Where is my memoir?

After many months, here is an update on the status of my memoir. Over the last year plus, obstacles attempted to sabotage my efforts. In all honesty, I tried to sabotage the entire book multiple times.

Thankfully I’m married to a man, also a creative, who would not let me turn loose of my dream. He persistently reminded me of conversations we’d had wherein I told him how much I wanted this to happen. To be a published author has been a dream for so long. Bob, love that you’ve got my back and push me forward!

Currently, I’m continuing to rewrite, edit, and revise. For those of you have published your books, you know the vicious cycle it is. Let no one tell you writing is an easy task.

It is a long and arduous, and sometimes lonely, journey from beginning to those two little words, “The End.” During that journey and depending on your story, you may hurt all over again. Or perhaps your story is a happier one and you get to laugh and smile at the memories. Either way writing is not as easy as the reading public thinks it is.

You worry a lot about legal ramifications of those truths you have written. Even though you know they belong to your story, nerves get jangled every time a family member raises questions about what you’re writing. We’re told to write our truth as we remember it. It is our story, and we reassured with the inimitable words of Anne Lamott.

How To Publish my memoir?

Following a lot of reading and then number crunching and head scratching, I decided the course for publishing my memoir. I have chosen to go the self-publishing route with a company of designers and editors at 1106 Designs guiding me to the point of turning it over to IngramSpark for printing and distribution.

It hasn’t been easy to make this decision. There are so many options and opportunities out there for self-published authors. For weeks, maybe months, I vetted the options until I felt comfortable committing to the path D

Daddy sitting at the linotype machine.
Daddy sitting at the linotype machine.

Part of my reason in selecting self-publishing is a lifetime connection to the printing and publishing industry. My father started his life in printing as an apprentice for a small newspaper in Winchester, Tennessee, and from there he moved to Nashville and began working his way up to some of the large printing and publishing houses there. My parents met working in a printing service in the 1940s. An uncle owned his own printing company. My older brother worked in the printing industry involved in the two-, three-, and four-color process of printing colored materials.

 

What’s next?

Over the next several weeks and months, I’ll be finishing up my manuscript. A surgery and its recovery period will come up in about a month. With that behind me and a last read-through, I believe (I hope) I will be ready to send this manuscript off.

In the meantime, I’ll keep you posted. I may even call on some of you for help in one way or another.

Community has been the best part of writing my memoir. Online friends and community made it not so lonely and were always sharing their experiences to help the rest of us take the next step.

Keep writing,

Sherrey