We could have also gone the vanity-press route, but that was unappealing for a variety of reasons. Or we could have self-published. We know a few people who have done that, and I edit self-published books as part of my freelance work, but print is expensive, and there’s always the risk that we’d be stuck with a basement full of books and an empty bank account. The risk/reward ratio just didn’t seem appealing.

Enter the e-book. It’s changed everything. You can self-publish at a fraction of the cost of print. It’s certainly not free, but when we look at reducing the time to publish, skipping the middle men (agent and publisher), and publishing in digital format only (at least at first), the risk/reward ratio seems a heck of a lot better. We’ll still have spend an enormous chunk of time getting the book ready and then promoting it — no publisher, no marketing help — but that’s the price of going indie.

But will anyone buy it? Maybe. Look what’s happening in the world of e-books and indie authors: people are making money! Writers who previously couldn’t find an agent or publisher are selling their books and turning a profit. Some are even making millions, MILLIONS, I say. You HEAR me? MWAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry.

We don’t expect Steve to be the next John Locke, Amanda Hocking, or JA Konrath (who makes about $100K per month selling his self-published e-books). What these three indie authors illustrate is that a lot of people will buy e-books if the price is right and the stories are good. So there’s hope for us. Hey, if lightning strikes, we won’t complain, but realistically, we’re just hoping that Steve’s stories get read, that we can recoup our costs. A small income stream would be the cherry on top.

So, we’re off! Steve has begun writing a novel he’s had rattling around in his head for about a year. It’s tentatively titled Becky Bright & Dark, and it’s about, um, Becky, a freshman at Franz Kafka Memorial High School (at least that what she calls it) and who stumbles into a hidden world of illusions, deception, and double meaning. She meets the Furniture Man (What’s his deal?) and finds her calling at Kafka’s underground newspaper. At some point, of course, chaos ensues.

Word count thermometer.
Still lots of white space!

The rest of the family has mobilized. We’re in support-staff mode now. The kids understand that Steve will be at the computer a bit more than normal, particularly on weekends. Luckily, they sleep late (love that homeschooling!), so Steve can write before they even wake up most days. To help us all stay on target, the kids are tracking Steve’s writing progress with this handy-dandy word-count “thermometer.” (Look at the pro-fessional graphics!)

While Steve and I will enjoy the thrill of just finally publishing a novel, the kids are excited about a more tangible reward. They desperately want to go to Disney World, but we need to save for the trip. If we’re lucky, we won’t spend more money publishing the book than we make from it the next 1.5 years. We’re not crazy enough to think one book by a new, indie author could sell enough copies in a year to pay for a Disney vacation, but if puts a few dollars in the vacation piggy bank, then it’s a win/win.

So far, the writing is going well. Steve wrote ~3700 words last weekend. By yesterday, he was at 9800. This morning, he brought the total up to 11,000. And by tomorrow night, we hope for ~13,000. Of course, I, the in-house editor, haven’t gotten my red-pen-happy hands on it yet, but still, 13,000 unedited words in 9 days: not. too. shabby.

Aside from serving as the editor (we may farm the book out to another editor, as well), I, as usual, am the engine that powers this family endeavor. Want a vacation? Get planning, Lori. Need a new car? Get Consumer Reports, Lori. Want to self-publish a Young Adult novel, get researching and Tweeting, Lori. I have learned a ton about author platforms, e-book formatting, the importance of professionally designed book cover, the pros/cons of the Kindle DRM, and oh, so much more, in the past two weeks.

Steve and I have a lot of work to do because we’re effectively starting a new business. I’m handling the behind-the-scenes work so that he can focus on writing. We make a good team.

The next few months should be very interesting around here. Wish us luck!

Tags: indie books, becky book, e-books, indie author, self-publish

Goldstein makes several assertions — all of which I’ve heard before — to support her conclusion. (Hint: liberals don’t like it when other liberals homeschool.) She says that liberal homeschoolers are oblivious to their own class privilege, have a “distrust of the public sphere,” and are harming low-income students by removing their middle-class (big assumption) children from the public school classroom. Thus, homeschooling is not progressive.

