Launching a product is a pretty scary thing to do.
I launched a product several weeks ago, a poetry book that I spent about five months writing and editing and compiling. A couple of nights before the launch, I wrote this in my journal: “I have to admit that I’m feeling a little nervous about releasing the book, because there’s just so much in it that’s me.”
I felt terrified. I was afraid that no one would see value in the project or that they would be disappointed with the content or that they would never buy anything from me again because of that.
Here’s the truth about launching a product: It’s super scary. Nothing is assured. We don’t know how well it will do or what people will think or whether they will even get what we were trying to do. Writing is so subjective. Not everyone “gets” our kind of writing.
My release was a poetry book, and poetry is one of those things that people either love or hate, and I knew that putting myself out there was going to be a scary thing. But the other truth is this: If we are ever going to succeed at building a thriving business, we are going to have to sell our work.
I didn’t know if I could ask people to buy. Sure, I give out a ton of free content every week, but would people really care when it came time for me to sell something? Would they even pay attention? Would they be able to see the value in what I had done? Would they even remotely care?
But I stepped over that fear tripping around my ankles, and I did it anyway.
And the book did about as well as I thought it would do.
Leading up to the launch, I studied the work of Jeff Walker, a product launch expert, so I could gather every kind of tip there was about successfully launching a product. I followed his tips and released videos about my project and talked it up on social media channels and email lists. But there were many things I should have done differently. So I thought it would be helpful if I shared my mistakes with you.
But before I tell you what mistakes I made, I have to give you this disclaimer: When we’re new to selling products, we’re going to be finding our way into it. We’re going to be testing different theories, seeing what works and what doesn’t on a project-by-project basis. It’s important for us to know that we’re sort of in an experimental stage, because if we set our expectations for that first launch too high, we’ll get so discouraged we won’t want to do it again. Mostly because launching a product is a LOT of work. But it is worthy work.
If I know anything about this business at all, I know it’s built on persistence. We have to have persistence to become the writers we want to be.
My launch strategy was this:
About a month before the release, I started letting my newsletter people know that I was launching a poetry book.
I recorded three videos about the book, which I started releasing once a week three weeks before the launch. Video one was about the origins of the book—what made me write it and the inspiration behind it. Video two was about what I hoped the book would do—basically show people a piece of their lives in mine. In video three I talked about the layout structure and shared a couple of poems from it.
The day of the launch, I sent out an email to my newsletter group to let them know the book was on sale and that I was running a 48-hour special on it.
That same day, I shared a couple of poems at different times on both Facebook and Twitter.
When 24 hours passed, I sent another email and did another social media plug, letting people know there were only 24 hours left to get it at the introductory price.
And again, an hour before the book went off sale I sent another email and shared something on social media.
All in all, I shared about four of the book’s poems on social media during the 48-hour window.
After the launch, my husband (who is my branding and marketing consultant because he’s really good at what he does), and I assessed how it had done. Here are some things we learned:
1. The first pre-launch video was the most viewed, and each video’s views decreased as they were released.
This told us that the pre-launch content shouldn’t just be videos and that we needed to keep them closer together, since releasing them with a week between meant that people likely forgot that I was launching a book and that another video would be coming. So for my next launch, which comes Dec. 2, we will be launching a video a day to see how that works in terms of views and sales. I’ll be reporting on that launch as well.
2. Make a landing page, share it and point to it.
This is a crucial factor. No one signed up for my release notification list for my poetry book, because they didn’t really know about it until the day of the release. I mentioned it casually to my email list in that first email about a month before the list, but I never let anyone on social media or my blog know about it. We brainstormed ways that we could do this more effectively for the next launch, and we thought creating a landing page sooner would help, because when I’m mentioning the project, I can just point people to that page. So that’s what we did. On this new launch page, I have an intro video on the landing page, giving an overview of the project, and then the pre-launch videos will come closer to the release date.
3. Create open loops with the pre-launch videos.
Open loops are part of a story that will logically lead into another story. Think about series and what they do. They leave a few open loops so that people look forward to the next installment to find out what happens. That’s the same thing that needs to be done with pre-launch content. People need to finish that first pre-launch video and say, “I can’t wait to see the next one so I can close that question in my mind.” It’s part of our human nature to want to know what happens next, and story can do this really well when we’re willing to tell a story with our video content.
The pre-launch videos for my poetry book did not contain open loops, which could be why every video released after the first one had fewer views.
4. Generally talk about it more.
I know. I feel the same way. I hate selling myself. But the truth is, if I believe my work is worth having fans gathered around it, then I HAVE TO DO IT. Otherwise no one will ever know what’s happening. People signed up for my email list for a reason: they enjoy my writing. They’re a Facebook fan for a reason: they enjoy my writing. They follow me on Twitter for a reason: They find value in what I have to say. Surely they will enjoy knowing that I have more of that writing packaged up in a book.
For the next release, my husband has advised me to share something about it at least two or three times a week. So that’s what I’ll be doing.
