Wing’s World Welcomes a New Arrival: The Flying Burgowski

Posted on February 26, 2014 by gretchenwing

Road Trip IV, Days 14-16 : Dallas to Natchez Trace State Park, Tennessee.

We interrupt this travel blog to bring you an important announcement:

The Flying Burgowski is launched!

Folks, I have so much I want to talk about. The metaphor of birth that keeps surfacing as I bring my “baby” forth into the world. The gratitude I feel toward all the friends who have helped me turn a manuscript into a Book, and toward my wonderful husband for putting up with my distraction as we travel. The ~~difficulty challenge~~ joy of bringing a book to publication via iPad while on the road. And then there’s all this lovely scenery we’re passing through, and the fact that we camped last night in an Arkansas campground that was so deserted even the rangers abandoned us. (The Mate and I were TOTALLY tempted to take off all our clothes and camp in the nude just for the novelty of it, but it was too cold.)

But today is Jocelyn Burgowski’s day. So I’m going to close here with the link where you can check my book out further.

https://www.createspace.com/4615462

And this question: do you think a book IS like a baby? Why/why not?

The Power of Tree-hugging (Seriously)

Posted on February 13, 2014 by gretchenwing

Road Trip IV, Days 1-5: Lopez Island to Oakland, CA

You’re going to hear me say this a lot: I love road trips. But I’d also better confess right off the bat: these days road trips induce almost as much guilt as joy. Across the U.S.? All that fossil fuel! A carbon footprint the size of Missouri. And for what?

Well, for love of friends and family and America the Beautiful. OK, we do have good reasons. But until I fall into the rhythm of the trip, my mind roils a bit. With those thoughts…and, these days, others, like…

Where are the proofs of my poor novel? I paid extra to have them shipped “expedited” last week. They said they’d be here Friday, so I figured Saturday was safe. Well, I gambled and lost. The Mate and I left Lopez Sunday, proofless. Next day my buddy Steve collected them from our mailbox and sent them on…to my son’s house in California. I’ll get them this weekend. But what if I don’t? What if my proofs just keep chasing me across the country? How will The Flying Burgowski ever get launched?

Or…

When am I going to get time to practice my guitar? I’ve set myself some ambitious musical goals, but our evenings on this trip are pretty social. Can I practice in the car without bashing The Mate’s shoulder, or driving him nuts with scales?

Or…

Is Duke going to ~~cream destroy~~ beat Carolina tonight? Will we be able to hang onto our good moods if they do? (Answer: the game was postponed due to snow, so stay tuned!)

Anyway, you get the idea. Apparently I’m a pretty shallow person, and road trips don’t seem to deepen me any.

Cue my favorite Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “In the woods we return to reason and faith.”

Yessss. Trees. I need trees. Big trees. I need to walk among them, gaze up at them, and yes, hug them. So The Mate and I stopped to hike at Prairie Creek State Park, north of Eureka, one of our favorite stands of redwoods. It was POURING, but hey–what’s a better umbrella than a bunch of 200+-foot trees?

Sorry, I’m not much of a photographer…

Have you ever had the chance walk among redwoods? Oh, I hope you have, or you will. Redwoods aren’t only grand, they’re grandly impervious. They heal themselves.

But at least you know I didn’t just pull these pics off the internet!

And in healing themselves, they heal my thoughts back to quiet wholesomeness. Like church, without the fidgeting. I walked, I gazed, I hugged.

So, if your thoughts are dwelling in the shallows and you just want to get back to reason & faith, my advice? Go find the nearest, biggest tree, and…well, you know what to do.

…and when I get to North Carolina, I’ll hug an oak! (Especially if the Tarheels lose)

The Proof is in the Putting-it-out-there: When “Writer” Becomes “Author”

Posted on February 7, 2014 by gretchenwing

I’m waiting for my proofs to arrive. If that makes no sense to you, don’t worry–three months ago it meant nothing to me either.

