Now that I’ve had a little celebratory break (which included an incredible trip to Blue Osa in Costa Rica), it is time for the next step: revision.

Yuck.

I tried to start yesterday, but failed. I was gripped by fear. I had no energy. There were other things to do, like look at my Costa Rica pictures again and refill my coffee cup.

But today, success! I started by picking up my favorite book on writing, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop, by Stephen Koch. He inspires me every time.

One hitch is that I keep trying to remember how I revised my last book. Koch takes that question off the table simply:

Every writer must be taught how to write every book she writes, and the teacher is always the book itself.

Phew. I can’t go wrong! I just need to let the book show me the way.

Another hitch is that I don’t want to read my first draft. I know it has some good stuff. But I also know it has some dreadful stuff. And for the past two weeks I’ve been agonizing about all of the things I should have done and ideas I haven’t yet included that I want to weave in.

According to Koch, these ideas are precious and hard-won. I wouldn’t have them had I not written the first draft to being with.

“I love the flowers of afterthought,” says Bernard Malamud, author of The Natural. Flowers. What a lovely way to think about these thoughts.

Finally, Koch gives some very specific instruction on how to take the first step: Sit down and read the draft. All at once. Listen to your “twin friends, the senses of rightness and wrongness,” he says, and trust them. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. Take note to cut or edit later. Don’t waste time or energy feeling embarrassed by the terrible parts. Look at your draft, he says, like a doctor reading an X-ray.

As I type, my pages are printing, 4 pages per sheet, one-sided by accident. But hey, the blank side will be useful for taking lots of notes about how great or terrible that page is!

All I have left is to decide what chair to sit in… Okay. Decided. Here I go.

A Boston-based initiative called the Real Food Challenge is encouraging institutions worldwide to sign on to pledge that 20% of the food they serve will be real.

Twenty percent.

Here’s the hitch: “Real Food is food which truly nourishes producers, consumers, communities and the earth,” according to the Real Food Challenge website. That means factory farmed foods might not qualify. In fact, they have a calculator for institutions to use to figure out what counts as real and what doesn’t.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think this is awesome. The fact that we have gotten so far from knowing what real food is that we have to calculate it means that we probably need programs like this one. On the other hand, to me, the whole idea of creating a calculator drives us even farther from our intuition — that basic instinct that tells us what’s yum and what’s yuck — that took us eons to evolve.

According to the Burlington Free Press, the University of Vermont is the 5th university to sign on.

In other weird stuff that was fiction when I wrote The Blind Pig but is now creepily creeping into reality is Project Glass, eyewear made by Google. Here’s a short description from the NY Times:

The prototype version Google showed off on Wednesday looked like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands.

Here is a description of the fictional eyewear from The Blind Pig:

Her eyepiece projected a clock onto her retina and, seeing it was earlier than she’d thought, she decided to wait an hour. The metal arm jutting out from her ear looked like the stem of an old pair of glasses and held a convenient a test-tube sized computer just over her eyebrow.

In the future, I will patent all of my fictional ideas.

Actually, what this tells me is how quickly things change. Apparently, researchers are already working on Project Contact Lens.

What’s next?

And now, with my new goal of measuring my progress as an Indie author, it’s just gotten worse. How many books sold? / blog hits tallied? / stars awarded?

The saddest part of all of this? I’ve been trying to be LESS goal-oriented.

So I’m going to let go of something. It might seem small, but to me it’s big. I’m going to stop worrying about how fast I’m running. In fact, I’m going to run my upcoming half marathon this Sunday without a watch. (Gasp!)

It’s terrifying, I know. But don’t worry. I’ll survive.

Meanwhile, I’m making progress on getting ideas for how to fill in the self-judgement void I’m pretending to create. For example, I found a great QueryTracker post about how to ask people to review your book (and have more of them say yes!). The short answer? Research.

Know your market and new releases in it, then figure out whose hands your book should be in to give it the greatest positive exposure, says blogger and novelist Mary Lindsey.

I think the idea of working to cultivate reviews is a great investment. First, reviewers are readers and I always love to hear what readers have to say. Second, it’s important to know your space, and what better way than to read books with great reviews? Especially if it gets your book into the hands of people who might like it.

