Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Milestones!
This is my 150th newsletter! It seems like a milestone, and I have lots to celebrate.
When I first started writing Out of Chaos, it was a quarterly, then a monthly and finally a weekly. I was afraid my readers would get sick of me, but the more I wrote, the more positive feedback I received, and requests for “more!” My main goal in writing Out of Chaos was to reach out to clients whom I hadn’t heard from in a while, but I was also inspired by my friend Ayun Halliday, who turned the zine she wrote during her daughter’s naps into a wonderful book, The Big Rumpus.
Secretly I hoped that if I could write newsletters in small chunks of time, on the subway, at the playground, between working with clients and being a mom, perhaps I, too, could eventually parlay them into a book. I snail-mailed my first newsletter< in December of 2002, and it took a mere 13 more years to get my book deal! I’m excited to reveal that Organized Enough: The Anti-Perfectionist’s Guide to Getting and Staying Organized will be published by Da Capo Press in February.
In that baker’s dozen of years, my son went from the terrible twos to the terrible teens (in retrospect his twos weren’t bad at all) and I gave birth to twins, so my book dream wasn’t always at the top of my priority list. But the fact that I have written not only 150 newsletters, but also a book is proof that there is no enterprise that can’t be achieved by breaking it down into small, manageable tasks.
I have had so much help, from the encouragement of clients (like V. who told me to go to the nonfiction pitch-conference) to advice from my friends who are agents and editors, truly I am a lucky girl. Thank you one and all.