Book Update: How to be a Pink Flamingo in a Brown Duck Pond

So here I sit with my final proof before the book that I have spent the last two years writing and what seems like a life time living, and it’s go time. Sign off time.  The last edit.

I actually received the final edits from my publisher on August 19, and I procrastinated opening the files until today.  There were many reasons that ranged from business priorities to poolside priorities. But the real reason is this: once I open the book, again, I have to go back there, and open up that part of my soul that created the words on the page.

Let me begin by saying I believe in the power of intention, and that once intention is established, alignment begins to happen.   I began writing How to be a Pink Flamingo in a Brown Duck Pond in July 2012. My intention was to write away a very painful time in my life by attempting to make sense of it through words, since that is how I usually make sense of the world.

Going backward is not my specialty but in the writing process,  I was able to come to terms with a very painful experience in the first book, which I titled Learning to Fly.   I like to spend very little time in the past. I prefer the present, and I love the possibilities about the future.  The challenge of writing the book was to understand the past so that the present and future could change.

I am a publisher and owner of SKY Publishers Ltd. I publish SKY Magazine, a quarterly magazine that I purchased in October 2012.  I was trained as a journalist, and spent my career writing corporate plans, annual reports and speeches.  It turns out the writing and journalism skills that I learned in university became the wings upon which my career unfolded.  From 1996 to 2011,  I evolved from a corporate communications student consultant at $25,000 / year to a corporate executive leading business planning, risk management, communications, social responsibility, policy and governance at a salary of six figures.

During those years, it was my intention to live out my corporate life and eventually retire and become an independent in the market place.  I had always kept one foot in my ’some day’ world, freelancing writing and planning gigs in the outside world wherever I could.  Then one day, my someday plan changed with a head on collision between my values and a brick wall.

Technically this is my third crack at publishing.  The first work that I produced was a collection of poetry titled, Died of a . . .  a private collection of lives lived so far.  I began writing that draft in 2006, and in 2010, I took a chance and submitted it to a publisher after my oldest daughter said, “you will never know unless you try.”

So on December 31, 2010, on the deadline for submissions, I dropped the manuscript off to the office next door to the publisher, because the publisher was already shut down for the holidays.  About one year later, I called to inquire about the status.  I got the distinct impression they had never seen it because they insisted they sent it back to me, and I insisted they hadn’t.  About 10 days later, it came in the mail, unceremoniously denied and likely never read.

I began writing How to be Pink Flamingo in a Brown Duck Pond in July 2012 with an intention to publish.  I decided that traditional publishers were not in my future, and so I went the route of self-publishing with a well known national publisher.  They have been very helpful throughout this process.  They helped me with the appropriate package, and they have followed me through my process, patiently waiting for drafts to be submitted and decisions to be made.

Writing a book is a business in itself because it is actually a product that will be available in the market place.  Beyond writing, decisions had to be made about size, pricing, distribution and website positioning.  One must be a marketer, website designer, social media networker, and public speaker.

In the course of learning to author a book fit for public consumption, there were challenges related to content risk and sensitivities to be managed, knowing that some people may read this book and think it is about them, but it’s not.  This is a book about ducks and flamingos, and ultimately how to learn to fly.  No ducks or flamingos were hurt in the writing of this book.