First Baby

Well, this is fun! I’ve been running my “Finding Your Story” workshops at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto for a few years, and I’ve had some great experiences helping other writers pull their books together, but this is the first of those books to see print. It’s from a smaller publisher, but it’s legit: on sale in bookstores and airports, carried by Ingram and other major distributors. It’s a memoir, a funny and touching one, called Karma, Deception and a Pair of Red Ferraris, and its author, Elaine Taylor, was one of my favorite students. She came into my workshop with a lot of rich material and a determination to get the book written but not a clear enough focus on the direction, and I loved helping her zero in on the “heart of the story.” It’s gratifying to see it all together in a real book, and to see that the storytelling is so strong. (And, of course, to see myself thanked in the acknowledgements.)
      The last couple of years I’ve been emphasizing my own writing much more than my teaching and coaching, and I generally expect to keep going in that direction. I developed that “auxiliary career” during a period when the writing was slow, when I was buried by the research and organization of what’s finally evolved into the next book. But this does remind me of why I don’t think I’ll ever stop working with new writers. It’s a lot more lively than being lost in my own narrative for days on end, and it makes me glad to see that someone has genuinely benefited from my help. And I have other past and present clients out there, clearly moving toward publication in both fiction and nonfiction. It’s not quite like being a parent—actually writing my own book is the more parental job—but a proud godparent, at least.