DOROTHY RICE
  • home
  • writing
  • work with me
  • blog

How Publishing a Book is Like Giving Birth

4/18/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
I feel pregnant, uncomfortably so, though at 65 and with no hormones left to speak of, I know that's not what ails me. The publication of my second book, a memoir, is imminent. The current "due date" is June 1.

My symptoms are a lot like those I experienced when I was nine months pregnant with my last child, twenty years ago. I'm in a limbo state, alternating between excitement and anxiety, ravenous hunger and digestive stupor, spurts of productivity and longer spurts of twiddling my thumbs waiting for something, anything,  to happen.

Like pregnancy, publishing a book is not something that happens to me very often. The babies arrived once a decade, three times (in my twenties, thirties and forties). I published my first book at 61, with a small press
(The Reluctant Artist, 2015). I'm hoping for at least 20 productive years to come. But there's no telling what the future holds.

When I was a little girl, I never dreamed of having scads of kids, or any kids really (children frightened me; they're so unpredictable). I'm now grateful I did and can't imagine life without them. I did dream of being an author and of one day finding a shelf of books with my name on their spines in the local library. A book or two doesn't exactly constitute a row or a shelf. Still, I'm grateful to be here, where I am, right now. I got a late start, but there's that old chestnut I don't need to repeat.

​If not now, when? That was the mantra that finally got me going.

This is not nothing. Life. Family. Friends. Words. Books. Readers.

So here I sit, pregnant with a book. Gray Is The New Black: A Memoir of Self-Acceptance 
(Otis Books, June 2019). And, yeah, it's a lot like my last birth, at 45. Perhaps because, just like then, I feel as if there's a lot at stake. This new memoir is more personal, closer to the heart and bone, than anything I've published before. 

​As Tom Petty so wisely said, the waiting is the hardest part. It's terrifying and exhilarating. 



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Dorothy, author of GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK, blogs about the challenges and opportunities of being a woman and a writer of a certain age in a youth-centric universe. 

    GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK | ebook
    GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK | PAPERBACK

    categories

    All
    2020
    #AmReading
    #AmSubmitting
    #AmWriting
    Going Gray
    Gray Is The New Black
    #HavingItAll
    #ifnotnowwhen
    Imposter Syndrome
    Interviews
    Lessons From My Father
    Lessons From My Mother
    #literarycommunity
    #LittleBlackBook
    Quiet Memoir
    Reasons To Write
    #Rejection
    #writer'sblock
    Writing With Others

    archives

    January 2023
    August 2022
    July 2022
    September 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015


​Thanks for visiting my website!



                                                                                   
​             Copyright © 2015
  • home
  • writing
  • work with me
  • blog