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Welcome to the November issue of the ginagreenlee.com bi-monthly newsletter.
Newsletter features:
- The Symbol Life - On mothering.
- Book Updates - Cheaper Than Therapy: How to Keep Life's Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones -
The Lesson of the Paper Clips has been on the radio, in the newspaper, and in Italy.
- The Leap - A narrative serial about my adventures in book publishing - Part 7, Decisions,
Decisions!
- Readers Write - Margaret from Andover, Conn., shares a metaphor that holds the secret to 20 years
of marital bliss.
Years ago I attended a themed social event that included five-minute psychic readings.
"You have many children," the psychic intoned.
"No, I don't," I said, disappointed by her skills from the start.
"You don't?" My late father was heavy into the psychic world at one time in his life. He told me,
"Never affirm or deny facts in a reading. If the psychic is legit, she'll know."
"Really," she said staring at nothing in particular, perhaps consulting her source.
"Not a one."
"I see lots of children around you. Nieces and nephews?" At this point we were already at minute four
and her time, not mine, was up.
"I'm an only child." I tried to leave.
"This is so strange. I sense so much the energy of children in your life."
"What can I say?" I glanced at my wrist. No watch.
"Are you an artist?" A different approach.
"Yes, I am." I'm a visual artist as well as a writer.
"Ah! That's it!" She gasped with relief.
"What?" Now she spoke with authority.
"In the spirit world, children are metaphors for creative ideas. And you, my dear, have a lot of
creative ideas."
At last, we had arrived.
This exchange is memorable for two reasons: the first half cracked me up; the second half felt like
this woman had taken a swan dive into my soul. Though I have no physical children, I have given birth many times.
The first time was when I produced, directed, choreographed, re-scripted and starred in a 4th grade
rendition of West Side Story, one of my all time favorite musicals. I was eight years old.
I awoke one morning obsessed with the notion that the children of P.S. 110 on Manhattan's Lower East
Side could not fully enter into adulthood unless exposed to one of Broadway's greatest musicals. I set the production
date, negotiated directly with the principal to call a special school assembly for the occasion, and managed the
auditorium schedule for rehearsals. The gestation period was short: eight weeks after conceiving this idea, my first
stage production was born.
In 2000, I gave birth to a dream I'd carried for 10 years: traveling around the world. Actually, I had
twins: My world trip was the elder of the two; the second birth was of my professional writing career. I negotiated a
paid weekly Web column for The Hartford Courant called Journey With Gina, which I wrote from the road during my
five-month trip. The exchanges I had with women all over the world, in person and through e-mail, planted the seed for
my book, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. Due date: December 2006.
Fertility as a metaphor for creative expression is ancient and cross-cultural - from Asia to Africa,
Europe, and Central America. One of the most well known metaphors comes from Greek mythology: Demeter, the goddess of
the harvest.
The Greeks, like most ancient cultures, relied on agriculture for their survival. As the patron deity
of agriculture, Demeter was worshipped with festivals and other honors. She brings forth the fruits of the earth, which
also translates into a close relationship with human fertility. As a result, the central myth of Demeter is her
relationship with her daughter, Persephone.
Persephone became the goddess of the underworld when Hades, the god of the underworld, abducted her.
Life on earth came to a standstill as the depressed Demeter searched for her lost daughter. Zeus, the supreme ruler
could not tolerate a dying earth and forced Hades to return Persephone. Before he released her, Hades used a trick that
forced Persephone to return to the underworld for four months each year.
When Demeter and her daughter were together, the earth flourished with vegetation. But while
Persephone lived in the underworld, the earth became barren. This happens during the summer months, since in Greece
this is when all vegetation dies from heat and lack of rainfall. The winter, by comparison, has heavy rainfall and mild
temperatures and plant life flourishes.
Scholars also interpret the myth of Demeter and Persephone another way: the daughter as metaphor for
the mother's younger self.
My first child, my younger self who I call Baby Bee, is the one I've struggled to honor the way the
ancient Greeks revered Demeter for her gifts. Baby Bee is me but not the part of me that works, pays bills, and
otherwise manages the responsibilities of my adult life. Rather, she paints and draws, creates collages, and takes
photographs. She yearns to see the world and can't sit still when she hears good dance music. Hers are the ideas that
fuel my pen.
My child has wanted nothing more than to be completely herself in this world and for me to uphold that
desire. Yet, I've suppressed her - through my own fears, judgments, and erroneous beliefs about life's possibilities.
For years, I was not a good mother.
But I'm learning how to be a better one. Like Demeter, my heart is heavy when my child isn't with me.
I don't flourish in her absence. These days, I keep her close rather than shutting her down or tucking her away. I am
better connected to my young, soft core of fertile ideas and I use all of the power of my adult resources to support
her in worldly ways.
I hosted my launch party on October 26, 2005, with 130 friends and supporters who turned out to say,
"You go, girl!" each in his or her own way. Pat Seremet, an entertainment columnist for The Hartford Courant, covered
the party and book generously and amiably in her column. Her headline: "Party at a Clip Joint." Her lead: "Gina
Greenlee has a twisted mind. And she is wired. How else to explain how she could take a simple paper clip and turn it
into a book?"
I love it: Twisted and wired in all the right ways. And Stan Simpson, another Courant columnist, said
it this way when he interviewed me for his radio talk show a week earlier: "You obviously don't think like the rest of
us!"
Oh, yes I do. Folks get the metaphor and are snapping up five to 10 copies of the book at a time for
gifts this holiday season. I deliberately priced The Lesson of the Paper Clips - $12.50 hardcover - so that it would be
substantial yet affordable. Local gift, New Age, and flower shops have purchased it. And I just made my first bulk sale
to a local leadership development organization.
