A couple days after my first son’s birth, I walked down the street of our busy neighborhood with my baby in a sling, awestruck. Everybody I looked at, I realized, every child, every adult, had come out of a woman’s body. I walked home slowly, mind-boggled at the wonder of it all. I was still a little stunned by my short, hard labor, and felt like I had been initiated into an amazing new society; I wanted to tell my birth story to anyone who would listen, and wanted to hear other women’s stories. Now, nearly four years after I gave birth to my second son, I still often find myself in groups of women that drift into sharing birth stories; we commiserate over past pains, cheer for supportive attendants, and, as we tell our stories, come to a better understanding of this sometimes joyous, sometimes traumatic, always transformative event.

Better understanding is the impulse behind the documentary, The Business of Being Born (2008). Producer Ricki Lake, unhappy with the interventions she experienced during her first child’s birth, set out to research American birth practices. She and director Abby Epstein (who became pregnant during the filming) dig up incredible documentary footage and still photos to create an informative, gripping film that should interest anyone concerned with healthcare in the United States, especially parents and parents-to-be.

Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest!

Christina Katz, The Writer Mama, is one busy woman. I met her for the first time last month at the AWP conference in Chicago. While some of us were trying to figure out where to eat lunch between panels, she came to say a gracious hello, and then excused herself, I expect to go write a book or coach a student or develop a new publicity plan. She’s got ideas and she wants to share them; she wants mothers who write to get their work published and read by the broadest possible audience. And although I think Elrena and I have done pretty well spreading the word about Mama, PhD (have you watched our trailer? joined our Facebook group? how about bought yourself a t-shirt at our store?) there’s always something more a writer can learn about every step of the process, and I’ve learned from Christina’s work. So I’m happy to help celebrate the two-year anniversary of her book by having Christina Katz guest blog here today.

Post #29: Your Book’s Benefits
The features of your book are nice. You need to know what they are.

But the benefits of your book, not the features, will determine if your book is going to sell.

Your book’s benefits will motivate a potential reader to seek your book out and buy it…or not. For example, here are some of Writer Mama’s benefits described:

As a mom, you want to spend as much time with your children as possible. But you’d also like to make some money doing something you enjoy. How do you get the best of both worlds? Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids by experienced freelancer Christina Katz tells you how. You can start a stay-at-home freelance writing career tailored to fit your family and lifestyle.

Writer Mama will answer all your questions about how to get started, in realistic, easy-to-follow steps. While conversational and easy-to-read, this book also does a lot of hard work for you. It gives you practical advice and exercises that help you get started in a matter of weeks.

Writer Mama is a reference book, so notice that most of the benefits described above relate to how informative it is. Since it’ a how-to book, the benefits relate back to how helpful and handy it is. They describe how the book walks the reader through a process step-by-step.

Remember, all you former students out there, the emphasis on forms in my Writing and Publishing the Short Stuff class? Well, when it’s time to describe your book’s benefits your understanding of writing forms will prove helpful once again. Different forms accomplish different things. Fiction takes the reader away and offers entertainment. Memoir typically offers a heartwarming, inspirational or humorous slice of life. But nonfiction books are very practical. Nonfiction forms accomplish their mission by informing the reader through a list of tips, a how-to process, or a cataloging of relevant facts and information, or all of the above.

The promotional material for Writer Mama weaves together features and benefits, since thought and consideration went into both:

You’ll love the short chapters, sidebars, and exercises that let you get the information you need in small doses that fit into your busy schedule. Plus this book was written to grow with you. Once you master the skills of being an article writer, it teaches you how to pitch a nonfiction book idea and explore other areas of writing—advice you won’t find presented like this anywhere else.

So if you want to get started writing for publication, let writer mama Christina Katz help. If she and countless other moms can do it, so can you!

Nonfiction books make the reader’s life easier by gathering and compressing information the reader wants and needs into tight writing. Nonfiction books are typically focused on an outcome and chug toward that outcome purposefully like a train. A nonfiction book written for traditional publication never rambles or loses its way. The sense of purpose is clear from the moment you set your eyes on the book’s cover, as you crack the book open, start scanning the table of contents and reading a chapter or the introduction.

Books have been informing, inspiring and entertaining people for many years, so the fact that your book does one or all of these things is just the beginning of describing the benefits of your book for readers. In order to offer value to your intended reader, your book must make a promise and deliver on that promise.

The promise you made when you pitched your book will be re-summarized once your book is complete as the benefits that will sell, or not sell, your book.

Today’s Book Drawing: To enter to win a signed, numbered copy of Writer Mama, answer the following question in this blog’s comments:
What unique benefits will your book have for your readers? Can you offer any specifics on how your book will inform, entertain or inspire readers?