In next week’s blog, I’ll discuss how to get better at product launches. (That right there is all it takes to create an open loop.)
Six boys produce a lot of destruction around my house. Everywhere I look, there are nicks in bookshelves and unintended holes in the walls from errant hands or fingers or just curiosity, and there are cracked toilet lids and pictures frames that have no more glass and shattered lights that took an accidental knocking.
But the destruction, by far, hits toys the hardest. Mostly because toys are made of paper. Or something similar. They’re surely not made of anything durable, like steel. Or iron. Or cement.
I know, I know. If we had toys made of steel or iron or cement, we’d have bigger things to worry about, and besides, boys wouldn’t even be able to lift them, which might be my point.
I have no idea what goes through the minds of toy manufacturers when they’re building these complicated little things intended for boy play. I imagine it’s something like this: “Haha! Finally! Here is something they’ll never be able to destroy.”
The answer is always false.
My boys get pretty wild and rowdy when they’re playing, but, from what I’ve observed, it’s not any more wild and rowdy than their friends, including some girls. Kids play hard. It’s their favorite thing to do, and that means that many times, the toys they choose to play with are on their last life. Or maybe they never really had a life in the first place, because as soon as they came home and saw the boys, they gave up (remember the scene in Toy Story 4 then Woody and Buzz and Jessie watch the kids at daycare play with the old toys and you can just tell they’re terrified to be brought into the room? That’s what I imagine any toys coming into our house feel like, if they had feelings.).
So I’m just putting it out there, toy manufacturers: If you want to test whether or not your product is really durable—and I’m talking nothing-is-going-to-destroy-this durable—send it to my house.
Here are some things we’ve already tried:
1. Anything made of foam.
Once upon a time, my second son got a Thor foam hammer for his birthday. It was the coolest thing, if you talked to him. Two days later, it was about half its original size, with tiny little bite marks all over it, because his little brother thought it looked like a good thing to tear apart with his teeth. BECAUSE THIS IS THE ONLY THING FOAM IS GOOD FOR.
Trust me. We made light sabers out of pool noodles this summer, because we thought our boys would really enjoy some safe sword play, except it’s hard to sword fight when you’re focused on how many bite marks your light saber has. They kept getting me in the face, because I couldn’t stop staring, marveling at how quickly it had happened.
You know those foam protectors they put on the metal bars of trampolines so kids don’t get hurt while they’re jumping? Yeah, my little foamivores got those, too. Maybe they’ll learn their lesson next time a body part connects with a metal pole.
2. Anything made with a thousand pieces that don’t keep their pieces.
This would be things like LEGOs that get opened and dumped out and no one really cares about putting together that awesome Star Wars starship as much as I do. It would be things like puzzles, which are all packaged in a bag kids can’t open and neither can parents—so when it is finally, finally, finally wrestled open, the pieces go flying everywhere, and at least one of them is sure to disappear. Forever.
(I think toy manufacturers do this on purpose. Someone somewhere is laughing every time a parent sweats through trying to open something and a billion pieces fly everywhere. You know who’s not laughing? Me. Thanks for another anxiety attack, toy manufacturers. My kid just tossed a puzzle into my lap and asked me to open it.)
3. Mr. Potato Head’s butt.
This was just lazy designing, in my opinion. I get why it’s there—easy storage of all the pieces that make Mr. Potato Head Mr. Potato Head, but it’s just that Mr. Potato Head, at least in my house, has a very leaky butt, because every other minute my kids are asking me to put Mr. Potato Head’s butt on, except we don’t allow the word “butt” in our house, so it sounds more like, “Can you put Mr. Potato Head’s booty back on,” which is really kind of ridiculous and a little bit cute. I’ll put it back on, and then I’ll watch them fill it up with pieces and close it and then open it again, and, whoops, there went the butt flap again and all the pieces are spilling out and my kid is throwing Mr. Potato Head across the room, because it’s just so frustrating. I get it. It’s frustrating when you have a leaky butt on your hands.
4. Action figures.
These guys. I feel sorry for them. They lose limbs like we lose matching shoes. I’ve found Captain America with only one arm, but “at least he still has his shield,” the boys say. I’ve found Hulk without a head, which would be a very dangerous Hulk, if you ask me. I’ve found Iron Man missing a leg, but “at least he can still fly.”
All I know is I’m hoping they won’t come back to avenge their missing limbs, because I have no idea where they are.
5. Games.
Now, I love playing Apples to Apples and Ticket to Ride and Dominion and even Cards Against Humanity just like any other parent, and even when it comes to kids’ games, I love Battleship and Candy Land and Operation. It’s just that even though these games are super fun and most of my boys are old enough to play them, they come with two thousand tiny pieces. And they’re packaged in boxes.
This alone is a recipe for disaster, but put together, it’s a recipe for we’ll-never-play-this-again. The boys try to cram on the box lid, even though the Battleship board is still halfway open, and the box tears in half, and then the pieces are everywhere, and we have to break out the Duct tape, and even still, pieces go missing. Ever tried to play Operation without the liver and the heart and the funny bone? It’s not as much fun.
