The Alphabet Posts

 Blog post topics have been elusive lately. I’m not really surprised since I’ve been writing this blog for --well, a long time. Long enough to feel (quite often) as though I'm repeating myself.

So I’ve decided to go back to the very beginning – the ABCs. I've brainstormed some Lisa-related topics for each letter of the alphabet to share here and, as is both obvious and logical, I'm beginning with A, for Acting Assertively. 

Parents refer to their firstborn as the child who made them a parent. Acting Assertively is the book that made me a published author. It also introduced me to the process of working with an editor and a publisher, along with the idea that my vision of the final product might not be exactly what the people putting the book into print have in mind.

In the case of Acting Assertively, I lucked out. The book that was published wasn't at all what I had in mind but, given its intended audience, it was even better. Practical in approach (at their behest), it was geared primarily to school counselors (conveniently enough) and teachers. That made my job easy, because the content of the book arose from classroom lessons I taught to fourth and fifth graders, quite often with the input of classroom teachers. Turning it into the end product they wanted not only made sense, but fit perfectly with the book's origin, which made it an easier project than the one I initially envisioned.

I learned a lot while writing the book, about both writing and the topic itself. Practicing what we preach isn't always easy, and defining assertiveness in terms that were accessible to ten- and eleven-year olds left me little wiggle room when it came to walking the walk that matched the classroom talk. 

At the time, writing fiction seemed an impossibility, but when I look back at the scenarios I created with classroom role-playing exercises in mind, it's obvious I was laying the foundation for creating characters in the novels that would come much later. 

After a brief stint as a reproducible PDF, Acting Assertively went out of print, something I find both gratifying (I've been writing long enough that my first book has gone out of print!) and a little sad. I still have a copy or two of my own and, as is often the case, it can be found through third-party sellers. If I Google myself (and I do -- ask any author and they'll probably tell you the same), I can see where it pops up, which is kind of fun. 

I still try to embody the lessons taught (and learned) from the creation of Acting Assertively, just as I do with Know Thyself, which came along twenty years later. And I am, of course, still writing, taking all of those lessons along for the ride.