Amanda Hirsch's Blog

A Mother Enters the Scene, Stage Right

2013-05-17T03:40:44Z

Photo by Flickr user thegirlsmomaAlison, what will happen when you catch me looking in on you while you sleep?

Will you cry? Or will you say to me, "Hello, mommy, let's go look at the stars"?

Will you crawl into my lap and ask me to read you a story? Or will you push me away?

If I give up nursing -- and it's about that time, when I need to think about when I want to give up nursing -- will I ever get to hold you in my arms? Of course I will -- I know that -- but you are on the move, you are a free creature, and I have a deep primal fear that maybe we'll never be that close, that intimate, again. First, you leave the womb; then, you leave the breast.

I just want to hold you, and yet, I am so afraid of you. Yes, the power you have over my emotions terrifies me, still. The week of my birthday, I was despondant because you were fussy. You were not like yourself. That invisible umbilical cord continues to run between us, just like it runs between me and my mother.

In improv class tonight, my teacher coached us to connect the core of our character to the core of our scene partner's character. She was telling us to follow our intuition, to respond from the gut, rather than thinking or trying to make things happen. We counted -- "one, two, three" -- but expressed emotion with our numbers, as though they were profoundly expressive dialogue. Connecting, building -- expressing. This is how it is with you sometimes, Ali. I say words, but they don't matter. All that matters is feeling.

This is a powerful place to be, as an actress, and as a mother. My teacher coached me, "Go towards the feeling of power in a scene." Notice when you make a choice that deflates things, instead of revving them up.

I am revved up. I am terrified. "What if I lose my baby girl?" flits through me, makes my heart clench, and clutch. Lose her where? Lose her to whom? These thoughts don't make sense, and yet I sense that many mothers have them. You cannot hold onto things in this world, and so much of me knows that, but so much of me just wants to hold her to my chest. To plug her in, like a plug in a socket, her body pressed into my heart.

I lost my words tonight, in a scene. I was listening to my scene partner, feeling him, responding from the gut with very few words, and my teacher kept coaching me, "Why? Tell us how that makes you feel." In the past, teachers have told me I rely too much on words. I get hyper-verbal. I'm a writer, after all. Let me use words to tell you a tale. But no, that is precisely why I am drawn to acting, why I've been drawn to acting ever since I was a little girl, because it lets me get out of my head, out of language, into being. It can be so hard, sometimes, as an improviser, to be in that true emotional place, while also allowing the words to come in -- without letting language dominate the joint. To balance mind and heart, thinking and feeling.

And so it goes in life. And so I came home from class and turned on my computer and here I sit, and here I write, and the words are pouring out of me, and the feelings, too. I can bridge words and feeling in my writing, and it's so much harder for me as an actress, which is precisely what compels me to act more and more and more. Acting makes me vulnerable, but it is such a good vulnerability (when I can keep my ego in check). It is an important part of being human, for me, to open myself up in this way -- to create human interactions in the context of art, as a way of better understanding human interactions, period...and of better understanding myself.

I can feel Alison sleeping in the next room. I opened the door a few minutes ago to peek in on her, and she stirred, and I pulled the door closed, terrified. Next time, I might just relax. What's the worst thing that can happen?

So You Want to Publish an E-book Based on Your Blog: Part 1

2013-05-15T23:50:42Z

My book!It was January when my friend Christina said, "You should publish an e-book based on all those blog posts you wrote about pregnancy and being a new mom."

A good idea is a good idea. Four months later, my book was born: Feeling My Way: Finding Motherhood Without Losing Myself. In its first week, it was #9 on the Kindle bestsellers list in the Motherhood category, right alongside Bringing Up Bebe, Anna Quindlen and Jessica Alba. Not too shabby!

Here's what I learned about the process of writing and editing my e-book. In subsequent posts, I'll share how I got my book cover design and how I figured out where and how to publish my book, plus how I've been marketing it.

10 Tips for Writing and Editing An E-Book Based On Your Blog

Cut and paste: I cut and paste all relevant blog posts into one massive Word document.

Read, and read again: I read through the Word doc (aka "Book, Draft One") in one sitting, and then I did it again. I wanted to get a feel for what the narrative was like when all the blog posts were strung together like that.

