Purpose, Satisfaction, Joy!

Photo by Luca Onniboni on Unsplash

My career as a writer began determinedly, but oh so tentatively.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I barely knew what I hoped to do.  Except to write.  I knew I had to write.  Something.  Anything!  And without ever asking myself why, I knew I wanted to write for children.

I had so little experience in writing fiction that, when I was struggling with my first novel, I remember picking up a favorite book to see how the author managed to move a character from one side of the room to the other.  I didn’t have a clue!  What to describe?  What to leave out?

I had no connections when I started.  No mentor.  Not even a writing group.  In fact, I didn’t know a single other person who was writing . . . or even wanting to write.  And no one close to me had the slightest interest in this thing that called to me, this thing I needed to do to be whole.

Some writers begin filling pages and pages in elementary school.  Writing by hand was always awkward and tedious for me—it still is—so when I was a child, the stories that filled my mind never reached the page.  In high school, though, I took a typing class, and the keyboard gave me wings.  My high school graduation gift from my parents, a 1956 manual, portable Smith-Corona typewriter the color of golden sand—my heart still warms at the thought of it—opened the sky.

But I still didn’t know how to fly.

Oh, I could write.  Letters, journals, even occasional poems.  A constant flow that honed my craft, day by day by day.  But nothing anyone would want to publish.  And I might have gone on writing just for myself and an occasional other for a very long time . . . except that something happened.  My youngest child started first grade.  My husband took that opportunity to come to me and say, “It would be awfully nice if you’d go back to work and bring home some money.”

He was a clergyman in a small-town ministry so he had good reason to want help with the family finances.  

His request, however, brought on a disturbing vision.  I saw myself on my deathbed saying, “Wait a minute!  I wanted to write!  No one ever gave me a chance to write!”  And in that moment, I knew no one would ever give me a chance to write.  I had to create it for myself!

So I made a bargain.  “Give me five years,” I said to my then-husband, “to write seriously, professionally, full-time, as though it were a job someone is paying me to do.  And if in that time I can’t achieve something you and I can agree is success, I won’t promise to give up writing, but I will go out and get a real job.”

He’s a nice guy . . .  or maybe I was just a bit intimidating.  In any case, he agreed.  And I found myself the next day sitting at that pretty beige typewriter in front of the blankest sheet of paper anybody has ever confronted. 

We were living in Hannibal, Missouri, at the time.  Hannibal boasted a Mark Twain Roofing Company and Mark Twain Fried Chicken, but if there was another writer in town, I never met them.  Nevertheless, I had made my bargain and I took it seriously. 

I was the standard-issue clergy wife then.  I ran the church school, created and supported an emergency call-in service for the area, took foster children and exchange students under my wing in addition to the two children born to us, and volunteered in a program for at-risk youth.  But for the first time, I also sat down every day and, hesitantly, awkwardly, began to tap out a story.

I began with a story about a foster child because I’d had several in my home and I’d built up some real fury over their plight.  And because I was still young and quietly grandiose, I was pretty certain if I could only get my story published, I would save the world.  Or at least save a few foster children.

When Foster Child was published—as my second novel, not my first—the only thing that changed was that, despite the fact that I was still earning very little money, I heard no further suggestions about getting a real job.

It took me many years to understand that I was writing to save myself, not the world.  And by then I had left the solid, if limited, financial base my marriage had provided, and my writing was saving me financially, too.

Did it alter the quality of my work to have to focus on sales?  (In the early years, my son said to me once, “Mom, I know it’s not the kind of story you like, but could you write just one best seller so we could have some money?”)  In another publishing genre that pressure might have been a challenge, but in the world of children’s literature it’s mostly quality that sells.  Oh, I’ve published early readers and board books, too, where quality can be produced in a few words and in a short time, and that has swelled my numbers to over 100 books.  But I have almost always written only what I love and what I myself value. 

Which means I’ve spent the last fifty years mining my heart, steadfastly, determinedly, sometimes urgently, getting up every morning ready to work, wanting to work, needing to work.  Finding in each morning purpose, satisfaction, joy. 

All of which brings me to today.  I’ve been doing this good work for a very long time, and my psychic energy is changing.  The deep satisfaction I used to find in story—either reading or writing story—comes harder.  The editor I have worked with so happily for the last decade, both on my latest novel, Sunshine, and on my new, scientifically based nonfiction picture books, has retired, and I haven’t yet landed with another.  I have a couple more picture books in the pipeline and one out seeking a home.  And I have another idea I’d love to explore.  But without an editor waiting in the wings, I find myself unable—or at least unwilling—to tackle the complex research and the even more complex gathering of words required for a piece that may never see the light of day. 

Still, I can’t not write.  And I can no longer write solely for myself as I did back when I was honing my skills.  So the choice that remains seems to be to write for this space, for those few who follow me here.

And perhaps, just perhaps, these blogs—along with an occasional poem or whatever else may emerge—will be enough, once more, to give an old lady purpose, satisfaction, joy.

We’ll see.

In the meantime, for those of you reading this today . . . thank you.  I couldn’t be more grateful that you are out there!