Shauna Niequist's Blog, page 2

Why We Write

A writer friend came over yesterday. She’s written a novel. She brought over a fat, beautiful binder full of pages, full of story, and I can’t wait to read it. 

We talked about publication and agents and sharing your work, about marketing and the internet and a million other things. And then we talked about why we write. 

You know those conversations when you think you’re helping someone, sharing from your vast well of knowledge, only to realize, of course, that this person is the one actually instructing you, reminding you something fundamental that you’ve forgotten? This happens to me approximately every day, every time I think I know something about something, and it happened to me yesterday.

My friend sat across the table from me, and it seemed like she could have combusted into flames, burning with sheer, clean passion about this story. And I blathered on about pub boards and PR and editorial perspectives.

After she left, I realized that some days I forget why we write, and she reminded me.

I write because other writers’ words changed my life a million and one ways, and I want to be a part of that. 

I began writing because there were things I wanted to say with so much urgency and soul I would have climbed a tower and shouted them down, would have written them in skywriting, would have spelled them out in grains of rice of I had to.

Sometimes I pretend that my take on all this is very cut & dried. What? I’m a writer. He’s a plumber, she’s a teacher, I’m a writer. Everybody has a job. 

That’s what I say, though, as a way of distancing myself from the very uncomfortable side of it: sharing your work is scary, and while it gets easier over time, every time you do it, it’s an invitation to grapple with your own worthiness.

Because if you’re not careful, you’ll hang your entire self-worth on getting published or getting a certain amount of page views. 

And let me be clear: we know this is dangerous because we might feel like failures if we don’t get the publishing contract or the page views. But it’s equally dangerous if you do get them. 

Because little by little it’s easy to start needing them—need the comments, need the reader emails, need the Amazon rating, need the positive reviews, need the Twitter mentions or the Facebook likes. 

But that’s not why you got into this, is it? It’s not why I did. 

You will not do your best work if you develop an appetite or addiction to affection, to fans, to approval. 

Remember, at every point, why you started writing in the first place. 

Remember how desperately, right in this very moment, you want to tell this story. 

You get into it because you have a story to tell, because you sense, in some wordless, wild way that you don’t know why and you didn’t earn it or ask for it, but for some reason, there are things you can find words for that might maybe matter to someone else, that might set someone free, that will make them feel one tiny bit less alone, like they’ve made a friend, like they’re not crazy, like they’re not wrong just for being who they are. 

You write because you think it might matter someday, to someone, the way other people’s words mattered to you when you read them in your dorm room or under your covers late at night or on a train all alone. 

At least I do.

 And I’m so thankful that my old friend reminded me, on a snowy February afternoon.

Bread & Wine: Last Call for Early Readers

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Oh, heavens. This is happening! I got an email from my publisher this week, and at one point it said something like, “since we’re inside eight weeks from release…” And then I passed out just for a second. 

You know that I don’t agree 100% with the writing-a-book-is-just-like-having-a-baby thing, but it is absolutely true that in both cases having been through it before and knowing what to expect helps so much. The second trip to the hospital to deliver is so much less stressful than the first because you know, at least in some ways, what to expect. And the same is true with a second, or in this case, third book. 

I know now that once the writing is done a whole different kind of work is required. I know now that as the pub date nears, the amount of emails between author and agent and marketing director and publicist reaches absurdity, and that the deadlines for every little thing become really tight! and really urgent!

Yesterday the final cover design popped into my inbox, and I love it. Every day, it seems, there are two or three urgent things—proof this, sign off on that, write some copy for this. It’s exciting, and it’s busy, and as much as it feels familiar in a good way, there’s something about this book that’s totally different than the other two. 

I don’t know if you’re even allowed to say this, but this is what’s true: I’m SO excited about this book. I’m so excited about what happens around the table, and I can’t wait to share these stories and recipes with you. 

With Cold Tangerines, I was clueless. With Bittersweet, I was afraid that the small but very kind group of readers who liked Cold Tangerines wouldn’t necessary be down with a book about heartbreak. And I wasn’t at all sure I was ready to talk about our heartbreaks so openly. With both those releases, I was sort of excited but mostly terrified. My shoulders were tensed, my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for impact. 

