Birth Announcement

In a recent Facebook post, I announced the forthcoming printing of a new book like this:

 

Like someone announcing a pregnancy, I can’t resist sharing my new book on its way to the printer. Should be out by the end of March. A look at what my lifetime (50 years plus!) of teaching music might have to offer our long-overdue turn toward kindness and compassion. How nothing alone can get us there, but music and the humanistic teaching of music have much to offer. Stay tuned for further announcements!

 

The responses—some 250 of them after two days—felt like they deserved a thank you. And so I wrote (but haven’t yet posted) this: 

 

Immeasurable thanks to all who responded so positively to my book announcement. In the past couple of months, the distributor who gets my Pentatonic Press books online dropped me, my jazz, Joy & Justice publisher dropped me, the prices for printing, storage and shipping all skyrocketed, the ten book dealers who have always carried my books are whittled down to two, people seem to be reading less and less and if they are, electronic versions instead of print books. Not an auspicious time to publish a new book! 

 

In the midst of all this discouraging news, your encouragement is keeping me chugging uphill like “The Little Engine That Could” (do young kids still read that book?), chanting “I think I can, I think I can… “ I have at least four more books waiting in line (bringing it up to 15 books!) and your kind words are helping me to keep going. Thanks to you all for pushing me up the hill. 

 

When the book comes out, it indeed is parallel to a birth, as the little seed of an idea is fertilized and slowly grows into a recognizable shape and felt presence. And then the moment it comes fully out into the world and you behold it, as all parents mostly do, as the most beautiful baby ever born. One phrase of your work is done, but the rest is just beginning. Raising the child, feeding it, clothing it attractively, finding a school that will accept him or her with friends side-by-side and the sense of being welcomed and known. 

 

In short, the opposite of my recent experience with low sales, callous publishers, indifferent distributors, all of which feels like a rejection of my child, which in turn feels like a rejection of me. Like every author, I vacillate between feeling like what I have to say needs to be said and no one else can say it precisely in the way that I do and that readers will be affirmed, challenged and uplifted and then the polar opposite— maybe I’m not a very good writer, maybe what I think is important is not of interest to most people, maybe the world doesn’t need any of it after all. So when I get comments like the below on Facebook, it feeds that engine chugging up the hill:

 

“Wow! Just what’s needed!”

 

“I always enjoy reading and learn so much from your writing!”

 

“So very much needed at the perfect time!”

 

“Congrats! The world needs this now!”

 

“Thanks for keeping your thoughts and experiences coming to us all and nourishing us in your each and every book.”

 

And then some 15 others who commented, “Congratulations! Can’t wait to read it!”

 

And so I’ll keep huffing and puffing—“I think I can, I think I can…”