Before I rant, allow me to establish my secular-liberal bona fides by showing you my Political Compass test results:

Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97

Let’s see how I compare to some historically political people:

I’m a bit farther to the left of Gandhi, with a mean anti-authoritarian streak. Should be liberal enough.

But now I’m going to explain why it doesn’t matter.

First, let’s dispense with the inane implication that all decisions liberals make need to directly benefit society this very moment. I’m not saying I should go through life not caring about how my actions impact others; I’m saying that sometimes I need to focus on what’s best for my family because that’s my responsibility as a parent. If our family is happy and healthy and loves to learn, then society will ultimately reap the benefits, anyway.

Second, let’s talk about whether the children of progressive parents have the responsibility to make schools better for other children. When it comes to fixing the complex, deeply rooted problems generations of adults before them have created, I say children have no such responsibility. That’s the grown-ups’ job. While I encourage and and try to empower my kids to be civic-minded and to make a difference in our community, it’s not their obligation to clean up messes they didn’t make.

Politics and parenting

My children are not vessels through which I self-consciously demonstrate my political loyalty. They are neither an expression of my liberal leanings nor an obligatory cog in the wheel of progressive politics. They’re people. They’re individuals. They’re children. And although I attempt to live and model my values for my kids, I do not use my children as vehicles to further any agenda.

Most liberal responses I’ve read to Goldstein’s article, in the comments thread and in blog posts, have refuted her misstatements and insisted that homeschooling is, in fact, aligned with liberal values. Or that schools are anti-progressive, not homeschoolers. To me, those arguments are secondary. Anyone who thinks that a parent should or shouldn’t homeschool because of his/her political affiliation — that the decision whether to homeschool should be first and foremost a political act and not a personal one — is missing the point. Parenting means putting aside your politics, looking directly at your children, and adapting to their needs.

How did we get here?

We never planned to homeschool. My husband and I attended middle-class public schools. We did well, and we went to a good, small private college. I always assumed our children would go to the local public schools; private school never entered my mind. Homeschooling? That was for religious conservatives, not us. When I learned a close friend was planning to homeschool her six-year-old, I was stunned. She’s nuts! I had no basis for this reaction, but there it was. Like many people who are products of the public school system, I couldn’t imagine why someone would want to do that, never mind how.

That kind of unexamined belief is not good, but it is common. Not until my own child entered public school kindergarten did I see why someone might look for an alternative. Let’s just say public school wasn’t a good fit on many levels. We tried a small private Montessori school for the next two years, but by then our son was in public school kindergarten, and for completely different reasons, it wasn’t a good fit for him, either. Rather than move or send two kids to private school, we decided to homeschool the following year. I quit my job (but kept freelancing), and we haven’t looked back.

The myth of the social-isolation echo chamber

In the article, Goldstein asks:

In a country increasingly separated by cultural chasms—Christian conservatives vs. secular humanists; Tea Partiers vs. Occupiers—should we really encourage children to trust only their parents or those hand-selected by them, and to mistrust civic life and public institutions?

Even in the supposed bastion of secular liberalism that is Massachusetts, homeschooling families are reasonably diverse. The “hand-selected” homeschoolers we have spent time with over the past several years include atheists, observant Jewish families, Unitarian Universalists, Pagans, Buddhists, Christians from a variety of denominations, Muslims, liberals, libertarians, conservatives, single-parent families, mixed-race families, naturalized-American families, families with same-sex parents, families who eschew TV, geeky gamer families who can cite chapter and verse of Doctor Who … the list goes on. And that’s just among homeschoolers. You may be shocked to learn that we actually do have other friends. And — get this — we meet and interact with people from all backgrounds at the grocery store, library, concerts, community gatherings, and all sorts of other places.

Opting out of public school is not necessarily synonymous with mistrusting civic life and public institutions. For some people, it probably is. For my family, it’s just opting out of school to do something different. We haven’t hopped on the anarchy bus; we’ve just hopped off the school bus. We like the freedom, the ability for the kids to pursue what they’re interested in at a pace that suits them, and the erasure of the artificial line between learning and life. I could write a lot about what I think is wrong with schools. But I’d rather talk about what’s right about homeschooling for our family. Besides, the kids might decide they want to go to public school again someday. Who knows?

Now, what to make of the unsubstantiated claim that homeschooled kids learn to trust only their parents or people “hand-selected” by them? Goldstein makes a very common assumption that homeschoolers have fewer or more restricted social interactions than schooled kids. My kids spend a lot of time out in the world, where they interact with people of all ages. If we want to be active and do interesting things, then we meet who we meet. My kids aren’t cloistered off, hiding from anything or anyone. They’re out and about every day of the week, to the degree that I wonder why it’s even called homeschooling.

Privilege and hypocrisy

Homeschooling is indeed a privilege. I know I’m lucky to spend so much time with my kids during their fleeting childhoods and to be able to live mostly on one income (I still work part-time). I’m well aware that, for a variety of reasons, some families will never be able to homeschool, that too many children come from unstable or deprived homes, and that the public schools provide an essential place for the vast majority of children to spend their weekdays. I am aware that many families could theoretically homeschool but just don’t want to. Their kids like school and do well there, so they have no reason to change things. Every family is different.

Ms. Goldstein makes a lot of assumptions in her article, including the assumption that she’s qualified to decide who is and isn’t living according to progressive values. Perhaps she should remove the beam from her own eye before pointing out the speck in mine. If she’d like to demonstrate her adherence to the progressive values of being inclusive, embracing diversity, and being tolerant of others, then she could start by actually trying to understand homeschoolers.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy my “precious snowflakes,” who are indeed precious to me. (If they weren’t, there would be something wrong with me.) And if Snowflake 1 and Snowflake 2 choose to go to school some day, or, when they’re grown and ready to live on their own, I’ll know that I enjoyed spending lots of time with them when they were young. If that attitude isn’t approved by the liberal-values police, I think I’ll survive somehow.

[Click here for a larger image.]

I would hate it if I turned out to be the mother in this strip, the one who just gives an automatic no. No thinking, no sharing of the child’s excitement, only flat-out no. I’m not thrilled that mothers take the blame — don’t dads ever put the kibosh on things? — but it still speaks the truth about parenting in general. So I see the strip as an example of what not to do: Don’t just say no. Turn off the “automatic no” switch and instead support my kids’ dreams. Over the past two years or so, I’ve come to see myself as my children’s partner in dream fulfillment. We’ve still got to get through the day-to-day realities of life, but I’ve learned to say yes more and more, and it makes all the difference.

So instead of saying no to some of their wackier-sounding (to me) ideas, Mr. Enigma and I say yes a lot. And then we try to figure out how we can make whatever they’re asking for happen. Maybe we can do it right then and there. Often, we have to work together on a plan to make it happen down the road. Sometimes we tweak the details. But the answer is still, “Yes, we can. Let’s figure out how.” Our kids still think we say no too often, but I know that we’ve made a shift and that we’ll continue to work on saying yes more.

In May, a 13-year-old friend of ours was telling us about a trip to Paris she’s planning with friends for when they’re 18. My daughter, age 10, immediately asked if she could go too. I said, “Sure!” She can go, even though she’ll be younger than the other kids. We might have to delay the trip until she’s 16 and the others are 19. And we’ll have to plan very carefully to make sure we can ensure her safety. If we can figure out how to make the trip safe (within reason), she can go. Maybe I’ll fly over there with them to get them situated. Maybe my brother, who lived in Paris for 10 years, can hook the kids up with some local friends to help make sure they’re safe and have a decent meal once or twice. He might even be living in Paris again by then. Who knows? The specifics are irrelevant right now. The key is that I wasn’t going to say no to that trip. Why would I crush the dream?