The key, I think, is to not look at all of this as work. I read (count ‘em) 4 young adult books in the last 2 weeks in an effort to get a better handle on the voice for my next book. The books, which I will soon be reviewing on GoodReads, were fantastic and fun to read.

So, reading books similar to The Blind Pig should also be fun to read.

And what better way to spend these frighteningly hot spring days than reading? Hmm. Let me count the pages…

I like his vision for 3 reasons:

• It validates my decision 2 years ago to self (scratch that) Indie publish;
• It does not render books, literature or any other kind of writing obsolete; and
• It suggests that the age of the novelist — you know, the one alone with the typewriter in a spare, dusty room — is not completely dead.

It’s easiest to explain his vision by contrast with the status quo.

Ashlock sees traditional agents as the go-between between authors and publishers on a linear path that leads, from author to agent to publisher to distributor and, eventually, to readers.

But in the digital age — which, he stresses, is here now, not coming tomorrow — that path is no longer linear. Rather it radiates outward from the author, at the center, though many shorter paths to readers. The modern agent’s role is to live in a slim concentric circle that surrounds the author and help her figure out how, when, where, and why to radiate.

As an author standing alone at the center of my little circle, all aglow but completely unfocused, this vision articulates precisely what I have needed for the past two years.

I’ve beaten myself up quite a bit for not knowing when, where or how to radiate. I’ve tried little things. I’ve tried big things. I’ve gotten discouraged. I’ve lost focus. I’ve become paralyzed.

Should I invest in becoming vocal on GoodReads? Should I send out press releases to journalists who write about food and technology? Should I make my eBook free?

And if I try one of these approaches, how do I know if it worked? What do I measure?

I’ll admit it. At some point, I just let my personal life and my professional life take over instead.

But, says Ashlock, to make progress, you must experiment. And when you experiment, you will fail. And when you fail, you will learn. Any scientist will tell you, any entrepreneur will tell you, any athlete will tell you:  Failure is part of the bargain.

The good thing is that, during the past 2 years, things have changed. There are more tools for Indie authors and more ways to measure success. Plus people like Ashlock are lending credence to the entire digital model. As a result, more and more agents are willing to look at someone like me, who took a risk 2 years ago, as someone with potential rather than as a pariah.

So it’s time to experiment. I guess my short term goal is to fail and learn. But my long-term goal is success! Success, that is, that I can quantify in terms of readers and reactions — Yelp-style (to paraphrase an attendee at Ashlock’s talk) — so when my next book is ready, so am I.

I mean, I’ll have to, won’t I? I will have to try it.

This email came a week after receiving 3 other Neermeat news stories: a friend sent me this FoxNews clip, and my mom sent me a similar article in Financial Times and another friend mailed me a cute card with a clipping from The Economist.

When I do book talks, I take along with me a copy of a New Yorker from September that also talks about lab grown burgers.

I used to bring this along with me because I found that, at book clubs and libraries, I attracted a mixed crowd. There were those who read The Blind Pig and said, “this is already happening. I know all of this already…because it’s real.” And then there were those who said, “um, this is kind of weird. Where did you come up with this stuff?”

Not everyone is up on modern science. I don’t even claim to be, and I follow it for a living. That’s why I wrote The Blind Pig. Because it’s fun to take what’s real and speculate about it. And it’s even more fun when you know that what’s real is something that’s happening that only a few people know about.

Boston happens to be one of those places where there are lots of thinkers and tinkers who are making the technologies of our near-future. This is also happening in other places, but still, these people are like an intellectual 1%. They’ll come up with a disproportionate percentage of the products we rely on in the future. And we in the 99% will buy them because eventually, we won’t have a choice.

So, anyway, I bring the New Yorker article (and a few others) to show people that the ideas in The Blind Pig are real.

I keep seeing these trends that make me think of Neermeat or The NArc. From now on, when I do, I’ll to post them here so we can all watch as the science of The Blind Pig comes out. I hope it will be more fun than scary!