Eliminate content that doesn't serve the narrative: I deleted a couple of posts that just didn't fit in. One was an attempted humor piece that, in retrospect, wasn't all that funny. Even if your mission is to weave your blog posts into a book, that doesn't mean you need to use every single post -- no one's keeping score! Your job is to make the book as compelling and readable as possible, and that might mean letting go of a few posts, even ones you love. It's ok -- they'll still be there online!

Begin establishing structure: Do you want each blog post to be its own chapter, or could some posts be combined into a single chapter? Do you want your chapters to be organized into sections? Begin thinking about this now. How can section/chapter titles help you tell your story? (For example, if someone is skimming your Table of Contents to decide whether to read your book -- what information will they be able to glean about the substance and tone of your story?)

Revise: I was completely surprised by how many revisions I found myself making to the text of my original posts. There were two reasons for this: First, I found I needed to provide additional context for people who didn't know me from my blog (from small things, like, "Cosmo" is my dog, to bigger things, like -- I'm a writer and performer based in Brooklyn, I run my own consulting company that helps raise the visibility of good things online, etc etc). Second, I found I wanted to flesh out ideas that I had touched on briefly on my blog, but felt warranted more exploration in the context of a book. Finally, in some cases, when confronted with my own writing, I saw opportunities for improvement -- tightening, rephrasing, etc -- and I took them.

Write: I wrote an introduction to provide some context (there's that word again) for my story upfront. Later, after I got feedback from my editors -- see #7 -- I realized I needed to write some short intros to each section of my book, as well as a final chapter and epilogue.

Get people to edit you: Even the best writers need editors. Do not skip this step. I sent an early draft of my book to a fellow writer/editor, and then later, I sent a nearly final draft to...my dad! He has a journalism degree and is a fabulous editor, and doesn't follow my blog very closely, so most of this content was brand new to him. That was critical, because it helped him see some holes in the narrative that someone closer to my blog might have missed. He raised questions and also observed some themes I hadn't even realized were there, which helped me weave them more mindfully throughout the entire book. His feedback was essential. I highly recommend having one of your editors be someone who isn't familiar with your blog and who's outside your demographic -- they'll see things that a close buddy may not.

I'm also lucky to have a husband who's a fabulous editor. He gave me feedback at various stages throughout this process. If you can have a go-to sounding board like this, it's a real gift.

Sit with it: Sit with your editors' feedback and decide which changes feel right in your skin, and which don't. This is a delicate balancing act between being open to other people's good ideas and staying true to your own vision for the book. In general, I took more ideas than I ignored, but in some cases, even though I understood what they meant -- it just didn't feel right to make the change, so I didn't. Trust your gut. Don't rush this part of the process.

Make final revisions: Once you've decided which of your editors' feedback to take, make your final revisions. Note that these may be structural as well as sentence-level -- for example, you might decide to move part of your story earlier in the book, or maybe you'll decide to group chapters into sections, at the same time that you're rephrasing descriptions or reconsidering some of your word choices.

Be done: You can't edit forever. At some point, you need to let this baby be born. I recommend setting a deadline at the outset, to help you maintain focus and momentum -- and to avoid having the process drag out indefinitely, which can sure take the wind out of your sails. In my case, I decided to write my book in January, and I realized that Mother's Day would be a big marketing opportunity, so I knew I wanted to publish by the end of April. That ended up being a perfect timeframe for a book my size. You may need more time, or less -- but give yourself a deadline, and stick to it.

Questions? Suggestions, based on your own experience with e-book publishing? Let me know! And again, stay tuned for subsequent posts, where I'll share tips for designing a book cover, choosing a publishing platform, and marketing your e-book. I also recommend checking out MediaShift's coverage of self-publishing -- I find it extremely useful.

One Year

2013-05-09T13:51:17Z

Photo by Tom Newby

Today is my baby's birthday.

My baby's. Birthday.

My baby.

I'm writing this in a cafe and there's an 18-month-old chatting with her daddy and I want my Ali. I want to hold her to me. But if she were here, she'd want to be crawling everywhere and exploring. My girl is curious, active and brave. She explores things fearlessly, checking in from time to time to make sure mommy is still there, or to get a quick hug before she toddles off in a new direction.

I love her energy, and it is exhausting.

The energy of my love for her is exhilarating and exhausting, all at once.