Proofs? Thought I left those behind in geometry class.

Turns out proofs are the kinda-sorta first draft of printing. I guess this term works for photography as well. You get your picture taken, you check out the proofs, you choose the ones you like, and those proofs get printed.

In the next couple of days, I’ll receive my book, The Flying Burgowski, in the mail. I’ll comb through it, looking for any piece of missing punctuation or indents or chapters cut off in the middle of the page or….ANYthing wrong that needs to be fixed before my baby is ready for her debut before the reading public.

My baby!

To while away the nervous hours until my proofs arrive, my brain keeps running loops around the word “proof.”

“The proof is in the pudding.” Now my brain imagines a scene at Hogwarts:

(Courtesy Flikr Creative Commons)

Wonderful-sounding aphorism, but what does it mean? Yes, you with your hand up? Miss Granger?

It’s actually a misstatement. The real saying is, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” It means, the dessert may look pretty, but you can’t really tell how good it is until you eat it.

Ten points to Gryffindor. Yes. And how does this aphorism apply to the present case? … [sigh] … Yes, Miss Granger?

Your book may look wonderful, but you will only know how good it is once people read it.

Another ten points.

Thank you, Brain, for this amusing illustration. What’s that? You want to talk about another meaning of the word “proof”? Fine. Go ahead.

“Proof” means you have proven something. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the proof has been laid before you! I rest my case.”

So what’s being “proven” here?

That I am no longer just a writer; I’m an author now.

Come again? What’s the diff?

Think about it. If you’re a painter, you paint. If someone asks you what you are and you say “Painter,” the next question is never, “Oh? And have you sold any paintings lately?” No, people want to know what medium you paint in, or do you do landscapes or portraits, or how you learned to paint. But when you tell someone you’re a writer, the next question is inevitably, “Oh? Are you published?”

So…aha. A writer writes. An author is a published writer? Is that what you’re saying, Brain?

I think that’s what I’m saying. But what do I know? I’m just a brain.

So, what do you guys think? Do you agree with my brain? Do you think writers are thought of differently than other artists? My brain and I are very interested in your answers.

Madrona Branch Press: Lessons in Logos, Publishing, and Humility

Posted on February 4, 2014 by gretchenwing

I thought this was the equation: carefully-edited manuscript + self-publishing tools + a lil’ bit o’ cash + a lotta time = BOOK. I thought I was all set to launch my YA novel, The Flying Burgowski, out into the world.

Turns out I was missing a few variables.

“What’s your publishing name going to be?” my book designer, Bob Lanphear, asked me about a week ago, over the phone.

“Umm, you mean, like, a pen name? I wasn’t planning to do that…”

“No,” he explained patiently. “The name of your press. You know, what you want it to say on the spine of your book, on the back cover, on the copyright page, under the title.” He named three other books he’d designed, books by friends of mine: Iris Graville’s Hands At Work, Lorrie Harrison’s Kindred Spirits, and Holly Bower’s With Love and Butter. “Look at those books and you’ll see what I mean.”

“But I don’t have a press, I’m self-publishing,” said Gretchen, Queen of Obvious.

“Yes,” Bob said. I couldn’t actually hear him rolling his eyes over the phone, but if he wasn’t, he sure had a right to. “But there’s no need to advertise that fact to the world. Your book will look much more professional with the name of a press, rather than” (here he named a fairly well-known ~~corporation associated with chewing up small bookstores and spitting them out~~ book company. “So you should choose a good name. Then let me know what kind of logo it should have.”

Me: “Logo?”

Bob: “eye roll”

So I got right to work on that. Unfortunately, I have a ~~terrible horrible non-existent~~ poor eye for design. (I think that’s why I write: since I can’t draw the picture, I need the thousand words.)

Fortunately, I have a great sense of metaphor and a beautiful landscape to live in. As soon as I started thinking of a good name for Gretchen Wing Press, Inc., the image came to me: that self-supporting madrona branch. Remember that? My metaphor for independent publication.

