If you subscribe via reader, you may not have seen the button in my upper left-hand column. I’ve been nominated for Education Blog of the Year and you can vote for me by clicking here. “Pass the Torch” is approximately halfway down the list and you vote by selecting the radio button and clicking “vote” at the bottom of the page. The other nominated blogs are great resources as well, so you may want to check them out. Voting is open until May 15.

Also, my article, “Say Yes!” has been published at Blissfully Domestic. I recollect an empowerment story about my son at age four.

And did you now Sk*rt is now Kirtsy? Find out about the switch here.

Have a great week!

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 Two
Spring 2006

Part One is here.

After two months of constant writing, reading the boards at Absolute Write, and researching and querying magazines, I was getting discouraged. Although I still loved putting words to the page, there were so many hoops to jump before getting published. And editors were picky, so the fact that I could never seem to get my “its” and “it’s” straight couldn’t be helping.

I asked my Internet-genius brother-in-law what he would suggest for setting up a simple writer’s site. I thought I could post my company’s newsletter articles there, as well as any published articles (assuming I ever HAD any.) He suggested a blog – and I said, “A what?” I figured I hadn’t heard him correctly, since that was such a goofy word. I did a little research and anonymously played with Blogger for a bit. While I figured out what exactly a person would do with a blog, something unexpected happened.

Someone called a “fact checker,” followed up on a query I’d sent. She wanted to know if I could verify some information about the article I’d submitted for the True Stories section of Budget Travel.

The same week I received another unassuming email from an editor at Boy’s Life – asking if I would still be able to write the ice-fishing piece and provide photographs. The article wouldn’t publish until the following December, but I’d need to brave the punky ice and take the photos right away. The snow-covered lakes in Wisconsin usually open in late March.

And so I completed these assignments, anticipating the day my name would become a byline in a magazine.

I’d read several of Jenna Glatzer’s books, and since she seemed so approachable, I initiated an emailed conversation with her. She offered valuable insight and encouragement about non-fiction book publishing. It’s a connection I doubt she remembers, but one I’ll never forget.

With renewed conviction, I broke all the rules and sent a half-baked, but promising book idea in a spontaneous email to an acquaintance at publishing company. ..

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, is now available, from Search Institute Press.

(CLICK ON THE PHOTO)

In less than a month, my book will become available, and my publisher has launched the book’s landing page. Want to see what it looks like? Just click the image above and it will take you there.

Becoming an Author series:
Part One — Winter 2006
Part Two — Spring 2006
Part Three — Summer 2006

For more Wordless Wednesday, please visit 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 One
Winter 2006

It was January 2006. Our family had survived a stressful move/remodel/live in a construction zone period for the previous four months. (Think “sleep on the futon in the middle of the kitchen” and “power saw on my stove.”) I had served as general contractor on the project, while trying to keep the chaos in our house from driving me to the brink of madness. By the time the sub-zero temperatures reached our Wisconsin home, our keel was even again and I found myself with a luxury.

Time.

The only work I was doing outside the home, was that related to my part-time business. My kids were in school during the day. And I generally hibernate during most of the snowy months. I’d always thought about becoming a writer, but it never seemed to be the right time. There was always so much to do, and for me, my muse never visited unless I had uninterrupted time – alone with my thoughts. If I was ever going to try my hand at writing, I needed to do it then, before we made the decision for me to go back to work in a school system, and while I had no major projects on the horizon.

I joined the online forum, Absolute Write and devoured the advice offered there by experienced and struggling writers. I signed up for a course – “Travel Writing: From Free Trips to Flat Tires”, taught by travel writer Amanda Castleman. The course cost about $300, which was more than I had paid for some graduate level coursework, but the ten-week course promised to walk us through the process of submitting to magazines, as well as line-edits. That’s what I really needed.

I’ll never forget my first query to a magazine. I submitted it to Boy’s Life. The query was about ice fishing tips and tricks, from the perspective of a seven-year-old boy.

Take a five-gallon bucket, a snow covered lake and a 12-inch hole and what do you get? Perfect fishing conditions. At least that’s what seven-year-old, Craig tells me. An avid fisherman for half his life, he proves without a doubt that ice fishing isn’t just for old men in a shack.

Like its warm-weather cousin, ice fishing is a science, which is why many would-be fishermen can’t catch fish. What equipment is necessary? When will the crappies bite? Which bait works best? These are critical questions for anyone hoping to fill their limit.

I propose a 750-word article in your nature or sports department, with a sidebar. And I would provide photographs, according to your technical specifications.

The ice in Northern Wisconsin is still safe into March, and I could submit the completed article within two weeks.

Thank you for your consideration. I have enclosed a SASE and look forward to your response.

My second query was to Budget Travel, for its True Stories section. I was naïve – I didn’t yet realize that submitting to national magazines might be setting my unpublished sights too high. I queried numerous other magazines as well – more than 100 of them within a four-month time frame. And I hooked up with another student writer from Australia. Although her son was much older than my kids, she had worked as a teacher for years and I found we had much in common. We edited each others’ work outside of the course and provided the cheerleading we both needed. Writers need a lot of encouragement during the long weeks with no response from editors – and especially after a never-ending series of rejected queries.

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, is now available, from Search Institute Press.

The following story was published in the anthology, Poetica Grandmatica, last year.

My sweet memories of Grandma are really just scattered slices of life. But together they make up an important part of my heritage.

When I was young, Grandma lived on Delbert Road on the north side of Eau Claire and my house was on Anderson Drive. Sometimes she had a garage sale and I brought my saved quarters to buy trinkets she’d display. It seems crazy now, but I remember riding my bike across Hwy 53 in the summer to visit her. Of course, now this four-lane highway is three-times as wide — and ten-times as dangerous.

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