We talk a lot about tea sets and tea parties in our house (what with all the repeated reads of A Bargain for Frances), and reader Cathleen recently wrote in about a chic eco-friendly toy line that includes a tea set that I plan on getting for Laurel. Cathleen writes: “I recently saw Green Toys products in a store in New Hampshire…They are made from recycled milk jugs, made in the USA, have no Bisphenol-A, and are SO cute to boot!” In addition to the tea set, Green Toys offers cookware and dining, indoor gardening, and sand play sets.

Today, Heather offers a cute and practical toddler safety option:

"When it comes to safety, we know all too well that toddlers do not always do as they are told. As parents and caregivers, it’s our responsibility to keep them safe while also encouraging exercise and teaching independence. It’s tricky to negotiate this balance with one busy toddler, and not surprisingly, even more so with my triplet toddlers.

Obviously, when we’re out for a walk, strollers are the best option to keep my adventurous trio confined and safe. But another option I have invested in is a safety harness. Yes, I confess to initially feeling uneasy at the thought of 'leashing' my children. But I have quickly come to feel that they are a terrific option when looking to provide both safety and freedom. I braced myself for judgmental stares and unsolicited snarky comments, but have been pleasantly surprised to receive compliments about how cute the harnesses are, and questions about where we purchased them.

I recommend the Eddie Bauer Harness Buddy - available in Monkey, Dog, or Bear. They are machine washable and work as both a harness and a backpack. The removable tail functions as the tether. My three toddlers love their plush animal backpacks. And I love that they provide safety, are machine washable, and are easy to buckle on and off.

Babies R Us also has harness options, including: the Safety 1st Child Harness, Safe Fit Grow With Me Backpack with Harness, and Safe Fit Grow With Me Purse with Harness."

So this weekend I was talking about the book and blogging at the Kansas City Literary Festival. The festival had a great turnout. It was a beautiful day. 

My panel was at five.

Many people had gone home.

Still, Mike Lundgren and I had about 15-20 people under our white tent, and they asked a lot of great questions.  The main question that always comes up for mommybloggers, it seems, is privacy.  I pointed out that putting your name on your blog is not so different from putting your name on your memoir, or maybe your Sunday op-ed column, and really, putting your name on something you wrote is what writers do. I initially bought into the privacy fear, but the more I wrote, the more I realized I never used to worry when I put my name on the articles I wrote for KC Weddings or Greater Kansas City Business.  I never worried about putting my name on the poems I published or the things I wrote for any of my jobs. Yes, I want to protect my daughter's privacy and my husband's privacy, and by privacy I mean "freedom from having nutjobs break into our house or kidnap my child," but really, if I totally respected their privacy, I would not write about them on my blog.

I think that's an unfortunate side effect of being in the family of a writer.  Anything you say or do could become material. Not that we are walking around trying to expose people's foibles, but even fictional characters are composites - how else could you write what you know?  How else could you capture the life-like details that make a complex character jump off the page?  I definitely have more boundaries than people probably realize -- there are some subjects that are completely off-limits, and things happen all the time that I wish I could write out to figure out my feelings about them, but to do so here would be so totally inappropriate I can't fathom doing it. 

I also talked a little bit about the narrative nonfiction form, which is really what we do when we blog.  We're telling a story, and usually it's a true story.  I read a post last week from Kyran talking about the blog-to-book phenomenon and what it means to blogging.  Dutch made a point that we'll really see how bloggers hold up when they produce successful fiction. I love Dutch's writing, but I disagreed in the comments with his point.

Here was my comment:

Traditional publishers are not yet sure if bloggers can sell books. Iwill tell you that. I had 11 pages of links to mainstream mediacoverage of the bloggers in my anthology, and many of the largerpublishers still weren't sure they wanted to take a chance on it.

Ido think that the blogosphere is going to have to show they want to buyprint versions of the favorite bloggers' writing in order to createmore demand for bloggers' books. I know my book wasn't the first bloganthology, but I'm hoping it will be one that is delivered with aproper marketing campaign, and that campaign is coming from outside thepublisher as well as inside it. It has to. There isn't enough money inpublishers' publicity budgets to help a new author succeed unless he orshe takes it on. The success of a first book (for those of us withouttwo-book deals) will determine whether or not we move forward withanother.

