{"id":215,"date":"2010-10-04T19:53:37","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T19:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2010\/10\/04\/paperback-reflections-thank-you-and-a-free-book\/"},"modified":"2010-10-04T19:53:37","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T19:53:37","slug":"paperback-reflections-thank-you-and-a-free-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/paperback-reflections-thank-you-and-a-free-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Paperback reflections, thank you, and a free book. . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span>I tried, a year ago when my book was published, to see what was ahead.\u00a0 And of course it soon became obvious that I could see nothing at all.<\/p>\n

I was not one of those authors who pops a bottle of champagne the day the first finished copy arrives on the doorstep.\u00a0 In fact, the opposite.\u00a0 There had been one mildly positive review in Publishers Weekly, not much else to make the world sit up and take notice, and I was pretty certain that “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” would come and go without leaving so much as a trace.\u00a0 That, I told myself, was just fine with me. After all, there had been so many times, as I was writing it, that I completely lost confidence in what I was doing.<\/p>\n

Why should anyone need three hundred pages anyway, just to work through some rather personal and complicated feelings about mid-life and children growing up and leaving home?\u00a0 And more to the point, why would anyone feel compelled to read a\u00a0 memoir in which no one\u2019s marriage falls apart, no deep dark secret is unearthed, no goal is reached, no great epiphany ever achieved?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you writing about?\u201d various friends and acquaintances would ask along the way.\u00a0 I never did figure out how to answer:\u00a0 \u201cUm, myself. Getting older. The kids changing. How hard it is to live with them, and how it\u2019s even harder to let them go. Wondering what\u2019s next, what really matters, and, well, how to deal with it all. . .\u201d\u00a0 Somewhere in there I would trail off, embarrassed by my own lack of a plot.<\/p>\n

Not exactly a compelling sales pitch.\u00a0 Every once in a while, I would send chapters to my mom to read, and ask, \u201cDo you think anyone will be interested in this?\u201d\u00a0 And she would read, and call me up, and say, \u201cWell, I\u2019m interested, but of course, I know you.\u201d\u00a0 That was honest, if not exactly encouraging.\u00a0 Finally, in order to finish, I just had to sit down at my kitchen table and write.\u00a0 And in order to do that, I had to pretend that no one would ever actually read it.<\/p>\n

We were in Maine on vacation, at the very end of last summer and a few weeks before pub date, when, to my\u00a0 surprise, the first couple of advance reader reviews popped up on amazon.\u00a0 Apparently, bound page proofs had been sent out to a few hundred serious book bloggers and amazon faithful; now, they were beginning to weigh in. \u00a0A friend e-mailed me the news and so, heart pounding, I logged on and typed in my book title.\u00a0 \u201cHas this woman ever had an unexamined thought?\u201d wondered my first reviewer, a woman who admitted she had lost patience with me within the first couple of chapters.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I did know the answer to that one.\u00a0 But the review stung.\u00a0 It also confirmed my own worst fears.<\/p>\n

I took a long, fretful swim that day, and then I took my friend Ann Patchett\u2019s advice:\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t even read the amazon reviews,\u201d she warned.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s not much you can learn from the good ones, and the bad ones will break your heart.\u00a0 Just write what you are meant to write.\u00a0 Trust your own voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, when a box of finished copies arrived, I put a couple on the shelf and then got busy making dinner.\u00a0 Did I want to have a little celebration? my husband asked. \u201cNo thanks,\u201d I replied, having already decided to pretend I hadn\u2019t just had a book published.<\/p>\n

