Book Arrival II

The Given Self has arrived!

I’m surprised first that my book looks so skinny. I’ve never written a book this short – 148 pages. I thought it was 159. Amazon says 229. I’m not sure what it started out at, but the original version came in with a page count that was going to make the price of the book $24.95. I cut it to the $13.95 range. I don’t think with a traditional publisher you’d ever see a $24.95 paperback, but pages and price are linked with this less traditional publisher. Somehow, I think it was 159 as a PDF and became 148 through tighter margins – which disappointed me. It’s got that bold cover and a plain inside with tight margins. Okay.

I’d asked for the category to be changed from Self-help (maybe as my first excerpt I’ll print the paragraph where I say THIS IS NOT SELF HELP). But oh well. It is done. It is fine. Anyone who gets to the page where I say it’s not self help won’t care anymore what the category was. (I hope.)

Why self-help bugs me so much I’m not sure. Have you ever considered it? What it means? What you find in the self-help section? It’s not that I haven’t shopped there. I have. Maybe most recently for a Carolyn Myss book. Most often when I buy self-help books, I’m disappointed. I don’t really want what they have to offer. I think I do when I make the purchase but then I don’t.

I remember Willis Harman writing about his encounter with A Course in Miracles and how he avoided the daily lessons. He said something to the effect that he was aware…somewhere inside himself…that there’d be a change. Machiavelli wrote, when proposing any kind of change you can expect the lukewarm support of those the change benefits, and the violent opposition of everyone else.

It’s just, I suppose, that self-help books never have changed me.

Man. Change is something you sure want and don’t want, both at the same time. I talk about that in The Given Self too. Maybe that’ll be my second excerpt.

Arrival

The Given Self Has Arrived!


Had a champagne toast the other night after getting my six author copies of The Given Self. It was to be our Tuesday night dinner with Katie, but she’d been out all day (much to my husband’s chagrin) and we woke her from her nap when it was time for dinner (and let her sleep). My brother-in-law Brian, who’s been coming over with his baby daughter Grace while his wife Joyce leads choir practice still dropped by, but first he had to go to a wake and didn’t make dinner. Angie and her boyfriend Christopher, almost always there, decided to watch a movie instead. So it was Donny and Mia and me who toasted.

There’d been a bit of tension earlier in the day. This always seems the way.

When I got home from work the box pf books was sitting on Henry’s yellow stool, and I took one look at it and knew what it was. I had to make a phone call concerning the cause of the tension (dare I say the mind-blowing stress?) and so took the box with me to my sunroom office. I made my phone call. The person I needed to talk with wasn’t in. And so I opened the box.

Isn’t that terribly anti-climactic?

I didn’t show anyone until the dinner-table toast, and at that point had only gotten through the first chapter minus the last paragraph (the phone call I needed to take came).

So there you have it. The book has arrived.

The next day, I called my friend Mary to come over and hid the new books under the blanket I usually keep on the love seat. I’d told my daughter the night before (in the midst of the – what shall I call it – bi-weekly crisis?) that if anyone could get me feeling excited, Mary could. But before I could even think of excitement, I had to talk about the other stuff – thus the hidden books.

Isn’t that the berries?

The only good thing is, The Given Self is a book for just such a time. It’s a book that will tell you to get a life, claim a life, quit being thrown off track by bi-weekly crises. It’s a book that will tell you to take care of yourself (in whatever your own weird way of doing that is). It is a book I wrote because I needed to and it was there when I needed it.

On the radio

This site is an open journal about publishing this book: The Given Self.

It’s probably been a while since I intimated a desire to give up on the marketing end of book publishing. I’ve nearly done it, but not quite.

Take, for instance, the idea that you will do radio interviews.

Now, for one thing, this is difficult for me because I don’t listen to the radio. Well, okay, every once in a while, I turn it on when I’m in the car. The fact that each time I do I end up scribbling myself a note about some great new song I’ve heard, doesn’t get me to do it more often. It doesn’t get me to learn how to put that song on my computer. I’ve got, at any given time, a half-dozen bank slips with song titles written on them in my purse though. Then, when I get a chance, I ask music savvy people, “Have you ever heard of Dan Wilson?” Usually, the answer is “Yes.” Then I’ll give them my guess at the name of the song I liked. With the click of a finger and a cell phone, blackberry, or whatever kind of device they have in their pocket, they’ll find the correct title. I’ll revise my note. That’s as far as it goes.

