These plans may well change based on what happens as I go through the query/book proposal process. If I land an agent – and then a publisher – I probably give up a fair chunk of control of the project (and the title will probably change.) If I am unsuccessful at landing an agent and/or publisher, we’re looking at Lulu.com, a touch of public embarrassment (hardly the first time) and, for whatever it’s worth, enough creative control that about 25 people will look at this project and 3 might buy a copy. I acknowledge I may fail. I’ve failed before, and to date, my survival rate is phenomenal.
Also to date, so those of you especially who see me Tweet-tweeting about this know, my intentions are as follows:
1)Book – in rough draft. Just got the first chapter in 2nd draft on Sunday. This means that it’s now coherent, but the prose can still improve and the manuscript is quite likely riddled with the sorts of typos and grammatical errors that bypass Word. I realize I’m in rookie zone since I have the entire book give or take a few sections already written. Even if it doesn’t get picked up as is, the additional chapters are still usable.
2)Survey – I have doubts that any survey is fully scientific or reliable, and Gods only know if I’ll get enough data to define anything relevant. Even so, through this survey I am inviting the neopagan/Wiccan community (and Reconstructionists if they can tolerate the neopagan header as a kindness to me) to add their own voices and perspectives to this project. While mine will be loudest – I am the self appointed narrator – I want to offer a)numbers I don’t know that we’ve gathered recently or ever on divorce among these particular Western-world faiths and b) to offer anecdotes and experiences that drastically differ from mine. Advice that lingers with me from an old screenwriting professor applies here: “Don’t even try to relate.” By speaking from personal experience without care for whether or not others “get it” I’ve found that people who might not connect at all can connect and add to our collective lessons from these experiences.
3)Documentary – This is where I venture out of my comfort zone. I thought of this initially as a website promotion, but then I realized that I might do something more, if not necessarily better. I intend to interview on camera any willing participants in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. If I’m lucky, someone may let me video their handparting ritual. While I don’t expect much from the production quality – I’m working with two Flip cameras – it’s something I can release free online that people can share freely.
That’s my current total intention for the Divorcing a Real Witch project. The survey itself is in beta right now, and anyone else who wants to beta test, please let me know. Mostly I’m looking for when/where the survey breaks so I can do what I can to make sure it stays operational.
Also, when I do post the survey, if you’re a blogger looking for something to post about, please run an announcement about the survey once or twice. I’ll be more than happy to return the favor on any of your projects.
At the advice of my friend Lisa, I’m doing a slight rework of the survey I intend to release about Wiccans/neopagans and divorce practices. Rather than completely overwhelm people with a deluge of questions, I’m breaking it up into the following sections. I think it covers everything. See on the list below, and let me know if any larger topics I might be missing.
I’m also working on the knotty problem of incentive. I can’t reasonably expect people to do this for absolutely nothing. Just asking the questions was emotionally wrenching, and I’m not answering them myself because I write about my own experience – in detail – in the book. Somehow offering a free copy of the Spellcasting Picture Book, or of the upcoming illustrated Zombie Repellent Chronicles1 just doesn’t seem to answer to what some people will go through while fishing their memories over this stuff.
Name/Contact/Location (for people willing to interview on camera for the coinciding online documentary I plan to piece together.)
Data points: number of marriages
Length of marriages
Children from each marriage (#)
Pets from each marriage (# and type)
1st marriage
2nd marriages and greater
Definitions of divorce
Legal experiences including division of property
Child custody
Pet custody
Religious issues and Ritual Practices
Family/friends/peers
Alternative lifestyles
Dating
- For real. I now have an illustrator. [↩]
I’m only now taking baby steps into writing the proposal, and I started with a rewrite of my chapter outline. This will definitely not be the final draft, but I thought I’d give you all a peek at the chapter titles so you can get the jist of the book:
Foreword: Why I wrote this book
Chapter 1: Why divorce when marriage is optional?
Chapter 2: The impact of divorce on family and friends
Chapter 3: Untangling the entanglement: the magical benefits of handparting
Chapter 4: Spells and magic to assist handparting rituals
Chapter 5: A year and a day, the end
Chapter 6: Oathbreakers and Warlocks
Chapter 7: Divorced witches under 30
Chapter 8: What to expect when you’re divorcing (and a witch)
Chapter 9: Rebounds, retrogrades and Saturn returns
Chapter 10: Life after handparting
Chapter 11: Between divorce and dating
Chapter 12: I’m single and Wiccan. Now what do I do with me?
