Do you have good news to share about youth? I’m encouraging bloggers to share “Good News About Youth and the Adults Who Empower Them.” Please write about the great things you see happening in your community - and I’ll feature links once per week through August.

Here are a few of my recent articles related to youth empowerment:

Service to Others: Raising Charitable Kids (5 Minutes for Mom - Positively Speaking)
My Daughter Won the Kohl’s Scholarship (Pass the Torch)
How to Empower Your Students (So You Want to Teach)
Youth Empowerment (Pass the Torch)
Good News About Youth is There When We Seek It (E-Writing)
Growing a Servant’s Heart (Pass the Torch)

Feel free to attribute and republish a short excerpt of any of the above articles, and link to the complete original post.

My book, Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things will soon be available everywhere. If you’re looking for it, the following stores and major online retailers are a good place to start:

SearchInstituteStore.org
Barnes & Noble
Amazon.com
bn.com
Powell’s.com.

I also offer autographed copies from my company order page here.

And please be sure to ask your local library to carry it! Librarians are often looking for recommendations from their patrons.

We host regular giveaways for parents and educators. Please consider signing up for updates by email or feed. We will never spam you or give out your address.

We returned to the house from our cabin for a day last week. We had lawn to mow and mail to retrieve. And I knew there would be a box on my porch. I hadn’t really told the kids about this package, but I thought about it during the entire 45-minute drive.

When we pulled into the driveway, I saw it sitting there, but told myself I’d get it in a minute. As usual, we had loads to carry in, and would use the garage door, rather than the one on the porch. The kids helped me haul in the cabin basket filled with whatever we thought we’d need for the overnight stay, got the dog out of the car, and Darla grabbed the pile of mail that had accumulated in our mailbox.

Once everything had been dropped on the floor and kitchen counter, Craig took off to see his buddies, and Darla started sorting the mail. I quietly walked to the porch door and opened it, picking up the small cardboard box I’d been waiting to open. It was light and unassuming, yet I felt my heart beat faster as I read the return address label.

I carried it to the counter next to Darla and dug around for scissors in the junk drawer. Darla sifted through the mail, planning to open the ubiquitous credit card applications, and get a few fake cards for a make-believe game she plays with her friends.

I sliced through the clear packaging tape while Darla chatted about what I considered the useless pile of garbage she’d retrieved from the mailbox. She probably assumed my box was one of the regular ones that comes from Office Depot, addressed to my company.

“Can I use this Visa card? It says. ‘John Smith,’” she asked.

“Sure,” I said as I sliced through the clear packaging tape.

“Oh, I think this one’s a bill — I’ll put it over here,” she told me.

“Sounds good,” I said, removing the kraft-colored filler paper from the box.

There they were. Five of them. Crisp and shiny, a bright green, with blue and black lettering. The pdf file image really didn’t do them justice. They were beautiful — and mine.

I pulled out the top copy of my brand-new book, and held it with both hands up near my face. I could still smell the fresh printing. The scent of ink and paper lingered, even on this small pile of books. Then I quietly said, “Darla look.”

She turned her head away from her project, and her face lit up with both surprise and excitement. But most touching was the way she spoke - like a mother might speak to her daughter, her heart swollen with pride.

“Congratulations, Mom!”

She’d been with me on so many steps of publishing. She listened to my half of the interview conversations on the phone. She watched me during those months at the keyboard. Then she celebrated with me as I held the book in my hands. And now she confidently tells her friends,

“My mom’s an author.”

Other torch-passers:
Phat Mommy - The Lemonade Stand - Sell What People Want

What does passing the torch mean to you? Is it teaching? Passing traditions? Or good news about youth? Join us each week for Pass the Torch Tuesday.Former PTT posts.

Each weekend I share moments that help me journey toward occasional “presence” — explained in A New Earth — to enjoy life and appreciate small gifts. This post is also a part of Fussy’s Happiness Project every Thursday.

This seven-part series will cover the 2 ½-year time span between the day I set out to become an author and the day I became one.

Becoming an Author – Part Seven
Spring 2008

This final segment of Becoming an Author describes the past few months, when when our gears shifted toward marketing. We’d seen the cover design, and now the designer was finishing the back cover as well. I asked my editor to send the manuscript to a few like-minded authors I’d met and they offered strong testimonial blurbs for promotion.

I’d already learned so much during this process – about publishing and youth empowerment both. But my education would just begin regarding marketing piece. My confusion about when the book would be available for sale caused me to finally contact my editor, who referred me to a new team of professionals in marketing, public relations, web design and trade publication. Apparently the book would be available in July, even though the IPG release date wouldn’t happen until September. The IPG date is our in-house terminology for when the book becomes available to all the trade markets.

I went to Search Institute Press for a brainstorming meeting and was awed by the beautiful architecture in the historic Banks Building which houses Search. I was also completely impressed by the team that would be marketing my book. A do-it-yourself-er my whole life, you can imagine the relief I felt in knowing that other talented professionals would manage the press releases, trade shows, advertising and promotional contacts. I left this meeting even more buzzed about the book than I was when I entered the building.

And this brings us to today — 2 1/2 years after I decided to pursue a writing career, and more than two years since proposing the concept which turned into Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things. During this journey, few people close to me understood the process involved to making this particular life-list item happen. Few friends or family members comprehended what I was doing during those long months at the keyboard. If you’ve read this series, you now know how it happened for me.

I now anxiously await this book so I can hold it in my hands. I hope you’ll join me.

Becoming an Author series:
Part One — Winter 2006
Part Two — Spring 2006
Part Three — Summer 2006
Part Four — Fall 2006
Part Five — Winter-Spring 2007
Part Six — July 2007-February 2008
Part Seven — Spring 2008
Photos of Search Institute Press

My book, Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things, will soon be available from Search Institute Press.

When I drove to Minneapolis for a marketing brainstorm session at Search Institute Press, I was awed not only by the grace and talent of the entire team that will bring this book out into the world, but also by the architecture of the building itself.

Search Institute is housed in the historic Banks building in Minneapolis. This beautiful mural is painted on the wall leading up to the offices.

But my favorite part of the architecture is this stairwell within the office. The natural light from the ceiling leads the way to my publishing/editing/marketing team.

Becoming an Author series:
Part One — Winter 2006
Part Two — Spring 2006
Part Three — Summer 2006
Part Four — Fall 2006
Part Five — Winter-Spring 2007
Part Six — July 2007-February 2008
Photos of Search Institute Press

My book, Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things, will soon be available at Search Institute Press.

For More Wordless Wednesday, please go here or here.

This seven-part series will cover the 2 ½-year time span between the day I set out to become an author and the day I became one.

Becoming an Author – Part Six
July 2007-February 2008

After a year of homeschooling, we knew it wasn’t a long-term solution for us, so we did our research and chose the school district we wanted our kids to attend. We just needed to buy a house and move there. Our summer was spent doing that, and preparing to enter a new chapter in our lives.

I was also offered a part-time school counselor position in the same district, which turned out to be the perfect fit. This way I could be selective about my writing pursuits, without needing to worry as much about income. I chose not to take work-for-hire writing contracts that came my way, but rather narrowed my focus and reestablished my goals as a writer.

Throughout the next eight months, I completed several edits, usually with a month or so in-between revisions. My editor posed clarifying questions and insightful nudges to help me to tighten the focus and better define sections that were too gray. So in this way, we took turns sculpting the manuscript — each time handing off a cleaner, more readable and fine-tuned document to fresh eyes that could read the manuscript more like it was the first time. Each trade brought this little book a little closer to the final product.

During this time, I also started the overwhelmingly mundane process of requesting permission from publishers and authors for the research and diagrams that were referenced in the book. This tedious aspect of authorship was not my favorite piece of the process, but it was necessary nonetheless.

The designer finished the book cover in January and I felt a rush of “reality” when my editor forwarded the very professional-looking pdf file to me. Several focused weeks of editing followed, but most of the work at this stage was done by my editor, assistant editor, page designer and other invisible and crucial roles in the publishing puzzle.

The editing team sent the manuscript to numerous reviewers within the youth development field, to ask for feedback, and the questions and suggestions posed by these reviewers significantly contributed to the validity of our finished book.

Each time I received the edited manuscript, it would feel a little more polished, a little more focused, and a lot closer to something I’d eventually find on the shelf in a book store. Each time I read the revised chapters, after being away from them for two months, I’d look at the words with fresh eyes and be pleased with most that I saw, but irritated by an overused or repeated word I allowed to slip by. The changes I made at this point were rather small, and more because of vanity and OCD, than because of a significant need to change.

In February, my editor sent me the proofs for the designed pages. It’s hard to describe the difference between reading a version of a manuscript that LOOKS like pages in a book, versus 200 pages of double-spaced text. It’s more readable, more attractive, and at this point, it’s virtually error-free. We did have one more shot at changes even after this typesetting, but the revisions were pretty minute at this point.

Please return next week for the final installment for Becoming an Author…

Becoming an Author series:
Part One — Winter 2006
Part Two — Spring 2006
Part Three — Summer 2006
Part Four — Fall 2006
Part Five — Winter-Spring 2007
Part Six — July 2007-February 2008
Part Seven — Spring 2008
Photos of Search Institute Press

My book, Empowering Youth: How to Encourage Young Leaders to Do Great Things, will soon be available at Search Institute Press.