Awards! Preorders! And giving your creative work some time.
I am just back from Albany, NY, where I was incredibly honored to receive the Denise McCoy Literacy Award for Two Dogs in a Trench Coat Go to School, which is given to (and I'm going to quote so it doesn't seem like I'm bragging) (too much) "the author of the previous year's most humorous children's book (grades 3-5) as selected by a review committee of the Albany (NY) Public Library and the 15-Love Program."
It was a truly incredible trip, the highlight of which was doing a visit in one of the schools where 15-Love does literacy work. 15-Love has given out TEN THOUSAND BOOKS just THIS PAST YEAR.
I'm hoping to have some more photos soon that maybe I'll stick in the next newsletter. But I want to send this one out NOW because October was packed and I didn't get a chance to send out a newsletter. So we'll call this a late October newsletter. I was trying to decide whether or not to send the newsletter today, and my morning meditation quoted Arthur Ashe, who founded 15-Love, which seemed like as good a reason as any to write these words to you now.
Two Dogs in a Trench Coat book 4 is available for preorder
Next order of business: the fourth book in the Two Dogs in a Trench Coat series, Two Dogs in a Trench Coat Enter Stage Left, is ready for preorder! In this installment, Waldo, Sassy, and their human friends at school put on a play. The play is Wizard of Oz fanfiction called The Wizard of Dogz. If you preorder this book, I'll send you the full script of The Wizard of Dogz, which I wrote just for this occasion, and which won't be available anyplace else. It's a whole new thing, and you can only get it if you preorder.
Full instructions on how to get it are here.
Here are preorder links:
Bull Moose (preorder from here if you want a signed copy)
Print, A Bookstore
Indiebound
Amazon
Amazon Kindle
Audiobook
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Nook
Books-a-Million
Powell's
Target
Resisting Efficiency
I've been doing a lot of non-writing writing work (book promotions, filming my dogs in costumes, writing speeches for awards and then receiving said awards). Which is definitely part of the process. But if I spend too much time away from the actual writing work, I start to get really antsy. Over the summer, I wrote a new draft of a middle grade novel that I've been working on a few years. I had planned on letting it marinate for longer before I revised it, but it kept tugging at me, and this past week I started back in on it.
I have a lot to do on this book. I've written three drafts of it, and the version I wrote over the summer is all new, and a lot of new characters and plot threads have been shoved into it, and it's a mess in many ways, but I'm looking forward to making it what I think it can be. And I'm at that point of knowing it's a ton of work, knowing I can do it, knowing it's going to take time, and wanting to be done with it immediately so I can know how it went.
I've been listening to the Hurry Slowly podcast, and it's just what I need to hear right now. On the day I started back on this novel, I listened to season 2 episode 8, Creativity vs. Efficiency, where the host, Jocelyn K. Glei, said "The creative process actively resists efficiency." YES, I KNOW. Then she said, "The next time you feel stuck or rushed or judged for your 'inefficiencies,' remember that they are also your strength. Because great art comes from working at your own pace."
So I'm going to do the work, and give it the time it needs, and let the process and the work shape it into the book I know it can be.