Thanks for participating! Only US residents, or folks with a US mailing address can participate in the drawing. Please only enter once per day.

Where will the drawing be tomorrow? Visit The Writer Mama to continue reading the rest of the Writer Mama story throughout March 2009!

Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids by Christina Katz (Writer’s Digest Books 2007)
Kids change your life, but they don’t necessarily have to end your career. Stay-at-home moms will love this handy guide to rearing a successful writing career while raising their children. The busy mom’s guide to writing life, this book gives stay-at-moms the encouragement and advice they need including everything from getting started and finding ideas to actually finding time to do the work – something not easy to do with the pitter-patter of little feet. With advice on how to network and form a a business, this nurturing guide covers everything a writer mama needs to succeed at her second job. Christina Katz is also the author of the newly released Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008).

I was delighted today to receive my contributor copy of A Cup of Comfort for New Mothers, in which my essay “The Cookie” has been reprinted. My story is about a particularly trying day of new motherhood and how a little old-fashioned advice and infant Ben’s own ingenuity saved the day.

My Literary Mama colleagues Amy Hudock and Kristina Riggle also have essays in this collection, which is a terrific group of moving, honest, and unsentimental essays about new motherhood. Check it out!

My latest column is up now at Literary Mama:

When I first learned I was pregnant, I started a journal on my computer; seven months into the project, my hard drive crashed and the most detailed journal I had ever kept was lost. Since then, I fill Italian paper notebooks that I buy in bulk at a local art store; I keep one next to my bed with a pen marking my place and the journals from earlier years are piled on a low shelf of my bedside table. If I ever had to flee the house, I would scoop the journals up on my way to get the kids.

I do this for myself, to keep hold of my sons’ fleeting childhoods and to make sense of my life. I reread the journals frequently. I am a researcher searching for patterns, seeking context or comfort in the midst of challenging periods, and I am a writer looking for anecdotes for my public writing. But I wonder sometimes, what will become of this private record when I’m gone? Will my children preserve it? Do I want them to read it? Will their children be interested in their grandmother’s life?

The documentary film Must Read After My Death (Morgan Dews, 2009) has me thinking about these questions of legacy and privacy more pointedly than usual. Filmmaker Morgan Dews composed the film entirely of the 300 pages of transcripts, fifty hours of audio diaries and Dictaphone letters, and 201 silent home movies he discovered after his grandmother Allis’s death; the boxes were all carefully labeled in thick black marker with her initials and a message: “Must Read After My Death.” The film makes a searing portrait of a typical American family, one that slips gradually, mysteriously, from happy to tragic while they all unwittingly document the change.

Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest…

The conference so far:

One blood orange margarita at Frontera Grill

Two meals with great writers and fans of Mama, PhD: Elline Lipkin and Elizabeth Coffman

Three sighing, meaningless invocations of the word “craft” (in one panel!), as in
Question: What makes this writing stand out?
Answer: Well [long pause], I’d say, really, well, it’s just … the craft.

Four (out of five) speakers on the Fictionalizing the Family panel who don’t have children, and so advised “Write as if everyone you know is dead.” Kill your darlings, indeed! I can’t write like that.

Five speakers on the fabulous Writing as Parents panel — Kate Hopper, Jill Christman, Shari MacDonald Strong, Sonya Huber and Jennifer Niesslein — who spoke much more relevantly to me. I loved all their presentations, and am thinking this morning particularly about Sonya Huber’s anecdote expressing the whiplash of talking with small children. Her son asked her one day, “How many days until the day we die?” When she responded, “We don’t know,” he asked, quite reasonably, “Why don’t we ask the one who made all our parts?” And then, as she was still struggling with her answer to that, he tossed her a softball, “How do you spell Chewbacca?”

Six more meals until I head home.

Seven readers at tonight’s Literary Mama reading at Women and Children First bookstore; if you’re in Chicago, please come!

Eight panels today that sound interesting to me, so many that I may not make it to any.

Nine times I laughed out loud during Art Spiegelman’s brilliant, funny, keynote talk, a swift survey of comic strips and his place in them.

Ten minutes in the bookfair before I was weighed down with free chocolates, pens, and subscription forms.

Ten months of planning (thankfully quite intermittent)

Nine Literary Mama editors and Mama, PhD contributors I’m looking forward to meeting, talking to, sharing meals with, and getting to know much better

Eight panels I could attend each day, if I have the energy

Seven lunches and dinners without children

Six-plus years of mothering with only a couple nights away

Five writers on the Literary Mama panel: A Model of Grassroots Literary Community Building.

