Dedicated to anyone who gets on stages with a message they care about. Pre-order your copy of Willa's Grove from your local bookstore or here for its March 3rd release! ***My new website, with all the event links, launches this week...so stay tuned! For now, all of my event info can be found on the …
Dedicated to anyone who gets on stages with a message they care about.
Pre-order your copy of Willa’s Grove from your local bookstore or here for its March 3rd release!
***My new website, with all the event links, launches this week…so stay tuned! For now, all of my event info can be found on the above websites.
Most every author I know both loves and dreads the book tour. I’m in the LOVE camp, but it also requires some heavy grounding and strong tools that you learn and lose and learn again. At least that’s how it is for me. One minute you’re on the stage sharing this book that has lived in you like a child in your womb, exposing it to the light of day, hoping people will love it like you do, afraid that they won’t, trying to let go of that attachment, trying to focus on being an authentic messenger. And sometimes when you’re on that stage, people assign you power. Put you on a pedestal, even. And sometimes they don’t. At all. (I had a heckler once!) And it’s your job to not take any of it personally, even though…I mean…if you have a kid…it sure would be nice for people to like it. So you do your best to share from the depths of your heart—without giving your heart away altogether, walking that fine line with all your might.
And then the next moment, you’re in a hotel room staring at the ceiling with a 4:00 am alarm set to catch a plane to another city, forgetting where you are in the time-space continuum, never mind where the bathroom is, and the door for that matter, with another bad pillow under your head wondering why you are doing this at all. Isn’t it enough to just write the book, and have people read it and think what they want to think and it’s none of your business? That’s what you ask in that dark hotel room that smells like soggy cereal and institutional laundry bleach. And then you fall asleep and dream that you’re on the stage naked and people are throwing rotten tomatoes at you. And then the alarm goes off and you take in a deep breath because you want to get your kid to the next place it needs to go so you can give it all that a good mother gives to her child. And you do this in seven cities in eighteen days, sixteen times—and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have that kind of support from your publisher, or if you’ve figured out a way to do it on your own. How else could you possibly live with yourself if you didn’t? You have to. It’s just the way it works these days. And you are grateful. Deeply grateful. And there are moments of supreme joy and delight all along the way. AND you are also a little scared. A little wobbly. Hoping you’ll know yourself out there on the road.
I was on the road off and on for six years, promoting my memoir, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is, in the US, and internationally, and I learned so much about myself and the life that a book takes on. I was a tireless messenger. I was in it to help people. I was in it to finally realize a very old dream. I was in it to do everything in my power to make that bridge to the reader to complete the connection I built when I wrote that book in the first place. And I’m about to do it again in two weeks. New York, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. Back home. And then to LA, and on and on. I love the road. I love meeting readers. I love watching my book baby take on life in the hearts of others. I love the prospect of others connecting with my characters, learning from them, feeling their hearts, rooting for their conflicts to find resolve. I’ve lived with them intimately for seven years and it’s time that they be released from their pages. It is a true honor to be their messenger.
The Dread part is usually more like this: (And this applies to anyone who is a messenger for something they hold dear.)
We create in solitude. Even if we’re extroverts (which for a writer is rare…but I am one for sure), it’s a strange thing to be able to coherently, and hopefully wisely, communicate just what our book is about. Part of us wants to say, “I wrote it. Now read it. You tell me what it’s about!”
The tendency is to want to splay ourselves supplicant on the altar of our book’s message, and every single one of its readers– especially those who show up to hear us read from it, ask us questions, receive our answers. This is not recommended. But we love these characters and the place they inhabit so purely and powerfully that it’s heartbreaking to think that others won’t. Or worse—that they’ll loathe and despise them. And that’s like someone loathing and despising our child. Enter: tough skin. Most writers don’t have it. Which is why we can write in the first place. We’re highly sensitive people. We feel everything. We are so full of empathy that oftentimes it’s to a fault. The trick is to not let that empathy derail us.
Advice to all of us on stages everywhere: You can’t control how people will react to your work. You can’t cause an effect for anyone in those audiences. You can’t take their reaction personally. You have to allow yourself to be misunderstood. You have to put your head on that bad pillow in the hotel room each night and let…it…go…
The main thing is that you have to support yourself as you go, and that’s the challenge. Taking care of yourself. And the stuff you do in your daily life in the realm of self-care might not play in Peoria. You might find yourself behaving in a way that totally shocks you. You might feel shame and disorientation. Please…from someone who knows…be kind to yourself. Find people who will hold your hand along the way in your humanity. Who know your heart. Who won’t put you on any sort of pedestal. And who in some way understand from experience what it is to take a message public.
So as I prepare to go on the road for all of March and most of April, doing ongoing promotion throughout 2020, I’m taking stock. As with any of you who hit the road with your message, it requires good boundaries and an open heart…and sometimes those two are hard to assemble into wholeness. So yes Love…and Dread. Take that love and use it to embrace your fear. Take that love and hope and wonder and belief…and wrap it around yourself. I have to believe that when we show up pulsing with love, that it honors everyone. And maybe I’ll even be good at it.
See you out there on the road! If you’re in the audience…please send me a little wink. We’re in this together. As my father used to say, “Shoulders back, Munson!” And that goes for all of the messengers out there!
Yours,
Laura
Come join me in Montana and find your voice! Write your book! Court your muse…all under the big sky. You do not have to be a writer to come to Haven. Just a seeker…longing for community, inspiration, support, and YOUR unique form of self-expression using your love of the written word!
Haven 2020 Schedule:
February 5-9 (full with wait list)
May 6-10 (still room!)
June 10-14
June 17-21
September 16-20
September 23-27
October 28-November 1
Go here for more info and to set up a call with Laura!
