April 24, 2016 by M A Clarke Scott

My Kindle Scout Campaign So Far: Worth It?

Midway Through My Kindle Scout Campaign: Some Thoughts About Its Worth

I’ve just passed the midway point through my 30 day Kindle Scout campaign for my book Reconcilable Differences and am checking in with my results and experience thus far. If you didn’t catch my last post about my path to publishing, at the end I introduced my latest venture.

To recap: Amazon runs the Kindle Scout program to which authors submit unpublished works (title, cover, longline, 50 pp sample and an author bio/blurb) and, if selected, provides a 30 day opportunity to expose your book to the public and solicit nominations through your network/social media. After this time, they either offer to publish your book… or they don’t. The implication is that the number of nominations you receive affects the deal, but I’m not entirely convinced. More on this later.

What my Kindle Scout landing page looks like:

No Harm Trying

As I was preparing Reconcilable Differences for independent publishing anyway, I figured there’d be no harm experimenting with this relatively new Amazon publishing program. Some early-adopter authors, such as self-publishing guru Martin Crosbie, and Lexi Revellian, have found success. If I were published by Amazon, it sounded to me like a very good option for a debut author with a smallish social network and a limited capacity for social media marketing. If I didn’t make the cut, well, back to Plan A.

Social Media Reach

Since I’ve been at it for quite a number of years (9-10?) I actually thought my social media reach would be reasonable. Despite being a lazy, infrequent blogger, I’m somewhat active on several platforms, including Twitter, FB, Pinterest, LinkedIn and now Instagram. What I’m discovering (not that I haven’t been told this before) is that you need a huge (as in thousands and thousands) of connections, OR a very loyal, devoted and passionate following of around a thousand. I have neither.

Definitely NOT Hot & Trending

Possibly for this reason, despite shamelessly flogging my campaign this past 18 days, my “page view” results have been very, very modest. Quiet, one might say. As of Day 18 I’ve had only 363 page views. This has qualified me for the mysterious but vaguely desirable Hot & Trending list exactly ZERO hours so far. I can’t tell you what it’s like to drop-kick your baby out into the wide world and receive such a resounding… whisper.

What Does It All Mean?

Nevertheless, there are several terrific things that have come of the experience already.

The first is that I forced myself to go out there and actually promote my own work, something many an introverted writer will tell you is akin to sticking pins in your eyes. I posted on comfy and familiar channels, such as Facebook, where presumably my “friends” are fairly indulgent and supportive, although I suspect their patience is wearing thin. I personally solicited family and friends by email. I’ve tweeted to a broader mixed audience, and I’ve even mentioned it quietly on LinkedIn, a professional networking environment seemingly more conducive to the exchange of ideas than the flogging of wares. I’ve also pinned it on Pinterest but I don’t think I’ve had any page views linked from that source, and created ‘events’ on Goodreads and had some results. Some of this data is made available to Kindle Scout authors through statistics that update every 24 hours. For me this occurs somewhere between 3 and 3:30 am. And no, I don’t get up to check. It’s just not that exciting.

It’s interesting to see where the external traffic comes from though. The range of externally linked traffic gives some idea of how effective my marketing efforts have been. Although the effect is small, this is still very useful information going forward. If I make noise, who is listening? And who is more likely to take action? During the 18 days of my campaign so far, the split between internal Kindle Scout traffic and external links has remained constant at approximately 40-60.

So what does it all mean, and what is likely to happen next?

My and Others’ Thoughts On The Program

I’ve also participated on a number of writer forums, such as KindleBoards, writer’s group’s such as RWA, WFWA, Writer Unboxed and author blogs, and got involved in a few discussions. There are a variety of opinions out there among authors about the risks and rewards of the Kindle Scout program.

It seems to me those that take a cynical approach are likely in the habit of hedging their bets, and not allowing their hope too much reign. It’s easy to get hurt in this business. Too easy to be deeply disappointed yet again. So never letting yourself expect much might seem the safest bet of all. Those of you who are writers will understand that’s it’s never easy, no matter which route you choose to publishing, or how you go about managing your business afterwards. The facts of Kindle Scout are more optimistic.