And now Bread & Wine. I have no illusions that everyone will love it—Amazon quickly disabuses writers of that myth. But I love it. There. I said it. I love it, and I’m excited about it, and I can’t wait to connect with you all when you’ve had a chance to read it—what recipes did you try? What parts spoke to you, reminding you of your story and your table? 

There are approximately one million things that need to happen before the release, and there's one that I’m more excited about than any other: we’re mailing out a huge stack of early copies to readers who want to post about Bread & Wine on their blogs. 

Loads of you have already emailed with us about this, and we’re so thankful. If you sent us an email in the fall, you should have received an email from us this past week with all the details. If you didn’t get an email from us this week, or if this is the first you’re hearing of advance reader copies, and you’d like to post about the book on your blog, send an email with your mailing address and a link to your blog. If you want to be a part of this, we still have plenty of spots, and we need to hear from you by Friday, February 8th. 

We’ll send out advance reader copies mid-February, and we’d love for you to post about the book between March 15 and April 15. The actual release is right around April 1st, so you’ll be getting in on the action six weeks before anyone else, which is always fun.

Again, if you’d like to be a part of this and haven’t yet emailed with us about it, it’s not too late. Send an email with a blog link and your mailing address, and we’ll send a copy of the book and all the info you need. 

Thanks times one thousand for walking with me through the wild world of publishing. It means more than you know. 

Wishing you lots of love & bread & wine, and lots of time around the table with people you love. XO

Jealousy & Regret Are Great Teachers

I realized recently that I had a refrain of jealousy that was cropping up when I spent time with friends who had what I perceived to be a relatively large amount of leisure or rest time. People who took the time to, say, take care of themselves or work out or rest when they were tired. People who asked for help and took time for themselves. I had a nasty, withering “must be nice!” little twitch that became so common I had to admit it was about me and not about anyone else.

Our jealousy teaches us so much, if we let it. I wasn’t envious of anyone else’s marriage or home or car or even their writing success or speaking opportunities. What I wanted was other people’s ability to care for themselves. I wanted their space and freedom and rest. And so my envy guided me to my own deep need to slow down and care for myself well, instead of pushing so hard and constantly getting frustrated with the people around me who had the audacity to care for themselves instead of wringing themselves out like I had been doing for so long. 

And regret is another great teacher. When I look back over the last couple years at the things I missed, there are very few things that I actually missed—didn’t attend, didn’t do, didn’t taste. But there were too many trips and meals and conversations and experiences that I was too busy and too overwhelmed to really experience and appreciate. That’s what I regret: the days when I was there but not fully there, the conversations with people I love during which I gave them half my mind and a sliver of my heart because I’d spent it all already, because I was empty and fragmented from the sheer amount of things I was trying to experience.

There was a particularly intense season from May to November of last year, and when I click through my memories of that time, I don’t like the person I was. I loved the experiences—time with the boys, time with friends, trips and adventures. But I don’t like the person I brought to those moments: self-absorbed, erratic, impatient, greedy, a person without margin, a person who wasn’t present in meaningful ways, a person who lost track of the bigger picture.

Things that were supposed to be fun weren’t fun. I was at the end of my rope, as they say, too quickly and too often. My ability to weather things was shot, and I was on my last nerve all the time.

As I've made difficult but important changes, I've found that the slower I go, the richer life feels. The more often I admit I need help, the calmer I feel. When I rest, when I say no, when I let the house stay messy while I play with the kids, I feel better about the life I'm choosing than I did last year.

It's not without bumps, certainly. I’m finding I’m more sensitive—I feel more when I slow down. Obviously, that's why I keep myself so busy so often, so that I don't have to feel things that scare me or worry me. I’m a lot more indecisive these days, and more tender. I think about my kids more--maybe I even worry more about them, one of the consequences of feeling more of everything.

At the same time, though, I feel less afraid about the future, because I feel very sure that this way of living will instruct me along the way toward that future. I plan in rest time and margin time, and instead of looking for how to cram more of everything into every moment—can I get another load of laundry done? Can I stop at one more store?—I’m asking the opposite questions: can I stay home tonight and go to the store tomorrow? Can I let that go, say no to that, find a simpler way to get that done?

I’m making these changes so imperfectly, with so much fumbling and relearning, but this is what I know: this is changing my life.

If you were to take a close, honest look at your jealousy, what would it teach you about what you really want?

And when you inspect your regrets, what do they show you about how to live your next season?