I am spent. I need to take more care these days to fill myself up, restore myself, so there's enough of me left to give. My physical strength has quadrupled in the last year. My stamina is trying to catch up.

She is lovely. "Mama," she says, and I swoon. This morning I made her scrambled eggs with kale and feta and she shoved them in her mouth with so much gusto, getting them all over herself, rubbing a little egg in her hair for good measure. Tonight she'll have her first birthday cake, a sugar-free apple cake that her daddy made for her. We'll sing to her, again -- this morning, standing in the kitchen, we sang to her, and then we sang again, and we were overcome with memories. A year ago, we were in the hospital...

A year ago, I birthed a human. Jordan and I made a human being, and I pushed her out into the world, and now she is standing and talking and we are falling ever more deeply in love. I need to repeat these facts -- "I gave birth" -- because twelve months later they are still profound. I may never take it for granted that I did this - that we did this - that my body did this.

I love you, Alison. Happy birthday, little girl.

Read my book, Feeling My Way, about integrating motherhood into my identity.

Seeking Creative Community

2013-05-08T13:33:17Z

Today I took myself out to breakfast at an awesome local cafe. I'm still there as I write this. Billie Freaking Holliday is playing. How awesome is that? There's a guy with a French accent at the next table, and the space is dotted with antique Mason jars (we're in Brooklyn, after all), shabby-chic furniture, mirrors... I just ate the most delicious bowl of oatmeal with cranberries, and now I'm sipping my goji berry green tea, and I feel like a million bucks.

An hour ago, I was slopping through the rain under a big poncho, pushing my daughter's stroller through puddles and careening up over gaps and drops in the sidewalk. As I pushed the stroller with one hand, I held my umbrella with the other, and tried to chat with her as she modulated between happy sounds -- delighted sounds, as if this rain on this morning was the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen -- and sounds of discomfort and dismay. I couldn't tell if she was just trying those sounds on for size, or if she was really feeling moments of frustration mixed in with the wonder.

By the time I got to daycare, I was a sweaty mess, with low blood sugar to boot.

I'm still sweaty, but my belly is full and my sanity restored. (Lucky me.) Now the music has shifted to something that sounds like Django Rhinehardt, and the background hum of other people's conversations is comforting. I need to get out more. I spend far too much time in our apartment. I work there all day, and then my big outing is to go pick up Alison at daycare (this morning was unusual - Jordan usually does morning drop-off). Then it's back home, where I put Alison to bed, eat dinner and settle in, usually, for a productive evening -- making Mother's Day gifts, this week, for my mother and mother-in-law, or blogging, or answering personal email, or reviewing a friend's manuscript. Maybe I'll pump a little breast milk if I'm feeling crazy.

I'm feeling crazy.

This is no way to live. I gotta get out. I'm surrounded by a splendiforous city full of cafes like this one, nooks and crannies where creative people like me are pouring their hearts and souls into laptops... like me. Where there is conversation nearby, like a comforting balm, reminding you of human connection. Jesus I sound lonely.

I guess I am.

Lonely.

This week I met a friend of a friend, an awesome, warm, animated guy who's funny and smart and a writer like me. (He's about to become a dad!) He was offering all these suggestions for how I should be promoting my book and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. First of all, he got it. He got how you need to find ways to get people interested in your work so you can make more of it, and how this takes almost as much energy (or more, maybe?) as creating the work itself. Second, he seemed to genuinely want to help. It is so tiring, promoting your own shit. "Please, sir, won't you buy my book?" For someone else to step in and say, "Ok, here are three marketable qualities I see in you that you may not see in yourself, now go kick some ass" -- it was energizing. And it made me realize that I do a lot of that kind of cheerleading and proactive helping for other people in my life, but I don't feel like I get a lot in return, unless I ask.

Amanda Fucking Palmer thinks there's beauty in an artist asking for help . There can be. But what about the pain of asking, and not receiving?

So I'm asking a lot these days, and it's tiring. My new friend thinks I should get a literary agent -- someone to ask for me. That sounds good. I'd like to take a load off.

Creative community, that's what I miss, and that's what I got a taste of this week -- first with my new friend, and then later when I reconnected with an old friend, and we fell into an energetic brainstorming session about each other's various projects and possibilities.

