Recognition

 

I follow a number of authors on social media.  It's one way I learn about their new books coming out so I can look for them at the library, or purchase them.

I know a lot of weavers (been around a loooong time), some of them I've even met personally.  Some of them have written books (and/or articles).

In many ways I struggle with the identity of 'author' as it pertains to myself.  I see others writing great books, and I hasten to promote them, in part because I know just exactly how hard it is to write a good book, especially a technical book, even more especially because the craft has been written about for ages, and it's hard to find something 'new' and/or different to say about the craft.

But I struggle (I realize you might find this difficult to believe) to promote my own writing.  In my childhood home, it was not 'done' to 'toot your own horn'.  In some way, my inner child still cringes at the prospect of promoting myself.

From time to time, I gird my loins and write a blog post (or other social media post) reminding people of my books.  Four of them now.  But every time I do, my inner child recoils in horror, remembering that 'tooting your own horn' was 'bad'.  Boastful.  Too forward.  Too...arrogant.

From time to time a weaver will contact me and thank me for my books - especially Magic in the Water.  It is, in fact, the book I'm most...proud...of.  It took an inordinate amount of time, energy and money, to produce.  But I'm also satisfied with The Intentional Weaver, because it contains most of the basic stuff I feel a weaver needs to know to become a better weaver.  It is, quite literally, the book I wish I'd had when I was learning.  

The other two books are more...'vanity' books.  Stories I wanted to share that didn't fit into the other two.

Most authors I follow give the same advice - don't read the reviews of your books.  Reviews are not for the author, but for those who would read it.  I broke that rule a couple of months ago when I was digging for information on books I was trying to sell - trying to find reasonable prices to put onto the books from Allison's library.  I found myself on Goodreads, and out of idle curiosity searched for my name.  There was exactly one review of  The Intentional Weaver.  The reviewer commented that it was an okay book but the experience of reading it was 'ruined' because it was riddled with typos.

Gah.

We worked SO hard to eradicate all typos, but apparently we missed some.  I was nearly driven to rereading the book myself to see just how many typos there were, but realized that would have been a waste of my time.  I cannot argue with the reviewer - she saw what she saw.  (But I also wonder how many of those typos were simply the British spellings, like 'colour'.)  

In the meantime I have not given up writing - this blog, primarily.  And I do know the occasional typo sneaks into these posts.  I do re-read them at least 3 times, sometimes more.  And months later I might re-read a post on a particular topic and oops - there it is - a typo.  So I know they happen, no matter how hard an author and/or editor tries to get rid of them.

Anyway. I continue to write.  And no doubt I will continue to make mistakes.  I hope that most people are forgiving of typos and concentrate on the content.  

But that is not something I can control.  So I'm going to try really hard to never read another review of my book(s).  

If anyone is interested, 3 of my books are available here 

My 'memoir' is available in my ko-fi shop (along with a variety of tea towels, and the monograph Weave a V by Kerstin Fröberg)