Do The Nominations Even Matter?

Popular topics of discussion among participant authors include whether being on the Hot & Trending list is important for selection, and what the most important factors for selection might actually be. Reports from the battlefield indicate that no, the Hot & Trending list doesn’t matter. There are reported cases of books that spend a full 30 days on the Hot & Trending list getting a pass, and books that never hit the Hot & Trending list getting publishing deals.

While this is especially encouraging in my case, it’s interesting to speculate why. This seems obvious to me. Everyone knows you can buy supporters and reviews, and even buyers of books. Amazon knows this too. This is one of the reasons there are so many rules around who can leave book reviews on their site, and why those rules keep changing. They’re interested in staying one step ahead of the players, hackers and scammers who think they’re clever enough to “work the system.” Even earnest, hard working authors who try simply to understand how things work in order to do better have the rug pulled out from under them on a regular basis.

What Is Amazon Looking For?

Which leads me to believe that a) you can’t really fool an organization a large and powerful as Amazon, and b) they are ultimately interested in your book succeeding on it’s own merits. Not that they won’t help you along if they want to. It’s the power of Amazon marketing that makes publishing through them so desirable.

And if that’s true, then what really makes your book competitive?

I have theorized that Amazon may be interested in evaluating potential authors’ social reach and social media marketing savvy, and use the campaign results to do so, but others disagree with me. They may also be interested in the general public appeal of the candidates as a measure of their future success. But as was pointed out to me, why would Amazon care about this? If they want to sell something, they know how. Unlike most other publishers, they don’t need our help. Point taken.

Are All Nominations Equal?

Also, so many of the book covers are amateurish or just plain awful, that I wonder if what attracts page views has more to do with which genres are popular with the demographics that are more likely to hang out at Kindle Scout or respond to social media appeals than they are with the books themselves. Do the people nominating books actually take the time to read the sample pages? It also makes me wonder if nominations are weighted by Amazon according to the online behavior, nomination history, and perhaps most important, past book-buying practices, including the relevance of genre to the candidate’s.

One other marketing experiment I tried was to create a HeadTalker campaign. HeadTalker is a crowd-sourced promotion tool, like crowd-funding, that leverages the social networks of your supporters to send out a huge blast of announcements. I managed to get 25 supporters for my campaign within the deadline, so I’ll see within the next day or two whether the 969,780 reach makes an impression on my Kindle Scout campaign. And ultimately, whether this kind of social support makes a difference to Amazon.

Bottom line, the story and the writing, as always, are most important. Every book will find its readers eventually, even a quiet one. And the measure of a reader’s satisfaction rests with the story itself. You may need a little editing, and help designing a more appealing cover, but Amazon, like other publishers, will help you with that. It’s in their interest to do so. You may get only 50% royalties, but they get the other half, so your success is theirs as well. But the books, and the authors, that will sell are the ones that people want to read, and enjoy. So after all is said and done, I think I’ll put my faith and hard work into more and better writing, and leave the mysteries of marketing to others.

Losses, Gains and Opportunities

My impressions are that writers who’ve been selected for publication have been treated well by a professional and supportive team of editors, designers and marketers at Amazon, and have no regrets about participation in the program. Whether you see it as a loss leader, a great way to launch, or a reliable and relatively pain-free way to pursue publishing for all of your projects, you won’t do worse with Amazon than on your own, with the big five or a boutique digital press, and you might actually do better.

My Kindle Scout Campaign

Reconcilable Differences cover

You can help my campaign, and perhaps help Reconcilable Differences get published. 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

April 7, 2016 by M A Clarke Scott

It’s Time to Publish

My Long Path to Publishing

Aptitude and Ambition

I 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

Then 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

Or 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

Five 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.

Having 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

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.