Fortunately again, I have Bob. He took my madrona branch from this…

to this:

Isn’t she lovely?

So–phew. Thanks, Bob. Got that taken care of.

Two days later I met with my ~~guardian angels of all things literary~~ writing group to go over my Marketing Plan for The Flying Burgowski.

“Do you have your author web page set up?” they asked me.

“My blog? Yeah–all set!” said Gretchen, Queen of Oblivious.

“Noooo….” my group replied kindly. (I’m paraphrasing, ok? But they were kind.) “An author page is a static page where people go to learn about you as an author, or about your books. It has a link to your blog. But it’s not the same.”

“I need one of those too?” I ~~whimpered~~ said. “I thought I was all ready…”

Again: no visible eye-rolling. (I chose a great writing group)

But once again, with the help of web-maestra, Adrienne Adams at Cloud Islands, I got my author web page set up and linked to Wing’s World.

Don’t believe me? Click here.

So NOW can I make a book? Tune in for the answer on February 7, right here!

But meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever designed or imagined a logo for yourself? What did you choose, or what would you choose, and why?

Polishing My Novel, Or At Least Its Nails

Posted on January 8, 2014 by gretchenwing

This week I’m meeting with the book designer I hired. We’re going to take pictures of hands.

Well, he is. He’s the pro. Not my hands, though. Not even the hands of anyone I really know. He’ll be shooting the hands of a girl who’s the younger sister of a girl who works at my bakery.

Boy, was that a weird pitch to make over the phone: “Hi, you don’t know me–well, you probably know who I am just like I sort of know who you are, just ’cause, you know, that’s just Lopez Island–but anyway, can I borrow your hands?”

My book is The Flying Burgowski. It’s about a girl who discovers she can fly. The cover picture features landscape viewed from above, from the perspective of my heroine, Jocelyn Burgowski, through her outstretched hands.

(orig. image courtesy flikrhivemind.net)

My book designer could NOT find any stock photos of adolescent hands. Adult ones look just plain wrong. So do little kids’ hands. Therefore: the hands-shoot, scheduled for the 10-minute slot my 8th grade hands-model has between the end of school and the start of basketball practice. She’s a busy girl. But she’s a conscientious one, too. Right after enthusiastic agreement and establishing a meeting place, she said, “I’ll need to take off my nail polish, right?”

Actually, I explained, nail color could easily be photo-shopped out, so she didn’t need to worry. In fact, I added, my book’s heroine only wears polish on her right hand, because–well, you’ll have to read it.

So when I put the phone down, I was thinking about nail polish–what it means, what it doesn’t, and wondering if other people had similar thoughts.

For the record: the only nails I polish are on my toes. Which, honestly, I’m considering giving up for winter because I haven’t SEEN my toes, sockless or slipperless, in about three months, except for the shower. But then I remind myself of why I bother.

I’m not what you’d call girly, though I do enjoy dressing up occasionally. But here on the island, folks are used to seeing me in jeans or biking gear. I’m always talking about going for a run or going camping–the earthy type, right? So one of my male friends seemed honestly baffled when he asked me, “Why do you wear nail polish?”

“Because my husband once told me he thought it was sexy,” I blurted. Whoa–TMI. We both blushed. “And…and I like it too,” I added lamely. New topic…

But it’s true. I could totally leave those little jars behind (though I do enjoy their names: right now I’m wearing a sparkly burgundy called “I’m Not Really a Waitress”). But my husband likes it, and goodness knows, I don’t do many special things for my mate. (Yeah, those chocolate chip cookies in the freezer are for him, but hey, they’re not JUST for him.)

(orig. image courtesy familyholiday.net)

Still: I draw the line at toes. Fingers? Forget it–can’t be bothered.

How about you gals? Fingers, toes, both, neither? Why? And you guys: are you like my husband? Do you think it’s silly? Do you even NOTICE? I’m dying to hear.