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It’s Time to Publish

My Long Path to Publishing

Aptitude and Ambition

10-things-you-have-to-do-before-you-leave-varsity-female_graduate90I can still remember like it was yesterday the evening almost eleven years ago that I sat beside my husband in bed, doing aptitude tests and reading books like What Colour Is My Parachute? It wasn’t the first time I was trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d already been to university for years and earned several degrees. I’d tried to put all that worthy education to good use by building not one but two professional careers, first as an architect, then as an academic researcher in gerontology, and then, rather feebly, as an architect again.

 

Enter the Sandwich Age

toddler excited about diggerThen a baby, aging parents and a huge home renovation got in the way. Et voila, five  years vanished. Strangely, I put good use to my architectural training being my own house designer and project manager, and I put all that valuable gerontology knowledge to good use caring for my mother-in-law and mother. But once junior was in full time kindergarten, I began to get restless and look for new outlets for my energy and creativity. Thus the soul-searching moment I mentioned above. At that point in my life I really needed to close those doors and move into a new arena.

The Sleeping Writer

cat on laptopOr not completely new, as I’d always been an avid reader and book lover, and had attempted to craft my first novel at the age of nine. I made it (longhand on yellow foolscap) ten chapters in before something else stole my attention away. But I never lost the desire, and the books, or their genesis, accumulated inside my head over the years, like secret friends whose voices called to me.

So that night, revisiting my strengths and interests via these tests and quizzes, I decided I would give it a shot – I would try my hand at writing a novel. I said to my husband, “I’ll give it five years. If I haven’t published a book by then I’ll quit and get a real job.” How naive.

A Fire in the Belly

As it turned out, five years is nothing in the life of a writer. Barely enough time to figure out which way is up. I had taken on so much more than I’d realized at the time. Firstly, that being educated and literate does not mean you can sit down and write a decent novel – oh, no! Without any formal training in creative writing, it was a long learning curve. An iterative one,  as I dreamed, wrote, studied, workshopped, networked, critiqued, competed, read, and wrote some more. And I got better. But most importantly, I discovered two things: I LOVED writing, and I’d finally found my tribe. I didn’t want to stop at five years. I didn’t want to stop ever. This is where I belonged.

Ten… Make That Eleven Years On

robert-de-niro-oscars-2104-quote-about-writersFive years came and went in the blink of a cursor, and no book publishing happened. I suppose for some writers it happens faster, but I believe for most there are many quiet years of devotion and diligence, and perhaps dabbling, that precede those fabulous debuts. But the path to publishing is paved by many a stumbling block. Mine included perfectionism, an addiction to research and learning, crushing self-doubt (a cliché in our business), a desire to learn how to navigate the online world of social media in order to build my author “platform”, a desperate attempt to learn about and keep abreast of the quickly shifting sands of the publishing industry. All necessary parts of the author’s career. Oh, and did I mention crushing self-doubt? None of these new challenges came easily, especially the digital-technical stuff, which seems to get harder the older I get.

Never Look Back

Nevertheless, the pressure to get my lovely children out there into the world built and built. Several half-hearted forays into querying traditional agents and publishers over the years simply sent me scurrying back for another round of honing my craft. But when the ten year mark approached, I decided I really needed to get at least one book “out there.” Even with that determined goal, another year+ has slipped by. Now, however, I see the cumulative effect of that determined effort and focussed goal. In fairly short order, I’ve won a prize, got another manuscript request by a traditional publisher, and prepared yet another manuscript for independent publishing. Sometimes I think it’s just about setting clear goals.

e73514af7309c4006bfce2a7e38a4451Having several completed works is one of the side benefits of working diligently for eleven years– I have an “oevre.” And I’m certain at least one of those books will be published very soon. One way or another. I now have a solid sense of the industry and my place in it, and a lot more confidence about how I want to manage my writing career.