6. Anything that’s super cool.
The 8-year-old once got a microscope for his birthday, because he was really into science (and still is), but it lasted all of three days, because he left it out on the table once, and one of his twin brothers decided to see what would happen if he squeezed the tiny little light bulb. Easy enough to fix, except that when he crushed it with his tiny little hands, he also bent a piece that wouldn’t permit any other right bulb to be screwed in.
The 6-year-old once got a really cool bug catcher that broke the first time a fly got caught. (I know. That wasn’t his fault.) Another boy once got a frogosphere where you can raise your own frogs, and we didn’t even try that one, because we’re talking about live animals. After what these boys do to toys? No thanks. You just dodged a bullet, baby frogs.
7. Scooters.
It’s amazing how difficult it is to align the handlebars with the wheels on a scooter and how amazingly easy it is to mangle this contraption beneath the tires of a minivan when boys forget to put it back on the porch.
8. Stuffies.
If the 3-year-olds are left alone with a stuffed animal for any amount of time, they will defluff it, which is about as terrible as it sounds. Every now and then they sneak a little stuffy past my eyes and hide it under their pillow until I take a bathroom break from my post right outside their room, which is where I have to stay if there’s any chance that they will take a nap, and when I come back, I find a miniature throw carpets that have dog heads and lion heads and pink elephant heads with sparkly purple eyes.
In fact, this has happened so often recently I’m considering starting a business selling slippers made from old, defluffed stuffed animals. Because those little throw rugs look suspiciously like the material used for kids slippers. Might as well make a profit off my boys’ destruction.
All I’m really trying to say, toy manufacturers, is that you’re going to have to do better than this. Let’s see you make something cool that will not be taken apart in ten seconds and put back together all wrong, or maybe, worse, better than before. Let’s see you make something that can withstand cross-purpose playing (like puppet sticks that are actually durable enough to be used as swords—which will happen). Let’s see you make something kids can’t destroy.
I know it’s a daunting task, but judging by the price of that action hero castle they got for Christmas last year that was destroyed two hours later, I’m paying you about $25 an hour. You can do this. I know you can.
Plus, my boy just put a cool Star Wars light saber on his birthday wish list, and I still remember what happened to the last one. No one wants to see an 8-year-old on a war path to figure out who broke his favorite toy. Trust me.
So there’s laundry. And then there’s putting laundry away. One of these things doesn’t happen at our house.
I usually slave over at least eight loads of laundry every Tuesday–and that’s if the boys don’t put all their dirty clothes in the laundry, which they actually did this weekend, after we helped them clean their room and found six weeks worth of clothes on the floor. Not really. It was more like eight.
We hung most of them up, because I wasn’t about to put them all in the laundry, but some of them were obviously dirty, after a smell test performed by anyone but me, because you could not pay me enough money to hold up a boy’s sock–clean or not–to my sensitive nose. Well, maybe for a certain amount of money. How much are we talking?
Anyway, like I was saying, when the boys actually put all their dirty clothes in the laundry it’ll typically gain me an extra load or two.
It takes me all day to do laundry, because I don’t own a laundromat. And then it takes at least 45 minutes to sort it all.
I know, I know. Boys should be helping. And they will, eventually. It’s just that I usually only get to laundry when they’re in school, because when they’re home I’m so busy putting out fires and keeping them out of the refrigerator I can’t possibly juggle laundry in all that activity. I’m easily overstimulated. What can I say?
Also, I would kind of like to have my laundry done and not stalled out, which happens often when boys are invited into the laundry process. Mostly because we have the heavy-duty machines with a billion buttons, and if we know anything at all about kids, we know they like pressing buttons. So sometimes the towels get washed on delicate cycle in boiling hot water with enough water for a “tiny load” instead of the “gigantic load” it is. And sometimes, if I’m really lucky, the washer won’t even be washing like I think it is, and I won’t know until my phone timer goes off, telling me the load is done and I find that it is not, in fact, done, because someone pushed the start button one extra time, and it never got past the soaking stage, which just, essentially, added a whole hour to my laundry day.
So I just do it myself for now.
The way I fold laundry is I first dump it all out on my bed and then sort it into its eight different piles. My thought process behind this is that if those piles are blocking my bed, that means we can’t go to sleep until they’re put away. Husband, who is charged with the responsibility of teaching boys to put laundry away, because I’ve just spent my whole day washing it, doesn’t feel the same way, though. The piles are just things to be moved. And where he moves them is to the banister outside our bedroom door.
Here’s what the breakdown usually looks like from there:
Boy: Mama, I don’t have any sweat pants in my drawer.
Me [jugging the baby on a hip while I finish up frying eggs for breakfast because protein is king]: Okay. It’s probably in your laundry pile. I’ll come help you in a minute.
Boy: Okay. [disappears.]
[I finish up breakfast and get the plates on the table, set the baby in his high chair.]