I never listen to talk radio. Occasionally I’ve listened to a Twins game. Basically, it seems to me that listening to the radio is something you do if you’re alone and bored. When I’m alone, I sigh in relief for the quiet. When I’m alone in my car, I’ve really gotten so I enjoy the freedom – maybe because my car broke down not long ago and I missed her while she was awaiting repairs. She’s a 2001 PT Cruiser. When I first got her, other Cruiser drivers would honk at me and people in grocery store parking lots would ask how I liked the car and want a peak inside the door. I’m sentimental about her, I guess. I named her Maurice after a song I still can’t ever remember the title of. But anyway, unless the drive is long or I’m feeling a restless energy, we ride in silence.

So you take this easy sounding thing – start with talk radio in your local area. You get on the internet and try to find out which talk radio shows aren’t right wing political diatribes. You delete those, and then you try to guess which ones might be interested in the arts. It’s a long and laborious process.

I found one woman I’m going to give a try though. Get this. There was this section – a kind of “get to know the host” question and answer section on the station’s website. When asked what her pet peeve was, this woman, host of Steele Talkin, said, “Cleanliness.” I thought – ‘She and I could get along.’

I told my mother- and sister-in-law about her while they were over working with Donny to make 9 dozen spinach and meat pies. They’d started before I got home from work. Donny hadn’t put the morning dishes away. They were going up and down the stairs to the basement where we’ve got more kitchen equipment than you can shake a stick at, including a warming oven (at least I think that’s what it’s called), and a big industrial mixer. To make spinach and meat pies, you mix the dough, set the dough in little balls, pound the dough after its risen, fill the dough, and then pinch it into little triangles and bake it. The table and counters were laden with bowls, flouer, pounding areas, pans, spoons, and big trays of beautiful, golden brown pies already done. The floor and steps were littered. Talking of this Jearlyn Steele and her pet peeve, I said, “I feel so much more comfortable in a house that isn’t perfect.”

Graciously, my mother- and sister-in-law agreed that I was comfortable with a mess. They started talking about people who’d wash your wooden spoon before you were done with it with great disdain.

Being peeved by cleanliness is a great conversation starter. I figure this woman knows what she’s doing on the radio. I figure if I can interest her in talking to me, we’ll have a great time. Check her out if you care to – she’s a fine looking woman besides – I mean you just know by looking at her that she’s got stuff to say:
http://www.wccoradio.com/pages/3457.php

But it still feels like a shot in the dark…even when you find someone who isn’t too keen on cleanliness. You might not think this bodes too well for me: one shot in the dark radio personality whom I feel I can approach with ease. Actually there are two more, both former patrons of our former coffee shop. One will remember me. The other will remember my daughters if I drop their names.

I just can’t see that it makes any more sense to send out massive inquiries to every radio program in town than it does to send the awful group e-mails. Call me old-fashioned, behind the times, or just plain contrary, but this is how I feel. And you can’t put out a book called The Given Self and go against yourself and your best instincts too much. It just won’t fly.

The shoulds

Photo is of the cover of my new book
Courtesy of O Books



Opened the door for the cats this morning and found that the light that yesterday was red was green. I wondered if it would stay green all day. When I went back for the cats, it was red. I haven’t noticed if it’s yellow in between yet. Maybe, if it is, the intersection is open. Another inconvenience gone. Ha. Ha.

What’s a convenience? A convenience to you might be a pain in the neck to me. I could go on and on about how convenient all these companies are making things for us by making us “do it ourselves” and get off on a real tangent. I’ve done it before.

But then this whole thing of getting up and writing in the morning is a tangent. Letting my mind ramble along like a wayfarer until it settles down.

Let me use Verizon’s “Friends and Family” discount as an example. They advertise all over the place that you can choose your ten most frequently dialed numbers, get them on a list, and you won’t be charged for them. It’ll save you tons of money on your cell phone bill. There’s a web address right on the envelope that your bill comes in. The implication is – just go sign up – it’s easy!