Plus over the last 3 weeks, I’ve gotten back into writing my next novel. Yay!

This particular novel is one that I’ve attempted to write two previous times. The first time, I wrote about 120 pages. I had been excited about it at first, and I liked my main character, but for some reason, she just wouldn’t DO anything. She — meaning me — was stuck. And there was no saving her.

So I tried again, this time from the first person, and this time with that character demoted to a supporting role and about 10 years younger. That draft resonated more in terms of story, but the characters still felt weak.

Now I am 91 pages into my third first draft. I’ve kept the first person point of view and developed the characters more fully. And I’ve even (gasp!) written an outline. (Thank you Erika Mailman, teacher of my MediaBistro Novel Writing class!)

I’m not one for outlining. I like to free-write. I like to let my characters be free to do whatever it is they do and to let their lives unfold in my made-up world. But I also know that I actually want this book to get written and if I keep waiting around for my characters to get busy doing interesting things, I might still be here, working on my umpteenth draft 5 years from now.

The outline has been great because, on days when I am pressed for time, I can just sit down and crank out a scene. When I do that every day, guess what? The book is in my head all the time. Everything is connected. So the outline is constantly morphing in my head.

In fact, its time for a complete outline revamp to really hit the high points and define the climax since the next 100 pages I write need to get me there. The entire process of outlining and writing daily has helped me see the big missing links in my story idea — those things that I hadn’t worked out and that I thought I could maybe get away with avoiding but that really are so foundational that the story is nothing without it. You know what I mean.

Oh! And I came up with a new rule to help me make sure I write. Every. Day. I write before I run. And I still do run or hit the gym 6 days a week, religiously. So now I write every day — even on my rest days — because now that I’ve started, I don’t want to stop.

I found mine at the Harvard Writer’s Workshop, a continuing education course for MDs. I attended as a reporter, covering the course for Harvard Medicine. The opportunity fell into my lap on Thursday during a chat with the editor, my friend and colleague Paula Byron.

I almost said no. I had a long run planned for Saturday and I was semi-holding Sunday open for a not very good reason and I’d had a long week already.

But then I remembered that whole bit about showing up. You have to show up, meet people, be a part of it. So I said yes, as long as I could attend the fiction workshop too, which turned out to be wonderful, like icing on cake.

The advice I got came from Rusty Shelton, a highly regarded publicist in Austin, TX. He gave a talk about hiring a publicist, which I’ve been considering, and among his parting words, which included “Write a great book,” he said, “Get good advice.”

I’ve been wanting good publicity advice for ages but haven’t known where to get it. So I approached him after the session and asked for some. “How do I get the most bang for the buck to promote my book?” I asked. “Should I hire a publicist to help me get reviews?”

Before answering, he asked, “What’s your goal?”

Luckily, I knew the answer. “I want to be a novelist.” There. I said it out loud to a stranger. In the publishing business. Kindly, he didn’t laugh. Instead he gave me some really great suggestions for how to build my online presence.

Now, I was recently a panelist on Books and Blogging for New England Science Writers and I’d left that event feeling inadequate compared to some of the other panelists. I also left thinking that what I needed to do was start tweeting and blogging about science.

This is what I get for hanging out with a bunch of journalists, few of whom would ever consider uttering the words “I want to be a novelist.”

Instead, Shelton suggested blogging and tweeting about fiction. Review books. Talk to authors about writing. And consider giving away the eBook version of The Blind Pig just to get it into more people’s hands. In hindsight, it’s kind of obvious. These are the kinds of things that novelists do.

Interestingly, earlier in the day, Jeff Brown, author of The Winner’s Brain, had encouraged us to act “As If.” By acting as if I’m a novelist, I am sending messages to my brain that I already am what I aim to be. If I keep activating those self-image brain cells, I’ll start naturally seeing myself as who I want to be.

I cannot overemphasize his caveat to avoid going overboard on this one. Acting insufferably “As If” will only make people say “As If” about you behind your back.

So I’m off to get my “I’m a novelist and a winner” brain cells in gear (and also to get my laundry done).

Incidentally, Brown will be in the medical tent at the Boston Marathon finish line. I very much hope not to see him there.