December 29, 2015 by M A Clarke Scott

Fairy Tales as Real Life Lessons for Women

Forging a Better Version of Yourself Through Fairy Tales: Lessons for Women

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her seminal 1992 book of fairy tales, Women Who Run with the Wolves, says of stories: “In a very real way, we are imprinted with knowing just by listening to the tale.” (p.387)

Participation mystique: Just like living it

Termed “participation mystique” by Jungian psychologists, this notion has more recently been scientifically proven by brain researchers. Your brain really can’t tell the difference between experiences you live through and those you read about someone else living through, even if fictional. Here’s an article in The Atlantic about it. And another in Science.Mic.

For a person like me who makes stuff up for a living, and loves fiction more than life, this is incredibly validating.

Thus we can read stories and fairy tales to expand our experience. The lessons we learn through fiction are real and applicable to the lives we are leading. This is the very purpose of myth. To pass along the wisdom of the ages. To learn from our “elders.”

In this book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, there is a particular story – a dark fairy tale – that Estes believes “deals with most of the key journeys of a woman’s psyche.” It’s one that seems to have particular relevance to women, such as myself, who wake up one day in mid-life and wonder: What happened? How did I get here? Has this happened to you, too? Do you wonder about the choices you made, the lies you told yourself, the sacrifices and compromises that marriage and motherhood and life seem to have demanded of you? Do you look in the mirror and ask: Who am I?

Do you look in the mirror and ask: Who am I?

The story’s called, “The Handless Maiden.” By reading, and slowly absorbing, this tale, we can experience, vicariously–through “sympathetic magic”– the transformations the character experiences over her entire lifetime. That’s a lot of wisdom to help you with your own life stage challenges.

Did You Sign Away Your Self? Time to Toughen Up, Ladies

There is no way to compress all of Estes wisdom into a brief blog post, but I’ll try to highlight the key points. Likely I’m doing her careful arguments a great disservice, but this is meant as an introduction only. Hopefully if this intrigues you you will seek out and read the book, if you haven’t already. Estes suggests taking quite a long time to read the story. Maybe even months. This time is necessary because the lessons of the tale are very, very deep in a woman’s psyche, and you can’t just shake a stick at these parts of yourself and expect understanding, or change.

These deep lessons take place in a female psychic underworld, where we learn knowledge and language from the “Great Wild Mother” who wants to toughen us up to prepare us for life in the topside world of everyday. But we have to go down there to receive these lessons. Way, way down there.

Preparation for real life

In the tale, a series of tests and lessons must be mastered, each requiring a cycle of loss, sacrifice and enlightenment representing “women’s lifelong initiation into the renewal of the wild.”

Synopsis: The Handless Maiden

The tale, in brief synopsis: A man unwittingly sells his daughter to the devil in exchange for riches. She is too pure for the devil to claim, even after her hands are severed. She leaves home to become a beggar. A spirit guides her to a magical orchard, owned by a compassionate king, who falls in love and marries her. He builds her silver hands. She has a baby. The king goes away to war, and the devil interferes again, twisting messages, until the king’s mother is forced to send the queen away for safety rather than kill her. She is taken in by woods people and lives happily for seven years, and slowly her hands grow back. The king returns and seeks her out in the woods, and they live happily ever after.

The Stages:

The bargain without knowing = The end of innocence. (What poor bargain did you make?) Everywoman gives up her deep self knowledge and power for a more frail self. We trade our wild selves for the promise of riches, but the reward is hollow. We choose superficial riches and gives up dominion over some part of our passionate, creative and instinctive life. We become a sleep-walker, yet this is a necessary step on our journey. A catalyst. The father who guides us is ignorant of the connection between the inner and the outer worlds. Things are not what they appear to be.
The (symbolic) dismemberment, or separation from false life/innocence
The wandering (foraging for fruit symbolic of feminine strength)
Finding love in the underworld (she is rescued, but not yet whole)
Harrowing of the Soul (a time of healing, a shamanistic initiation during which she rediscovers her creative inner strength)
The realm of the Wild Woman (return to society as a fully empowered, adult woman bringing gifts of knowledge, maturity and fertility.)

art by Jeanie Tomanek http://www.jeanietomanek.com

For a terrifically written, thoughtful and more thorough analysis of this and other fairy tales, as well as art inspired by them, visit my new favorite link, the extremely awesome Terri Windling’s Blog, Myth & Moor.

