It's a question I hear often as I make my daily way through the towns where I've lived and worked for a total of 30+ years.
When I retired from teaching in a local high school, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and did it. It took four years, reams of paper, a quart of printer ink, and crippling moments of self-doubt.
"Wow. Good to see you. So, you're retired? Reading books and going on vacation, huh?"
I hear variations of the same at the gas pump, in the produce aisle, at the nail salon, etc.
When I retired from teaching in a local high school, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and did it. It took four years, reams of paper, a quart of printer ink, and crippling moments of self-doubt.
"Wow. Good to see you. So, you're retired? Reading books and going on vacation, huh?"
I hear variations of the same at the gas pump, in the produce aisle, at the nail salon, etc.
My answer always follows a pause on my part, deciding whether to lead with the part-time care of my two-year-old granddaughter or with the all-the-rest-of-the-time care of writing. The latter is the more difficult choice. But over the course of those four years, there were times I needed to say it aloud to prove my intention to myself. And of course, now that the novel is about to appear on the book market, it needs to be the first-choice answer.
"Well, I just finished a novel," I say to reactions that are generally along the lines of:
"No kidding. Wow. Now what?" or "Really? What's it about?" or "Seriously? Do you have a publisher?" and a few times: "What's your elevator speech?"
More questions. I like answers - even though, ironically, Don't Ya Know is all about questions, the ones that haven't any clear answers.
I have stumbled through different replies, finally coming up with a quick and descriptive one: "It's a story of faith told by unbelievers."
I really liked the sound of that, but I had to drop it after awhile because the people who were actually interested wanted to know more. I didn't have more to say on the topic, I wasn't sure it was a topic to begin with, and how tall is the building this elevator is in anyway?
So I changed my answer to: "It's about the people of a secluded island who find themselves facing a whole new world when the beaches of the area become recreational havens at the turn of the 19th century."
That seemed to be a conversation-ender, earning a pat response: "That sounds interesting." Click.
So for a long while I just just said: "Well, we have our first grandchild now..."
Then I wrote up a script for myself and went to a writers' conference in Atlanta.
Every conversation I had was delivered as if the conversants were living sandwich boards. "I'll tell you my elevator speech if you tell me yours." One woman, who presented her companies' services under the guise of helping writers master the universe, asked to read the first page of Don't Ya Know and followed up with an invitation to have coffee in the dining area. Ten minutes into an 11-minute conversation she explained what paying her marketing experts $10-20,000 would get me. It was an answer I already knew, so I excused myself and asked for my first page back.
I'm familiar with this part of self-publishing. It's the lonely part where I spend time wondering who I am to think other people will enjoy reading what I write?
I go to confession and tell my writer friends that I don't have an answer. They whisper back to me in the darkness of the internet confessional booth that they don't know either. Is it a compulsion, I ask? Were we the kids who demanded all the adults watch us perform in the living room? Am I doing that again in my 6os?"
Bless me, for I confess to all of the above. I love to tell stories. I love to trade mine for theirs with friends around a dinner table. Hear our grown kids' stories of how they viewed their childhoods. Listen to the time you ran on a Long Island beach with me under the moonlight, or how you felt the day we knew your ailing mother would die, or your marriage would end, or a fear was real or a baby was coming.
Don't Ya Know is the story of all those stories. The ones you told me. The ones I told you. The ones we read, the ones we taught in classrooms, the ones we acted out on stage, as well as the stories that wove around us while we did those things. How can we be anything but a sum of our stories?
So one answer came to me: Don't Ya Know published itself.
***************
I go to confession and tell my writer friends that I don't have an answer. They whisper back to me in the darkness of the internet confessional booth that they don't know either. Is it a compulsion, I ask? Were we the kids who demanded all the adults watch us perform in the living room? Am I doing that again in my 6os?"
Bless me, for I confess to all of the above. I love to tell stories. I love to trade mine for theirs with friends around a dinner table. Hear our grown kids' stories of how they viewed their childhoods. Listen to the time you ran on a Long Island beach with me under the moonlight, or how you felt the day we knew your ailing mother would die, or your marriage would end, or a fear was real or a baby was coming.
Don't Ya Know is the story of all those stories. The ones you told me. The ones I told you. The ones we read, the ones we taught in classrooms, the ones we acted out on stage, as well as the stories that wove around us while we did those things. How can we be anything but a sum of our stories?
So one answer came to me: Don't Ya Know published itself.
***************
Available in ebook and paperback from online booksellers, May 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment