I have a confession to make. I still haven’t sent out the email to friends and family telling them about the anthology and the Indiegogo campaign. I was really hoping that my “Blog-off” idea, posted on five blogs, two Facebook pages, and one Twitter account would be enough that I wouldn’t actually have to ask anyone point-blank for money. Because I hate that.

So I did it. I wrote the email and sent to a bajillion close friends and family. This is what I wrote:

You can’t see what I see, because this is an undisclosed recipient list. But from where I sit, I’m sifting through my contact list, checking off email addresses. Because you are someone who has encouraged or inspired me to write—either through blog comments or Facebook shares or emails with editing suggestions—I’ve added you to the list.

You took the initiative to respond; I am so grateful for every time that one of you did. It’s made me more serious about my writing and more comfortable in taking risks when I write. I wouldn’t be in this place without your generous feedback.

(Now comes the part where I ask for a favor.)

I’ve started a project with my writing group, the Write On, Mamas. We're collecting essays that we’ve written about motherhood and writing and intend to self-publish them in an anthology. We found an agent who has offered to help us navigate through our maiden voyage in the self-publishing world and recruited an editor (whose forte is helping mothers write their stories), to help us shape our book. To pay for editing, graphic design, printing, and distribution, our group has started an online fundraising campaign through Indiegogo.

If you’ve got 90 seconds (two minutes and fifteen seconds if your Internet connection is slow), you can help by just going to our Indiegogo campaign and sharing our link on Facebook or Twitter. (We increase our “go-go factor” when we drive traffic to Indiegogo and the more traffic we drive, the more prominently they feature our campaign on their pages.)

Of course, while you are on our campaign page, if you are so inclined to contribute to the cause, dude, I would be so totally grateful.

A big thank-you to this group of undisclosed recipients who collectively got me to the stage in the first place—

Sincerely,

janine