“The trials these wounded young heroes encounter illustrate the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state to wholeness, from passivity to action. Fairy tales are… maps through the woods, trails of stones to mark the path, marks carved into trees to let us know that other women and men have been this way before.”

Windling concludes her analysis by saying: “Likewise, we’re not meant to remain in the circle of enchantment deep in the fairy tale forest — we’re meant to come back out again, bringing our hard-won knowledge and fortune with us…in service to the family (old or new), the realm, the community; to children and the future.”

Inspiration for Writing and Life

A better source of inspiration for writing women’s fiction I can’t imagine. One of my novels, a work-in-progress entitled “Coming About,” is a more intentional exploration of a woman’s journey through various stages of this process of metaphysical maturation and self-discovery. It’s about a woman who values her professional success as an architect over her selfhood as a woman. At the beginning, she has figuratively sold her soul to the devil by having an affair with her boss, and must lose everything she values and go on a spiritual retreat to learn how to integrate her inner and outer worlds.

This journey also serves as a metaphor for a writer’s life. What are we, as storytellers, doing, besides entertaining our readers, if not bringing our life’s journey to bear on stories that are a product of our creative imagination. For what purpose? To share them with our community, and our children. As I said earlier, this is the very purpose of myth – and of story. To pass along the wisdom of the ages.

If you’re a writer, have you applied this framework of the heroine’s journey to your writing? And whether you are or not, does this fairy tale speak to you in terms of your own life journey?

October 31, 2015 by M A Clarke Scott

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo: What are your pre-writing rituals?

The Value of Rituals

This is a great article, and also I love this guy so I recommend subscribing.

This Is The #1 Ritual You Need To Do Every Day


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Anticipating NaNoWriMo Daily Writing

As the participants of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) anticipate our start tomorrow, I’m thinking about the little rituals we all have, conscious or not, as we prepare to sit down and write.

For our purposes here, let’s have a little fun. What are your personal “ok I’m going to sit down and write now” preparation or psych-up rituals? Let’s share and maybe have a laugh.

Aahhhh, My Morning Latte

When Barker mentioned the ritual of preparing your special morning coffee, that really resonated with me. I make my own half decaf latte’s at home and I love them so much, but the preparation gives me as much joy as the drinking of them. Something about the anticipation, the way I lay out all the bits and pieces, the sensuality of it, the noise of the steamer, even. Damn those coffees taste good. And then I feel I’m ready for anything.

As for daily writing, I think I probably do a few non-essential household puttering things. Put a wash on, let the vacuum go (it’s a robot), tidy a few piles of papers. Maybe sit and stare out the window doing deep breathing for a while, gathering my thoughts, immersing myself in my imaginary world. And once I get going, I would also read over the past day’s words as a way to sink into the story world before I begin.

Good Luck Charms Actually Work!

Oh, and as for good luck charms, there’s this guy:

I’m not sure why but he has to be with me when I’m writing new content. My B-I-L thinks it’s weird that my mascot is a jester, but… well maybe it is. But he chose me so I can’t help it. (It doesn’t mean I don’t take my writing seriously.)

I’m sure as I get going, if I pay attention, I’ll notice a few other weird things that I do.

How about you?

June 29, 2015 by M A Clarke Scott

Digital Age Workers and Jobs of the Future – Part 1

Digital 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 24^th 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.

October 12, 2013 by M A Clarke Scott

Remembering Thanksgivings Past

BOUNTIFUL BEGINNINGS

I was the child of parents who grew to adulthood on a pioneer homestead in Manitoba. Throughout my life, I took it pretty much for granted that the major holidays would signal a large family gathering, accompanied by some significant feasting, with food that my parents had more or less produced themselves from the land.

Although we reaped the rewards at these special times, our everyday lives benefited from the work my parents did every other day of the year, too. It may have seemed to me as a child that they simply waved their arm and all that bounty magically appeared on the table, whereas now I understand how much it was the product of their bent backs and a not insignificant amount of wisdom passed down through the generations.