Boy: [yelling from upstairs]: Don’t worry, Mama! I got some.
Me: [physically deflates]
I deflate because I know this is what it’s going to look like when I go back upstairs. Apparently, every single time we do laundry, the sweat pants, which are the only things my kids want to wear anymore, are always on the very bottom of the pile. Which means those sorted laundry piles don’t stay sorted laundry piles for long.
We’ve gotten so used to walking on clothes I don’t know what we’re going to do when someone decides to clean this up.
I know how it is. I know how it goes. You just want to know what’s coming. You want to know if there’s something bad around the corner, or something good, because you don’t want to lose your heart to the bad, and you don’t want to lose your hope to the good, because there might be something bad coming after that.
The knowing means a calm and controlled and perfectly ordered life. If you don’t know, you can’t control.
It’s easy to understand. Because there is that past, when you were just a kid, or maybe more than a kid, when something happened, something completely dangerous and out of control, something unexpected and unwelcome, and you just want to make sure nothing like that will ever blindside you again.
And there could be something now, too. A too-empty bank account. A call you don’t want to get. A test. A job’s insecurity. A child. A big step into the black.
There is something frightening about the unknown. We try to leave it be, because we can’t change it anyway, when it all comes down to it, but then we care too much, we think too much, we fret and worry and agonize over all the details, because surely there’s a formula that will tell us what’s waiting in the future so we can plan and plan some more.
It’s not easy living in this world of tension, where we aren’t really sure what’s next, whether we’re going to have to venture through sickening dark or blinding bright, and so we try not to. We try to figure it all out. We try to run it over in our minds, every possible situation sitting behind that what if, so at least we’ll be prepared. So at least if our plans don’t pan out we’ll have a backup plan. So we won’t hope unnecessarily and feel those hopes clanging to the ground when the universe throws its curveball.
But we know life doesn’t work that way. Because we just can’t plan for everything.
We did not plan on a layoff two days after we welcomed our sixth son into the world. We did not plan on being launched into our passion pursuits because there was nothing left to do but go. We did not plan on loving so many boys around a dinner table so they could strip us of our control.
We did not even know how to put one foot in front of another.
And I cried and raged and shook a fist to the sky, because I just couldn’t see the end in it, I just couldn’t see whether it would work or not, I just couldn’t see all those possible outcomes, and it made my head ache with its impossibility, because I was just a small-town girl who grew up in a poor family, and all I knew was I didn’t want that for my boys, and I planned for everything, every single little thing, except I hadn’t planned on this, and here was a place where I could not possibly know everything.
Our circumstances, you see, asked us to walk a plank we couldn’t see and pray it wasn’t the end. That we wouldn’t fall. That we wouldn’t go under in shark-infested water.
And then we did.
We fell, and we went under, and the sharks circled, and we tried to catch our breath and fight back to the surface so we could see the sun again. And we did.
See, the thing is, when the unexpected comes sweeping in, uprooting all those old oaks and tearing the roof off our house and lifting all the random toys my kids left in the backyard so they shift and turn in the vortex, what we get to learn is that those old oaks can be made new, and that roof can be repaired and we didn’t really need the toys anyway.
Before life began to peel the control from my cramping fingers, I thought I needed to know everything. I thought I needed to examine every scenario, every last possibility, so I could just go on and expect the worst and rise again when it came, as it always would. I thought that was best.
But a lost job offered something startling in its hands: freedom.
I sank and I nearly drowned, and my hands were water-logged by the time I climbed back out of those waters, but I rose again completely out of control and unprepared and surprised, and I felt free.
Control keeps us from freedom.
Control says we have to wrap our arms around it or else (fill in the blank). Control says we have to grip this circumstance in won’t-let-go hands until we have wrestled to the death, even though we’re the ones who will do the dying. Control says we have to live on a plan that always knows what’s next.
Control is not telling us the truth.
You, dear one, don’t have to know everything. It’s safe to let go. Go on. Let go. Just open your hand. Pry your fingers loose, if you have to. Let the sparrow fly, and feel the weight of the world and all its possibilities leave your shoulders once and for all.
The truth is, we can’t know everything. Sometimes life will throw us a curveball, and the only thing we’ll be able to do is duck and cover, jump into those shark-infested waters for a time, because the pitches just keep coming, and the only way out is in. And sometimes we walk not a plank but a bridge, from one beautiful side to another, and we cannot know which it will be before we take the first step.
We can know that we will rise again. And we will rise stronger. Always, we will rise stronger.
In this episode, Rachel takes a look at the art and stories of William Joyce, the importance of analyzing books before you begin writing, why she varies up her Pandora playlist for different projects, and how Rachel stays healthy even while writing four hours a day.
Husband: Where were you? It’s time for dinner.
6-year-old: I was getting my brother.
Husband: But your brother got in here five minutes ago. What were you doing for the other five minutes?
6-year-old: Staring at this girl.
Husband:
6-year-old:
Husband: Well.
Me: What did you do in school today?