Anti-Frantic

I think I’ve been in a hurry for almost seven years. In January of 2006, I found out I was pregnant with Henry. Later that week, I was offered a contract to write Cold Tangerines. And since then, it seems, I’ve been in a hurry, running against the clock. They say that being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. I get that feeling. 

I’ve been stacking things up, plan upon plan upon plan. I’ve been cramming things in—pushing, hustling, scurrying. I’ve been strategizing, multi-tasking, layering commitments one upon another like bricks.

It worked for a while. I like to be busy. I’ll always be kind of “more is more” person when it comes to my schedule. With one child, the pace didn’t bother me much. So maybe it’s a second kid thing. Maybe it’s a second-kid-who-is-a-terrible-sleeper thing. Maybe it’s the accumulated exhaustion of two kids, two miscarriages, three books, countless trips and events, one marathon, one move. Maybe some weird timer goes off inside you when you turn thirty-six. I don’t know. 

All I know is along the way, I signed up for a schedule that seemed so fun, not taking into account the pace that super-fun schedule would force me to keep. 

I had a lot of fun, but not a lot of margin. I gathered up some amazing experiences, but I didn’t rest well or often. I gulped down so much life, but at a certain point I was too tired and ground away to taste it anymore. Last year, it stopped working for me.

The changes I’m making this year are not, at the core, about more traveling or less traveling, more flights or fewer flights. The travel schedule is part of it, but really it’s about the hustle. It’s about frantic.

That’s what I’m done with, that’s what I want to leave behind. You know what I’m talking about: when your mind has to work seven steps ahead instead of just being where you are, because this deadline’s coming, and the laundry has to get done before that trip, because you can’t forget to pack snowpants for school, and you need to beg for more time on this project. Again.

Kindergarten drop-off is at noon, and that gives me just enough time to squeeze in this meeting and pick up the dry-cleaning and talk through those five pressing things with my editor. While I'm on the phone I prep vegetables for dinner, and if Mac takes a good nap, I can get packed for the next trip, as long as the laundry is dry. And on and on and on, times seven years.

Good things like efficiency and multi-tasking go of the rails so far that sometimes I find myself running in my own house, shuttling things from room to room like my life is a timed obstacle course. This is insane.

Why am I telling you this? Because I think I’m not alone. It doesn’t matter if you work or don’t, or have little kids or don’t, or travel or don’t.  So many of us, it seems, are really, really tired of the hustle, and the next right thing is to slow down, to go back to the beginning, to stop. 

I’m adopting a ruthless anti-frantic policy. I’m done with frantic. The new baseline for me: will saying yes to this require me to live in a frantic way? 

I’m saying no more often than I’m saying yes. I’m asking hard questions about why I’ve kept myself so busy all these years. The space and silence I’m creating is sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrifying. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a cartoon airplane when the engine gets cut and the plane hovers for a few long seconds before starting to fall. But then sometimes I feel so strongly like for the first time in a long time, I’m listening to the right voices. I’m remaking my way of living from the inside out. 

Publishing is all about striking while the iron’s hot. But sometimes you have to trust that the iron will still be hot later, and that there’s more to life than that iron. Sometimes you have to trust that life is long for most of us, and that there will be other irons. 

My inbox is a disaster. The house is messier these days. That’s how it’s going to be for a while. I’m not powering my life with the white-knuckled, keyed-up buzz of efficiency and multi-tasking anymore. The word that rings in my mind is anti-frantic. 

Sleep. Slow. 

Present with my kids. 

Present to my own life. 

Anti-frantic. 

Bookplates Anytime :)

Good morning! For whatever reason in the last few days I've received all sorts of emails, texts & FB posts about Bread & Wine bookplates--thank you! You have no idea how meaningful it is to me that you're excited with me about this book. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And yes, the bookplates are totally still available, and I'm so happy to personalize and sign them. I'd love to be able to meet/have coffee with/share stories with every single one of you, but since that's logistically challenging without time travel, the very least I can do to say thank you for being on this journey with me is making sure that you and the people you love have signed, personalized bookplates--a tiny thing. Send a letter with all the details to the PO box below, and give me about a week to get them back to you. Sound good? :)

We also have Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet bookplates, so if you’d like to give someone signed, personalized copies of those, all you have to do is let me know the name you want on the plate, and you can buy the books from your local bookstore—much easier/cheaper/faster than me shipping them to you.

