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Much Ado About Publishing

Bios, Acknowledgements & Bears... Oh, My!

by Nina L. Diamond

My old friend, Erica, also a writer, columnist, and editor, volunteered to help me pack a great deal of my books and all of my office on the last few nights before the move. As I marveled at how well she’d wedged in numerous oddly-shaped doo-dads into one of the office boxes, I flashed back to a magazine editorial meeting we’d been at in the ‘80s, where I’d first heard the phrase, “It’s like shoveling 10 pounds of sh*t into a five-pound bag.”

As we packed my stuff, I thought that it wasn’t much different from trying to fit 3,000 words worth of information into a 1,500 word story, and that we were doing a magnificent job of shoveling.

With nearly 1,000 books to pack, I estimated I’d need 50 boxes and would put 20 books in each. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it took only about 25 boxes. The movers, however, weren’t so pleasantly surprised. With about 40 books in each significantly-larger-than-recommended box, it turned out that my joy translated to misery for the good sports who had to lift what felt like boxes of lead.

Of course, I didn’t know when I packed them that the boxes were bigger than they should’ve been, and was quite proud to need only half as many book boxes as I’d thought I’d use. The movers weren’t so proud of me. I tried to keep them laughing as much as possible. If, as the saying goes, laughter truly is the best medicine, I hoped that in this case it might work as a pain reliever.

A few days later, thanks to the helpful folks at a travel center (that’s what upscale truck stops are called, I learned), including a trucker who re-set my car’s dislodged –therefore-whistling air intake hose’s bell-shaped top (of course, I ended up interviewing him, too, because I interview everyone whether I need to or not), I arrived at my new place and, you guessed it, proceeded to unpack everything, including my book boxes of lead once the movers arrived.

The mind tends to wander when you’re putting 1,000 books on their shelves, and I started thinking about all those things a writer has to do when she moves, (in addition to what you have to do as a “regular person”), including updating the old author’s bio.

For awhile, I’ve thought: Instead of cataloging our lofty accomplishments, why don’t our bios say who we really are?

You’ll see my “official bio” at the end of this column. But, how much does that really tell you? After all, I have many other skills, experiences, interests, and let’s face it, stuff to brag about, and so do you.

So, here’s my “un-official bio”:

Journalist and author Nina L. Diamond can cross her left eye. She is known for expertly making the sound of a flying pigeon, and has never fallen out of a canoe.

She won her 5th grade spelling bee, received a day camp certificate for cheerfulness, and her sinuses can predict the weather.

She has never read War and Peace, can program a VCR, but only uses a manual can opener because the electric ones won’t give the can back.

Ms. Diamond once delivered kittens, but she will never scuba dive, climb a mountain, or play a team sport. She can do three different kinds of cartwheels.

She reads faster than the speed of light, expertly walks into coffee tables, likes submarine movies, and anything to do with time travel.

Her grandfather invented men’s elastic socks, and she proudly reminds men everywhere that “if it weren’t for my grandfather, your socks would be falling down around your ankles.”

Her first byline appeared when she was 2 ½ years old and wrote her name with a ballpoint pen on her newborn brother’s tummy. He survived nicely, and is now the father of three. Aunt Nina did not autograph any one of them.

Ms. Diamond has never written a book in a borrowed cabin, home or villa in the mountains, by the sea, or on a lake.

Which brings me to something else I’d been thinking about for awhile: Every time I read the Acknowledgements in someone’s book, I saw that the author always made a big point of thanking So-and-So, who provided them with a cabin (guest house, summer house, bungalow), in the country (by the sea, in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere) for three months (three days, three years, three decades), while they wrote this book.

Had I been the only writer all those years who didn’t know people who had extra homes just lying around empty? Maybe there’s some service that provides Temporary Writing Places, and I just hadn’t heard about it yet.

And then, just before I moved, it finally happened to me, too. I got one of those offers. Well, sort of. I wasn’t working on a book at the time, but that’s just a technicality.

“When you move, why don’t you just put all your stuff in storage and come stay at our cabin in the mountains for awhile? It’s a great place to write and you can stay as long as you like!”

I gasped when I heard those words.

An author friend and her husband have owned this vacation and weekend get-away cabin a few hours from their home for more than 25 years. It was tempting, if only because it was so ironic.

I thanked them for their generous offer, but had to turn it down.

Bears, you know.

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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.

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Logo image courtesy of George Glazer Gallery, NYC georgeglazer.com