The return of 3 Small Items of Great Delight + My new workshop for writers!

Let's get ready to meet summer

Hello again from The Book Case, the newsletter of Dinah Laprairie, Book Coach & Reader’s Advocate.

If you’re just joining me here, you are welcome. You’ll find entries on the practice of writing and the practice of delight, and book reviews that measure how successfully a book engages its readers, from cover design to the final page. It’s delivered on a whim — or, more likely, when I can squeeze it in.

You’re always welcome to respond and share.

Greetings, Readers!

It’s been a while since I had the oomph — the zeal! the pep! the vim and vigour! — to return to my practice of delight, but today I do. I remind myself that seeking and engaging with delight is indeed a practice, one that I learned from artists. Below, I share the latest lessons from hard winters, nature walks, and dog ownership. You can skip ahead if that’s why you’re here, but I hope you read what comes first, because I have updates and a big announcement.

Updates

WORKSHOPS • Last week’s Spring Into Memoir Workshop in Sudbury attracted nineteen participants!

Liisa Kovala

and I were thrilled. Thank you to everyone who came! We received enthusiastic feedback. Please let us know how we can continue to support you. We hope some of you will join us again at our full-day Mini Memoir Retreat on August 14, 2024 in Sudbury at Fielding Memorial Park. We’ll be promoting it soon, but you can sign up already for $99 at this link. We’re also working out details for our next writing retreat, this fall.

BOOK COACHING • If you are wondering if book coaching will help you with your book project, I do have openings for summer coaching, on a weekly, biweekly basis. I also have a VIP Day option, where I set aside everything to help you plan your book! Go ahead and book a time for a free discovery call: https://bit.ly/talk-books-with-dinah

Special Announcement!

And now, something I’ve been working on behind the scenes! Today, I am opening registration for Your Imagined Reader, a 4-day, 4-class group challenge for writers. And it’s going to happen this month.

Do you remember being so excited by the ideas you read that you forced the book into a friend’s hands, saying “You have to read this?”

I have built something for writers who want their readers to feel the same way, a sprint-style challenge beginning Sunday, June 23. And you have only a week-and-a-half to sign up.

If you’ve been wondering how to:

• Connect to your reader’s heart and mind

• Write with an understanding of what readers are seeking from your book

• Focus your summer writing time

…then head over to my website to learn more about The Imagined Reader: A a 4-day, 4-class workshop focused on your book's ideal reader, led by me Dinah Laprairie, Book Coach & Reader's Advocate.

Four days, fours classes, forty-nine dollars. Just in time for summer writing.

This is just for you if:

• You are beginning a new piece and need to think through your approach

• You are in the messy middle and wondering “Who will even read this?”

• You have your first draft complete and need new focus before you tackle revisions.

Here’s the scoop:

WHAT: Your Imagined Reader: Meet your future reader

WHEN: June 23–26, 2024, each day at 7 p.m. EST on Zoom

WHERE: Online! Enroll right now at https://bit.ly/Imagined-Reader

WHY: If you’ve been wanting to shift the thinking of your readers or wrap them up snugly in your story, this will help you build a picture of the people you are writing to.

Imagine if you could slip into your summer writing understanding your ideal readers and how to shape your message for them. You might just end up with a page-turning book. This is how you start. Begin the work at reader engagement in this 4-day challenge.

I’ll be there as a book coach and reader’s advocate, leading you through exercises and challenges.

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And now we return to the regularly scheduled newsletter…

3 Small Items of Great Delight

It’s time to practice. It took me a long time to get back into training, but the habit of noticing and engaging with the world around me is one I don’t want to lose.

What have you been delighting in? Tell me in a comment below! (Or hit reply if this landed in your inbox.)

1. The Constance of Seasons

Delight + deliverance

The winter was hard. We missed the sunny days of a cold winter, and everyone here in Sudbury found it long, despite how mild it was. Here in my family, we aren’t the outdoorsiest of people, but our opportunities to enjoy the beauty of winter were few. Mother Nature didn’t deliver enough snow to snowshoe or ice to ice skate. Then, when my family tried to escape to Florida, I was left behind holding an expired passport. THEN, I threw out my back and spent a few weeks recovering.

I hardly suffered in comparison to others. My “winter of discontent” was the quietest of blips in the universe. But it was discouraging and wearisome on a personal level. I like working, and I love what I do, but when your occupation is the main occupation of life (that, and chauffeuring kids to activities), it leaves little energy for delight.