I disagree that fiction is the ultimate stronghold. Iwent to school for fiction writing and have placed a few things, but Ifind the narrative nonfiction form to be just as relevant and one thatmy readers better relate to. David Sedaris and Anne Lamott have donejust fine with it, and they are two of my favorite writers. Why wouldyou change a formula that is working for you? Just a question. I knowLamott has written novels, too, but my favorite books of hers are hernonfiction offerings.

Is this the beginning of a new trend,blogs to books? No. But it may be the first time the mainstream willbecome aware that it's happening. At least I hope the mainstreambecomes aware, because if it doesn't, there may not be many moreblogger books. Publishing is a fickle beast.

But - back to my husband?  When we went to dinner after the panel, he admitted he'd thought because of the time, I'd end up with like four people.  He was actually impressed we got the amount of people we did. 

But then he said if I REALLY wanted to impress him, I'd start spouting sports scores.  So there you have it.

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Talking about how childless people really feel about your pregnancy on BlogHer today.

Although guest contributor Sara Cabot of Little Lettice is one of our family food experts, today Sara – a mom of four children approaching or in their tween years - takes a diversion from nutritional content to provide a review of Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids. Read on for Sara’s review, as well as to learn how to be one of 5 winners to receive a copy of Pressured Parents!

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Often I feel just fine about my kids until a casual conversation on the soccer sidelines turns into a comparison fest.

“We go to Kumon once a week,” a mom wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt told me one day as we watched our kids play. “ I didn’t think I could fit that in, what with Benjamin’s oboe lessons and Cub scouts, but we’re going on Tuesdays, right after soccer.”

“And what are you doing over Christmas vacation?” I ask with masochistic verve.

“We’re sending him to soccer camp in Brazil. And this summer we’re doing our regular road trip. We’ll visit every state capital by the end of junior year. That will give Benjamin great material for his college application essay!” She exclaimed.

“College application essay?” I think, my throat tightening. “But our kids are only 12 years old!”

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This excerpt, taken from Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Dealing With Competition While Raising a Successful Child by Wendy Grolnick and Kathy Seal, gave me what I call the “AHH” factor. As in, “Ahh, I’ve had this feeling too!” And you are not alone. Grolnick (a psychologist) and Seal have given this throat-tightening panic a name: Pressured Parent Phenomenon (PPP). Our emotional response to the kind of situation outlined above is caused, the authors say, by our incredibly competitive society whose every facet - be it academic, sports, or the arts - has become rife with pressure to achieve.

Grolnick and Seal have written an exhaustive and well-researched book that explores all the facets of this Pressured Parent Phenomenon: where it comes from, how it is affecting our children, and how we can turn our anxiety into calm guidance.

The authors first explore the context where PPP is flourishing: she asserts that “competition is a defining feature of American schooling,” while “the music world of kids revolves around competitions.” As for sports, the authors quote a sports psychologist who suggests that sports programs operate as “failure factories” that, as time goes on, weed out more and more players. Competition among kids has reached “epidemic proportions” and to extend the metaphor, PPP is contagiously passed from parent to parent like a virus.

Inevitably, we parents are fanning the flames of this competitive culture, rather than putting a dampener on it (which is what we should do). In fact, Grolnick and Seal make no bones about presenting parents as the culprits. They talk about us fighting the “battle for admission” into certain schools from nursery through college. Regarding sports, the authors claim that we “get hooked into the competitive mind-set,” and panic that our children are going to feel bad if they don’t do well. The authors say, rightly I think, that all this competition “is affecting parents as much if not more than children.”

So what can we do about it? How can we parents turn our fears into calm guidance?

The authors outline three tactics, which Grolnick discovered during over 30 years researching this topic: We need to develop our children’s autonomy, competence, and connectedness. This in turn will lead to intrinsic motivation in our children, who will feel empowered to do well because they want to, not because they are told to do so by us.

Grolnick and Seal then devote the rest of this very sensible book to teaching parents how to develop these traits in our children. We need to be “in control” without being “controlling,” thus respecting our kids’ autonomy while setting clear guidelines about their roles and responsibilities. The authors show us how to use praise to boost feelings of competence in our kids by “prais[ing] effort or product, not character,” and that “the most effective praise or feedback is informational: it specifies what children have achieved.” I experienced the “AHH” factor with this suggestion because I hear a lot of parents saying “Great job!” without really specifying what is so great about it. And in these cases, I think children often suspect that the actual action wasn’t so great and that their parents are just saying, “I love you,” which can be annoying.

