The F Words: Quoting Myself

Authors are often called upon to come up with quotes. This is especially true if somebody (a fellow author, an institution, a journal of some kind) wants a testimonial or a capsule summary of something. I have often given such quotes, which are usually pithy (50 words or so) statements about whatever the subject matter happens to be.

But these statements are written or spoken right then and there, for that particular occasion or need. For example, a library might request, “Could you give us a short statement on what your program is about?” And I might reply something like, “Margaret, Nellie, and Rose tells the story of three teens who played on Maud Nelson’s last barnstorming baseball team. It is a story of both tragedy and triumph.”

Until quite recently, I have never been asked to quote myself. Yet that is what happened several months ago when, during our biweekly Zoom meeting, my editor at City of Light Publishing suggested that, as long as I was creating flyers for awareness days and F words used in The F Words, I create some flyers containing quotes from my various writings about The F Words.

Aside from the fact that quoting  myself felt very strange indeed, I knew that I would  have a wealth of writing to choose quotes from, and that’s because since February of 2020, I’ve been blogging about The F Words steadily.

So: the source material was plentiful. But what about my words within those words? Were any pithy enough or pointed enough or provocative enough to arouse reader curiosity when taken out of context? To answer that question I simply began going through all my F Words blogs and selecting those sound bites that sounded good to me. I copied the words and pasted them into a master document . . . which came out to ten pages.

Then, I chose one of the quotes and designed a Canva social media template in which to place it. The very first template had a space for type, large quotation marks around that space, and spotlights shining down on it. Wow! It’s as if this template were meant for me! In designing it, though, I reduced the size of the quotation marks, which were a bit overwhelming.

Having made one flyer, I was emboldened to make another. I used the same template, but changed the colors and positions of objects. From there I went on to choose new templates and modify them to fit my quotes. And of course I posted these flyers on social media, which was the whole reason for  creating them.

Whether these quotes are selling books . . . I don’t know. But they look kind of impressive, especially the ones with spotlights.

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