My book is available online from Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and about eight other booksellers on
the Web - including one in Italy (!) that picked up the book and credits me as "autore." Also, I've contracted with an
offset printer for a volume run of 3,000 books so I can sell bulk orders of 100 (plus) books at a nice price, wholesale
direct.
More next month on how to place bulk orders directly from me for events, conferences, company gifts
and promotions (signed, too, if you'd like).
If you've already purchased my book for yourself or friends and family: thank you, Thank You, THANK
YOU.
In the previous episode, Gina decided to self-publish her first book, Cheaper Than Therapy: How to
Keep Life's Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones - The Lesson of the Paper Clips, fueled in part by the mortality
reality check of her father's sudden death in 2004. In this installment, she takes control of her literary destiny and
chooses a Print On Demand model that will deliver a one-stop publishing shop.
My biggest hurdle in deciding to self-publish was to trust myself, to have faith in my ideas. The
challenge: Unlearn the industry conditioning of "agents and editors don't want to read a completed non-fiction
manuscript because they prefer to have a say in how to shape a book to the marketplace." The opportunity: Replace this
conditioning with a radical approach - write what's in your heart then find a market for it. If you write from a place
of passion and authenticity, a friend told me, it will resonate with somebody.
A few years back, another close friend suggested that one of the reasons I had not seen success in
publishing my first book was because I engaged the process with a heavy heart. "You don't seem to be enjoying
yourself," she observed. "You seem burdened." I was burdened. I wasn't writing my book. I was writing proposals and
query letters and dog-earing tomes on how to become a trade published author. But my manuscript remained cold and
unfinished. Another friend advised, "Just write your book. Worry about how to sell it later."
Having fun while writing my book my way started to feel familiar as a success strategy. It had worked
in my freelance career. But in my desperation to convince the elusive trade decision-makers of the worthiness of my
book idea, I had forgotten what constituted the foundation of my earlier successes. My writing support network helped
me to remember.
I temporarily put aside my first book, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the
Road. It had too much trade baggage associated with it. Instead, I revisited a manila file folder filled with copier
images of paper clips I had bent into different shapes, along with some rough sketches for a book idea. I based the
idea on an epiphany I had while working at a part-time job that involved mounds of paper clips: Small problems become
big problems when we don't nip them in the bud.
This was fun. So I played with the idea and kept playing with it until I had a first draft with
photo-illustrations by David Schulz, a local professional artist. Now it was time to test my idea with the
"marketplace" - 18 friends from across the country who formed my reading group. Some were more enthusiastic than others
("I'm not into self help") but the consensus among all 18? "This is a clever idea."
Encouraged, I kept revising until the fourth read came back clean - no illogical arguments, phrasing
that felt "off" or images that didn't work. Just a smooth, clear manuscript with a whimsical heart.
I was ready to print.
I work full time as the managing editor of an intranet for a local company. I don't toil more than 40
hours a week but the 40 hours I do work require all of my brainpower. Also, I freelance and I was still managing my
father's estate when I was writing The Lesson of the Paper Clips. What little time I had left to work my book required
that I be smart about it because I knew that self-publishing is the literary equivalent of launching a business.
There are different ways to self-publish and distribute one's book. An author's publishing goals,
resources (time and energy being the most precious), appetite for creative control and tolerance for minutia will
determine which option he or she chooses. With so much life to manage already, I needed a single vendor to orchestrate
ISBN procurement, layout, printing, and liaising with online booksellers such as Amazon.
I decided on a POD (print on demand) model - in addition to the services outlined above, a POD printer
prints my book as readers buy them versus an offset printer model where the author/publisher purchases a large volume
of books upfront and then arranges for storage and distribution separately.
The plus of an offset run is the low per unit cost. The minus is a high cash outlay. Some offset
printers also distribute books and fulfill orders but these services are à la carte and, therefore, more
expensive than an all-in-one package price.
The upside of the POD model is the one-stop-shop and the low cost of entry to market. A reputable POD
company charges about $400 for a standard book. Extras for more unique books such as mine that include multiple images,
still should be well under $1,000. My book cost $700 to print and distribute online and through brick and mortar
bookstore orders (not shelves).
The downside is that the per unit cost of the book is high. This becomes an issue when I want to take
advantage of large volume distribution channels by selling books directly to readers or businesses. Because I purchase
my books at such high cost - though still below retail - I cannot offer, without wincing, wholesale discounts for bulk
orders, or to retail operations for resale.
In short, the POD model is not a moneymaker. It doesn't have to be a money loser, either, but I
wouldn't go giving up any day jobs. However, there are ways to address the financial limitations of this model by
augmenting it with an offset volume print run - if an author has the money and the appetite to sell books from her own
hand, basement, car trunk, and Web site.
Business models aside, my first objective in this leg of my publishing adventure was to deliver on my
goal of becoming a book author by being true to myself and leading with my heart.
Mission accomplished.
In the next episode, Gina takes Cheaper Than Therapy: How to Keep Life's Small Problems from Becoming
Big Ones to the marketplace. What's her strategy for making her first book visible and getting it into readers' hands?
Find out next month in The Leap, Part 8: Gone Fishin'.
Margaret of Andover, Conn., has been blissfully wed for 20 years. She writes that the toilet seat is a
metaphor for her successful union: In her marriage, the age old war between the sexes about the position of the toilet
seat - up or down - doesn't exist. She doesn't make an issue of it when he leaves it up; and, more often than not, he's
selfless enough to put it down. It's about give and take, she writes. Not right and wrong. And that approach informs
everything in her marriage.
Tell me about your Symbol Life. How have your own metaphors for living shaped you? What leaps have you
taken? I'd love to hear about them.
Thanks for taking time to read my newsletter. I'll be writing to you again soon.
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