Four nights away, for the first time ever

Three guys I’m going to miss

Two flights alone

One big milestone

Eli is standing by the side of my bed in his pjs, clutching his patch blanket, Little Blue Bear, Moosie, and his small pottery train engine. He is angling for some Saturday morning television. “Let’s watch the goose movie again, Mama!”

“Yeah!” adds Ben, walking down the hall, “Let’s watch the goose movie!”

“Do you want to watch any of the story,” I ask groggily, “or just the geese and planes?”

“Geese and planes!” they chorus happily, “Geese and planes!”

Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest!

I’ve been busy this December, with a good week’s vacation in snowy Connecticut with my entire family (some pictures here) followed by three days at the annual Modern Language Association convention, reporting on the proceedings for Inside Higher Ed. You can read those articles here:

MLA Realities: Then and Now

The Quest for Balance and Support

Caring for Children and Their Parents

In the midst of all that, I watched an incredible documentary about how a group of Muslim and Christian women worked together to end Liberia’s fourteen-year civil war. Here’s an excerpt:

Ben and his friend were in the bedroom playing war. Because they are the kinds of boys they are, the game involved Legos and negotiation of the rules but very little discernible war play. Still, because I am the kind of mom I am, I suggested some other more friendly narratives in which to involve their Legos. Then three year-old Eli, who had been listening attentively to all sides of the conversation, shouted out his peace plan:

“All war, go home! Have dinner! Go to sleep!”

We laughed (me a bit ruefully) at Eli’s naiveté, but when I saw the new documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Gini Reticker, 2008) I reconsidered Eli’s approach.

You can read the rest of the column over at Literary Mama.

I was stunned yesterday to learn of the sudden death of Literary Mama columnist Ericka Lutz’s husband, Bill Sonnenschein. Ericka had been writing recently about a new and exciting stage in their marriage as Bill’s career took him to Madagascar. The family was there together for the holidays when Bill passed away. Ericka’s most recent column, Holding, is a beautiful and now terribly sad tribute to their relationship:

A painting I did the first year Bill and I were together shows a field of green. In the center there’s a floating bed, and in the middle of the bed two people, face to face, stare into each others’ eyes and hold each other. That was what we were like those first years. We held each other and saved each other and were each other’s everything.

Time passed, and of course we changed; we had to, and it was appropriate that we did. We moved out into our own worlds, but we kept that connection. Night after night Bill slept next to me, his warmth just inches away.

Please visit Literary Mama to read the rest.

In Columns

Great Green Room
by Stephanie Hunt

I have a heron. A gorgeous, mysterious Great Blue. In the mornings
when the sun is bright, I pull back my bedroom drapes and look first
thing. From my window I have the slimmest keyhole view through my
neighbor’s gate out toward the harbor, where at the end of a dock he
sits. Regal, still, his pewter feathers nearly indistinguishable from
the slate sky. He is my talisman, and when I catch him there, for some
inexplicable reason my day feels charmed.

Red Diaper Dharma
by Ericka Lutz

One of my favorite Roz Chast cartoons shows a woman in her forties or fifties wearing a flowing baggy dress with a wild hairstyle and clunky jewelry. The words read: Are you entering your “Goddess” years? Have you gotten heavily into herbal teas, especially the “soothing” varieties? Has your husband recently purchased an expensive sports car? What’s with the hair? This cartoon makes me convulse with laughter and cringe with a bit too much recognition. Am I her? Am I that? Is she my future?

In Fiction

At Second Sight
by Ashley Kaufman

The birth had been an assault. Natural childbirth and pitocin should not be uttered in the same sentence, much less tried together, at least not by her. She had felt inadequate; she had felt unsafe with all those expectant faces waiting impatiently around her, and all their instructions. “Push! Harder! Come on, bear down, now, let’s get this baby out!” The voices, unconnected to bodies, pierced unevenly through the bubble that shut her off alone with the pain. And it had been a bubble. Like being underwater. She was alone inside of it. No one could reach her. No one could help her. But they could hurt her, or at least he could and did. She felt the ring of fire as he crowned, and the last of what had once been her self slipped away and she watched as what was only animal pushed a baby out. It was not the spiritual experience the natural birth proponents had promised.

Literary Mama Logo Contest

Literary Mama is turning 5 and we need a fresh look! We’re soliciting designs for a new logo that includes our name and tagline — Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined — plus, optionally, an image that captures the spirit of the site. The winning entry will become the property of Literary Mama, to be used on our site, and on any and all Literary Mama gear. We’ll give the winning designer credit on our site, of course, plus a t-shirt and a copy of the Literary Mama anthology. Send your entries (or questions) by January 1st as jpg files (800 pixels wide) to carolinemgrant@gmail.com