As it is for running, so for writing. Stop fighting the page. Stop fighting the ideas. Let the words come without criticism and let them grace the page as it rushes beneath you.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Words long and short, dancing across a white background, fingers flying effortlessly across the keyboard. Birds singing. Right. So let’s talk substance.

Momentum, to me, is what you build up when you really get engaged with a story. You know you’ve got momentum when every magazine you pick up has something in it that’s somehow related to your book. Every radio show mentions something you need to go look up or jot down. You’ve got it when little comments made by friends, bartenders, even the woman at the post office, seem to feed your stream of ideas.

But to keep momentum, these connections need to move. Otherwise, you just end up with mess, like a giant knotted ball of yarn. You’ve got to tug on them, tie them together, take them apart, wind them up.

And to do this, you need time.

While pondering my new mantra — more momentum, less resistance — during a recent race down in Hyannis, MA on a snowy, yucky day, and using it to fight my urge to finish with the 10K crowd rather than the half-marathon crowd and get a jump on the clam chowder I knew was cooking up at the finish line, it occurred to me that I am an endurance person. I am not a sprinter. I’m too slow and I don’t like expending lots of energy all at once. I like to get inside of something and stay there. At the end of the long haul, I like to be done with it until next time.

This ephiphany made me realize that my recent approach to writing fiction was destined for failure. I’ve tried on and off for the past several months to write for an hour a day. I start off strong, hitting 5, sometimes 6 days a week for the first week or two. By week three, I don’t write a word. By week 5, I feel so far from my ideas that they hardly seem worth having.

Momentum? Zero. Resistance? Full on.

So for the past two weeks I’ve tried a new approach. I dedicate one full day per week to fiction. I’ve written over 5000 words, re-read the first third of Story by Robert McKee (an amazing book on writing), written a press release for The Blind Pig and had it reviewed by a friend, and have a plan to send it out this coming week.

Not only have these two days been productive, I feel engaged and I feel as if my next writing day is tugging at me, pulling me towards it. The road isn’t exactly rushing beneath me yet, but I think I’m starting to get some momentum and I’m starting to let go of some of the resistance.

The winery is in Sandown, NH, known for it’s old vines and Mediterranean climate. Not! Sandown is one of those places that’s not really close to anything, and when I left last night, the temps were just barely clinging to the teens.

I cursed myself on the way home for not having a GPS as I drove the dark and lonely back roads, hoping to run into route 93. I did, eventually. In fact, I didn’t get lost because I’d run a race a few weeks ago in Derry NH and I recognized the rotary that led to the race start at West Running Brook Middle School. (Note the literary connection.)

Zorvino’s itself was charmingly isolated. The main room had a roaring fire and a busy bar. The author tables had nice linens and elegant chairs. It’s amazing how much of a difference nice chairs make. The setup was easy now that I have my schtick. I had my bowl of apples, my poster, my trailer, and my book stands. I even had my money box with lots and lots of 10s for change.

I sold 10 books, which hit my goal. 10 is a nice round number. Everyone goes into these events hoping to sell, like, 20 books, but it’s just not realistic. What you hope is that you sell more than 3, which is what I sold at the last one of these events. It helps when your customers are drinking! But it also helped that the room felt warm and welcoming and that people had come there to have a fun evening out.

Also the room was full of berets and tweed, so you couldn’t help but feel like reading. Seriously. A bunch of writers wearing polyester and baseball caps would not have had the same effect.

The things that worked best for me last night were my poster (it made people stop and look, giving me a chance to pounce), and my overall presentation (people stopped to tell me the cover design, title and overall clean display grabbed them). So yay and thanks again to Luke Strosnider. Design matters, and great design matters a lot!

To break the ice, I tried asking people if they liked science fiction as they meandered past my table. It’s an innocent question and not too pushy. If they said yes, I’d launch right into my pitch. If they said no, I’d tell them about the people who loved my book even though they never read sci-fi.

It worked. I sold a few non-sci-fi readers on the book and even got one excited about the idea of doing a book club session. The whole point is to get people engaged as quickly as possible.

