How to Write and Publish--5a--Editing

You need an editor.

Sorry to break it to you.

Remember that post about the lovely idea in your head that looks a bit less attractive when it’s on paper? An editor can help you restore your work to its original intended vision.

Yes, there's self-editing, and you need to do it thoroughly. Some writers are sure that if they’ve been over their own work fifteen times, an editor couldn’t improve it.

Those of us who have bad experiences with editors conclude that we can do this better ourselves, thank you very much.

Once you’ve worked with a good editor, though, you will love her, appreciate her, rely on her, praise her in the gates, and weep when she retires.

We all need someone to look at our work and catch what we’re missing. Self-published shorter pieces such as blog posts might need only types 1 and 2 below. Longer works, either self-published or sent to a publisher, need more kinds of editors.

Here is a chart about different types of editors.

Here are some of the “editors” you need:

1.       The cheerleader.

My friend Ilva sent me an email the other day and said she loved the excerpts from The Eye that I posted. She loved The Eye back in the day, she said.

That’s not the only thing Ilva has ever said about my writing. Not by far. Ilva has read my form letters, newspaper articles, and blog posts. She always says the same kinds of things: I love this! I understand! You made me laugh! You made me cry! You are wonderful!

Every writer needs an Ilva, someone who thinks everything they write is amazing. Maybe your mom is this person for you, or your best friend.

I noticed on Facebook today that my old friend Heidi linked her daughter’s blog and said, “My daughters writing... so good!!! I can identify... I love your honesty and putting it in perspective!"

You need someone like that. You know deep inside that not everything you write is breathtaking and beautiful. But you need That One Person who lives under this delusion that you and your work are just astonishing, always.

Go find your Ilva.

2.       The practical skimmer.

We learned long ago that things work best if I don’t expect my family, especially my husband, to be my editors. [There is one exception to this which I’ll explain later.] Paul doesn’t think or express himself or relate stories like I do. He doesn’t find the same things funny.

In the form letter days, lacking a critique group, I would get Paul to read my writings. He would work his way down through a long letter without changing the expression on his face. “It’s fine,” he would say.

“But isn’t it FUNNY?” I would wail. “That part about Matt and his experiments—I was trying to make it funny!”

“I guess, but I already knew about it, so I couldn’t really laugh.”

This did not make for marital harmony.

Over the years, a lot of people have asked if I made up incidents for the newspaper, or embellished things that happened. I could always tell them, no, I didn't, because Paul in particular and also a few of his offspring have a pathological dislike for exaggeration, and they always brought me back, grudgingly, to the bare facts.

For example,when I wrote about the grass seed harvest almost 20 years ago, I said that when the cleaner is running, the warehouse shakes and rumbles.

"No it does not!" said Paul. "It vibrates and hums."

How could he!? That was so far from reality!

We compromised. If you go read page 149 of Ordinary Days, you will find that the warehouse vibrates and rumbles when the cleaner is running. 

Another time I had Paul read a poem I had posted on my blog on Thanksgiving. I thought it expressed the deep feelings of my heart. “I don’t really get it,” he said. “It seems like you're asking for sympathy for your hard life."

Oh mercy. That wasn’t my intention at all. So I deleted the poem. That afternoon a niece told me she had read it and related to it, but when she came back to re-read it, it was gone. So I posted it again, feeling vindicated, and got more response than for any other poem I’ve posted, I think.

We finally settled on an arrangement where Paul read my newspaper articles before I sent them off, but only to correct any glaring flaws, maybe about seed cleaning or family history or theology. And of course, to check any inclination toward over-inflating the truth. In addition, if I mentioned Paul or any of the children, they got to have veto power before the column went to my editor.

Paul is good at catching the glaring errors. If I don’t expect him to do more than that, we are both happy with the arrangement.

Find yourself a Paul who will read your article and say, “It’s fine,” and then you know it is.

3.       The critique group.

The idea of a writing group is to share your work with peers. You read their work and find ways to improve it. They do the same to yours. You all share questions, advice, and motivation.

A good critique group member has a sharp eye for detail and is also kind, honest, punctual, supportive, and humble. He or she will point out flaws in your work without ever making it personal and take your suggestions with similar equanimity.

You need to find a group that’s roughly at your skill level. If you’re a complete beginner, you’ll feel lost in a group with Francine Rivers and Jane Kirkpatrick.