Here’s how it works: 

Send me a self-addressed stamped business-sized envelope with a note inside that lets me know how many bookplates you’d like, for which books, and what names you’d like on each one. I can send up to six in one envelope. 

The address:

1566 W. Algonquin Road #112

Hoffman Estates, Il 60192

No, that’s not our home address, so don’t send snacks or anything. It’s a PO box that I’ll stop by every week. 

...and, really, if you want one with your own name, that's absolutely fair. Send me an envelope! 

Maybe I don't say this enough, but I feel it all the time: thanks for caring about these books. Thanks for sharing them with the people you love and sending me such sweet messages. You all are a wonderful group of people, and I'm thankful for you every day. XO

The Push & the Permission

First, thank you, thank you, thank you for your kindness and grace and encouragement. It happens every time: when I take a deep breath and tell the truth about myself--the scary-wild-unruly truth--what I find along the way is that I’m not alone at all, and that I’m not the only one who’s aching to rest and stop and find a new way, not the only one who’s been pushing too hard for too long. 

One of the words that keeps coming up in this conversation is permission.

I am, for better and worse, someone who depends quite heavily on my personal board of directors—a little group that acts as compass and guide, that reflects back to me my next steps and ragged edges. I’m not a just-me-and-my-journal person—I like to feel connected and surrounded by a little tribe that weighs in on the way I’m living in each season.

For many years, what I needed from those most important voices in my life was a push—you can do this! Your voice matters! You have something to say! Don’t be afraid! My husband, my best friends, my mentors, my family have been such constant and necessary cheerleaders—do this! Try it! Write it! Say it! 

I would never have become a writer without those voices. Some people have that deep-in-the-belly, against-all-odds, though-none-go-with-me confidence and ambition about their calling or their dream. I am not one of them. 

But Aaron wouldn’t let me stop. He pushed me and encouraged me. He’s my number one biggest supporter and cheerleader. He totally affirms my writing and traveling and working. And my parents and extended family and close friends have been pushing me in the best possible way, too. I’m so thankful for that. 

In this season, though, it’s a different kind of support that I’ve needed. I’ve needed the permission to slow down, to say no, to admit my fragility and exhaustion. This fall there were four very important conversations that gave me the permission I needed.

Aaron saw firsthand the stress cracks as they bloomed across our life and family and home. When I started to say things like, “babe, I’m too tired, I can’t catch up. Something’s wrong,” he was right there, ready to make a new way together. When I asked to reshuffle my workload and commitments so that I’d travel a lot less in 2013, he didn’t skip a beat. 

When I asked for grace in a thousand areas—leaving things undone that I’ve always been on top of, needing space and time to untangle all this, asking for help and partnership in new ways--Aaron has responded with mountains of grace, a gift I couldn’t have imagined. He gave me the first push, and also the first avalanche of permission in this season, and I’m so thankful for him and his voice in my life.

My dear friend and long-time mentor, Nancy, lives in the Bay Area, and she invited me to an event she knew we’d both love. I’d come stay with her for the week. It would be so fun…except that when the email came, I felt paralyzed and overwhelmed by the travel I’d already committed to, and the childcare logistics that go with it. With anyone else, I would have said no. Or yes, because I was scared to say no, scared to miss out on something. But because it was her, instead of a yes or a no, I sent a wild, rambling, “How do I get out of this mess?” email. And she replied right back. 

She said: STOP. Say no. Remake your life in a way that works for you, and remake it now.  And I literally cried with relief. 

My dad stopped over one night and on his way out, we were alone in the kitchen for a minute. I said, Hey, by the way, I think I need next year to be really different. I’m kind of too tired. I’m kind of scared. 

I was trying to keep it light, tiptoe in. My dad is one of my closest friends, and one of my biggest supporters, but at the same time, he’s literally the hardest-working, highest capacity person I know. It’s hard to say you’re tired to someone who does more in a day than most people do in a month. 

I was trying to keep it light, but he saw underneath my words. He put his hands on my shoulders in our kitchen and he said, I’m so glad to hear this. I’ve been worried about you, and I love that you’re going to slow things down.  Again, such deep relief. 

One night at our small group, after a trip that put me over the bad edge this fall, I babbled inarticulately about how something needed to change. I can’t do it, I said. Maybe this would work for a stronger person, but I’m done trying to pretend I can run like this. 