And that's what this cafe represents -- community -- even if I'm among strangers. There's a feeling of "we're all in this together" -- "this" being life...

My moods are up and down, just like Ali's. Or hers are up and down, just like mine. Bliss and wonder at the beauty of a moment, right on the heels of stress and despair -- then back to bliss. Riding the storm.

It's better not to ride alone.

++++

A few postscripts to what feels like a pretty downer post:

I do actually leave the house sometimes :). It's just been a particularly "inside" kind of week.
I'm wondering about joining a coworking space. I'd love to be surrounded by other people who are balancing paid work with various creative projects. It shouldn't be that hard in Brooklyn. Any personal experiences, tips or recommendations?

The Tax on Things We Value, But Can't Measure

2013-05-07T23:35:38Z

Please enjoy this wonderful guest post from my friend Paul Myette. Paul is a high school history teacher and a writer who graduated from the Bread Loaf writing program. He's putting the finishing touches on his first novel, which he works on every morning before his wife and two kids wake up.

When I read Amanda's recent post about the artist's tax my first thought was, "Yes! This is about me." I wanted to run down to the harbor and throw things off the side of a British ship because that is how we handle unfair taxation in Boston. Instead, I wrote Amanda a really long email, which she encouraged me to turn into this post.

You see, if I want to worry about hours I spend working without compensation, my writing time shouldn't be my primary concern. Not even close. The profit-free time I spend writing doesn't come close to the free hours I put in at my real job: teaching.

Photo by Austin KleonLet me stop here and reassure you, this is NOT going to be a post wherein a teacher complains about not getting paid enough for the hours spent correcting papers. I went into teaching with eyes wide open and I chose my fate.

Allow me to continue. What intrigued me about Amanda's post was the connection it made me see between these two things, writing and teaching. I realized that, to me, the issue is less a tax on artists than it is a tax on things that confound capitalism -- a tax against that which cannot easily be measured.

Art is Lousy Business

What do art and teaching have in common? There is no way to gauge their worth. Even if we could accurately measure the effectiveness of an individual teacher (we can't...but again...I'm not here to write about the common teacher gripes), what we can't measure is the economic value of teaching. What does my job contribute to the health of the stock market or the price of gold? I don't know. Nobody knows. I can't even begin to imagine a metric that could determine that.

Likewise art. Yes, we can place a value on a Monet because it is old and has been deemed culturally relevant and we know how many are available and how often they come up for sale. In the same way, we can gauge the value of a new Stephen King novel because he is likely to sell X millions of copies as a baseline and Y million copies if the book is very good. But the starving artist in the loft? The unpublished novelist typing away in his basement? These are unknown quantities and our culture does not see fit to compensate unknown quantities. It claims not to know how. This is understandable, perhaps, but there is a cost.

I'll stop here and say that this problem exists in business as well, albeit to a lesser extent. An unproven business idea will find fewer financial backers than the next venture from...I wanted to write Steve Jobs. Err... you take my point. The unproven business idea, if it does get off the ground, will also face stiff competition from whatever large corporation does something similar. A mom and pop ice cream shop will struggle to compete with Baskin Robbins, even if they have a better product. Vying for market dominance (photo by Tito Perez)

That said, a savvy entrepreneur can secure a loan for a new business if they can present a reasonable plan for their venture. What artist could manage that? The very idea of art hinges upon subjectivity. What business plan from a painter could convince a bank that people might find her paintings attractive? Because art is subjective and can't be measured, it makes for lousy business.

I know that plenty of naysayers have no problem with that. Art is art and business is business. If you want money, contribute something. If you can't afford to be an artist, put on your big boy pants and get a "real" job.

I'd argue that art is a real job and that someone who works hard at it ought to have the same prospects of success as someone who works hard at a for-profit business. (And someone who won't work hard at either will have very little success.) But I understand that our culture doesn't value art highly enough to subsidize it to any great extent. Still, there is a price that we pay.

Encouraging a Marketplace of Ideas

When we leave art to those who can afford it we risk eliminating an entire class of voices. And that is what we do. Yes, anyone can write a novel or create a painting. But the devotion required for success in such pursuits makes them difficult to shoe horn in around another job. Or it means great financial risk in the early going with no guarantee of success. I am lucky to have a "regular" job that I am passionate about, one that allows me time to pursue writing, too. However, I cannot pursue a writing project with the same abandon as someone who can afford not to work full time. I can pursue it with much greater fervor than someone working three minimum wage jobs.