I tried on and off for two months to get on “Friends and Family.” It’s one of those things that if you’re anything like me, you don’t inconvenience yourself to set up until you really need that discount, and by the time you really need that discount, you feel totally frustrated when you can’t figure out how to do it. I still don’t know how I eventually, two months, and half a dozen tries later, got to a human being. It took him 45 minutes to walk me through it. I wasn’t such a dummy after all. I first had to be signed up for the right plan and then there were all kinds of other hoops to jump through.

I tell every human being I talk to now how grateful I am to talk to them. I offer to call their managers and tell them how wonderful it is to talk to a human being. The human beings are always nice. Even patient. They get me apologizing for being the way I am and I start feeling old and like a fuddy-duddy. If I were twenty years younger, I tell myself, I’d probably be able to do this with ease. A friend was telling me about her own technical difficulties with a computer program and her inability to get answers and she said, “They lost me,” meaning whatever program and company that offered it, lost her as a customer. When you make the “convenience” (especially, I’m finding, the “self help” convenience) too difficult, you’re going to lose people.

Getting back to the light, I see it best from the steps leading out my back door. They’re higher, of course, than the yard. By the time I’m standing in front of the cabin, I can’t see the light at all, which is a blessing.

I am not going to walk out my back door and gauge my day by what color the light is…but I have to admit that after writing about it yesterday…the green light today was surprising. “Oh. It’s green now. Is there a green light somewhere in my life?”

Well, of course there is. Most of the time, in a field of green, there’s a lone red light flashing in the distance, saying Stop. Not this way. There’s an easier way. A more direct way. A simpler way. Or, Wrong direction – turn around.

The “shoulds” are the ultimate inconvenient convenience. Think about it. If you do what you “should” do, everything is going to run smoothly in the long run…right? Isn’t that the prevailing wisdom? Follow the instructions. Read the Users Manual. The How To book. And then….

I should go in and do the dishes.

That, to me, is about as much depth as you're going to get from the "shoulds."

Getting a red light

My New Book


Walked out to the cabin this morning. Granted, I had my down coat on at the time, but it felt nearly balmy. I’ve been wondering what the new red light has been down the way, assuming it to be a temporary light for the construction or from the equipment along the freeway ramp. This morning I realized it’s the cause of the construction. The newly installed traffic light glares boldly into my woods. I can see it from the house. The whole time the ramp work has been going on, I knew they were changing the traffic signal from a stop sign to stop and go lights…and still…when the light showed up in my woods it was a shocker. I hadn’t thought I’d see it. Hadn’t imagined how high it would be. Hadn’t imagined it peaking over my fence. The ramp isn’t open yet and the light is permanently set to red at the moment. Soon it will be an ever-changing range of red, yellow, green. Pooh.

I’ve been having technical difficulties lately. They started with my e-mail. I was preparing to send an announcement of The Given Self to my email list, which let me tell you, is not an organized list. When I want to send an email to someone I haven’t heard from in a while, I do a find for their name and respond to their last email to me. The lists I have in my address book are pretty old. Regardless, I was getting queasy about this from the get-go. I hate getting group emails and didn’t want to send one. I’d already decided to write one letter and send it to each individually. I’d sent it to about three people – well not “it” – but I’d mailed a personalized version of it (so personalized that it made the letter senseless) to those few, when my email went down. It’s probably recoverable, but not by me. So, if anyone’s reading this who once emailed me and would like me to have their address again sometime soon, send me a note.

I’m still surprised when technical difficulties arise to enforce an intuition. Still surprised even though it’s happened many times. More times than I can remember. Some would probably say these are flukes. Others that they’re the effect of my inner life reaching out and causing effect in my outer life. I’m beginning to believe the latter. I’m beginning to believe things happen on purpose. I’m beginning to believe things happen on purpose when I’m not intending them to…that the random isn’t random and the purposeful is contrived. It’s a variation on a theme I’ve been exploring for a while.

