Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom (And Whimsy)

Posted on November 26, 2025 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

Direct marketing 101

 

I promise that this will be my last post about my autobiography!

(WARNING – shameless self-promotion)

“You can’t finish what you don’t start.”

Author unknown        

There’s a corollary to this statement and it goes something like this:

“You should never start what you’re not committed to finish”.

I am not going to bore you with the process of writing and publishing a book. Simply put, it’s a big undertaking. If you are a writer and have a publisher, kudos to you. You’re a superstar but for self-published authors like me, it’s a “do it yourself” job.

This is not to suggest that I single handedly wrote, edited, designed and laid out the book and printed it. Not so. There are many moving parts and it’s a team effort to bring a book into the light of day.

One of the most challenging parts of the process is to get the books sold. It is a lesson in direct marketing.

It’s rather odd, but I hadn’t thought much about the end game: people actually reading the book, until I started selling the books.

A few months ago, I sent a rough draft of the first two chapters to a friend and former Hillcrest Street neighbour, Bruce Nunn. Some of you will know Bruce best as Mr. Nova Scotia Know it All. Bruce and the Nunn clan lived at the very end of Hillcrest Street. Our families have known each other forever. Our summer homes were “side by each” at Bayfield.

Here is an excerpt from an e-mail that Bruce sent me a few days ago. I am reprinting it with his permission.

“Your words are a good record to have: a colourful tile in the historical mosaic of Antigonish. And maybe, culturally, they’re important as an archive of a piece of the real past – fond, nostalgic recollections of a sweeter time viewed through the distorting lens of time perhaps, but so meaningful when held up against today’s lesser experience: city neighbours who don’t know each other’s names and kids absorbed in their phones who don’t know the wide open freedom of the Salt Ponds or the fun of an impromptu street hockey game or a neighbourhood ball game in an empty field until it gets too dark or your mother’s literal ‘dinner bell’ calls you home.”

It was a much simpler time and I, for one, am so grateful to have been brought up in that era.

And now, I close the book on this chapter of my life. Book number 8 was a great trip down memory lane.

What’s next?

I have been tinkering with poetry, and I might try and cobble together enough of them for book  number 9! Here’s one I wrote shortly after my books were delivered to my apartment:

 

I WROTE A BOOK

 

When I was young, I liked to write,

Short stories and the occasional poem,

I wasn’t tough, didn’t like to fight,

In my imagination, I felt at home.

 

I was a sportswriter, when I attended X,

I went to every sporting game,

Our editor, a member of the fairer sex,

She was a pro, my writing quite lame.

 

As an English teacher, I taught prose,

Poetry, haiku, and even limericks,

Questions about syntax, I would pose,

My students wrote with Bics.

 

And then my children came along,

I journalled early in the morn,

Their lives to me were like a song,

Ever since the day they were born.

 

On a Florida vacation in twenty-twelve,

I wrote my first story on the plane,

An incident at Pearson caused me to delve,

Into a plot that seemed inane.

 

I shared my story with my friends at The Islander,

They found it funny and liked it a lot,

Channeling my inner Scottish Highlander,

Even though my story had a flimsy plot.

 

I began writing humour columns,

For three known weekly papers,

To incite a laugh, they weren’t very solemn,

Mostly about life’s little capers.

 

I was told that I should write a book,

Compiling several stories,

They were quite simple, not needing a hook,

None about the Liberals or the Tories!

 

Over the years, one book became two,

Then three and four and seven,

Number eight is about “you know who”,

No copies will be found in heaven!

 

It’s been a lark, this writing thing,

It’s kept me sharp and witty,

When my stories dry up, I can always sing,

A ballad or a ditty.

Have a great weekend.