Grolnick and Seal tell parents that being involved boosts our children’s feelings of connectedness to us and to the world. In a chapter called ‘At Home,’ the authors tell us to hike or knit with our older children, play with blocks or dolls with our younger ones, “or just watch.” Interestingly, she never mentions reading to them, which I think is the number one important thing to do with young kids for myriad reasons.

For me, the authors don’t emphasize enough the importance of starting young on this path of intrinsic motivation. The book feels like a curative for a problem that already is, rather than a preventative for something that has not yet happened. But I think this is because so much of the research is based on case studies of older children.

Ultimately, I found the authors most compelling when they wrote about us adults, rather than the kids. Perhaps it’s because, as stated at the beginning of the book, it is we who are the cause of much of this stress. Or maybe it’s because the authors lost me when they wrote that over-scheduling is OK for some kids (I don’t think it’s ever OK!). Or perhaps it’s because we are closest to what first author Grolnick herself thinks as a parent, rather than as a scientist.

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winners Marion, Sarah, Catherine, Anne, and Kendra!
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Now, want to be one of 5 winners to receive a copy of Pressured Parents? Here’s how:

Visit the Prometheus Books’ new releases section, then email contests@bostonmamas.com (with ‘Pressured Parents’ in the subject), and name another Prometheus book you’d be interested in reading (other than Pressured Parents!).

One entry permitted per person; US entrants only.

Entry period closes at midnight EST, Monday, May 19, 2008.

And now for our weekly dose of web highlights from some of our stylish blog partners:

Mommies with Style reviews Chilly Jilly’s wrap-in-a-bag. MomFinds features the latest crop of Crocs for kids. Vote for your favorite bump at The Nest Baby - the winner gets a babymoon in Jamaica. One Chic Mama is giving away an iRobot Roomba 560. Moms’ Buzz is offering up a $100 Toys R Us gift card + Veggie Tales DVDs. And visit Modern Mom to enter to win a Celebrity BUMP Bag valued at over $3600.

You might think I'm writing this post about Sister Little because she wrote such nice things about me yesterday.  I can understand why you'd think that. Tit for tat, and all that, except that Blondie and I don't have that kind of a relationship.  She can do a million nice things for me, and I will just laugh and ignore her, and vice versa.  In fact, I have had this post half-written for about six months now, ever since she moved back to Iowa from Chicago and set up shop in Farmhouse Villa, but I was afraid if I wrote it then, she would think I was just trying to pump her up, and that would only serve to piss her off. And really, you don't want to piss my sister off. She can be something of a hellcat.

No, I write this now when she's in a good place and can appreciate it for what it is:  a love letter of sorts.

There's this book I've been reading the little angel about a mouse named Sheila Rae and her little sister, Louise.  Sheila Rae is fearless, and her sister Louise spends a lot of time watching her.  Then one day, fearless Sheila Rae takes a new way home.  Louise trails behind her, out of sight. After a while, Sheila Rae realizes she is lost, completely lost, and she sits down and cries.  Louise pops out from behind a bush and tells Sheila Rae not to worry, because Louise knows the way home.  When they get home, they are both fearless.  That's kind of how I feel about Sister Little.

Growing up, I know Blondie watched me to see how I did things.  Once she got to high school, she pretty much disregarded them, and by college we were barely speaking.  But she calls me a lot for professional advice, and we spent a lot of time together on the phone when she first moved to Chicago and again when she and Rock Star Boyfriend broke up.  Though we've had our ups and downs, we've counted on each other as a sounding board and emotional propper-upper.

As I started working on the book, though, I went to Blondie for professional advice of my own, for I think the first time.  My sister has been in the publishing industry for years.  I envy her this -- I listened to the world when they told me getting a degree in English would get me nowhere, so my undergraduate degree is in communications studies, and it took me five years after college before I realized I HAD TO HAVE that writing degree and went back for a master's.  My fearless little sis got the English degree and accepted no job other than those in the publishing field.  She's currently looking for a new one, and I applaud her singular vision, especially considering she's in Iowa.  It's rough out there for an editor, don't I know it.  It took me more than ten years of working in public relations, advertising and product management to admit DAMMIT I WANT TO BE AN EDITOR and got a job as an editorial manager.   My sister -- straight to the point.

