My Social Media Manager/daughter Sally Shideler scolds me. She’s the one who uploads all the posts I create for Facebook and Substack and WordPress.  She’s the one who looks at my analytics and discusses strategy for promoting my book to readers and publishers. She’s the one who does the stuff I don’t enjoy.

Read more: From Classroom to Keyboard: My Writing Routine

It’s a shame the old days are gone. The days when you knew someone who knew someone who knew a publisher who might go crazy about your book manuscript.

Now, you have to promote yourself to catch the eye of a publisher.  Or find someone to do it for you.

“You have to make yourself interesting,” she says.  “People want to know more about you.”

Do they, I wonder.  I’m just me. Then I get a little indignant. “Let’s get this straight,” I tell her. “I don’t want to be an ‘influencer,’ whatever that is.”

She shrugs. “I know,” she says, soothing me.

I really just want to share my writing and share Mary Jane’s story, the one based on her diary.  She has so many lessons to teach us, some 160 years later.

But Sally says to have MJ’s story published, I need a large following. So say the potential publishers, too. She suggests I share my writing routines and environment.  

I can do that!  

Pre-retirement and afterward

During the months I started writing the manuscript, I was still teaching high school English.  Even though I’m more of a night owl, I set my alarm for five AM and, with a cup of coffee at hand, I sat in my bathrobe writing and sipping every weekday.  I even created an inspiration wall behind my desk to keep me focused and awake.

Once I retired, though, I started slacking off. I let myself sleep in late– so delicious! The manuscript was edited and nearly copy-ready by then, and I had a publisher lined up, so I journaled. Not every day, but most days. 

I had several journals that I worked at the same time: a spiritual work notebook, a daily journal, an educational notes journal, a gardening notebook, and an herb/oils recipe book.  Each one was a little different.  In some, I used highlighters and gel pens.  In others, I drew.  Some were written in pencil. I alternated, depending on my mood and activities.

For a couple of years after retirement, I led professional development for Indiana Writing Project, so my writing was more educational: lesson plans, Google Slideshows, professional correspondence, that kind of thing. I co-led two summer institutes and worked to support teachers in writing instruction. 

Through Indiana Writing Project, I used my journaling experience to create a grant-funded, year-long journaling mini-institute for 24 teachers around Indiana. We stitched and glued our own journals and met monthly in person or by Zoom to explore how journaling could support better mental health for teachers and students. Seeing teachers make personal connections and unburden themselves through writing was incredibly meaningful.

After the retirement transition

When my book publisher deal dissolved, I started writing the second novel, inspired by the middle part of Mary Jane’s 1866 diary. It takes place during the summer when the sisters return to the farm, but just as in any Hero’s Journey, the women have changed because of their experience.  New conflicts and pressures hit them the moment they set foot back in tiny Raysville and had to trudge a couple of miles home in the dark.

I also started looking for a new publisher.  

That’s proven trickier than I thought.  

Even though I primarily have a teacher audience, my Historical Fiction genre and Faith subgenre are less commonly read than contemporarily-set fiction or romance. I discovered the publishers who accept this genre of unsolicited manuscripts are rarer, too.

I wrote a companion story, “A Silver Trumpet Calls,” inspired by the diary and my novel MS that was published last November in Friends Journal.  Then, after another polish and hours of research to narrow my queries, I submitted the manuscript and let it go.  Sometime in April, I may hear something about the novel’s publication. 

In the meantime, I am broadening my digital footprint as per instructions from my social media manager.

My physical setup

Now, I’m back at the writing gig, usually for a couple of hours, five days each week. After morning coffee and devotions with my husband, I tread back upstairs to my office and turn on the diffuser with a few drops of Frankincense and Myrrh oils. I squeeze the lever on my knock-off Vari desk so I can stand to write, just as I stood during the ugly days of the pandemic, teaching in the “hybrid” classroom: concurrently to students on the other side of my plexi-glass screen, as well as to those at home on Zoom. It makes me happier to use its options now.

I turn on my Macbook and watch in delight as it and the second computer screen my sons bought me light up.  A couple of taps on my sunlamp keep me more cheerful during the winter months. To my right, an orange, 3-D printed Baumpie reminds me that I have tech support from my son Ted Shideler at hand. Several motivational signs, stickies, postcards, and pieces of artwork adorn the wall behind my screen . They imprint positivity into my brain whenever I glance upward. 

Sometimes, I listen to podcasts or news stations, but mostly, I listen to instrumental music, usually Spa on Sirius XM.  Raising a household of kids and using workshop teaching methods honed my abilities to focus in noisy situations.

Staying charged

I think of myself as mostly intrinsically motivated, but I do take time to pat myself on the back, hence the marker board where I check off what I’ve accomplished. Using a Google Doc for all of my posts not only allows my social media director to have access in real time to everything I write, but it also helps me remember that I’ve written LOTS of posts. That’s encouraging!  Keeping the task board also helps me focus each week. The colored markers are a nod to the influence elementary teachers have had on my teaching. And they make me smile.

One other thing I learned from teaching during the pandemic: give yourself a break.  It’s not only literal, but metaphoric.  

For hours on end, I sat waiting for students to log into Zoom, so we could work together as a class and not lose instructional time during shutdowns.  That was a quick flame-out. I learned that getting up at lunchtime to take a walk around the neighborhood reset my brain with real sunlight and made the craziness of COVID more manageable.

Now, I’m quicker to walk away from a post or chapter that isn’t coming together. I don’t stress about them. They’ll come together when they’re ready.  Stepping away from writing allows me to enjoy my work and also appreciate my life, family, and friends, old and new.  

And that makes it ALL worthwhile.

Okay, Sally, how was that?