A NEW TRADITION OF GRATITUDE

I had to leave home, to go to university here and there (actually the further I went the more I discovered), before I came to appreciate what we had at home.

In particular, I remember two Thanksgivings.

The first was during my undergraduate years. One year when I clearly had decided I couldn’t afford the time or money to go home for the holiday, I was invited, along with my roommates, to join a large group of likewise “homeless” singles for a Thanksgiving feast. This was my first encounter with someone else’s traditions. Looking back, I can clearly see how insular I was, how little exposure I had to cultural groups outside my own. I still find it difficult to understand why someone would want cornbread, mushrooms, apples or oysters inside their roast turkey, or curry spices on the outside. 8^* But never mind.

On this particular occasion I was astonished, enlightened and delighted with the sheer variety of dishes that were brought to the pot-luck Thanksgiving feast I attended. All the familiar items were there (well maybe not pyrogies, I can’t recall now.) But certainly there was roast turkey and stuffing and myriad root vegetables and squashes. There were also things I had never had, that others deemed de rigeur: brussels sprouts, for example. (imagine that!).

And as many kinds of pie as one could dream of: not only pumpkin but apple and pecan as well.

But despite the disorientation and titillation of learning new things, there was one thing that was familiar, and perhaps even more accentuated in that strange setting: gratitude.

Somehow, I suppose because we were all displaced, the sense of appreciation, not only for the bountiful feast, but for the warm and generous companionship, was uppermost in my mind. Perhaps it was simply that none of us took it for granted. In my memory, it was one of the warmest, richest, most emotionally fulfilling holidays of my life.

RECONNECTING WITH THE BOUNTIFUL EARTH

A few years later, when I was further from home in the middle of grad school, I was taken in hand by a new friend and co-worker, along with my own room-mate at the time, and swept away to a rural area outside of Montreal for the Thanksgiving weekend. This was a part of the country with which I had no familiarity.

Not only the customs, but the very geography, were new and strange.

Our hosts ran a small pig farm. They were gracious and welcoming, immigrants themselves to Canada. Highlights I can remember include accompanying our hosts in borrowed galoshes as they fed their livestock and harvested from their fall garden most of what we would be eating that evening, including late tomatoes, squashes, greens and brussels sprouts. We were sent on a long country stroll down a grassy allee of trees under the rainbow canopy of colourful Eastern leaves, armed with a bag of wrinkled apples to feed the horses who met us at the bounding fence, anticipating the sweet treats we brought.

GRATITUDE TRULY FELT

Later, we warmed ourselves by a wood fire inside the cozy farmhouse and sipped wine while our hostess prepared the meal. My senses were alive. It was as if I had never experienced hospitality before, never seen food pulled from the dark soil and lovingly transformed into beautiful and delicious dishes, never tasted such a sumptuous meal, never felt such warm companionship, never felt such gratitude.

How odd, when in fact that is exactly what I had grown up with.

But perhaps without experiencing it out of my familiar context I would never have come fully awake to the wonders of a country harvest, and food lovingly harvested, prepared and shared with loved ones. Nor of the delights of opening ones home and ones arms to strangers.

It is a Thanksgiving weekend that I will always remember, and consequently why I prefer to be in the country at this time of year. Also perhaps why I feel a special urge to open the door and include those outside my immediate family at the table. I certainly never again took for granted the skills, traditions and loving generosity of my own family.

So this weekend I’d like to say thank you. Thanks to my parents and family for all that they gave me and all that they taught me. Thank you to all those friends and strangers who opened their homes, tables and hearts to me over the years. And thank you to the earth that provides us all we need and more. If only we are able to pause and remember to appreciate it.

How about you? Do you have a special memory that you cherish – a moment in your past when you woke up and really felt gratitude for everything you were given?

M. A. CLARKE SCOTT, Author

Romantic Women's Fiction ~ Healing, Wholeness, Hope ~ Stories for Life

Diligence