Amazon Path

No, I have not been on vacation to the Amazon recently, though I wish I had – except not right now during its rainy season. I’m referring here to the unexpected twists and turns on the path to the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) arm of Amazon.com  as I completed my journey toward publication of Adventures of a Chilehead.

I wrote about early details of this project in three posts in June: “Chile or Chile? Check it Out,” “Lessons Learned”, and “Story Album to Memoir.” In July that early manuscript flowed through email to a team of beta readers. After incorporating their sage advice about need for further detail, spots that needed an edit and more, I thought final layout was all I needed to do before the book was ready for publication.

That predictably became complicated, and pressures of preparing for classes I was teaching in September resulted in setting the project aside for more than two months. When I reopened the project in late October, I was stunned. I read a paper copy of the manuscript and realized it still needed a lot of work. Here are a few of the lessons I learned (or relearned) in the process:

Wine, cheese and stories improve with proper aging. This is not news to me. I often open story files I haven’t looked at for months and years and see dramatic improvements I could make. We get too close to our work to be objective. Setting it aside and immersing our thoughts in something else for a time allows us to return with fresh vision and perspective.

In the future, I’ll schedule in these breaks before final publication. I always underestimate the time required anyway.

Expect unexpected glitches. This time the unexpected glitch was a section break meltdown in my print version of the manuscript.  Since this was a print document, having the precise type of section break (odd page, next page) was not as important as having some section break to control page header changes. I did an end run and arm-wrestled that gator to the ground. Then, after all was said and done, I checked online and found the solution.

In the future, I’ll turn to Google right away. 

Proof-read in many modes. Again, this was not news. But sure enough, a paper printout looked different from anything digital. When I read the.mobi file proof from the KDP site, I found several more rough spots that needed further sanding. When I ordered my print proof copy, I filled it with flags. Not until I saw that final print version did I realize I’d failed to check for stragglers (those stray single words at the ends of paragraphs) after reducing the margins by .2”. As long as I was making those changes, I found even more opportunities for improvement.

In the future I’ll print a paper copy of the final pdf version before uploading.

Remember that stories of any size are always a work in progress – like life itself. At some point it’s time to realize it’s as good as it’s going to get. Click the Publish button and get on with it. You can go back and make changes later if you want, but at some point it’s time to turn loose and move on.

So, it’s done. My path finally led to the river. You can purchase your copy of the Kindle version of Adventures of a Chilehead: A Mini-Memoir with Recipes on Amazon right now. The print version should be ready for orders by December 6. I had so much fun writing this book, I hate to see it finished, but it is time to set it free and hopefully watch it soar. I’ll tell you more about some of the elements that made it such fun very soon.

Write Now: If you are working on a story that’s driving you nuts, set it aside. Let it age for two or three months. Pull out an unfinished story or project that’s been sitting around for a few weeks or longer and work on that.  Your old story will sound fresh to you and you’ll quickly find ways to improve it. Meanwhile, your problem story will stir around under the radar and reemerge with fresh energy.

Writing Compelling Description

The Heart and Craft family of fine publications has expanded. Today marks the official debut of The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description.

Chapters in this book may sound familiar to some. Each of the forty-eight chapters appeared as a post on this blog. Many may wonder why I published this book when all the content is available online. Here’s the story.

I already had a short anthology of description-related posts that I’ve used in various ways over the past few years. One gray January day, I whimsically decided to transform that document into a $.99 Kindle short. I thought it might take … maybe three hours. That was three months ago!

Many of my favorite posts were missing, so I sorted through nearly six hundred posts. Forty-eight made the cut. Next I shuffled them into some semblance of order, checked for dead links, and double-checked permissions for graphics. Sharing on a blog  the public can read for free is one thing. Using images in a for-profit publication is another. Some had to be changed. The posts needed more editing than I realized. A volunteer team of friends and writing group buddies offered  remarkable suggestions and the quality improved.

As I struggled with the introduction, I had an epiphany about the entire process of writing description:

Description is anything that shapes the reader’s perception of your message or story.

That insight blew out the walls of  my boxed-in concept of description as adjectives, similes and metaphors, opening a universe of creative options I had not previously noticed in those posts as I wrote them.

As the collection grew, friends convinced me this project had outgrown the original $.99 intention. They wanted to have a collection of those posts at their fingertips where they could easily refer to them, so I crafted a print version and turned to Amazon’s free CreateSpace publishing service as my printer and distributor.

During the ensuing weeks, various cheerleaders, with Gutsy Sonia Marsh at the fore, held my feet to the fire to develop a cover everyone was happy with. Writing group friends helped with content edits. Thanks especially to Elizabeth Kim, Carol Broz and Tom Imerito. How I valued their help with the book description! Who thinks about these aspects of publishing?

Hillary Clinton coined the phrase “It takes a village.” That phrase is equally true of publishing. Anyone can write a book, but it takes a village to ensure it’s a solid, well-written, well-crafted book the world can benefit from. I especially appreciate enthusiastic “beta readers” who have (or soon will) post reviews. I can’t begin to describe the sense of elated humility I feel as I read those reviews and personal comments.

The biggest differences between publishing this book and The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing (released seven years ago) is that this time I made final decisions on everything, and I control the business end. Even that book was a non-traditional experience. Although the earlier cover was professionally designed, it built on my concept, and I did all layout – an unheard-of arrangement when working with a traditional publisher. I love doing layout!

Controlling graphics for eBook conversion had a steep learning curve. I’ve now tamed that beast, and I can save you a lot of time if you ever need to know the secret.

Thanks again to all who have helped along the way, and I hope everyone else finds as much value in this new volume as you have!

Write now: I invite you to click over to Amazon and use the “Look Inside” feature to read the introduction to The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description, and skim the reviews. Then either buy a copy of this new book and write a review. Or find a book you’ve recently enjoyed and review it. Reviewing is the best way to find hidden insights you missed on the first reading and milk even more goodness from the volume. It builds community with other readers, past and potential, as well as the authors.

Professional Looking Books the Easy Way

When I wrote The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing to help readers begin writing their lifestories, I knew that some readers would eventually be ready to publish story albums – collections of short stories – or full-length memoirs. To help them produce professional looking volumes, I included instructions for assembling and preparing the documents to take advantage of free Print-On-Demand services like CreateSpace.com. I gave detailed instructions for using Styles to simplify formatting and ensure uniform results. I explained how and why to adjust line spacing for easier reading and suggested a number of reader-friendly fonts readily available for free download. I gave instructions for setting custom page size and effective margin settings. You’ll find everything there that you need to know to create a “real” book that doesn’t scream BEGINNER BOOK!

But, I admit it, there is a learning curve, and it’s more effort than many people want to invest. Until now, if you didn’t feel up to the challenge, have the time to try, or have a friend or relative you could cajole into helping, you could either settle for the home-made look or write a big check to a book designer or layout service.

I have great news: Joel Friedlander, veteran book designer, publisher of The Book Designer.com  and author of over 700 helpful articles for self-publishers, just launched a new service offering affordable, professionally designed templates that allow you to produce a polished book project with Microsoft Word. These templates relieve you of all decisions about line spacing, margin settings, header arrangement, font choices and more.

All you need to do is to write, edit and polish your manuscript, paste it into the template, and follow the comprehensive set of instructions to add header information, apply body text and title styles, fill in publication information and so forth. Add a cover and upload to CreateSpace and you’ll amaze everyone with your stunning results.

You may be wondering if I’ve used one of these templates. No, I have not, and I’m not getting a commission or any other incentive from this recommendation, but I know a good thing when I see it. I have used the same process they did to create templates (I even tell you how to create your own templates in my book), so I know how they work. It may be a little tedious, even stressful at first, but it isn’t rocket science, and it’s way easier than starting from scratch. You’ll also find templates for producing eBooks that coordinate with the look of your print project. That alone is worth the cost of the template.

If you are even thinking of someday publishing a volume for your family or the world at large, pay a visit to Joel’s sites. Look through the wealth of general information at The Book Designer.com and download a copy of his free eBook, Ten Things You Need to Know About Self-Publishing. Then click on over to Book Design Templates.com and check out the selections. While you are there, look for the Guides link on the menu bar where you can download copies of his free Book Construction Blueprint and  Template Formatting Guide eBooks. They are “must read” material, even if you don’t plan to use his templates.

As powerful as they are, current Book Design Templates don’t currently include one key element you’ll probably want: automated magic for inserting photos. Fortunately you can find step-by-step instructions for doing this beginning on page 264 in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing.

You put an enormous amount of time and thought into writing your stories. You owe it to yourself and your stories to make them look as good as they sound.

Write now: take a break from writing and read Joel’s free e-Books, then watch a few YouTube video tutorials on using Styles to ease your way whether you use his templates, the instructions in my book, or wing it on your own.

Writerly Resolutions for 2013

Writers benefit from New Year Resolutions as much or more than anyone. I realize we are already four days into the year, and for many, thoughts of resolutions last about as long as ice cubes in New Year’s Eve drinks.

But it's not too late. Durable, productive resolutions take time to craft. Besides, you need to do more than write two or five words about an outcome. You need to use your writerly skills to flesh out that description. Tell yourself or the world what it will look like, taste like, feel like (both tactile feel and emotional), and so forth. Then draft at least a rudimentary plan of getting from here to there, so you can track your progress.

I have two goals I’ll mention here. One is relatively new. In November I featured a guest post by Elizabeth Kim, who wrote about her experience publishing two Kindle Short eBooks, Dancing In the Rain and What My Mother Didn’t Know. Each of her books is what I refer to as a story album. Each is comprised of six or seven poignant and touching short stories that focus on a common theme.

This was not a new idea to me – I include instructions for compiling story albums in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing – but I have not, to date, published one of my own. Now that it’s become easy to do this in eBook format, it’s time to get the show on the road. I already had four stories about my adventures as a chilihead (someone addicted to the endorphin rush that follows hot chili intake and considers a day without chili rather like a day without sunshine). I have resolved to finish three more and publish this eBook story album by … April?

Process: finish drafting one story, then draft the other two on the list. Edit all three. Compile all seven stories into a single document, format, upload to Kindle and Smashwords. Celebrate.

I’d be more specific about dates, but my second goal may nudge this one aside. I have firmly resolved that this is the year I will finally finish the book on sensory description that I began a couple of years ago. Delays have made the content richer, and now it’s time to finish it and send it out to the world.

Surely you’re curious about this second project. I hope so! I’m working on finalizing the content, and will be announcing the title shortly with the advent of a Facebook page for it. You’ll be hearing more about it here, and I’ll be having book-related events. Stay tuned for details and excerpts! Subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already so you won’t  miss a post about it.

Write Now: Set at least one writerly goal you want to accomplish by the end of 2013. This may be a goal to write twelve stories, one a month. It might be to finish the draft of a memoir. It might be to journal at least five times a week through the year, or complete a story album of two dozen stories. Whatever it is, be sure you do believe you can complete it. Then write a description of the completed project, as discussed above, and create a simple outline of steps to get from here to there.

Give the Gift of Story

If you, like Santa, are making a list and checking it twice, here’s a gift idea for adult relatives: stick a copy of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing in their stocking.

This gift is a way of urging them to record their stories for you and the future. While you’re at it, order a copy for yourself. While you may not be able to crank out the story of your entire life in the next six weeks, you can begin now with a single story or two. If you write two pages a week, you’ll have six hundred pages in two years.

Amazon has dozens of books explaining how to write lifestories, and all have merit. In fact, I encourage anyone who is serious about writing lifestory, autobiography or memoir to read several.  I also encourage them to begin with mine, which is the most comprehensive I’ve found.

In addition to the usual guidelines for writing stories, here’s a list of features that set The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing apart:

• Start-to-finish instructions on planning writing projects, whether you want to write a simple story about a single incident or a complete history of your life.

• Guidelines for finding your personal writing style, whether you are a spontaneous binge writer, or someone who likes an orderly, little-bit-at-a-time process.

• Simple explanations of elements that bring stories to life like description, strong beginnings and endings, including personal reflection, and more.

• Concise overview of grammar and punctuation. Everything the average writer needs is covered in a one place.

• Layout guidelines with step-by-step instructions for using your computer to prepare attractive printed pages.

• Self-publishing overview explains the basics of preparing finished volumes of stories or memoir for uploading to free Print-on-Demand (POD) publishing sites like Amazon’s CreateSpace.

• Extensive list of writing prompts to trigger memories about any stage of life.

Please understand: this book is not intended to be read cover-to-cover, non-stop. It’s a user manual for the writing process. Read some, then write. Then read more. Repeat until your project is finished. Then read again and start another volume. It’s addictive!

Write now: click here and enter ordering information for several copies of  The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing! Then write notes for each recipient explaining that you’ll never be able to remember or tell their stories the way they do, and you hope they’ll write them down as a legacy of family history. Explain that it’s okay if they write these stories as a series of letters. The book will show them how to get started.

Tech Tips for Clean Manuscripts

I’m a  soft touch when a friend or relative asks for help getting a manuscript ready for uploading to a Print-On-Demand service like CreateSpace. More than half a dozen times these requests have ended me saying, “Just send me the file and I’ll fix it, but before you start another one, you have to promise to learn a few basic skills.” Then I spend hours cleaning up formatting garbage before applying the simple tweaks that convert it to a lean, clean, beautiful piece of work.

For those who grew up in the typewriter age, it’s natural to position text with spaces, both horizontally and vertically. It’s hard to unlearn some of those old habits, but if you want to take advantage of recent developments in affordable and accessible printing technology, you’ll do yourself and your pocketbook a favor by overwriting those mental typewriter files.

The tips below will ultimately save you time and maybe money. If you pay someone to do your layout, they will charge for the time it takes to find all the places you used spaces to center a title or pressed “Enter” 23 times to make a new page. Ebooks absolutely require a  squeaky clean manuscript.

Things to avoid and why

Using spaces to center anything. This locks you into a specific font and size, and your approximated efforts will lack crispness.

Center lines by using the Center Align icon on the toolbar.

Using spaces (or tabs) to position anything. As above, this will produce variable results.

Options include using tabs (only if you are sure you won’t convert to an eBook format), altering paragraph indentation (right-click and select the paragraph option), using tables or text boxes.

Using tabs at beginning of paragraphs. This advice may sound odd indeed. It has not been an easy habit for me to break. However, as page sizes, line lengths and font settings change, you may want to change the tab setting. Although you can control the tab setting in your paragraph style, using tabs is not advised for eBook conversion, so you’ll retain flexibility if you stay away from them as much as possible.

Set the first line indentation on the Normal or Default style. More about styles below.

Double-spacing between paragraphs. This is okay in a simple, short letter or story, but controlling paragraph spacing with styles is far preferable.

Bone up on Styles.

Entering two spaces at end of sentences. This is a hold-over from typewriter days, and it’s a really hard habit to break. Problems arise when you justify text to make even margins on both sides. Software distributes the extra spacing in spaces, so a double-space can become glaringly obvious.

Routinely use Find and Replace on completed manuscripts to replace all double-spaces with single ones. Obviously this will also kill any spacing you did with multiple spaces – another reason to avoid that technique.

Things to Do and Why

Learn to use Styles. Using Styles seems cumbersome at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a level of control you never imagined and save way more time in final layout than you invested in setting up your styles. With Styles you can

• change things like font size, line-spacing, or paragraph. alignment in your entire document with a single edit.
• change chapter or section headings without affecting paragraph text and vice-versa.
• automatically create a Table of Contents.
• save time and money on preparation for publishing.
• ensure consistency.

If you haven’t used Styles, do a YouTube search for your version of Word (or whatever software you use), and create your own class.

Download the Smashwords Style Book. Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, the leading free eBook conversion service, has written a book that details everything you need to know to get your manuscript squeaky clean and prepare it for eBook conversion. His tips work equally well to prepare for printing. He has generously made the book available at no cost.  You can download it as a pdf or any eBook format except Kindle from this link.

Write now: If you’ve never used Styles, open an old document, then watch a couple of YouTube videos, and play around with Styles in your document.

Why I Self-Published

This week I’m pleased to feature an invited guest post from Linda Austin, author of Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, and a colleague from the Life Writers Forum and Story Circle Network.

My mother has a lot of interesting stories of growing up in Japan during and around WWII. I wanted to write her memoir. Although it started out as a family project, this memoir became something I thought would interest a lot of people, particularly educators as Japanese civilian stories from WWII are rare. This project took so long that I began noticing signs of Alzheimer’s in my mother, and then the newspapers began writing about the 65^th anniversary of the end of WWII and I knew I had to get busy.

After three months of drop-everything-to-write, I was able to hand a softcover print memoir to my mother in early September 2005, in time for her 80^th birthday, barely in time to publicize it in conjunction with the anniversary of the end of WWII. Cherry Blossoms in Twilight was self-published through a local printer featured in the newspaper along with an article about the St. Louis Publishers Association. This article led me to self-publish – I had no time to bother with finding a publisher because I wanted this book for my mother before she lost her ability to read or understand what I had done.

My mother, our family, friends and strangers raved about the book, but I wasn’t satisfied with it, especially after I joined the St. Louis Publishers Association (SLPA) and learned so much about publishing. I produced a second edition using everything the SLPA taught me. I tweaked the story to better suit what readers might want, had a new cover by a professional cover designer, and uploaded the book to Lightning Source for print-on-demand and an excellent distribution system. Schools, libraries and bookstores could easily buy it, and I’m proud to say Princeton University carries a copy. Amazon’s CreateSpace was not in existence then, only Amazon Advantage (Take-Advantage, I called it).

I’ve been a board member of SLPA for over six years now, with my nose in everything to do with publishing. Yes, I’d self publish again. I’m working on a book of poems inspired by my mother’s dementia and my visits to the nursing home, and I’ll use CreateSpace because I won’t need distribution (poetry books don’t sell well). I’m also formatting Cherry Blossoms to upload to Kindle Direct Publishing. I’ve used Lulu.com to publish hardcover and softcover short memoirs for elder folks – just for the families, though. Lulu was very easy to use and perfect for producing a couple dozen copies, but using it to publish for the public is expensive, as it is with most publishing services companies.

