How to Be Happily Unpublished: A Writer's Journey

By Gloria Marshall

Writing creatively is important whether you publish or not. Its not so much the destination that matters but what you learn along the way. As the world turned Ive had to re-define myself. When myths fall apart, writing is the glue that holds my life together. What happens when your publisher uses your royalties to gamble in Las Vegas?

My book deals with deadlines, rejections, book signings when nobody comes, and workshops when everything is great but your story. It shows how humor helps to heal, the joys of a journal and finding a voice you can trust.

I describe in fictional form the lighter side of the writing life emphasizing that to fail is to achieve the unexpected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 4, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469107707

Gloria Marshall

Gloria Marshall, author, poet and painter, loves to spin a tale sprinkled with history and suspense. Her characters are cast in off-the-grid, remote locations. Her travels open doors to adventure and wonder. Curse of the Dark Shadows is a two book eulogy that pushes the boundaries of our senses. A history buff and avid researcher, her historical fictions carry a grain of truth to stir one's mind. Gloria lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she enjoys her passion for writing and painting.

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Copyright © 2007 by Gloria Marshall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

HER PUBLISHING CREDITS:

Butterfly Mornings and Wildflower Afternoons, a humorous tale of rural living on Orcas Island; How to be a Faerie Grandmother: a humorous guide for grandparenting; Mimosa: a French Country Mystery, and articles for the Christian Science Monitor and scripts for As the World Turns. She is also the author of Forget Me Not: Writing My Way Through Alzheimer’s.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

33377

Contents

PROLOGUE

INTRODUCTION

PAPER DOLLS

A LADY’S HOME JOURNAL

COLLEGE

ROOM OF HER OWN

REJECTION

THE GRANDMOTHER HOUSE

VOICE LESSONS

SOAP GOT IN HER EYES

DELIVERY DAY

THE EGG AND US

A NOVEL EXPERIENCE

PUBLISH OR PERISH

THE BOOK SIGNING

FORGET-ME-NOT

BUTTERFLY MORNINGS

WITH LOVE TO MY FAMILY,

SOURCE OF ALL MY STORIES

I would shed my surroundings, like a butterfly sheds a chrysalis, and I would fly towards a future which was not lumbered with other people’s rules.

William Wordsworth

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PROLOGUE

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If butterflies are free, why not me? Hildy always had this penchant for metaphors, so it is only natural that she choose the butterfly as symbolic of her life. From the time she won that desk as Queen of the Butterflies, her path was set before her. There are those who claim she was always up in the air, but she could handle that. After all, butterflies do fly from blossom to blossom sipping nectar, like she did, from book to book gathering twigs for her nest. Her nest, however, was her notebook where she placed a fragment here, a sentence there and had built into her mind a most extraordinary structure of disconnected bits of poetry, prose, fact and fancy. Like Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest, Hildy unconsciously had created her own private tree of knowledge within the pages of her notebook.

Butterflies are also a symbol of transformation to wholeness. Wasn’t that butterfly of being, her present stage of aspiration? Being is described as soft like a tree against the sky, the opening of a bud, the stream rippling in the sunlight. In May Sarton’s words: Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself part of it in a small way. Isn’t this how she felt at Orcas? There, cosmic moments were the norm and not the exception. There, she was one with the leaf, the stone.

Being is also relational. You not only are but are with nature and other persons. Like on walks with her husband, or holding hands on the couch while watching TV or just being with the wind in the woods. It has nothing to do with knowing but is feeling oriented, focused on your senses and inner reaches of the heart in tune with itself or its circumstances, as opposed to the rhythm and harmony disrupted by