Time to Publish – One Way or Another

Sometimes what you need is sitting right in front of you all along but you look right past it, because you were looking for something– different. Recently, as I’ve been editing, revising and designing my very first novel, Reconcilable Differences, in preparation for independent publishing, it occurred to me that submitting it to Amazon’s relatively new Kindle Scout program was worth the effort. Since I’d already decided it was a “special” book, a quiet one that would find its readers, even if a legacy publisher wasn’t willing to take a risk on it, I had nothing to lose. Even if it wasn’t selected for publication, the exposure would only help my indie launch later on.

So last week I got the bits all together and submitted it, and it was accepted. [What is Kindle Scout?]

My Kindle Scout Campaign

Reconcilable Differences cover

Reconcilable Differences cover

I was shocked that it was finally happening. Now, I wondered, did my long, slow build as a writer in the world of social media amount to anything? Would I be able to hold up my end of the publishing bargain by calling on my vast (possibly a slight exaggeration) social network and generate enough nominations to get noticed? Well… we’ll see.

My Kindle Scout campaign launched on April 6, 2016 12:00 AM EDT (9:00 PM PDT) and ends on May 6, 2016 12:00 AM EDT! Now it’s up to me (and you) to generate enough nominations for the book in the next 29 days to get Kindle to publish it.

Are You Willing to Help?

Please click the link and have a look, and if you think the book is worthy, give it your vote. Also please pass this along to friends, family and other readers who might be interested in helping out. As a bonus, those who vote for a successful candidate receive a free e-book as thanks. So we all win! If you don’t mind checking out the book, here’s the link: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/JXXN1LUS2SHW

And stay tuned. I’ll be monitoring my progress through the campaign and reporting back here a couple of times, as well as at the end to let you know what’s happening next.

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Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future – Part 2

Education is More Important than Ever to Prepare for Future Jobs

Continuing from Monday’s post:

Jeremy Rifkin, American economic and social theorist, presents the argument that an emerging zero-marginal-cost sharing economy will make itself felt most strongly in the labour market, where “new employment opportunities lie in the collaborative commons in fields that tend to be nonprofit and strengthen social infrastructure — education, health care, aiding the poor, environmental restoration, child care and care for the elderly, the promotion of the arts and recreation.” (The Sunday Review, March 15, 2014 and on CBC Ideas.

 

In this new economy, the youngest generations at last emerge to take the upper hand. They who have been weaned on digital communication technology and the new social practices that accompany it will be best suited to navigate this new economic and social reality.

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They who have been weaned on digital communication technology and the new social practices that accompany it will be best suited to navigate this new economic and social reality.

 

Rifkin argues that the first impact of the “Third Industrial Revolution” will be a massive “rollout of hardware buildout” to accommodate digitization and new renewable energy sources. Overlaid and subsequent to this forty year transformation of our physical plant, the vast majority of jobs in the new automated world will manifest in the growing social economy, including education and welfare.

 

The trick is to facilitate the change. Despite doubts about the challenges of supporting and realizing this global transformation and ensuring its truly democratic impacts expressed by Bob Rae, Anita McGahen and Janice Stein on the CBC Ideas panel, the alternative, the status quo, looks grim.

 

All of these changes make possible a better, laterally integrated, democratized society that enables a liberation of human potential unprecedented in human history. Toward this end, new jobs will universally depend upon education. The question remains: who will get it?

 

It’s been argued that the steadily rising cost of education, combined with increasingly scarce financial aid for students, is taking a professional, or even a basic undergraduate degree, beyond the reach of the working poor, and even the middle class.

 

Returning to the question of competition for education and jobs, it’s been argued that the steadily rising cost of education, combined with increasingly scarce financial aid for students, is taking a professional, or even a basic undergraduate degree, beyond the reach of the working poor, and even the middle class.

 

While competing for advanced education becomes more challenging due to rising costs and competition, education alone is not enough to guarantee success.

 

Students of today, and young workers, must be conscious of how technology is changing the very fabric of our world, and therefore influencing the shape of the job market in the near and distant future. Making wise and fruitful educational choices depends upon being able to see into the future and to strategize accordingly. They may intuit and take for granted the new world they live in, including technology and the new sharing economy, but they will do better to understand how it works, how it differs from the world of the past, and their place within it.