5-year-old: My teacher went to Lulu’s to get some ice cream.
Me: Who was watching you?
5-year-old: One of my friend’s moms.
6-year-old: Yeah. All the teachers went for ice cream.
Me, to 6-year-old: Who watched you?
6-year-old: No one watched me. I was too fast.
8-year-old: Mama, I just wiped my nose, and a booger came off on my finger.
Me: Well, wait until you have a tissue to get rid of it.
8-year-old: Oh, it’s OK. I just dropped it in my backpack.
Me: Hang on. Let me get some forks.
6-year-old: Hey! I thought we always ate with our hands!
Me:
6-year-old:
Me:
6-year-old: Well, not always. Just with Daddy.
Husband: What’s wrong, buddy?
6-year-old:
Husband: Are you sad?
6-year-old:
Husband: Mad?
6-year-old:
Husband: Confused?
6-year-old:
Husband:
6-year-old: Try to make yourself a statue.
6-year-old, talking to his brother in the back seat: One time in Odyssey, I learned that God knows everything we’re going to do before we do it.
5-year-old: Yeah. He knows when we’re going to hit.
6-year-old: And when we’re going to draw on the couch.
I recently launched a poetry book called This is How You Know.
Before the launch, I did all kinds of research on product launches, consuming everything I possibly could to learn how to do this kind of thing in an effective way. I studied the work of product launch guru Jeff Walker and took extensive notes and made a plan and had evening meetings with my husband after the kids were in bed so we could try to create something that would interest people and encourage them to support my career as an author.
For the launch, I released three pre-launch videos, spaced a week apart so that, from start to finish, they spanned three weeks. The first video was met with some excitement from people who read me regularly and were happy to finally see a book on the market. The second one was met with fewer views. The third was met with hardly any views at all.
All of that lack of response made me feel guilty that I was “pushing” the videos on people, because at the end of them, what I was really trying to do was sell interest in my poetry book. And then came the launch week, and my husband, who is a content marketer and branding consultant, told me I’d have to kill it on social media and my email list, letting people know about the book and trying to get sales, and I groaned aloud.
We don’t always like to sell ourselves, do we?
I would much rather have someone else sell me. I would much rather have someone else talking about how much my book will help others. I would much rather defer to others when it comes to spreading the word.
It’s true that every week I give more than 5,000 words in free content away, but sometimes it seems like I’m trying to sell that, too, because I’m posting it on all the social media channels, and I’m letting people read the stuff that will eventually form the basis for book material, so it always feels like they’re doing me a favor by reading and sharing it.
But the reality is that my words provide value. My words help make a murky world clear. My words have a tangible effect on people, bettering their lives or giving them information or just encouraging them with humor and truth. So I’m giving. I’m giving and giving and giving, every single week, day in and day out, and I’ve never sold a thing to anyone before this poetry book.
We can feel like we’re not doing what’s right, because no one really likes to be sold to, but the reality is that what we have, the message we carry, the product we’ve developed, has value, and it has the potential to change lives and minds and hearts, and this is a valuable thing to do—that providing transformation in the form of words. So what we’re really selling is not the actual book but the transformation that comes from reading it. And this is a valuable thing.
What we have to offer holds value, and we have to get over this idea that people are doing us a favor by reading it and sharing it, because no one’s going to do those kinds of things as a favor. Do we give out those kinds of favors, or do we share things when we find value in them?
If we’re going to make a career out of our writing, we’re going to have to get over this not wanting to sell our products, because if we believe that what we’re doing is valuable, then we’re going to have to communicate that value in order to get it in the hands of the people.
And the truth is, if we’re indie authors selling our 70,000-word book for $4.99, that’s not a whole lot to ask of the people who follow us. That’s about the same price as the Starbucks they probably had yesterday. They get a whole story that could change their lives or show them a deeper truth, which is more than Starbucks ever did.
Next week I’ll be talking about all the things I learned about product launches from this poetry book launch, and the week after that I’ll be talking about how we can get better at product launches. But for now, I wanted to get this out of the way: We have to become comfortable with selling ourselves if we’re ever going to make this a career.
Here are some ways we can do that:
1. Recognize that what we have to offer holds value.
Maybe it’s just an entertaining story. People love to be entertained, so our offering has value. Maybe it’s just truth wrapped in the veil of humor. Well, the world could do with a lot more humor, if you ask me, so it has value. Maybe it’s something you’ve learned along your journey. Not everyone has learned the same thing, so they will find value in what you have to share.
There are people who would tell you that if all you’re doing is writing stories about yourself, people will never be able to find value in what you do, because there’s not an actual takeaway that has “takeaway” flashing in gigantic neon lights. Don’t buy into that. Your story has value to people because it’s you, and the right people will be able to see that. So believe in your value and then sell.