As such, arts disproportionately reflect the upper classes. Doubt this? How many novels can you name that were set in prep schools? How many novels can you name that were written by or about a young American expat drinking his or her (his) way through Europe? Not all of them certainly, but many.

In this case, the same problem does exist in business: Those who can afford to take a risk are going to, and their ideas will find their way into the marketplace of ideas; those who can't, will continue to work at something else and hope that their stolen hours here and there will be enough to make their dream come true.

I turn things back over to the naysayers: "Whatever. Not everyone lives their dream." Or to quote "Mad Men," a favorite television show, "Not every girl gets to do what they want. The world could not support that many ballerinas."

Photo by Gerald Pereira

Fine. Except this: The marketplace of ideas is based on the premise that allowing all ideas to be expressed ensures that the best thinking will rise to the top. The theory becomes watered down when any ideas are kept out of the marketplace. Does the world need my novel? No. (YES IT DOES! YES IT DOES!) Does it need a particular small business or painting or song? Of course not. But it needs all of those ideas to come to fruition so that the best will succeed and, in so doing, improve all of us. When society is structured such that some people are unable to pursue their talents or skills, we are all the poorer for it.

I'm not bemoaning my lot in life. I recognize that I'm very lucky to be able to structure my life such that I can get even the minimal writing time that I get. But I do want to point out that the situation limits my artistic output and eliminates the output of many others.

I won't get into the question of whether anything should be done. Would I like to see changes here? Yes. If you planted me in the Oval Office tomorrow, would I make this my first priority? Probably not. Without discussing "should," however, we can discuss "could." We can consider what options exist. Let the conversation enter the marketplace of ideas. I will focus on only art, not to make the argument that it is any more deserving of attention (trust me...I want that ice cream maker to succeed), but simply because it was the point of the original post and I promised I wouldn't get into the debates around teaching.

Feeding the Artists

So...what can be done to ensure that the painters and writers and poets and sculptors and dancers can all pursue their dreams and still...you know...eat?

Nothing.

Let's be realistic about this. There are two places that revenue stream could come from: corporations and government. I do believe that there is some wonderful corporate sponsored art and that much of it is unfairly poo-pooed. That said, if our goal is to contribute to the marketplace of ideas, the art must serve its own purpose and corporate art, by definition, must serve the goal of profit.

As for government? In the age of sequester I don't see Congress lining up to put lots of novelists and painters to work. The Tea Party backlash alone would be a spectacle. That said...it's been done. The WPA writer's project paid would-be writers to do work for the country. Out of that we got the American Guide Series, respected histories and travel guides to the states. We very nearly got a history of local foods as they existed just before our current food industry began to homogenize them. That project started in late 1941. History prevented its completion.

(The collected writings from this food project have been compiled by writer Mark Kurlansky in his book Food of a Younger Land. Without forcing an argument these essays paint a picture of the changes in food culture in this country. If you read Michael Pollan or Mark Bittman you want to read Kurlansky as well.)

Photo by Brian WrightThe WPA also gave us Richard Wright, Studs Terkel, John Steinbeck, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty and many others. Certainly our culture saw benefit from this project. Because these authors were paid to work in their chosen field and nurture their talents and passions, they continued on to excellence and assumed positions of cultural importance. I know less about other WPA projects, but I do recognize the Depression era bas relief carvings on bridges and public buildings when I see them. The model for government support of the arts exists. I don't expect that I'll live to see its revival, but it's worth remembering that it worked once. It's worth considering what we gained from that.

Vote With Your Art

What is left is for those of us who love art to try to support it by whatever means we can. When we support those professions that can't be measured we do some small part. For some this means patronizing a local artist and buying their paintings. For some this might mean buying self-published books (editor's note: for example, this self-published book!). For others it might mean shopping at a farmer's market. Food writer Michael Pollan constantly asks those who value food to "vote with your fork." "Vote with your art" doesn't work quite as well as a slogan, but it gets the idea across, and might help spread the message that artistic endeavors have value...even if that value can't be easily measured.