It was silent for a minute, a long cavernous minute that felt like an hour. And then across the circle, Matt said, We don’t care if you go to Dallas or LA, or if you don’t. We don’t care what you do or don’t do. We’re actually not impressed by you. We love you, and that’s a different thing. 

What a gift. Those four voices cut through the screaming noise in my head and heart and spoke the words I desperately needed. They gave me the permission I needed, in my dear friend Nancy’s words, to remake my life from the inside out. I’m working on it, and I invite you to join me. 

I'm not going to stop working--I don't want to. I love my job. I'm not going to stop traveling, even. But it's going to look really different this year. I'm going to remake it all from the inside out, built on love, on trust, on calling, and not on fear or the endless hamster wheel of doing.

Maybe you need a push—to get out there, risk something, try something, start something. And maybe you need permission to let something go, to walk away, to put down something you’ve been carrying for way too long. 

So this is what I want to know: what do you need right now? In this season, do you need the push, or do you need the permission? 

On Prayer, Rest, Self-Care

I’ve had the growing sense throughout the last year that what has been working for many years is no longer working. Writing and traveling and speaking at the pace I’ve been doing it is no longer working for my life. For my spirit. For my body. For my home. 

To be clear, there is no crisis here. There was no crash, no fracture. It’s not, in any way, that things are in trouble with our marriage or our kids. Essentially, it’s the opposite. I married Aaron because I love to be with him, because he makes me laugh and makes me think and because he was the first person I ever met that I’d willingly miss a party to be with. I didn’t marry him because I wanted to be business partners and childcare partners, ships in the night building the same family but rarely sitting on the same couch at the end of the day. 

And our kids are fine. They’re better than fine. They’re so great. And the thing is, I don’t want to miss as much as I’ve been missing. I want to be more present and connected to them, less frantic and depleted. This isn’t really about Aaron or the boys. It’s about me. 

It’s about me finally getting to the point where I don’t care if someone else could live my life and keep my schedule with the greatest of ease. I can’t. It stopped working. 

One of my greatest flaws is that I look too much to the left and the right. I gauge myself too often by what she can do or what he can handle. And so many of my friends and family members are really special, really talented, really hard-working people. 

How can I say I’m tired when I look at her workload? How can I complain when she has four little ones at home? How can I pull back when he’s handling this, and this, and this. 

Most of the writers I know are publishing faster than I am. Most of them are traveling more than I am. For a long time, I’ve ignored the voice inside me that says, no more. I can’t anymore.

This isn’t a crisis of identity or calling. I want to be a writer. I love being a writer and I’m thankful every day for the opportunities I’ve been given. And I love to travel. Some of the sweetest memories of the last few years have been the moments of connection with readers at events. 

Speaking at APU’s commencement was a total highlight, one that will stay with me forever, and taking our family to England and speaking at an amazing church there was such a wonderful adventure. There are friends I’ve made all over the country and all over the world because we talked and hugged and sometimes cried together before or after an event, on the way to the airport or in a hotel lobby or coffee shop. 

This isn’t about not writing anymore or not traveling anymore. This is about shifting the math--more of this, less of that. This is about listening to my soul and my body, about giving up my need to be known as an extremely capable person.

For the last several years, I’ve been saying yes yes yes—and then after the fact, hoping my body and spirit and soul and life can accommodate all the yeses I’ve said. Now I’m starting with this actual body, this actual life. What does it need? How much can this person that I am--physical and spiritual--do?  It doesn’t matter what someone else can do. What matters is that I can’t do this anymore. 

And I don’t care if that makes me weak or fragile or completely non-special in someone else’s eyes. What other people think of me is less and less valuable. And what’s increasingly valuable to me is a life that works for me. 

I’m traveling back to the very, very beginning, and I’m starting with prayer. Not the frantic prayers of someone who’s already signed up for an insane schedule and unrealistic set of commitments and needs to be bailed out or carried through. 

But the prayers that start at the very beginning. Here I am. Just me. Fragile me. Human me. God, what do you want to occupy my days? What do you want to guide my choices?  

And I’m relearning rest. Less frantic multi-tasking. More sleep. More slow. More of those magical unplanned moments and hours—the ones that, to be honest, make me feel nervous and guilty, but that I think just might transform me along the way. 

