Greetings from "the dip." 🍃

Crowdfunding with Chronic Illness 🐌

Greetings from “the dip.”

This is week two of crowdfunding for Entwined & Ember.

We've reached over 60% and I'm really delighted by the response so far!

As I explain in Crowdfunding 101 there is always a dip in your campaign - no matter how hard you market or how long your campaign.

So it's a good time to recover your energy.

Most of your pledges will come the first week and the final week. When you think about it this makes sense. The first week is exciting. You're starting at zero and your biggest supporters can help get your campaign off the ground.

My first attempted Kickstarter failed from lack of early support.

It's really important when crowdfunding that you hit 30% early (preferably within the first week). This is the tipping point when friends of friends start to pledge. They see those pledges as "social proof" that you are a trustworthy and exciting creator to support. My failed film series reached 30% the final week.

I often wonder what might have happened if I had scheduled the campaign at another time.

But I learned an important lesson from that failure.

It is so important to communicate clearly how pivotal those early pledges are. Entwined reached 30% funded in less than a week. Now the pledges are tapering off, but I'm not worried. This is the time to catch our breath before the final push.

Here is how the dip looked for my first two books (left and middle) with Entwined’s current pledges on the right.

Left Discover Your Creative Ecosystem. Middle How it Feels to Me. Right Entwined (as of today.)

My first book campaign ran for a month. You can see the days in the middle where no one pledged at all. I was hustling the whole month and super burned out at the end.

My second book ran for two weeks. This was an effort to preserve my energy, but in this case the dip wasn't really long enough to recover.

For Entwined & Ember we are crowdfunding for a whole month. You can see the pledges tapering down and expect to see them shoot up again at the end. I’ll keep mentioning the project and sharing posts from my collaborators, but my main focus for Week 2 & 3 is recovering my own energy for the final push.

There is usually a surge of pledges on the final day.

People are motivated by a deadline! This is one reason I use a crowdfunding campaign to fund books rather than opening preorders on my own website.

Whether you've shared the project, left a comment, or preordered thank you! You've already set up this book launch for success. 🥰

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Entwined 🌿

The best thing about an anthology is that my collaborators all have their own stories to tell about the project. Here are some highlights from our virtual book tour.

• Finding Our Enablers by Hayley J. Dunlop

• Late Summer Embers by Joanna Wolfarth

• This Book is For Busy Mums by Dr. Sheree Mack

• Translating Anxiety into Art by Mindy Wara

We also have some podcasts coming out, but to my knowledge they haven't aired yet. You can catch the video recording of

Jocelyn Mathewes

and Vanessa Wright chatting about motherhood and creativity here.

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In the Studio ✂️

I started a new conceptual work with an old chalkboard this week. I find that working with my hands has proven to be a really good reset tool during "the dip."

sarahdshotts

A post shared by @sarahdshotts

Here’s the chalkboard in it’s glory days. An artist at work.

sarahdshotts

A post shared by @sarahdshotts

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In the Garden 🌱

After the book launch we spent a beautiful afternoon weeding the front garden and collecting tiny bulbs (snowdrops and muscari) to transplant in the back yard.

The next day I had a massive chronic illness flare due to my immune system response to ragweed. It's weird how the reaction can be so delayed. I was fine while I was outside, but completely knocked out a few hours later.

We haven't been in the garden much since then. I hope ragweed season is over soon, because the weather is beautiful (the pollen is just trying to kill me.) I made this for Instagram, but it's relevant here too.

Nathan roasted these Sunflower seeds while I was working on the Entwined launch last week. The water turned black and I wondered if it was good for dyeing. (Does anyone know?) It was a lot of work and many of the seeds were empty so he may not do it again.

I'm ready for the pollen count to shift so I can go back to mornings like this.

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Books 📖

I'd highly recommend having a cozy read as part of your gentle launch strategy. I finished this timey wimey Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett and ordered a witchy Discworld novel for spooky season.

I've linked to Bookshop.org here to support indie booksellers. But I buy my copies from Blackwells in the UK because I adore these “Unseen University” cover designs.

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Digital Foraging 🍁

Some bits and bobs I've collected for you this week.

Instagram 📷

I dare say, with the proper boundaries, I am enjoying Instagram again. Here are some of the posts I would have missed if I quit IG entirely.

printcessmeg

A post shared by @printcessmeg

"Nature does not hurry. Yet everything is accomplished." by Meg Fatharly.

national_archaeology

A post shared by @national_archaeology

This video. "The dance of the forest, the shyness of the trees while the forest breathes harmoniously."

wildhobbithome

A post shared by @wildhobbithome

"After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string."

katherine_duclos_rose

A post shared by @katherine_duclos_rose

This work by Katherine Duclos. She says, "it’s called “To soften ourselves we have to let all of our edges be touched,” and it references the hardness with which I approached the world for the majority of my life before having children. It took becoming a mother for me to reveal my vulnerabilities to anyone and I almost couldn’t recognize what they showed me. It’s been a reckoning for me to figure out how to be my true self amongst others, like I’ve had to grow a new skin these last few years. This one is softer, maybe not as capable of camouflage, but it’s far more secure than any armour I masked with in the past."

As well as…

• Human Touch Clothing (Process and IG Feed)

• Gender Neutral ASL Signs

• Stop the Arts - a fake UK protest - draws attention to the lack of funding within cultural industries.

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Substack ✏️

Two of my favorite reads from Substack this week. (Including a free snail mail swap!)

Rediscovering the Joy (and Importance) of Hobbies as an Adult

Introducing: Just One Stamp

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Podcasts 🎧

I found two new podcasts about gardening this week and thought I’d pass along some interesting reflections on authorial “failures.”

• Behind the scenes of Gardener's World with Monty Don.

• Andrew O’Brien’s podcast Gardens Weeds & Words

• Author Brandon Sanderson sharing some interesting early “failures” and how they set him up for his current multipassionate genre career selling books title unseen on his podcast Intentionally Blank.

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This time last year...

I recorded my first artist talk with Lauren Frances Evans and Katherine Duclos. We're all autistic artists mothers and had a really good chat about creativity and neurodivergence. I also talk about how my support needs were completely different before I became a parent because I had more capacity for masking.

#ActuallyAutistic Artists Talking

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• Leave a comment (it’s free!)

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The Internet is like a tin can telephone. It’s just a rusty can until someone talks back.

What resonates? What are you working on? How do you recover energy?

I appreciate you.

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This newsletter is a curated collection of tidbits from my overgrown Compost Heap (or digital garden.) Rummage around, turn the heap, and see what you can find for yourself. 🪱🐛🌱

Illustrations by Gracie Klumpp of Leave the Fingerprints. 🐞