With the advent of e-books and affordable, good quality print-on-demand technology, there’s never been a better time to take charge and self publish. But, you’d better know what you’re getting in to and what you’re doing or you could spend a lot of money unnecessarily or end up with a book that won’t sell (or both). Self-publishing is the shorter route, not the easy route, and many authors balk at marketing.

I advise new authors to read everything they can about publishing – and marketing. (Marketing actually starts with writing.) Every author these days must market his or her own work. Traditional publishers are struggling with Amazon, the bad economy, the advent of easy self-publishing, and the popularity of e-books. They can’t afford to market much and are more careful than ever about taking on the risk of unknown authors. You can wait ten years or more for a traditional press to accept your work, which may never happen, try for a small press (easier to be accepted, but buyer beware), or take the reins, study the road map, and make your own way into the realm of publishing.

Linda uses her website, Moonbridge Publications, to encourage others to capture life stories. She has collected and created some resources to help get started on the journey of memoir writing and publishing. Self-publishing is an intricate topic way too big for one post, but articles listed under the resources tab of the Moonbridge Publications website will help new authors navigate the field of publishing choices and make smart decisions that result in a professional-looking book without breaking the bank.

End of the Line for Lulu

For several years I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of Lulu.com for those wishing to self-publish a small number of volumes of their lifestory or memoir. I’ve posted several times about my experience publishing my preschool memoir, The Albuquerque Years on Lulu. 

Over the past five years, many friends and students have followed my advice and lead, using Lulu to publish their projects. I’m now recommending Amazon-owned CreateSpace, the no-fee Print-On-Demand provider of choice. Let me explain why I’ve removed The Albuquerque Years from Lulu’s website.

Without asking for my permission or notifying me, Lulu converted my document to ePub format and uploaded it to the Apple iStore and the Barnes & Noble digital catalog, setting the price at $2.99.

That was not okay with me! If that isn’t illegal, it’s certainly unethical. I immediately removed it from those catalogs.

I was never given the opportunity to review the conversion for formatting errors. The Albuquerque Years includes over two dozen embedded photos, which are notoriously difficult to position in ePubs. When I finally discovered how to download the ePub file, I noticed that the pictures do display between paragraphs, but not always between the ones they are relevant to. It needs some work before I re-release it, probably via Smashwords.com, as a free download.

I never added a “royalty” markup to the book, intending for any interested readers to purchase it at my wholesale cost, which has risen from about $2.79 five years ago to $3.99 today.

To my surprise, tens of unrelated people opted to purchase a paper copy. Today, if the book were still listed on Lulu, the “retail” price would be $7.99. I’m relieved that nobody (including me!) has ordered a copy since this outrageous inflation began. I certainly don’t want anyone thinking I caught the greed bug.

A LiveChat customer service agent (Lulu does not offer the option of phoning them directly, toll-free or otherwise) fed me some corporate line about “the stated current manufacturing price”, but was unable to explain why my wholesale price was lower. I can’t blame him. He’s just doing his job. I refuse to support the executive attitudes behind his explanation.

The free eBook (pdf) dowload link disappeared.

I intended for the pdf version to be free, as it was for over four years. Just before I “retired” the project (I discovered you cannot delete published projects), I discovered that the link to download the free pdf ebook was missing. I have fixed that. The link to The Albuquerque Years in the right sidebar now connects with my personal server for free digital downloads. (Click here now to get your own copy if you don’t already have it.)

Lulu’s pricing has become unpredictable.

Over the past year or two they have begun sending out a steady stream of “special offers” like 10% off, free shipping, 20% off, third book free, etc. Although I’m a die-hard bargain shopper, when I’m ready to buy a book, I don’t want to feel like if I waited another week, the price would drop, and I especially resent having retail prices inflated to cover this system.

By contrast, CreateSpace offers consistent pricing far lower than Lulu’s, free phone support, and they scan your uploaded document for typos and punctuation/grammar errors. Wow! The volumes I’ve seen coming off their presses are first rate in quality. Forums are full of great recommendations. Jonna Ivin is delighted with her experience using them to publish Will Love For Crumbs (see her guest post on this topic). I plan to upload a project myself to give them a whirl in the near future.

Write now: if you haven’t already done so, visualize a completed volume of your life story. It may take the form of a collection of individual stories or a memoir integrating those stories into a unified account. You may be writing more about family history. Perhaps your book will include lots of photographs. Let your vision grow and pull you forward. Set up an account at CreateSpace to add magnetism to that goal.