Some Christmas Reading

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 I am sure that two days before Christmas, you have nothing to do but sit down with some Christmas reading. It turns out, I have a Christmas essay and a Christmas adjacent short story among my publications for you to kick back with.

A Minimalist's Christmas at The Bigger Picture

The Mother Suite at Literary Mama

Also, if you happen to own a copy of My Life Among the Aliens, there's a chapter there called Santa is an Alien? that I've considered republishing somehow for Christmas.

A Personal Essay With A Childlit Connection From Yours Truly

My most recent short form publication is Blackened Pans, published at The Bigger Picture on the Medium platform. This is not humor but a light, memoirish personal essay. To some extent it deals with
food and eating, something I would like to write more about. And it has a connection to some classic children's books.

Over the two years or so that I've been publishing at Medium, I've tried doing different things there. Self-publishing humor directly myself. Writing about Medium, which often goes over well there. Reworking material from this blog's Time Management Tuesday feature. Publishing a review of a time management book I discussed extensively here last year. 

With Blackened Pans what I did differently was add a bio at the end of the essay with a link to Saving the Planet & Stuff.  

I have another piece out for consideration at a Medium humor publication and will be probably submitting to another later today.

And then some work on the never ending YA novel. Because it's not all short form work here all the time. 

A New Publication At Medium, Just In Time For Christmas

Annie Sprat on Unsplash

A Minimalist's Christmas was  published by The Bigger Picture, a Medium publication, a few days ago. This was a humorous essay but not a straight up piece of humor like some of the other things I've published on Medium.

What's Happening With Gail On Medium?

The Bigger Picture has a larger following than some of the other Medium publications that have published me, so that's good. While checking my stats for this piece, I noticed the line "Chosen for further distribution." This means that Medium will be promoting it in some way, beyond just leaving it to the publication's or my followers or whatever social media promotion I do for it. So that's good, too.

You know what else is good? I almost missed noticing that distribution notice, so I went back and looked at my other work published on Medium. I found that five of the ten pieces I've published there were chosen for further distribution. I am feeling quite special right this moment.

What Does "Chosen For Further Distribution Mean?"

 

Well, I'm not sure, other than the special feeling business. I haven't seen any of my selected work anywhere on my Medium reading lists or in newsletter-type e-mails coming from it. I can see on the graphs on my statistics page for these pieces that readership went up after the distribution point. But we're not talking anything going viral here, folks. Readership went up enough so that the lifetime income on some of these things is between $2 and $5 instead of much less. So the distributed pieces have made more money, but we're still not talking a lot. 

 

What this probably means for me, personally, is that I'm going to get all competitive with myself and feel bad when I publish something that doesn't make the "chosen for further distribution" cut.

Hey, but live in the moment, right? I got good news today.

The Weekend Writer: New Writers/New Parents

My husband and I recently shared a laugh over the common belief among prepublished expectant mothers and fathers that they'll be able to write a book while on parental leave with a newborn. It was a cruel, insensitive laugh, since we still talk about 'the nightmare of infant care' and can't recall a lot of our sons' early years.

Gail with new baby--not writing

Author Maria Kuznetsova has a moving piece at Catapault about something slightly different. She promoted her debut novel soon after the birth of her first child. Remind me not to plan to do that in my next life.

What makes Kuznetsova's essay so good isn't that it is an account of what happened and what she went through. She also describes how the experience changed her. It changed how she perceives others, how she reads, and how she teaches. Her essay is about change and coming out the other side with something, making it far more meaningful than just "this happened and then this happened and then this happened." 

We often hear that fiction should involve a change. Maybe essays should also.

Oh, also, Weekend Writers, if you're planning to do some major writing or promoting while recovering from the arrival of a new child--give it a second thought.