I’ve been blessed to be a part of a few different writing groups. First it was one of Verda Glick’s Writers Workshops by Mail. Verda had designed an efficient system: all our submissions circulated in a package. When it arrived, I read the others’ comments on my story and put in a new one. I also read the others’ work and wrote a page of comments for each. I dropped out of this group, regretfully, when I began writing for the newspaper because I couldn’t keep up with both.

I think I wrote to Verda, in the beginning, and asked her to add me to a group.

Sheila Petre, a writer and editor from Pennsylvania, says:

Many non-internet-using Anabaptist writers are part of writer’s workshops by mail, groups who trade editing skills with each other. Each scribbles her opinions on the other’s manuscripts using a separate ink color. This is my favorite kind of editing to give or receive. 

Later I took a write-your-life-story class, and after the term was over we kept meeting for about a year. I still run into one of the women on occasion.

Then there was Red Moons, a semi-professional group that was a great help in writing for a secular audience. There was a copyright lawyer in the group and one who wrote for National Geographic Traveler and led the group, so the resources were plentiful. The leader had read my columns in the paper and invited me to join. When the leader and the meetings moved an hour away, I stopped attending.

For the last six months I’ve been a part of the Fictitious Five, a group of Christian fiction writers. Two of them have 3-book deals with a publisher, so they know what they’re doing.

One week, we email out new chapters to all the others. We read, add comments, and print them off. The next week, we meet at Pat’s house. When it’s my turn to be on deck, everyone takes a 5-minute turn talking about my paper. Then it’s Amanda’s turn, and we each talk about hers for 5 minutes. And so on. I am new at fiction and this group has been invaluable. They see things in my stories that I would never catch, but they are kind. For instance, last week Pat noticed that I had the word “placed” three times in one sentence.

Amanda, one of the Fictitious Five, invited me to join the group. She and I had met back when she owned a small bookstore, and she knew I was interested in fiction.

If you want to be part of a writing group, don’t wait for an invitation. Libraries often have information about groups in the community. If you know any local writers, ask them if they know of a group you could join.

Maybe you can start your own group, in person or by mail/email. Decide how similar the group needs to be. Is it ok if the members are writing fiction, nonfiction, articles, books, Christian, and secular? If not, decide your specific parameters.

The key to success is clarity about expectations: how often do we meet, and where? How much do we write for each meeting? How long do we discuss one chapter? What kinds of help and information do we need?

--more information on editing tomorrow--

How to Write and Publish—4—Short Pieces, Self-Publishing

Writing, as explained in the three previous posts, is the process of getting ideas out of your head and translating them into a readable form. Putting your musings on paper is a huge step, but communication really happens when someone else reads what you wrote.

Publishing is the process of getting that writing out to where others can read it. If it’s scary to take your ideas and put them into a document for the first time, it’s absolutely terrifying to put that writing out before the eyes of others.

This is all part of using the voice God gave you, of listening to that persistent voice in your ear or thumb in your back, and of sharing your unique message.

The publishing process varies with the length and style of writing, its intended audience, and whether it’s distributed by yourself or someone else.

Today we’ll talk about publishing short pieces of writing and doing it yourself. “Short” is article length, maybe a few thousand words.

Today’s writers have landed in a propitious moment as communication has switched from paper to digital, from a laborious and difficult process to a few clicks, and from only a few gatekeepers in the industry to everyone potentially being their own publisher.

Here are a few ideas for spreading your work:

	To one person, or a few	To many people
Paper and ink	Individual letters	Photocopied form letters, Newsletters, booklets, tracts, brochures
Electronically	Email	Group emails
		Blog posts Facebook posts

Never underestimate the value and validity of a letter. I know people who wouldn’t consider themselves writers at all, yet they pour their hearts and stories into personal letters that are a joy to read.

My dad's letters always begin with, "Dear Ones in the West,"

HOW TO: If you’re too young to remember letters in the mail, you might want to learn that art from a grandma.

As a child and teenager, I had lots of penpals. It was a magical process—getting a letter in the mail and answering it. Depending on the receiver’s personality and the type of relationship we had, I could insert all kinds of witticisms and craziness in my letters to them, knowing they would understand. 