My pitch backfired on me a few times, too. I’d say “Food’s been replaced by government prescribed nutrition. Keeps everybody healthy. You know, cut down on those pesky healthcare costs…” I wanted to get people thinking about what’s going on right now with healthcare. I wanted them to feel the slippery slope.

It worked, but too much. One guy asked me if I was in the Tea Party [I am purposefully not providing a link here]. Another got so uncomfortable with any hint of politics that she, literally, backed away slowly.

I recovered by assuring them that the book was full of “food, science, and speculative fun.” People liked “speculative fun.” Lesson? Fun sells more than conflict on a Friday night at a winery.

My favorite customers were Willie and Margaret from Scotland. They run Stillmeadow Bed and Breakfast in Hampstead, NH. Willie was obviously Scottish, but when his wife spoke, she sounded like she was from Belfast. I couldn’t shake it, so I finally said something to her about it. She said she’s from the Orkney islands north of Scotland and that they all sound like that there. So interesting! I love accents. I can’t mimic them but I can hear them, and I just love the way they add so much character and depth to people. Plus I love that Willie bought 2 books. He’s going to send one to his son in Edinburgh, one of my favorite places.

The night ended with a bunch of punchy authors tasting wine in the basement tasting room. That’s where I sold my 10th book. I didn’t stay too long — with all the dark windy roads, I needed to practice some temperance — but I did stay long enough to enjoy a Pumpkin Port, which would be amazing with a slice of warm gingerbread, a fresh un-oaked Chardonnay, which I would pair with goat cheese and honeycomb, and a nice Malbec that I would not be embarrassed to bring to a book club.

I left with 6 bottles, 3 for my running friends, and 3 for me. I’m spending it as fast as I can make it.

While driving up to New Hampshire last week to run Boston Prep in the frigid near-zero temps, I was contemplating this advice (which wasn’t the last word on the subject, just the most brutal). I’d already decided that I most definitely wasn’t going to bury The Blind Pig. Rather, I was going to try to sell the hell out of it.

But I couldn’t say why I felt so strongly about this. Was I being stubborn and inflexible? I can become pretty rigid when I’m being led somewhere I don’t want to go. I can also be fiery about it. I blame my German and Irish roots.

As I drove, my iPod flipped and Billy Bragg started strumming his classic Great Leap Forward:

There I was, chiming in with what I could remember of the lyrics, and out came these words:

If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

Be still my heart.

Self-publishing is a publishing revolution. And like most upheavals, it is uncomfortable for everyone involved.

I can assure you that I am uncomfortable. I took a big risk by self-publishing. Some may judge The Blind Pig by it’s publisher. They may assume that it didn’t get picked up by a legitimate agent because it’s not good enough. They may fear that it’s pages are filled with bad writing, a plodding narrative and flimsy characters. They may dismiss it, their foregone conclusion that it suffers a lack of editing.

I have heard from many authors that they get pages of edits from their editors and that these revisions almost always make the book better. I’m sure my book would have benefited from more editing. Even now, with the book already “out there,” I would welcome the chance to receive suggestions and to make the book better.

To me, it’s all a process.

Maybe I think that way because of my software roots. I’ve never worked on a software project that was “done.” Despite the large teams of highly-paid, over-educated engineers working long hours, the products always ship with bugs. Eventually they get fixed and packaged in a newer, better version.

I also think this way because I came to writing in a step-wise way. I didn’t set out to be a writer. I didn’t dream of being a writer as a child. The prospect was as absurd as being a singer (which would be more obviously absurd if you had been in the car listening to me sing the other day). Not practical. Not for sensible folks.

When I did start writing, I didn’t set out to write fiction. And then when I started writing fiction, I didn’t expect to get anywhere. I certainly didn’t expect to fall in love with it. And when I self-published, I didn’t think I could earn a living as a novelist. I just wanted to share my book. Now, however, I know that I want to write novels for a living. I would never have gotten here, to this moment of realization, if I hadn’t self-published The Blind Pig.

This is my path. I’m paving it with a mix of discomfort, agitation and hope, and I’m waiting for my great leap forward.