2. Understand that what you’re selling is not you.
What I mean is that when I was selling This is How You Know, I was not selling me. I was selling an opportunity for my readers to participate in the mystic art of finding themselves in a book of poetry. If we open our eyes widely enough, I believe we can see ourselves in any story or poem or song or essay. There are snippets of truth that hide in our story, that can change our audience for the better, and that’s what we’re trying to sell—the benefit to the reader, not the product in and of itself. With This is How You Know, I told my readers that I hoped they could find a piece of themselves in the poetry that recorded my everyday comings and goings, as I have done with countless poets over the years.
And, at the end of the day, if people don’t buy my book, that doesn’t mean they don’t like me. That they don’t find me valuable. Writing is a subjective field to be in, anyway, and sometimes we can put a little too much of ourselves in it. It can feel as though if a person doesn’t like what we sell or if they don’t buy it, they’re essentially saying something about us. That’s a lie.
I am so much more than the sum of my products. I am so much more than the sum of my art. I am so much more than the sum of my stats and shares and likes. It’s not easy to see this truth when we’re only selling our book for $1.99 and we have thousands of friends on our social media sites, and surely they’ll buy it, even if they don’t have a Kindle or they don’t like reading ebooks or they don’t even like poetry, because it’s only $2 out of their pocket. Except they didn’t, and now I’m wondering why they don’t like me.
We just have to break free from this. Whether or not we sell well does not change who we are.
3. Remember we are helping people.
It definitely isn’t easy to wrap our heads around this one when what we’re selling is entertainment, as in humor or even some narrative nonfiction. The value proposition is a little subtler, so we have to dig a little. But it’s also true that the human experience needs entertainment, and so we are really selling something that will brighten the world and make it more beautiful or fun or interesting. That doesn’t seem like such a hard sell.
4. Know we can’t give away free stuff forever.
This is really the long and short of it. If we’re interested in taking our writing from hobby to career, we have to get comfortable with selling things. It takes work to get there, but every product we launch is giving us more practice in the process.
(I’m going to get a little serious in today’s post, so feel free to pass on if what you came here for was humor. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled program once I get this off my chest.)
There’s this school of thought that really bothers me. It shakes fingers at us and says that if we think parenting is hard or we feel like giving up on a daily or hourly or minute-by-minute basis or we, God forbid, wish our kids would be different, less difficult people for a fleeting moment in time, then we probably shouldn’t have become parents in the first place.
It’s a lie.
It’s a dangerous lie, too, one that keeps us locked in chains as parents, because that’s when we start looking around at all those people who make it look so easy, who make it look as though they’re enjoying every single minute of every single in-the-trenches hour, and we can think that we are somehow deficient in our parenting abilities.
You know what the easy part of parenting is? Making it look easy.
You know what the hard part of parenting is? Every other second.
Parenting is hard. You’ll never hear me say it’s easy. It’s hard because I work really hard at it. And, also, nothing worthwhile was ever easy.
I fail every single day at this parenting gig. Every single day. Sometimes that failing looks like yelling because the 3-year-olds just poured a whole package of brand new crayons out on the table and broke 26 of them in half before I could even get to them, even though I just got done telling them to leave the crayons alone until their brothers got home. Sometimes that failing looks like speaking more sharply than I intended to the 8-year-old because I just warned him not to swing the broom like that, and he decided to do it anyway, and he broke a light. Sometimes it looks like standing in a kitchen and crying without being able to say why I’m crying, just knowing there are two many voices and too many words and too many needs knocking all at once, and it’s overwhelmingly suffocating.
But I will never pretend I don’t fail, because it’s not true. I will never pretend that parenting my six boys is not hard, because it’s not true. The world is not served by facades and pretty little pictures and perfect little examples. The world is served by imperfection and being brave enough to bare it.
So, yeah, parenting feels hard to me. It’s not because I don’t love my children. I love them with a love that is great and deep and wild enough to gouge out whole parts of me that never belonged. They are precious and wonderful and most of all beloved.
Parenting feels hard because I’m trying, every day, to be better at it than I was yesterday. It feels hard because we’re all people and we’re all imperfect and we are living and growing together in ways that can grind and carve and shape. It feels hard because these are tiny little humans we’re talking about, tiny little humans who will one day become men and women, and we get to shepherd them into that, and it is a giant, humbling, magnanimous task. A privilege. But a mountain of responsibility.
I don’t take it lightly.
I would venture to say that if parenting feels easy every second of every day, if there is never a moment where we feel like locking ourselves in a bathroom for just a breath or 50 of them, if we never wish, for that tiny split of a split-second, that they would be different people, we are probably doing it wrong.
The best parts of life take hard work and dedication and perseverance, and the things most worth doing will, at any moment in time, feel hard. That’s how I know I’m on the right track as a parent.
Because, for me, parenting feels hard every time my 8-year-old forgets how he’s been taught to handle his anger and lashes out with hands instead of words, because he’s always been a gifted kid whose emotional development lags behind others his age and we’ve worked really, really hard trying to walk him toward a place of control and knowledge and healthy expression of all the emotions, not just the good ones, and sometimes it just feels like a losing battle. It feels hard when I remember what a brilliant and kind and loving little boy he is and how much good he has the potential to blast into the world, if only he didn’t have this one little thing. It feels hard when I see that school number on my cell, and I wonder if it’s him they’re calling about.