Within a couple of days, my daughter and I started to figure out we could make the trip happen. To estimate the cost, we researched current airfares, Eurorail, and youth hostel rates, as well as what other young, cash-strapped travelers have said about food and related travel expenses. We calculated what a 2-week trip would cost in today’s money. And then we figured out how much she’d have to earn and save each year for the next 5.5 years. It came to a few hundred dollars per year. To her, the money seems almost impossible. We’re talking about a young kid with very few opportunities to earn significant amounts of cash. But I explained to my daughter that as she gets older, she’ll have more opportunities to earn money. She also has a savings account she can tap into for the trip. Financially, it’s very doable, and I want her to believe that it’s doable. If she wants it, she can do it.

Will my daughter ever take that trip? I don’t have a crystal ball. Five+ years is a long time. But if she doesn’t, it won’t be because her father and I just gave her an automatic no. We’re not going crush her hopes and dreams.

Link: Zits, 08/02/09

Tags: automatic no, parenting, saying yes, Paris, crushing dreams,

He was not pleased. He did not ask for this new bed, and he did not want this new bed.

But that didn’t stop him from jumping. Jump, jump, jump. For the past five years, that bed has taken a beating. He’s big for his age and a wee bit enthusiastic, so it was inevitable that at some point he was going to crash through the platform. And a couple of months ago, he did.

Mr. Enigma, my husband, had patched the hole with some 1/4-inch plywood, but he was afraid it wouldn’t hold forever. So last weekend, he swapped in the platform piece from our daughter’s old bed. (She doesn’t need it anymore because she built her own bed last year.) But before he did, I made him illustrate just how big the hole was. Look how horrified he was to assist.

Of course, uncovering the bed meant unearthing some major dust bunnies. I swear, they’re alive.

Mr. Enigma has all the right tools for just about any job. He has a staple-puller-outer-thingie to pull crazy-long staples out, and a staple gun to shoot crazy-long staples in, among other handy devices.

The bed’s fixed, good as new, but it’s still rotten for jumping. So now the Duke jumps on my bed. There’s no platform to break, unless you consider the second-story floor a platform.

Um….

Tags: jumping on the bed, broken bed, tools,

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Tags: Lowell Folk Festival, thunderstorm, being prepared, Revolving Museum,

–The Duke of Hazard, 8.5 years

This is what happens when you clean so rarely that your kids find the smell of lemony fresh household cleaners to be offensive.

If you have a child in college or know someone who has a child in college, I highly recommend Maria’s book. Not only is it superbly edited (heh, heh), but the subject is one near and dear to my heart. Maria wrote the book (and started her company, Campus Calm) to help students relax and live emotionally healthier lives while in college so that they set themselves on a lifelong path of fulfillment and success (which each person defines for herself). The book includes chapters on learning again how to love learning, being creative, focusing inward, thinking big, and just plain having fun. Pascucci doesn’t advocate being irresponsible and/or partying for four years; she advocates embracing the college experience by slowing down enough to figure out what you really love to learn and to do and then pursuing those things.

As you might imagine, the book’s stop-and-smell-the-roses theme resonated with me. Many of the things Maria writes about, from anxiety-ridden, over-scheduled students, to kids who take courses only to check off graduation requirements, to students who care only about their GPA and not what they’re learning, reflect perfectly what Mr. Enigma and I hope our children can avoid by being homeschoolers. They have the time to follow their interests and the environment in which to truly know themselves. We don’t ever want to hear them ask, literally or figuratively, “Will this be on the test?”

Seriously, I know I’m biased, but Campus Calm University is a great book and a great read for anyone — even us old folks out in the so-called real world — who has found him- or herself caught in the rat race and who feels stressed out and stuck. If you need some calm, on campus or off, check out Campus Calm University.

Tags: Campus Calm University, Maria Pascucci, Independent Publisher Awards

Can we have it so the kids can take it apart? “Sure, have at it!”