In between pen pals and blogging came a strange little newspaper called The Eye that I produced sporadically during my years as a teacher and a few years into married life. It served no real purpose except as a creative outlet, and I was lucky to have friends who acted like they were happy to receive it. Production involved several evenings of typing, cutting, pasting, and photocopying.

I had forgotten that poem, which has since been relevant to many situations, 

not only school board meetings.

---

"Entreating with the Lord

At a meeting with the board

I have found to be the standard and procedure.

And the long and dull discussions

On the weather, life, and Russians,

Have relevance to school things: very meager."

I dug out my old Eyes to get a picture and may have gotten a tiny bit distracted.

HOW TO: I’m not sure anyone should try to replicate The Eye, but you have permission to be as creative as you want with paper and ink or online.

One writer who combines writing and illustrations is Striped Pineapple.

As a young mom on the mission field, I wrote monthly form letters on our primitive computer and mailed them out to a list of family, friends, and supporters. The letters often took a week or more to arrive, and a reply might come back weeks after that, but all the people on our list made us feel supported during long winters and tough times.

The feedback from those letters helped me improve my writing and prepare me for a larger audience later on, although I was unaware of this at the time of course. 

Sometimes I wrote a story and everyone misunderstood it. Or they got exactly what I was saying. It all helped me communicate better.

HOW TO: Form letters are still the communication of choice for ministries and missionaries, but there’s no reason you can’t send out form letters on your own, just for fun. Type one up, print it off, send it to friends, and see what happens.

Blogging was a natural transition once I was introduced to the internet. I was still in charge of the process, but everything about publishing this way was so easy and free. No paper, no stamps, no photocopying—and I could reach hundreds or thousands of people with the same amount of effort.

Wikipedia says:
A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.

HOW TO: If you want to get started blogging, go to Blogger.com or Wordpress.com and follow the instructions. If I can do it, so can you. My children will verify this. You can adjust your settings to restrict comments, if a public discussion makes you uncomfortable.

Eventually I switched to email for much of my personal communication, but I didn’t get into mass emails until after I had a newspaper column. I would copy the column and email it to my list of maybe 300 people every month.

An email list is a rich resource when you start publishing. I have friends who invite people to sign up for regular updates, devotionals, or articles. I send a notice to my email list when I have a new book coming out or a book signing coming up.

We’ll talk later about finding a publisher for your book. One of the words you’ll hear over and over in the publishing world is “platform.” Even a beginning author is expected to have an audience and a platform, which is unfair and unrealistic, in my opinion, but meanwhile a list of email subscribers can be a good foundation for your platform.

HOW TO: To develop an email list, send a letter out to everyone in your current address book letting them know what you’d like to send out regularly and giving them the option of signing up. Also, invite them to forward the email to others.

You can send them updates, articles, or fun meandering letters, like my Georgia friend Rhonda Strite does.

I think her letters are dispersed to people she chooses, but her blog is open to all, and it gives you a good taste of her writing. Here it is. 

Make sure you always use the “blind carbon copy” feature for group emails.

In recent years, I’ve done less blogging and 
more posting on Facebook, usually quoted conversations or 4-paragraph cogitations that seem too short for a blog post. Some people like to do longer posts on Facebook.

Again, you are your own publisher and you can post whatever you want.

HOW TO: go to Facebook.com. Sign up for an account. Do a search for people you know, and invite them to be your friends. If they like your posts, they might "share" them with others.

When you publish your work in any of these ways, people will read it. If your words resonate with them, some of them will let you know. Their responses will tell you whether or not you communicated clearly what you wanted to say. There’s no shame in finding out that everyone misunderstood you. That’s how you learn.

Be brave. Write. Find a way to share your work. Learn a lot. Keep writing.

Post 5: Edits and critiques.
Post 6: Publishing short pieces via a publisher.

How to Write and Publish--3--Organize and Begin

Step 3a is to gather and organize your notes.

Pull together the bits of paper, the notebooks, the documents on your computer.

Think hard—did you write about this subject in a journal, letters to your sister, or sermon notes? Include those on your pile as well, if you can.

If you’re writing a life story, whether it’s your own or someone’s else’s, you’ll want every document you can scrape up. Old letters, diaries, pictures, cards, report cards, and so on.

I inherited my grandpa Adam’s financial record book. Even the notes about eggs and cream tell me about him.

A list of farm products the family sold.