So I have greeted the warming of the Earth (in this hemisphere) with relief. The sun has returned, and so have the birds. As they do. The maple trees in our yard budded and bloomed a couple weeks early. As they do some years. The lilacs have already come and gone, and one tall poppy is posing for photos in the front garden.

Does anyone else love the novels of Rosamunde Pilcher, the British novelist whose book The Shell Seekers became a bestseller in the late 80s? You could describe her books as both romantic and prosaic, often focusing on internal lives and close relationships in commonplace activities during periods of change in the greater world. There’s a romantic, nostalgic tone, but Pilcher also talks about hard things. We visit the seaside or cliffs, travel and return to tiny towns in Cornwall. I think of her as a grown Anne Shirley, penning novels to delight herself and her readers.

Pilcher’s novels are long, long books, the kind no longer in style, books that ask you to sink down into them for days. Now, when you pick up one of her paperbacks, you see they are thicker than today’s books, and the pages are paper thin. The typeface crowds the pages. These books ask for commitment of the best kind. You make a cup of tea and sit in front of the fan on a hot day and read.

I haven’t picked my favourite — The Shell Seekers was certainly one of her best, but Winter Solstice my take first place in my mind. could me my number one pick. When I finished it , I searched for reader reviews to see how others had experienced it now that it is over 30 years old. I discovered a dedicated fan base online, and many of these reader pick up Winter Solstice every year in December. There are even tours of the town where it is set so readers can see the house that inspired the home described in the book.

Fun fact: Rosamund Pilcher sold over 60 million books.

It was a line from on of her book — one I can’t find now within thousands of pages — that I leaned on during our long winter. It was the idea that the world keeps turning. The one thing you can be sure about it that spring is always on the other side of winter. It is constant.

It comes always. Just keep looking at the horizon.

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2. We can’t help but love dogs

Delight despite effort

Book coaching and editing satisfy my curiosity and reward me with discovery all the time. I get to learn all sort of secrets about life from my clients and from my colleagues. In a coaching call yesterday, the topic was dogs and the joy we get in the human-dog relationship.

We adopted a dog four years ago, Bella. The kids were in love with Bella upon meeting her. She was healthy and lively and terribly cute. Exactly the right size, too. Her owner had trained her well, and was heartbroken to rehome her pet.

It wasn’t the best fit. Within a few months, we looked for another home for her, away from children and other animals. Long story, but in the end, we kept our Bella, and we continue to work with her on her issues. Two years post-adoption, the health issues began, and we have become regular visitors at the veterinary clinic. The poor thing has lost her hair at least four times, and while one diagnosis gave her relief for a time, there are still health problems.

Dog ownership, for me, is a lot of mental work. It’s not the twice-a-day walks or the grooming. Our home is always covered in “doggy dust” as I call it, and we dole out medications twice a day. We buy special dog food, change it when it doesn’t work; we have to make vet appointments and pay for them; we have to leave her at a kennel or dog-free home when we travel because she can’t get along with other dogs (yet). And most of the time, she smells terrible. Bonus: Because she loves me so much — I’m her person! — I get the full olfactory experience. By the end of some days, I’m on edge.

Dog ownership, you see, is not fun. It consumes a lot of my days — and a lot of real estate in my nervous system.

But then, when it becomes too hard, we are reminded of how much we love her. Like newborn parents, have a million photos of her napping. We laugh at her idiosyncrasies. How she loves to lie in the gravel of the driveway. Her love of reusable Walmart bags. How she’ll take as her own anyone’s Squishmallow if left unattended. How she likes the best seat in the house, always:

What can we do but love them, eh?

Birch trees, the ladies of the land

Delight direct to the eyes

When the children were younger, we’d wake up on a Sunday and let them in on our plans. Now that they are older, there are opinions. So it was a surprise when they came along for a trail walk with us on Sunday without a peep.

We tried a trail we hadn’t yet explored, and came across a stand of birches. I feel an affinity for birches. They were among the first trees to return to the Sudbury area after regreening efforts, the ones that we played among as children. I love how the light plays off their white trunks (blue and pink in winter), and the curling, paper-thin bark.

Presented with these ladies, you must stop and admire them.

Wishing you all such visual delight this season — not to mention dog love and big, fat paperbacks!

I’ll be back with another edition of this newsletter early next week, returning with the next installment of Readability: Books that Engage. Did you miss the first one? Read it here.