She walked me through how book proposals are viewed on the other side.  She talked me off the ledge when I didn't hear back, or I got rejected.  She lectured me on how the publishing world works, and she cheered accomplishments as small as a signed rejection letter rather than a mimeographed (and I am not kidding about that) half-sheet labeled "Dear Author," as painful to receive as a box checked "no" on the eighth grade "Do you like Rita?" note passed by a boy in study hall.

It's hard to find a new job. It's hard to move, to uproot your entire life, especially a life you shared for years with a guy.  Blondie and Rock Star Boyfriend were together longer than many of my married friends have been with their husbands.  She suffered an emotional divorce when they broke up.  There were times I worried she wouldn't come back from it, but she did.  She took up building dollhouses and growing orchids.  She thrived in her job. She made the decision to move back to Iowa so we could all be closer.  She has a whole house now, with a lawn to mow and everything, which is something I don't know I'd have the balls to take on alone. She's finding a new editorial job in a tough job market.  And she's returned to our tiny hometown as an adult and is making an adult identity for herself there -- again, something I'm not sure I would be able to do.  Louise is walking backwards with her eyes closed and stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, and Sheila Rae is so very impressed.

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Before you do your weekend shopping, read my review of Gorgeously Green on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.

Today, Jules offes a recipe to try over the weekend:

"With the arrival of spring and summer, I can’t get enough seafood. A light seafood entrée is the perfect dinner for me, and this recipe is a lovely, easy diversion from the typical banal salmon dish. The subtle fennel flavors come in the form of a light crunch similar to celery, and contrast surprisingly well with the brininess of the olives and sweetness of the oranges. Enjoy!
 

Serves about 4

1 large or 2 small bulbs fresh fennel

1 cup black cured olives

4-5 Clementine oranges

1 bunch fresh parsley (or cilantro)*

¼ cup + 2 tablespoons (keep separated) good quality extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup orange juice

Salt and pepper

About 2 pounds fresh salmon filet

Pinch red pepper flakes

Make the salad. Trim stalks and frawns from the fennel bulbs. Slice the bulb into long, thin slices. Pit and chop olives. Peel oranges and slice each segment in half. Rinse and chop parsley. Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Mix in ¼ cup olive oil and orange juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Allow to sit for at least 15 minutes.

Prepare the fish. While the salad is marinating, prepare the fish. Preheat oven to 350º. In large cast iron skillet, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil. Season skin side of fish with salt and a pinch of red pepper flakes. When oil is hot and begins to shimmer, place filets in skillet, skin side down. Allow to sear for at least one minute, or until skin becomes crispy. Once skin is crispy, place entire skillet in oven and bake until just cooked through (this depends on the thickness of your filets, but for a filet about 1” thick, this will be about 7 minutes).

Presentation. Plate salad on large plate and top with fish.

*I recommend parsley for this recipe only because it is more universally liked. In my house we prefer cilantro, so I use that. Each herb results in a very different flavor or the final recipe, so use whichever you prefer, or use both!"

CLICK HERE for a printable PDF of this recipe.

Given Laurel and my needs to post (her artwork, my notes-to-self), it’s not uncommon to find sticky tape shards on walls and doors throughout our home. Thankfully though, now there’s a stylish, tape-free way to exponentially increase your household display surfaces. Mayfair Lane offers clippers, photo frames, and notepads in a chic variety of graphic designs, all backed with an amazing material that grips non-porous surfaces such as stainless steel refrigerators, glass, and even wood, in addition to magnetic surfaces. I’m feeling far more affectionate towards our (drafty in winter) windows, now seeing them in a new, display-friendly light.

Want to win $50 worth of Happeez products*? Here’s how:

+ + + + +
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winner Leslie D.!
+ + + + +

Visit the Mayfair Lane collection, then email contests@bostonmamas.com (with ‘Mayfair Lane’ in the subject), and name a Mayfair Lane product you’d love to try.

One entry permitted per person; US entrants only.

Entry period closes at midnight EST, Thursday, May 15, 2008.

*The winner will receive a $50 gift card to use on their choice of Happeez products.

I know this post is going to take a long time to write, so I'm cuddled up on the couch with the last glass of white wine in the house to tell you all about it.  I hope you enjoy it.  I hope it encourages you.