Writing a children’s book or a devotional on forgiveness will be a different process from writing someone’s story, but in every case, the more jotted ideas you begin with, the easier the process will be.

Usually when I begin work on an article or speech, some notes are on paper and some on computer documents. However, when I prepared a few talks on marriage for a retreat this past year, I decided to put all my points and illustrations on bits of paper. Then I sat on the floor and placed the notes in piles all around me, with one pile of papers for each main point of my outline.

It worked amazingly well.

Our son Matt who works for the Navy is in charge of transitioning certain systems from paper to digital, much like the medical community has been doing for a number of years. Sometimes he is in charge of meetings where others with similar tasks get together from various points of the country to make sure they’re all doing this the same so that their systems can communicate.

Oddly and a bit ironically, he’s found that the best way to conduct these paper-to-digital workshops is not with Powerpoints and videos, but with Sharpies and Post-It notes. Everyone writes their questions and issues on Post-its, and Matt groups them by subject. Then they figure out solutions.

There is Matt organizing information and explaining things. And people are listening.
I am so proud of him.
He has always been good at explaining things so I can understand them without making me feel stupid.
He is sitting on his right leg. It is not as amputated as it appears.

So despite the benefits of fancy programs that let you cut, paste, and manipulate, there’s something about handwritten notes that helps you organize ideas.

Try it.

Step 3b is to start writing.

Most of us, at this point, agonize before the glowing computer screen. How should I begin? Beginnings are so crucial We slowly tap out one line.

“In 1990, my husband and I moved our little family to a reservation in Ontario.”

No no, too dry and chronological. Delete.

“I held my baby close as the Cessna 206 roared across the lake. Behind me, lumber for school desks was stacked to the ceiling. In front of me, the steering wheel thingamajig moved toward me as the pilot pulled the matching majiggy on his side. Beside the lumber, my two older children were strapped into one seat. I barely had room to turn my head to check on them.”

Sigh. I’m cramming too much into one paragraph. Maybe I need more backstory.

Actually, I need to quit worrying about how to begin.

The place you start writing won't necessarily be the place your story or book eventually begins, if that makes sense.

Much later, you can figure out the words that will draw people into your story.

At this point, you need to plunge into the middle of the pool and start swimming. 

This is what works for me at this point: take a pile of notes and dive in. Expand on ideas. Turn the jotted words into complete sentences. Add more sentences to explain it better.

Take another jotted note. Write out the idea or event in a full paragraph. This might remind you of something else that’s not in your notes, but it fits. Write that down too.

Don’t worry about beginnings and structure. The most important thing at this stage is to write like a maniac. Words words words. Pile them up.

This stage of writing is like building a sand castle on the beach: first you need a big pile of sand. So you shovel and scoop and mound it up high. Next, you run to the ocean for buckets of water to dump over it.

When the mound of sand is ready, the careful work begins. You pat here and carefully cut away there. You shape turrets and windows. You gather shells to make a pretty driveway, and put seagull feathers on top for flags. It turns into a beautiful castle, and you step back and admire it.

from Wikimedia

That’s how it is with writing. First you shovel and scoop a big pile of words. This gives you lots of material to work with. Then you slow down and start crafting. This first, then that. Cut this out and move it up here. An embellishment here. Less of this, more of that. Experiment with beginnings and endings. Read it from beginning to end a dozen times. Look at it from different angles.

Eventually, you’ll step back and admire your creation.

That idea tucked away in your mind has become something real.

I hope you are as proud of yourself as you ought to be.

 Next: How do I share my work with others?

How to Write and Publish--2--Jotting Down Ideas

The idea has been niggling at the back of your mind for a long time, and you’ve decided to do something with it.

Now what?

The process of getting your imagined story or message into tangible, readable form begins with jotting down ideas. It's a rough process, and you'll need to find what works for you.

It's also scary. Possibly for the first time, carefully-protected pictures and concepts in your mind are seeing the light of day.

This is not the time for well-crafted sentences and artful descriptions. It’s not for pondering word choices or designing book covers or contacting editors.

It's only for putting thoughts into words, on paper or on your computer.

This sort of note-jotting takes two forms:
1. The Brain Dump
2. The as-they-come-to-mind notes

First the Brain Dump. This is where you sit down and get those ideas out of your head as fast as possible, in abbreviated form. Sometimes I think of it as vomiting. While it might not be that gross, many times it’s not a pretty process.