 

Students of today, and young workers, must be conscious of how technology is changing the very fabric of our world, and therefore influencing the shape of the job market in the near and distant future.

 

As baby boomers prepare for retirement, it is important that they also consider the legacy they leave behind. They must not turn their backs on a world that is increasingly difficult to understand. Rather they must ask: Are the youth who will replace them prepared to function, run and thrive in the society that is emerging in their wake? And what can be done now, while they are still in positions of power and influence, to ensure that the next generation will succeed?

 

Mary Ann Clark Scott, formerly an architect and environmental gerontologist, currently works as an education savings advisor, a novelist, corporate storyteller and freelance writer.
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Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future – Part 1

file000898499863Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future

 

As a mother and aunt of a few young digital-age millennials, I often ponder the particular challenges these emerging adults face in our overwhelming and rapidly changing world, and how they will fare in the future.

 

In the last century, post-war changes to society, including wider access to education, industrialization, a growth economy, the sexual revolution, and changing social values tended to have a flattening effect on social hierarchies and increase opportunities for advancement and success. The world we now live in is very different.

 

“Canada’s economy is built on a simple but deeply entrenched belief: that every new generation will do better than the one before it.” MacLeans Magazine

 

Personal observations lead me to agree with Jason Kirby’s opinion back in 2009 that the above may no longer be true. The reality for today’s youth is increasingly the opposite. Costs of living are higher, incomes lower and debt even greater than they have been in previous decades.

 

Young graduates have a much harder time getting established than did previous generations.

 

Economic recessions combined with competition for jobs with established and as-ever numerically advantaged baby boomers, as well as a rapidly evolving, technologically changing job market, mean that young graduates have a much harder time getting established than did previous generations.

 

Evidence that today’s young adults suffer from anxiety and depression in unprecedented numbers, as well as often cited statistics about late launchers and boomerang kids, support this notion.

 

The January 24th issue of The Economist included a pair of articles pointing to “America’s New Aristocracy” and “An Hereditary Meritocracy”  which reveal that America’s founding principal of equal opportunity for advancement and success is being undermined by systemic filtering.

 

Wealthy, educated and powerful couples tend to beget more of the same, and both educational and career advantages, from cradle to college, accrue to the children of the existing elite, meaning that opportunities for success are slipping away from the rest.

 

The amount of recent political dialogue about the fate of the “middle class” and ensuing debates about how to define this term shine a light on the growing struggle average Canadians have to survive and thrive.

 

There seems to be general consensus that the “middle class” is growing, and the gap between the middle class and the privileged elite is widening.

 

While it’s no surprise that politicians are free with this term, even economists who insist on statistical definitions do not agree. Despite this, there seems to be general consensus that the “middle class” is growing, and the gap between the middle class and the privileged elite is widening.

 

This phenomenon in part explains the widespread growth in income disparity. “[An] OECD report shows Canada is near the top of the heap in terms of both growth in income disparity over the past three decades and in absolute terms.” http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/canadian-income-disparity-growing/

 

Add another ingredient to the mix: the changing nature of our economy in terms of both the types of jobs that are emerging (and disappearing) and the emergent alternate economy that social media and the internet have spawned.

 

Jeremy Rifkin, American economic and social theorist, presents the argument that an emerging zero-marginal-cost sharing economy will make itself felt most strongly in the labour market, where “new employment opportunities lie in the collaborative commons in fields that tend to be nonprofit and strengthen social infrastructure — education, health care, aiding the poor, environmental restoration, child care and care for the elderly, the promotion of the arts and recreation.” (The Sunday Review, March 15, 2014 and on CBC Ideas.

To be continued July 1, 2015…

Mary Ann Clark Scott, formerly an architect and environmental gerontologist, currently works as an education savings advisor, a novelist, corporate storyteller and freelance writer.