A cool thing happened yesterday to reinforce the original intuition if not the theme. I’d told a friend about all this and she sent me a “group” email she’d just received. It was well intended but awful. Simply awful. Who wants to get those things? Enough said.

But it’s kind of like the darn traffic signal. You think you know what will happen and then suddenly you’ve got a red light.

This is creative space

It’s one thirty in the afternoon. Henry, Ang and Mia just left in my car. I was so hoping I’d come home and Henry would be at daycare and Angie already at Mia’s. So…another hour goes by. But it was a lovely hour.

Henry wanted to come outside with me and explore the woods. I held his hand while he climbed on a fallen tree that made an almost perfect climbing ramp. After several ups and downs, he asks, “Can I go there, Umma?” I say, “Yes. Go explore,” and off he’d go. Then he’d turn and look at me. He couldn’t get much more than 20 paces in any direction before the woods closed in. I tossed Sam the ball. Kept one eye on Henry, and watched, only a little impatiently for his Mom to come get him. I’d been dreaming: Four whole hours!

Mia asked me to throw a load of her laundry in behind my own. It’s not so bad, although I didn’t do it yet, and I did kick Simeon out of the cabin. He wanted attention. I had to draw the line somewhere, and luckily he didn’t stand outside the window meowing to come back in.

I came home so excited to get here…smell the smells…be back in my space on an unexpected afternoon “off,” having worked this morning instead. My client likes to bowl with the guys on Friday afternoons. I love my mornings, but for being in the cabin, the afternoon is better at this time of year for it having had a chance to warm up. I’ve got my hooded sweatshirt on. It’s perfect. Not even my hands are cold.

Now what?

This is creative space.

The Given Self

You might wonder how cover-designs are chosen. At O Books you are asked to note covers you like from their other titles and to give a brief description of any idea you have or any “no way — don’t do that” instructions. My “No way” instructions were followed (no purple, nothing overtly spiritual – you know – like doves or angels). I had chosen covers you might call visually interesting. I got a flower. I didn’t complain. Who knows if simple isn’t just the right thing.


I thought it was about time that I share the cover and copy of The Given Self.


There is an urge coming from somewhere inside of you, a little voice that starts getting louder, telling you that you have to take back your life from the person who’s been running it so ineptly. The life you’re living doesn’t feel like your own. The person who people take you to be doesn’t feel like you.

We miss the self who has been stolen through an identity theft in which we have conspired. Our own diminishment makes it necessary to quit going along, to cease leaving ourselves open to those forces that take us away from our humanity, and to increase every opportunity to know our own given selves once again.

Mari presents her honest process in search for the authentic self - The Given Self. She accurately demonstrates that we cannot embrace an impersonal spirituality unless we integrate the personal self; without this piece, invalidation occurs which is a common trap for spiritual seekers. This book will help many learn to trust their authenticity - the path home to our Given Self. Nouk Sanchez & Tomas Vieira, Take Me to Truth; Undoing the Ego.

Mari Perron is the author/scribe of the Course of Love series (three books written in the tradition of A Course in Miracles), of two books of The Grace Trilogy, and is winner of the Jean Keller Bouvier Award for literary excellence from the University of Minnesota.

Early morning and the sun's rising

I could probably have been in the cabin the past few days, but being out there in the cold for however many weeks I was got my hips to aching pretty bad. I’ve got a blanket and heater next to me just to start my day in the sunroom.

The fall back/spring ahead time change happened over the weekend and the whole sky is already light at quarter to seven. Low along the freeway fence it’s golden, and above it’s already that pigment-less winter white. It’s pretty though. One of the storm windows in here is still open a crack and that window is steamy. Only one window has plastic taped over it to decrease the drafts. It’s the one that sits behind my desk. It’s there because it went up last winter and I never took it down. What the heck – I was in the cabin all summer.

I thought briefly this morning – who cares what the sky looks like at six or seven? Why do you write about this stuff?

It took me a long time to get “writing for a reader” out of my head. It’s hard to say why that doesn’t work for me. It seems to work so well for other people.

I woke up with these ideas of things to write about today:
giving up habits…later,
the yard light, and
doing what’s easy.

I trust morning thoughts so I’ll give capturing what it was that brought them to mind a quick whirl.

