TEN DAYS.

I only have ten days until my birthday/book deadline.  Jillian and I were originally supposed to meet today so I could pick up the book and we could discuss the revisions, BUT winter has once again taken Kentucky by surprise.

You see, every year it snows, and every year Kentucky officials go “Huh? What’s this white stuff? What should we do?? WE’RE NOT READY!!!”

Then everyone in the world goes to the grocery to buy milk, bread, and eggs. To make french toast. I guess. Yesterday, people were posting pictures of empty bread shelves at our local Kroger by 5pm and it didn’t start snowing until midnight. I really hesitate to think what will happen when the BIG one hits. Whatever the BIG one is.

All snark aside, in their defense, there IS more snow than usual this year. A state of emergency has officially been declared. Unless absolutely necessary, we’re being asked not to leave our homes. This won’t be difficult for me as the driveway is completely covered thanks to a nice drift.

The roof of the porch is groaning under the strain of almost a foot of snow, and my dog Riley, who LOVES snow and spends all day running in and out, went outside, looked around at the landscape, looked back up at me, uttered a silent “NOPE” and trotted back in.

Thankfully, the snow was light and fluffy instead of angry and heavy. With the snow in such a good mood, nothing weighed down the wires and the electricity stayed on.

Hooray! Because seriously, being snowed in with NO ability to work on my book could have been real state of emergency. I spent the afternoon revising/obsessing over the book cover. Two professionals were kind enough to give me their feedback, and I absorbed all their revisions and tried again.

I ended up designing about five alternate covers. I’m not going to post them here, because I’m still not quite happy with them. Thankfully, a friend of mine helped me focus my obsession in a positive way, and I now know what might be missing.

One step closer, friends. One step closer.

Right at 35 days before my 35th birthday, Rachael and I found out that a book we wrote about our experience making our first film “No Lost Cause,” was being returned to us by the publisher after a year of waiting for it to be printed. Instead of wallowing in our collective misery, I committed to blogging every day while I searched for ways to overcome this perceived rejection and obstacle to our goal. I currently also have about three other projects brewing at the same time, and write about the progress of each of them. This is part of that series.

Read the first entry here: https://ashleyraymerbrown.com/2015/01/23/35-days-to-35-dealing-with-rejection/