Here are some methods:
On a laptop, in a Word document.
In a pretty notebook with a nice pen.
In a cheap notebook with a cheap pencil.
On the backs of old envelopes.
On 3x5 note cards.

You can write in lists, boxes, charts, or mind maps. Even sketches. Whatever works for you.

While you don't want to write long, detailed sentences at this stage, you do need to use enough words so that when you sit down a month from now to write it all out in detail, you’ll know what you were talking about.

Let's say I decide to write a book about our years on a Native American reservation in Canada. My initial notes might look something like this:

Weagamow Lake
1990-93
Gokum
Tina’s house
School kids
Church
Matt’s surgery
The yellow house
The neighbor kids
WINTER
Flying
The winter road
Nursing station

Those are the big topics. Then I might take each one and add a few more specific incidents and details. It still won't be anything fancy.

Gokum—laundry—not knocking—did she actually understand English?—smoking beaver—Matt’s questions
Tina’s house—20x24—1 year—the tin tub—curtain doorways--
School kids—Halfadays—Kanakakeesics—when Kesa graduated—David Winter—Jacob and Nita
Church—Gary playing guitar--Sunday evening singing--Cree/English sermons
Matt’s surgery—Meckel’s diverticulum—ambulance plane
The yellow house—running water!!—Kans gave it up for us—by the lake--
The neighbor kids—James n BamBam—the swings—the hockey rink—Stye—the water hole--
WINTER—45 below—winter road
Flying—NYP pilots—kids barfing—flying to Windigo—lake vs ice vs airport--
The winter road—the Christmas trip with Mark Boss—over the lake—through the woods—

As I proceed on to the next steps, I’m going to keep coming back to jotting notes. These will be the as-they-come-to-mind variety. In the middle of writing a long, detailed chapter on the winter road, I might realize I never mentioned fishing, but obviously that won't belong in a chapter about driving to Windigo on the ice road. So I'll grab a note card and write down Round Lake—fishing—canoe—walleye—jackfish.

I can deal with that card later, either dropping it into a file or copying it into my notebook, adding it to the brain-dump list of topics I want to cover. If I don’t write it down, I will likely forget to include it entirely until the book is finished and off to the printers.

I might also recall a very specific detail such as the time Jacob Meekis told me happily that there are lots of snakes under the rocks in front of our house, and how he grinned with his fat cheeks when he told me that, completely unaware of how much I feared snakes. 

So I might write that story and quote in a little more detail and file it away to help me out when I write about the children in the neighborhood.

But generally, it's best to leave the detailed stories for later.

[By the way, this is very off-topic, but when you do this exercise lots of stories come to mind...I never saw a single snake in our three years in Weagamow. It is a miracle. I’m sure there were hundreds of garter snakes around. For some reason God had special mercy on me and I appreciate it.]

If you’re like me and have many projects going at once, you’ll get ideas for an article on marriage while you’re in the middle of writing a blog post about saving money, or maybe you'll have a chance conversation on the subject. Grab a paper, jot down the idea about marriage, set it aside, and continue with the blog post.

I jotted these notes when a friend was talking about surviving a difficult marriage.
It went into my "speeches" file.

Here are two quotes I recalled that I might include in a Pennsylvania Dutch video.
One was my old landlady, Noah Fannie, saying, "But I got a man!" after she had related
the difficulties of her life, like it all worked out fine in the end.
The other quote is from my mom who, when we left a few dirty dishes, always said we
are "saving some for seeds."

My files for the above notes.

In my writing, I quote people a lot. I’ve learned to immediately write down what people say, even if it means leaping up from the dinner table amid the family’s groans to grab a pen and paper. Sometimes I think, “Oh, I’ll remember. It was so clever,” but when I go to write it, I might recall the gist of it but it’ll be in my words and not theirs.

I’ve also learned to write down who said it, and why, because sometimes I end up with notes like this:



"Did you marry an onion??" What on earth was that all about, and who said it?? I’ll never know.

I can tell we were playing a game, but that's the only clue I have.



I tend to have quotes on bits of paper in pockets, purses, and piles of paper. Eventually I gather them into file folders.