Oh man, the sun is topping the fence just now and she’s bright orange. She’s sent a ray over my frosted window and I swear it’s already creating a V of moisture relief. The rest of the window is pink.

Bad Habits

I don’t admit to my bad habits in public or on paper anymore. I used to do it freely. Lately, I’ve seen the effects of “big brother”…newly named technology. I don’t have anything that big to hide, but when I saw in the past few months what employers can ask and claim the rights to, it freaked me out a little, especially that the same employer grew more invasive in less than a year. Then my daughter went to rent an apartment – not a fancy, exclusive kind of apartment, but an affordable six-plex on an average street. Her potential landlord got a list of her every traffic violation and it seemed, as he read the list to her over the phone, every trouble she’d ever had, no matter how small, or how long ago.

At the corporate job I briefly held, a young guy talked of his second job bartending and another asked why he didn’t put it on FaceBook. The kid said he wouldn’t want a potential employer to see it. Think about it – all these kids with lives like open doors – and all the potential employers peaking in.

But anyway, when I woke up thinking about how I want to quit my bad habits “later,” I realized how little good it does me – that “future” intention. It’s an idea of betterment, not something I want to do. If there was more to it than that, I’ve lost it.

The Yard Light

The yard light is one of those things that makes the view from the sunroom different from the view from the cabin. It’s a large, automatic light, like those that line the freeway. It was here when we moved in and I can imagine the old owner lobbying for it, afraid of the dark woods behind the house. It can still be seen from the cabin, but it’s not intrusive. I’ve spent whole seasons out there trying to get a bead on when it comes on. Same time every day, or when the day grows light? Point is, it’s obscure enough that I don’t notice.

We sit at the edge of town – across the freeway the city limits change. We’re on a rise. When I look out, as unpleasant as the view of a freeway fence might seem, all that I see over it is horizon. No roof tops, no neighbors, no anything – just sky. It’s pretty cool actually. But in the yard, the light kind of messes up the observation of the dark, and so it’s one of those things that I wonder about. Could I get it turned off? And then, when I think of the hassle of trying to do that (assuming with good evidence that it would be a hassle), I don’t, and I even question if it would be for the best. Maybe it’s better to have the light…if not for me…in general.

Doing What’s Easy

So then we come to doing what’s easy. It fits with the other two ideas but it’s been pressing on me the last few days. I have these blogs because they’re easy. I’ve been working on a third because it seems an easy way to share in a way more related to my books. It doesn’t have that sense of ease, though. I feel as if, since no one else may care when the sun rises in Minnesota, I can’t write about it.

Sun and window are yellow now. All this change in a half hour. Who can wonder why I love morning?

Anne Lamott says that you can’t write with your parents looking over your shoulder – you especially can’t go into the dark rooms you need to go into. When her students ask her why they need to go into those rooms, she tells them “Because it’s in our nature to want the truth.” It’s not so strange that we can’t have our parents looking over our shoulder and get there, but it feels strange to apply the same idea to readers – that you can’t worry about them, or censor yourself over what they might not find interesting. As if you can know anyway.

Back when I was working at my corporate desk and listening to spiritual radio to keep my sanity, I compiled a mound of post-it-notes with scribbled quotes. They’re still floating around. One, that I think was from Carolyn Myss, says, “Faith is doing what is difficult as if it is easy.” Hmmm.

I’m sorry, but I can’t apply that definition of faith to the giving up of bad habits. That’s probably a flaw in my character. But if I apply it to writing by seeing what is really difficult as going into those dark rooms, or getting rid of censors, or forgetting about doing anything for benefit or betterment...then it just might work.

Can I write about the big ideas within my books with ease? Can I write as an invitation to the readers I already have without writing leaden or in an obligatory way? Without wondering what they want to hear from me? Without separating the book wisdom from life wisdom (or from life crap…whatever the case may be)?

These things make it obvious where freedom comes from and who keeps it from me – me. No one else can truly censor me. Yet there’s no denying that there are some places where we feel more ease than others and it’s not all bad to stick with them until we get the hang of it. That’s my idea anyway.

That and having the faith to care about the sun’s rising.