Mr. Enigma spent some time late last fall emptying the gas and oil tanks and removing the engine from the chassis. He covered it up and left it near our shed, where snow promptly buried it for a couple of months. Over the long winter, the kids forgot about it. Then I mentioned it a couple of nights ago. My daughter wasn’t terribly interested, but there was no holding The Duke back.

The next morning, we peeled back the tarp and unveiled the hardware. As I lifted the engine to move it to the grass, The Duke said, “Hey, that’s a spark plug!” It was — I didn’t know he knew what a spark plug was! When, exactly, did he acquire that knowledge?

[What’s behind curtain number one?]

Before any project, it’s important to gather the right tools. The Duke has his own toolbox, complete with several screwdrivers of differing sizes and heads, an adjustable wrench, a hat, and measuring tape, which he apparently thought he’d need but didn’t. I also brought out my toolbox in case I had some tools he was missing. (I’m not sure which we have more of in this house, tools or books.)

[Carefully choosing the right tools.]

The Duke patiently examined the engine from all angles, planning his attack. We agreed that he should remove the plastic engine cover first since it was covering so much. It took us a while to get the sockets on the handle, but once I figured out we needed a pesky little adapter, the Duke was all set.

[The first piece came off easily.]

The socket set was our friend today. The Duke removed a lot of bolts surprisingly easily. Others required a little more oomph and some better leverage. My inner (and outer) feminist was not going to be happy if neither of us could budge any bolts and I had to ask big, strong, manly Mr. Enigma to loosen them for us.

[Gaining some leverage.]

Occasionally, a less, um, refined tool was needed. Did you know that when a part is really stuck, you can sometimes smash it off?

[Descendant of Thor swings his mighty hammer.]

Overall, I was impressed with The Duke’s careful attention to detail, his patience, and his use of different tools to do different jobs. He even grabbed a very small, thin flathead screwdriver and used it as a lever to bend some metal flashing that was blocking two bolts.

After about an hour, which included a couple of short breaks on the swings and zip line, The Duke announced, “That’s enough for today.”

[A day’s work.]

Tags: take apart, learning by doing, lawnmower

It’s so good, it deserves a trademark, doesn’t it?

Too bad it’s not my phrase. I plagiarized it from an acquaintance who was explaining why she enrolled her daughter in a Friends school: she wanted her daughter to grow from the inside out, and not the other way around. That’s it, isn’t it? This mother felt, as many homeschoolers and parents who chose nontraditional schools for their kids do, that conventional schools don’t allow children to grow naturally, that they spend essentially all of their energy trying to squeeze all those young, excited, unique individuals into the same small box. It’s not that the people in the schools are big, bad, kid-loathing meanies; obviously most of them love kids and love teaching. It’s that the system itself is designed for just this purpose, to turn out legions of young people who think alike, behave alike, and know the same body of information (which they often quickly forget).

Our family came to homeschooling after a few years of thinking and learning about what homeschooling really means. We ended up with a laundry list of reasons for taking the plunge, some more pressing than others. But I can honestly say that “growing from the inside out” perfectly encapsulates the entire list. Each item points back to respecting and loving our children for who they are today and for giving them the space and time to grow and develop with as little outside/institutional pressure as possible — especially while they’re still so young.

My hope is that my kids will never feel pressure to give up an interest because it’s not considered “cool” enough, that they’ll never have to spend time on meaningless assignments just to pass a class (I’m all for meaningful assignments, if there has to be an assignment at all), that they’ll never care more about a letter grade than about what they’re doing/learning and why. I want them to follow every interest to see where it leads them, regardless of what other kids their age and/or gender are doing. And I want them to be happy, content kids (and later, adults) who feel loved and respected and free to follow their hearts.

Jeez, this is getting high and mighty, isn’t it?

But it’s true. That’s really what I want for them. And it’s happening. Yesterday, The Duke (son, 8.5 years) said to me, “I really like my life. I get to do so many cool things.”

Growing from the Inside Out™. That’s why we homeschool.

Tags: homeschooling, why homeschool,

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Tags: tree climbing, learning when ready, patience, motivation, hard work