Obviously, if you’re jotting down ideas for one article or devotional, you will have far fewer notes than if you want to write a whole book, or half a dozen books. But the process is still the same.


Once your jumbled thoughts have been dumped onto the page, the next step is to group your notes and start fleshing these ideas into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. We’ll talk about that another day.

For today, pour a cup of tea, gather your courage, and pour those messy, disorganized thoughts and ideas out of your brain and into a spiral notebook. From now on, always keep a pen and paper near at hand for the ideas that come in the middle of a walk or meal or sermon.

Tomorrow: turning notes into actual writing.

Obviously, I scratch notes and quotes on whatever paper is within reach.
This one says, "I put my interested face on but in my head I was like this is literally like the dumbest thing ever."
I didn't cite the source here either but figured I'd remember, which I do.

How to Write and Publish: 1-- The Persistent Idea

“I have an idea for a book, but I have no idea how to get started.”

“I’ve written some stories. How do I get them published?”

“Somebody should write my grandma’s story. She’s had an amazing life.”

“Everything that happens to me, I think of in terms of stories and devotionals, but I don’t actually sit down and write them.”

In the last month, I’ve had at least five people ask me for advice about writing and publishing. I’d like to do a few blog posts about the process of getting an idea in your head to printed words that others can read.

Today, I want to talk about that idea that keeps squirming in the back of your brain. Maybe it’s a message of encouragement for young moms.

Or poetry.

Maybe it’s insights from Scripture that strike you in your morning devotions.

It might be a little girl you knew who was so much like Junie B. Jones that you know she merits a book of her own.

The idea keeps coming back. You get busy with other things and tell yourself you’re not a writer. You tell the idea to go away. It keeps returning.

For me, it’s like a divine thumb in my back, gently nudging. I can ignore it for days or weeks, but it doesn’t go away. It’s still there when the world quiets down for a bit, or when I’m falling asleep, pushing me in a certain direction. “You have something to say. You need to say it.”

I want to say two things about this:

1.       You need to listen to that idea, examine it, take it seriously. Quit ignoring the nudge. Maybe you’re not a writer, speaker, or poet. That doesn’t disqualify you from having a voice and a message.

2.       It’s risky to take that idea out of your imagination and turn it into something tangible. As long as it’s tucked away in your mind, it’s astonishing, profound, rich, and beautiful. No one but you can see it, but in your heart you know it’s amazing.

However, if you take it out of your imagination and try to put it into actual words, it might be like a big round glowing soap bubble that pops and becomes only a slimy little spot on the ground, or a beautiful dress you order online that turns out to be way too small and shabbily stitched from cheap scratchy material.

I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by cornfields. I used to read about mountains, visualize them, wonder what they were really like. I imagined a beautiful scene of snowcapped peaks with their tops in the clouds and forests at their feet.

One day when I was maybe nine years old I decided to draw the picture I saw in my mind. I took a pencil and white paper, sketching tall mountains, clouds, forests.

The result was cruelly disappointing—my mountains looked like a set of weird flat cones with donuts around the tips.

Would I have been better off keeping the picture in my mind and not even trying to put it on paper? Maybe. But there is something courageous about taking that idea and attempting to bring it into light and space, in tangible form.

Despite that failure, I never lost my curiosity about mountains. About ten years later, I moved to Oregon and was struck with wonder at the size and majesty of Mt. Hood and all the other snow-capped, cloud-covered peaks. I never get tired of seeing them. I no longer try to draw mountains, but I take lots of pictures.

I’m proud of 9-year-old me for attempting to draw that picture.

The funny story in your imagination might seem trite when it’s written out. You might write your grandma’s story and discover that no one else is interested in it.

The deep insights into Scripture might seem silly when you type them up.

That, of course, is the risk.

And yet, there is that nudging thumb in your back.

Here is a secret: most great ideas look limp and a bit ridiculous when you first put them on paper. The difference between beginning and experienced writers is that beginners expect the process to be simple and those with experience know that it’s a long road and a lot of hard work to make the words resemble the original idea, but they also know it can be done.

If an idea keeps coming back to you, you need to listen to it. You have something to say, and you should take the dangerous step of saying it out loud.

Katz un Hund un Gehss

This is a long, sisterly, Deitsch conversation involving animals and quite a few mentions of our brother Fred.



For more Deitsch conversations, subscribe to my Youtube channel here.