Parenting feels hard every time the 3-year-olds eat a tube of toothpaste and leave the evidence on the counter, because I have to choose not to yell and use my words in ways that will honor and teach and show grace and love even in this discipline moment that’s happened a billion times already. It feels hard when the 6-year-old wakes up on a school morning and barfs all over the Hot Wheels the 3-year-olds dumped out, not just because now it means cleaning all of that up, but also because no mother wants to see her baby sick. It feels hard every time the 5-year-old comes home from school and talks about how one of the boys in his class was mean to him on the playground, because then I just want to throat punch the bullying kid, but I have to talk to my boy about how the people who choose to bully often don’t know any better and need to be shown a better way of making friends, and he’s the one who will have to do it, because he will have to do this brave and kind and world-changing work.
Parenting feels hard when they forget who they are. It’s hard because I love so much, because I want to order their worlds just so, because I want to make their decisions for them, because I don’t want to sit by and watch those consequences break their hearts, but I have to, because it’s the only way they’ll learn and grow and stumble back to who they are.
Sometimes I don’t feel up to this task. Sometimes I don’t feel equipped. Sometimes I want to give up, but I also know that I’m a fighter. I persevere. I keep going. Which is kind of the point of all this parenting in the trenches—to show us what we’re made of. And you know what? I’m made of some pretty tough stuff.
So, no, I’m not going to suck it up, buttercup, because I have discovered something else in my eight years with these delightful little boys. Parenting is hard because I’m doing it right. Because I fail. Because they fail. Because we keep going, all of us together, along the road toward wholehearted living.
“It’s a haunted house, Mama! We even made bloody fingers for snacks!”
What’s all this, you say? How I wish I knew. The best I can gather: some grand entrepreneurial idea, courtesy of the always-wants-to-make-money 8-year-old.
All I know is that I went to my bathroom for five minutes (okay, I was hiding in there longer than that. You just have to understand. It’s been SO LONG since I’ve gone to the bathroom without someone coming to comment on what color my panties are or pointing out the fact that I have no penis that I guess I just sort of got carried away. I didn’t even dare to wonder why no one was following me in. They were just waiting for their opportunity. And I took it. And this is what happened.)
When I came back downstairs I found a little shop of horrors. Let me just take you on a tour of this creation my sons somehow, remarkably, envisioned and turned into reality in record time.
These are bloody fingers. They’re not really fingers, of course. They’re just chopped up bananas, which was probably the closest thing to fingers the boys could find. On top of them you’ll find honey, jam and peanut butter. Yum.
This delightful snack is provided for the people who “visit our haunted house,” because my boys are good at hospitality.
This is…the obstacle course? The wannabe tent? The seating area that isn’t really a seating area? Your guess is as good as mine. Even after they explained that “people would crawl through this and we’d be waiting on the other side to scare them,” I don’t quite get how that could be scary. Mostly because I tried, and all they did was giggle the whole time, because I could hardly get my butt through the legs of the piano bench. The scariest part about it was considering how I was possibly going to explain to my husband that I needed help peeling a piano bench off my backside.
Here we have “The room where ghosts knocked down all the chairs.” Which I suppose could be pretty freaky, especially if those ghosts are 3-year-old twins and an 8-month-old baby. Remember the twins in The Shining? Kids are the creepiest. (Also, I’m pretty sure the bloody fingers must have splattered on the floor at some point when they were making them. Hence, the splatters you see beside the chair with a booster seat. Most definitely not blood, unless strawberry goodness flows through the veins of one of my kids. In which case I need to put a tap in that, because we go through a jar of jam every week.)
This is the “Haunting minion,” which I laughed about until I stepped into the bathroom and they turned out the lights and the toy started talking. This toy has never talked. I mean, it did, but its batteries ran out months ago, and if you’re a good parent you never replace the batteries in any battery-powered toy, because keeping your sanity is paramount, and you’re really doing it for their own good.
They almost had to pull me off the floor after that.
Then they took me up the stairs, made me close my eyes and showed me this:
I’m pretty sure I passed out for a minute, because I still suffer from post-traumatic stress every time I’m going down the stairs from that one time I fell down our stairs and nearly died.
I love how creative my boys can be, and I love that their little minds thought up something as elaborate as this haunted house, but we had to close up the little shop of horrors soon after they took me through it, because it was time for dinner and we needed the chairs. They were disappointed they didn’t make any money off the haunted house, but I explained to them that there are easier ways to make money that don’t require so much setup for very little payoff. I don’t think they were interested in hearing it.
Next time they have a grand entrepreneurial idea, I’m going to insist on seeing a business plan before the activation stage.
It wasn’t so very long ago, just a little more than a year, that I got the first awful text: She’s in labor. She’s going in.
She was only 20 weeks.