And self-care. Basically, I hate the term self-care. It sounds like a luxury item. It sounds like something that fancy, well-manicured and perfectly-coiffed women do, something for people with lots of time on their hands. That’s a confession, of course, because my disdain for things like caring for my body and taking time for myself have brought me to this place: humbled enough to admit that I’m aching for a little self-care. 

This is a fumbling and ranting way to write about this. It has, I realize, all the rough edges of real time, something I’m just finding the language for. But it’s where I am, and I want to invite you into it. 

In the next couple posts, I’ll write more about some new disciplines I’m undertaking, the incredibly important conversations that have helped me along this path, some practical steps I’m learning, and the trickiest part of all: how I just finished writing a book that I really, really love, and I want to do everything I can to share it with people. How do you slow way, way down and still promote a book at the same time? I don’t really know. But the funny thing is I’m not that worried…

What I do know is that my starting points for this year are prayer, rest, and self-care. 

More to come.

 

2013

Happy New Year! As always, we’re starting our new year routines about a week late, because we were away with my family, leaving on Christmas morning and just returning Friday night. 

We’ve been visiting the same funny little island for more than fifteen years, and this trip was full of highlights: Henry learned to snorkel and Mac logged about hundred hours playing in the sand. We read great books and took long walks and ate conch fritters from Miss Roberta’s and drank Goombay Smashes at Miss Emily’s Blue Bee Bar. 

I love resolutions, the chance to start again, the framing ideas that guide our lives and choices. And I always look forward to our Christmas trip, time to think about the coming year. 

This year, though, I didn’t need to. I knew, in a very deep way, what I needed for 2013, because my life throughout 2012 announced the need for change over and over, and in more and more dramatic tones.  There were whispers in the spring, yelps over the summer, and then full-throated screams in the fall: it’s time to live a new way. It’s time to stop. It’s time for a change. 

I’ll be writing more about it in coming weeks and months, and like any big change, I feel the deep need for it but haven’t yet completely found the words for it. 

But this is what I know: I’m ready to change my life, to dig down into a new way living, in big and small ways. A friend told me once that getting older is like going through a tunnel, and you have to leave behind all sorts of things as the tunnel narrows. I’m ready to leave some things behind this year, ready to walk a narrower path, one of greater focus, greater sacrifice, greater risk.  

So much more to come. I’m still fumbling for the words, but these changes are ones I can’t wait to make. I can’t wait to learn this new path, and I can’t wait to walk it with you all.  

Love & prayers for a new year, for all the things we will gather up, and all the things we’ll leave behind. So thankful to walk it together.

Merry & Bright

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Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

The lovely Lindsay Letters did our cards, of course. If it looks like we tumbled out of a boat, shoved a camera into my brother's hands, and yelled, "Quick! Try to get all four of us!" that's because that's exactly what happened. And if it looks like Mac wriggled out of my arms and made a run for it and Todd kept shooting, that's exactly what happened, too. 

I love this picture because it looks exactly how our life feels right now: rich and lovely and just a little chaotic, full of life and laughter and lots of running around. Maybe someday you'll see a Christmas picture of us all combed and pressed and perfectly-dressed...okay, let's be honest, you never will. This is who we are: barefoot and rumpled, happy and thankful.  

My prayer is that you'll create a little space in the days to come to reflect on the year, and on the Christ child, that you'll clear away just a few moments to be thankful, to listen, to weep, to be still and present and fragile in the presence of a God who came to earth to be with us, near to us, connected to us. 

From our family to yours, Merry Christmas.

Bookplate Update

You all are awesome! We’ve been totally and very pleasantly surprised by all the bookplate requests. I go to the PO Box every single day, and then I send out a big stack later that day. I’m totally caught up after the initial deluge (such a good deluge—thank you!), so if you haven’t yet received your bookplates yet, they're on their way, and they should arrive today or tomorrow at the latest.

There’s still time to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and all the details are here.

I’ll be sending the last batch out on Saturday the 22nd, and then this little elf will take a break till after the new year. If you can get your letter to my little box by Saturday the 22nd, I’ll mail it back that evening, and then I’ll resume mailing the bookplates the week of January 6th. 

We have bookplates for all three books, and I’m happy to do any combination, up to six in an envelope. 

Thank you SO much for wanting to share the books with the people you love, and thank you as well for all the sweet messages you sent with the bookplate requests. You all are lovely, lovely people. Thanks. 

Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas to you and to the people you love. Big hugs.