I had, however, promised my publisher that I would create a web site and start writing a blog; it was the least I could do to help their sales effort along, given how very well they had treated me.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t sure that I could come up with something meaningful to say every week, but I was pretty sure that it didn\u2019t matter much; who would ever see it anyway?\u00a0 My son Henry set me up with a basic template, showed me how to slip in behind the curtain and manage my own content, and I typed up my first blog post on publication day, September 7, 2009.\u00a0 Hitting \u201csave and close\u201d I felt a bit like a pine toppling in the forest.\u00a0 If no one is there to watch, does the tree actually fall?<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long, though, before the first letter magically appeared in my in-box, an e-mail from a mother of three in California.\u00a0 \u201cIf you lived next door to me,\u201d she wrote, \u201cI know we would be great friends.\u201d\u00a0 A few hours later, another e-mail arrived, this one from a reader who was halfway through the book and paused to say, \u201cI can\u2019t believe how much we have in common.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since that day just over a year ago, I\u2019ve received hundreds of letters from women (and a few men) who have read “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” and then been inspired to visit my web site and write to me. \u00a0 And each of these letters has taught me something.\u00a0 One by one, my readers have reminded me that, in fact, our stories do matter.\u00a0 That a book can make a difference in a life.\u00a0 And that we humans are strengthened and supported by the simple act of reaching out across time and distance to say:\u00a0 \u201cI hear you.\u00a0 I understand.\u00a0 I\u2019ve felt that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

So here I am, a year later and feeling very much a part of a larger community, all thanks to you — you who are reading these words at this moment. \u00a0 Different as the details of our days may be, it is so clear to me now that we are bound together by our hopes for our loved ones and our aspirations for ourselves. What we seek, and what we find, as we write and read and share our fears and doubts and dreams with one another, is connection. \u00a0 Turns out that we are all struggling along, trying to make sense of the way things are and to become the people we are meant to be.\u00a0 We are all making an effort to be more present in our lives, to love our children just as they are, to appreciate life\u2019s simple pleasures, and to be grateful for every ordinary moment of every ordinary day.<\/p>\n

What we know, of course, is the very thing that we continually need to be reminded of: that life is fleeting and precious and beautiful, and that heaven is right here on earth if we will only pause long enough to really look, to really see:\u00a0 the cup of hot coffee, the tousled head, the wagging tail, the small hand held up in greeting, the curve of a chin, the blinked back tear, the sun, the moon, the stars. . .the very life that we are blessed to live.<\/p>\n

I began to write a blog a year ago because someone told me that I should.\u00a0 But I continue to write because, as it turns out, the forest isn\u2019t empty after all.\u00a0 It is full of friends and fellow travelers, all of you who are willing to show up, to listen, and to offer compassion and insight and, perhaps, a story of your own in return. \u00a0 Sitting here, at my same old kitchen table, I no longer feel alone and uncertain of my own voice but, rather, surrounded by soul mates.<\/p>\n

Last week, the paperback copies of “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” arrived in bookstores.\u00a0 This time, though, when my own box arrived from the publisher, I didn\u2019t hide them away — because the other thing I’ve learned over the last year is that a story told is at once an invitation and a gift.\u00a0 When we offer up the truth of the way things really are for us, we invite others to tell their truth in return.\u00a0 And when we give the gift of our trust–trust that we will be heard and not judged–we receive trust back, in spades.\u00a0 Those of us who write blogs or read them figure this out pretty quickly:\u00a0 the learning and caring goes both ways.\u00a0 Out there in the space beyond our fingertips, out where love is energy, our words to one another are alive and potent, weaving an ethereal, indestructible safety net of compassion and concern.<\/p>\n

Today, my dear friend Karen Maezen Miller<\/a> is giving away a signed copy of “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” on HER wonderful blog, Cheerio Road<\/a>.\u00a0 Visit her there<\/a> to win yours.\u00a0 And in the meantime, thank you, my friend, for being here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tried, a year ago when my book was published, to see what was ahead.\u00a0 And of course it soon became obvious that I could see nothing at all. I was not one of those authors who pops a bottle of champagne the day the first finished copy arrives on the doorstep.\u00a0 In fact, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,48,49,15],"tags":[182,249,322,422,477],"class_list":{"0":"post-215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-the-gift-of-an-ordinary-day","9":"category-writing","10":"category-writing-and-reading","11":"tag-friendship-2","12":"tag-karen-maezen-miller","13":"tag-paperback","14":"tag-the-gift-of-an-ordinary-day-2","15":"tag-writing-2","16":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}