Just Add Hot Water...

Yesterday I spent an hour putting together all the goody bags I plan to send to special readers and those who attended the launch party for “Tea with Dad” last Sunday. Two teabags, two sticks of pure honey, a bookmark, and a bookplate. It was the first book-related thing I had done in the past five days. I needed time and space. And distance. I couldn’t think of what to write on the bookplate.

Writing the book consumed my life for three years. It became the reason I decided not just to leave my last job but retire from working for anyone else forever.

In the past three years, I’ve learned a lot about book publishing. It’s amazing what authors don’t know. The research I did is enough to fill five books on various aspects of writing and getting a book into readers’ hands or onto their screens. The next time I’ll be fully prepared. There will be a next time. But not right away.

I also learned a lot about myself and my life while writing the book and putting it into action. For instance…

I learned that I need a certain amount of quiet time each day. That means alone time, whether I’m just sitting or walking outside. No radio. No music. No human voices. Not even the sound of my bare feet padding around on the floors of this old house. No television on in some room at the other end of the house.

I need physical exercise, enough water, healthy food.

I need to write every day and not what others tell me to write. I need the words to come, prompted by what I see, hear, and feel. Then I need to push them through my own individual set of filters, lenses, and perspectives. At the end of that, I’ll know what I have to work with.

I need to see the ocean at least once a week.

Before finishing and launching the book, all of the above sounded as though it couldn’t fit into the number of hours a day I have. But it can. I was so entangled with the book—even when not actually writing, I was thinking about it, noting things, looking for references—I couldn’t see the hours I had available to do all of it.

The other day Dad asked if we could have a cup of tea. I realized that even our 3:00 tea sessions had become irregular. “I guess now that you have the book, we won’t have tea?” he teased.

“Oh, no. Tea is on,” I replied.

I learned, too, that I needed tea with dad again. Every afternoon. It doesn’t take much. Grab a tea bag, add hot water, a little time, someone your love, and conversation. That’s what I wrote on the bookplates in the goody bags I’m sending out. It’s simple. Just do it. That’s the most important thing I learned this past year.