In May 2004, I started Surrender, Dorothy at the urging of my friend Average Jane.  I had read a few blogs at that point, and the little angel was one month old.  I, like many bloggers, felt isolated and wanted to reach out while on maternity leave.  Little did I know at that point how this blog would change my life.  It is now unrecognizable from what it was then.

It has taken a very long time for the traffic on this blog to build.  I won't tell you what it is now, but let me just say it's higher than I ever hoped it would be but not as high as I someday hope it will be.  But I wasn't really in it so much for traffic, or for pulling in ad revenue, but as a place to write at least five times a week.  Anthony Trollope was a mailman for his entire writing career, and I've never anticipated I would be able to quit my job in order to write books.  I still haven't.  Maybe someday I will be able to, but I am not one of those people who can make a living from her blog.  Not now.  And that's okay.

I heard all the stories from Cagey and Average Jane about BlogHer 2005, and I decided I really, really wanted to go to BlogHer 2006.  We had a free plane ticket from Beloved's job, and I had a place to stay, also free. So it was a win-win to go.  As I read my favorite bloggers and reveled in the fact I would soon be meeting them face-to-face, I thought it would be cool and an amazing gift to my daughter to print out my favorite posts from each of them, put them in a binder, and have them sign their work at BlogHer.  I thought about this for a few weeks.

Then I thought -- wouldn't everyone like to have such a thing?

In February 2006, I e-mailed Jenny Lauck, Eden Marriott Kennedy, and Alice Bradley with an e-mail entitled "An Idea in Its Baby Stages."  I told them about my idea and asked them what they thought.  They were all a little cautious, as they had NO IDEA who this Rita Arens person was, but they thought it just might work.  They agreed to contribute.  Most importantly, they wrote me back.  I remember feeling thrilled to see their names in my in-box.  For I, if nothing else, am a huge dork.

I found an example of a book proposal online and read all about the marketing part.  I decided I needed some statistics to show how much of a trend blogging is, as even two years ago, it hadn't really become mainstream.  I e-mailed Lisa Stone of BlogHer and asked if she had any statistics I could use.  She asked for my number and called me.  She asked a lot of questions about my idea, and I told her cautiously, again, waiting for the part where she would ask me who the hell I thought I was.  She didn't.  She said, "I want to be a part of this."

And thus began a wonderful friendship.

I started surfing, and reading, and e-mailing, and gathering together a list of 30 or so women and one man whose writing I admired.  Some didn't write me back, but a lot of them did.  Three or so who wrote me back for a long time ended up having to drop out for one reason or another.  I didn't fault them for dropping out, but I remained shocked that many more didn't drop out than did. At this point, the book was called The Tequila Mommy Message Board.

In May 2006, Lisa invited me to join the initial BlogHer ad network, which began with parenting bloggers, or, as we were being called, "mommybloggers."  I eagerly accepted, hoping it would help add to my legitimacy as I continued searching for contributors.  In June 2006, I was invited to be featured on Mommybloggers, and Mir Kamin claimed to have discovered me.

If Rita were a weaver, she'd be one who sits quietly in the corner, nottalking or waving her arms and calling attention to herself, but justever-so-steadily producing ever-more-intricate fabrics. You might noteven notice her. But then when you do finally look over? She'ssurrounded by mountains of of breathtaking work. I have no idea how shekeeps flying below the radar, but when her popularity explodes I am SOtaking credit for having discovered her. ;)

Mir will never know how much that comment in particular meant to me.  Because I had been writing for a really long time, and I did feel like crickets were chirping an awful lot.  But her comment kept me going.

Around this time, the little angel stopped sleeping through the night. She would wake up three times a night, sometimes for twenty minutes, sometimes for two hours.  I spent a lot of time on her bedroom floor, dreaming of the book finding an agent. That was as far as I allowed my daydream to go in those days.  That dream got me through the most difficult period of my adult life -- when my child wouldn't sleep.

The deadline for submissions to the book was November/December 2006.  I hired a lawyer and laid out $900 of my hard-earned cash for real, legal-and-everything contributor agreements, which we all painstakingly mailed around.  When the deadline came, I lost a few more contributors who never sent back in their contributor agreements, but I still had enough for a great book, and as the submissions trickled in, I was getting very, very excited.