And I spent that whole day praying for a woman and a man and two baby boys I already loved, because there was still hope, wasn’t there? Labor could still stop. Babies could still be saved. Miracles could still come winging in on the back of prayer and hope and faith. Nothing is impossible for you. That’s what I heard growing up, all the time, and I believed it. We just had to have faith and pray.
But this was impossible for you, because there was no miracle, and those two people I love watched their two babies slide into the world much too soon and claw for breath and then suffocate, because they had no lungs. The cruelest way to die for tiny beings. The cruelest way for parents to die in the secret places.
It all happened the same week I found out our sixth baby was growing in my womb, and guilt gripped my heart and wouldn’t let go for all those months later, all those months we asked and begged and cried and raged for their miracle and yet still rejoiced, because we had ours.
And then, finally. Finally came the day when another text pinged across the miles, and there it was: beautiful hope. A picture of a sonogram. The words rimmed by exclamation points: Coming in March 2016!!! So excited!!!
We danced and sang and cried and offered up thanks and hoped. Most of all we hoped.
Because we knew everything that could go wrong. We knew how a beginning doesn’t always assure the ending we want. We knew that sometimes the sky opens up and drops acid rain when we aren’t even looking.
But even though we could not see the end, I could not stop thinking the same thing over and over again: It’s about time. It’s about time they’re able to welcome a baby into their lives, as if they already had. It’s about time their prayers were answered, as if they already had been. It’s about time they were given the longing of their heart, as if the gift was here and sure and alive.
Every day we prayed for them, the six of my boys and Husband and me, storming your throne so that baby would be born safe and healthy and not too soon. My boys prayed it and I prayed it again: Please don’t let her be born too early. Please don’t let her be born too early. Please keep her safe and don’t let her be born too early. And every night, just before sleep, we breathed relief that the day had ended without the bad news that something had happened, that something had gone wrong, that another baby had been lost.
It was all going perfectly. Uterus health, check. Cervical health, check. Baby health, check.
Check, check, check, check, check. All the boxes were checked.
And then.
There we were, picking up my boys from a weekend at my mother’s, and I was caught in a project when she knocked on the door and startled me. I opened the door for her.
“Have you heard?” she said, and I felt your whole world crumble down. This world you made for us, this world of hope and dreams fulfilled and waiting in expectation. The next words reached me from a tunnel. “Her water broke.”
She’s only 17 weeks.
I sat there, sad, worried, but mostly angry. Mostly I felt the red-hot anger-fire climbing through the places one can’t see, down my face, past my neck, where it sat, flaming, on my heart. I felt it clench my fists and grit my teeth and shake my head against the news I could not bear to hear. Because they can’t do it again. They just can’t, God. They can’t go through another goodbye, and here it was, knocking on the door, again, in water breaking 23 weeks too early.
So many years they have waited, wishing, hoping, trying, and so many years they have held onto hope as it unraveled in their hands, and even now, with a 1 percent chance of survival, they hold on, and, God, it’s just so unfair. I am so angry. I am livid. I am on a war path, because they deserve better. They deserve a family. They deserve a baby, because they want a baby, and there are so many who get babies who don’t really want them, and why can’t they just have a baby?
WHY CAN’T THEY JUST HAVE A BABY?
My boys came piling into the car, but I could not move, could not even try for those moments of grief, because it’s just not fair, it’s just not fair, it’s just not fair. She’s had to say goodbye to two of them, and what if she has to say goodbye to this little girl? Would a mama survive? Would a daddy survive? Would their faith survive?
I just don’t know. I just don’t. We can only take so much, God.
Their hearts are bruised and crumpled from all the dried-up wishes in their chests, and they wait in expectation and fear and hope still flapping in their hearts, because hope is that thing with feathers that sings songs without words and never, ever stops. But this is a road no one ever wanted to travel, and yet they have traveled it already once before, meeting two babies before their time, and those pictures hang on a living room wall proudly, because their sons are never forgotten.
And now there is this baby.
Let them meet her. Let them know the delight and joy that she will bring, ALIVE. Let them watch your miracle keep a womb warm and full and protected so she is born ALIVE. Seal up the rupture so she stays ALIVE.
Let them hold her and listen to her breathe while she sleeps in a crib that first night home from the hospital, and let them feel the weight of her, the living weight of her, in their arms so that they will know surely and beautifully that you are God. That you hear the desperate cries of our hearts. That you give. And give. And give.
Let her be a mother. Let him be a father.
We know all things work together for the good, and we know that with God all things are possible, and we know that we only see things through a glass dimly right now. We know all the right answers, because we’ve been repeating them to ourselves all our lives, for all the years they’ve been trying, but show us. Show us you are God. Show us you can do what you say you can do. Show us that you still bring miracles in babies who live in spite of overwhelming evidence otherwise.
We need to see you. We need to see your miracles. We need to see her.
So I’m coming to you today, like I’ll come every day that baby stays put safe and sound in a mama’s warm, to shake my fist at the sky and say: JUST GIVE US A BABY.