Appendix – this will list resources helpful to divorcing pagans. Right now it’s just a book list including the works of Julia Cameron and Z. Budapest’s Summoning the Fates.
Looking at it here, it needs some re-ordering in the middle, but I can work with it.
24
Apr
As of Thursday: The first draft on handparting and Wicca is done! Joy!
Now there’s a whole lot more work to do, of course, but this is the first time I have written a work that long, ever. I realize that it’s a long road ahead, but hopefully with careful care and a little help from my friends I can bring this puppy into print (or digital issue) once I get all the phases done.
As the next part of my work, I’m also going to be posting a very long survey online, and asking people who are Pagan and divorced in the Twin Cities area if they’re willing to sit down and do an interview with me. I would like to get as many of these interviews on camera as possible, because I plan to open a web page with a few of these videos. I may be able to string together an online documentary if the interviews are of sufficient quality.
Along with the survey I will post the outline and sample chapters (after much rewriting, I’m sure.) I am seeking an agent to represent me. I’m also wondering if I should start a Facebook fan page under my own name. While Facebook is the devil, it does have marketing clout.
I’m already feeling quite celebratory, and I had friends over last night as a sort of indirect celebration.
And now, more work ahead.
One small thing. It works.
The book on handparting I’m working on passed 50K this weekend. It’s still a rough draft, but this means that the word-clay I need to work is really coming along. Next will come the web page, with the survey, and I will begin collecting interviews on the subject. This will happen around rewrites, and I may shop this around to different writer’s groups to get a variety of feedback.
I’ve gone into this knowing that publishing is a completely different game than a)the pagan market perceives it to be in the first place and b)what it actually was in the first place. I am an internationally published author. When I introduce myself, I generally get a response of, “What was your name again?” I think that sums up international publication for most of us, and I don’t expect that to change because I actually write a book as opposed to my smattering of short articles.1 Fortunately, I’ve gotten bits of help and nudges along the way – Lisa of Cybercoven.org2 has definitely sent some good information my way, as have local members of my writer’s group who also know the metaphysical publishing field.3 Yesterday, after finding the post through a comment over on Lupa of Therioshamanism’s livejournal, I discovered RuneSoup. The post was the Five Laws of Occult Economics: Why We Suck at Money. There’s more digging to do, on this, of course, and I am a true Scorpio in that I’d like to pluck at the underlying attitudes while people get mad at me for making their internal buildings collapse, but for the on-the-table reasons that you can’t ignore, this pretty well covers it.
I read through the blog post, found it valuable, commented as such and marked it in my “Read It Later” plugin. Apparently Howard likes to get to know his readers, because he contacted me today to tell me he wrote about my project on the Divorce and Wicca (or whatever title gets picked for it) here – I’m example 5.1. I think his plan is intriguing, and while I have every intention of hiring a publicist and actually have a specific publicist in mind, I can’t see how that person would object to me doing a chunk of the legwork myself.
While this book isn’t nearly as fun as the Urban Wicca book I have on backburner, I suspect it will be received more easily since it is unlikely to challenge any (Wiccan) assumptions. I suppose writing this is after all the literary equivalent of eating my vegetables first. At least it’s not brussel sprouts.
I am grateful for the help and tips I’m receiving along the way. Article writing, once you get into a groove, is relatively easy. But writing a book is daunting, because there actually aren’t many places that spell it out all at once: a marketing plan should look like this, a book length should look like this, a query letter for an agent should look like ___, for a publisher like ____ and you can do this and this with proposals, etc.
I’m not a babe in the woods in this, but I am a toddler. I appreciate all the points I get that encourage me to er, toddle along.
- Also, finding some of my work floating around the Philippines made me really wish I had a proper agent. [↩]
- read her book Magical Connections, it’s good! [↩]
- Not sure how public second friend wants to be, thus not linking at this point. [↩]
I suspect this will need rewriting or reframing, as it’s a hobbling concept but one that rings true at the moment:
“Forgiveness itself is a complicated issue that’s treated badly in western culture. Because of Christian thinking, there are people who believe they’re entitled to forgiveness from everyone. They’re not. Forgiveness, like respect, is an earned and mutual process, and far too many people push for you to forgive others because they do not want to deal with the very real consequences of someone else’s pain.”
I really have encountered a lot of people who think that they’re just owed forgiveness for the harm they do. And others that push me to forgive wrongs done to me despite no efforts made to right or even apologize for/take responsibility for the cruel action. I don’t practice a religion founded on some guy forgiving all my sins, and when I did practice that religion, I was not so convinced of my moral rightness that I eschewed responsibility for my actions.