I took all this uncut stuff and started massaging it into something real. At the same time, the proposal needed help.  Lisa worked with me a lot, and Liz gave me incredible insight (do we all realize that Liz has written a book?).  In the end, the proposal was 75 pages long.  One of my other contributors, Risa Green, who has written a book  that oh, I don't know, became a television series, spent a lot of time on the phone with me, telling me about her experience in the publishing world. I owe her a huge debt of gratitude.  I still can't believe she was so nice to me. 

At the end of March 2007, I got a fancy NYC agent. She changed the title of the book to Mommyblogging at Mach 10, which I kind of hated. I also attended BlogHer Business, where Jory Des Jardins introduced me to Redbook editor Stacy Morrison, who immediately agreed to write a foreward for the book, and I died and went to heaven. My agent sent the proposal out to eight prominent parenting editors at big publishing houses. They all passed.  By June 2007, I got this e-mail from my agent:

I have no problem with you trying to sellthe book to a smaller publisher at all. And I wish you the best of luck.

I was destroyed. I didn't blame her, I mean, agents don't get paid until your book sells, and if they don't sell it to a big enough publishing house, their little 15% cut doesn't keep the lights on. I remain thrilled that an agent of that caliber pushed the book as long as she did, which was longer than two months.  That may not sound like much, but actually, it was pretty good for an unknown author with a book that still needed a bit of explanation to the mainstream media.

The night I got that e-mail from my former agent, I had a nervous breakdown on the back porch of Chateau Travolta, into which we had just moved. I'd uprooted my entire life to move out to the suburbs, the little angel wasn't sure about her new school, I wasn't sure about my new commute, the house needed a ton of work, my husband's job wasn't going so great, and now my dream was being squashed.  I was desolate.  My husband wouldn't stand for it. He told me to pull myself together, that of course this was going to happen, and look how far I'd come!  Stacy Morrison!  BlogHer!  All these contributors!  And who was I to stop now?? WHO???

Sometimes you just need a little tough love.  Thank you, oh life partner.

I did what every other undiscovered writer does.  I bought the updated Writer's Market and made a short list.  Chicago Review Press was number three on that list.  I went to BlogHer 2007 with my sister Blondie. I met Esther from a major publishing house.  They passed on my book, but she called me and left a voicemail I still to this day have on my phone, saying it was a good book, a great book even, and whoever published it would be a very lucky company indeed.  She saved me, again, as I needed saving so many times.  Thank you, Esther.

I e-mailed Chicago Review Press. I didn't hear.  I called. I called again.  Then one day, at work, the publisher called me back.  She said a lot of stuff I don't remember, then the one thing I did.  She said, "I think I want to do this."

I changed the title again to Sleep Is for the Weak and floated it past her.  A lot of people don't realize that most authors don't get to choose their title or cover art. I was very fortunate to keep my title and be able to weigh in on the art.  My marketing contact and editor are avid blog readers.  They get it.  I never had to explain anything to them.  They worked with me to redistribute the posts, write some introductions and own the book in a way I hadn't done before.  I can't say enough nice things about Cynthia, Mary and Michelle. Throughout the entire project I felt like a huge poser, just waiting for someone to pull back the curtain and point out that I didn't know what the hell I was doing.  But nearly everyone I've encountered has been wonderful and giving of her time and energy.  All I had to do was ask, and back up my proposals with facts.  Yes, getting rejected 15 times before finding a publisher was horrible, but it also made finding CRP so much sweeter. 

We signed the contract in September 2007.  The book is coming out in bookstores this September 2008, a full year later.  It's a BlogHer book, the first BlogHer book, and I hope it's the first of many.  The list of contributors is certainly not exhaustive of all the wonderful writers out there. If this book sells well, I hope to do another.  I hope to get more people's words out into the world.  I hope to write a book all my own.  But for now, the dream I began when I was twelve has come to fruition:  This fall, I hit the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress.  It is worth the 200+ hours and $1500 I have in this book. It is worth my pride, 195 e-mails, countless phone calls and two and a half years of my life.  It is worth all the criticism I'm sure I'll receive, because that's what happens when you throw yourself out there.  But I write this story to let you know that it didn't happen overnight, and it was worth every fucking minute.  Keep writing.  Keep trying.

And please, read this book.  I think it's really good.

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Editor's Note:  Cool Mom Picks is giving away three books.  See all of the details here.