Giving Thanks and Birthing a Book

I am in the throes of preparing my book for publication after attending the Independent Author's conference sponsored by Book Baby in Philadelphia. They convinced me that Indie publishing is the wave of the future. I like the idea of pod books for the ecology: books sent back are often damaged or destroyed whereas you only buy a pod because you want it. I like having the ability to purchase boxes of books to sell at readings, workshops and events. And I like the fact that I can download a manuscript and have a book out in three months or less, whereas I have been waiting years to find the right and perfect fit in traditional publishing, one I am starting to believe doesn't exist. Not because there aren't potential readers but because my book doesn't fit in the right categories. It is a love story with the land of Israel and her people and two lovers, one an irresistible but dangerous charmer and one a comforting friend who can't commit, but it's not a romance. It tells the story of a country embroiled in civil conflict but it's not a political or historical commentary and it doesn't balance reporting about the Palestinian people's struggles with the Israelis I encountered. It is about the steps a woman takes in her own healing process but it's only the first beginning steps and not the completed journey.

It will be considered women's fiction, I suppose, but it is about contradictions, the ideal of peace and how hard it is to achieve, the light and the dark, the yearning for freedom and the yearning to belong, the desire to stay and the impossibility of doing what it takes to make it happen. The entire undercurrent of dreams: the dream for peace, belonging, love, and humanity against a backdrop of strikes, demonstrations, mandatory army duty, tear gas, suicide bombings, and imminent war.

It is also about life and death.

What I didn't know is that the revisions would bring up all the emotions I felt at the time they happened and the time of the initial writing.

What I didn't know is that I have extraordinary beta-readers who give me insight into what I thought I said and what I really wrote down, what makes the book work and what makes it less than fluid, and why I wrote the darn thing in the first place.

Catch a Dream: a woman's healing journey in a country embroiled in civil conflict.

It takes a village to birth a child: the steady voice saying, "You can do it! Push! Stop! Breathe! Push!" The nurse who offers you a cool washcloth or ice chips or checks your blood pressure, the delivery doctor who knows what to do when things escalate or go wrong or you need medical intervention. The mid-wife who has taught you to pay attention to your own body signals. The pre-natal friends who cheer you through the nausea and doubt and exhaustion of pregnancy, the friends who come to cheer the newborn and bring chocolate cake and clean up your kitchen. The family who gathers around in welcome of the new being, the community who acknowledge here is hope and a new beginning.

So it is with the birth of a book. The many friends who are cheering you on, offering their feed-back, encouragement, and critiques. The friends who will love your story, love the disturbing questions, love the fact that not everything has a tidy happy ending but only a prelude to provoking ponderings. I love happy endings. Catch a Dream is not happy in the way you might expect but it ends with a sense of hope. I learned from my own journey of falling in love with the irresistible dangerous lover and wanting to stay in a place where I didn't really belong is that not all dreams are meant to come true. But this one, the one of a book in my hands, written with my own tears and questions and contemplation and insight and love, is about to.