In Wicca the young are served the least and the worst. While honoring our elders is much needed, the dismissive or exploitative way people under 35 (or under 30) are often treated by more “traditional” Wiccans sets us up for a troubled future – some of which we are already experiencing. There is a very real generation gap, and some of the ideals that were adopted by Wicca in the 1960s and 70s are still there among the youth but are moderated by a reality of very different demands than what has been experienced by our elders. The elders must learn to respect and listen to the experience of the youngers; without this considered exchange the wisdom of age is rendered irrelevant because wisdom that helps no one is not wisdom.
I’m going to expand on this at some point1, particularly in light of Starhawk’s statement last year that pagans need to reach out to younger women via their own platforms (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) While this overlooks young men, I agree with the general spirit of the sentiment.
I’m seeing some success in that direction in the Twin Cities community, and I’m delighted to say I was wrong about how effective they would be. The reaching-out is working because those managing it are managing it exactly correctly. The trouble, frequently, has been one of relevance. There’s a lot of “pagany” stuff that I don’t like or don’t want, and I’m not alone – but I’m also one of the few unafraid to say it out loud. Hell is likely to freeze over before I’d go on a “pagan campout.” I don’t do festivals. I like the great outdoors, and I am grateful that nature allowed humanity to evolve the sense to move into caves.
However, I’m impressed to see a job/business networking program and some integration with “geek culture”2 without confusing religion and fandom.
What really needs to happen first though is that the elders who want to reach out to the youngers must stop and really examine their attitudes and assumptions. Maybe do that exercise where you deliberately call up stereotypes about different groups and where those stereotypes come from. The youth will benefit from doing the same exercise. Before the groups can connect you have to look at these attitudes, as they really are dividing us all right now.
- readers may have to remind me [↩]
- although I can’t say I’ve cared for the way it’s been done in the past [↩]
9
Feb
This is hardly the first time I’ve had to start over. I thought the snake that sheds skin was a good metaphor, and hey, I want to use more of my own photos in blogging anyway.
So – some feedback from my writer’s group made it clear I need to make the handparting book more clear in both background and intentions. Starting with the inevitable “what is Wicca?” speech that’s been obligatory since the first mass-consumption book about Wicca was written.
Here’s a small sampling of the foreword I’m writing:
“Most people inclined to pick up this book are Wiccan, or are neopagan, or know enough about ritual religions to want to borrow a well known ritual to fit in to his or her own spiritual needs. But just in case you’re merely curious as to what on earth handparting, Wicca, or handfasting is, the following points will clear a few things up.
First, Wicca is a religion with as many traditions as Christianity has denominations. Within Wicca, there is just as much quibbling about whose tradition bears the torch of legitimacy, much the same as Christians who argue about which Bible gets used post which reformation. Wicca is currently a fringe religion – the fringe status is rapidly changing to “simple minority” – that is part of what might be called the neopagan religious subculture. Wicca is one of many religions that anchors its spirit on concepts outside monotheism.
Wicca has no core mythology of its own, but contains a loose set of beliefs surrounding a usually benign mother goddess figure, the name and character of which can come from nearly any world mythology. In some traditions the mother Goddess has a husband or consort, sometimes he’s just not in the picture. Along with honoring the seasons and moon phases by adopting from the Celtic calendar, Wicca runs on a moral guideline that believes moral absolutism can cause destruction, and that different situations call for different decisions.”
Remember, there are entire books dedicated to the spokes beneath the neopagan umbrella. Mostly I’m writing about Wicca and divorce here.
I was reading the book Epilogue: A Memoir
and the author’s discussion about her husband’s death, about her grief, about her attempts to find new companionship brought to mind my divorce and my grief over it. It also made me think of an acquaintance going through a divorce, and how what she’s written of her experiences are so very similar to my own internal life when it first happened. It’s also brought to light one of the reasons I’ve had so much trouble getting the book on Wicca and Divorce of the ground: yes, it’s been years, yes, I’ve moved forward into a new relationship, but no, I’m not quite done and it’s not the sort of thing I can or should force. Emotions and loves don’t wrap up in end in neat little packages and it’s a disappointing behavior of modern life that people think they should; I blame this idea on too many people modeling their emotional lives after thirty minute sit-coms. Living doesn’t give you neat conclusions; otherwise you wouldn’t shit yourself when you die.
With that perspective, this is what poured out of me this afternoon.