Granny's Plea: Help Me Off This Bench!
With Grandparent’s Day this coming Sunday, I’m taking stock of what I have and what I haven’t. So far, there's not much on the credit side.
Whooooooooa there! Hold your retort! That observation has absolutely not one thing to do with my grandboy, Ben.
Ben peeping out his birthday teepee from Great Grandmadele
Why, just thinking of him makes me bust out singing: My boy, Ben, he’ll be tough and as tall as a tree, will he! Ben’s truly . . . well, GRAND!
The deficit is mine. And Grandparent’s Day—curse those Holiday Maker-uppers—has me keenly aware of what’s wrong.
When it comes to the whole Granny-Mimi-Nanny-Magah-Oma-Nana-Gigi-Grandmother thing, I’m a Rookie, fledging, novice, newbie, minor-leaguer—definitely lacking in credit and credibility. Especially when compared to friends like Marty with 6 grans (two under 6 months) and 13 years practice; Beverly (whose granny name is Grandmother, as in Would you care to dance. . . ) she's clocked about 8 years experience with both kinds of gran; Marcia, with 3 grands she sees all the time even though they live hours away, and Mimi (not her granny name), with 4 grands—2 sets of each same kind, same age.
Mimi and Brian with their 4 grans sang in Mimi's Milestone Birthday Aug. 11th.
Numbers-wise (Not that being a grandmother is a competitive sport or that I’m comparing….), my sis-in-law, Liz (aka Oma) with 2 grangirls, isn’t far ahead of me. Soon (come the end of the year), I’ll have 2 granboys of my own.
Liz with her newest gran, Felicity, born July 19th, 2014
But, in terms of time on the field, in the trenches--Play Time--Liz, and my other gran-friends are days-years-diapers-hugs-highlights beyond me. Real Pros!
The other night, coming out of the movie theater, Curtis and I met up with another expat couple we hadn't seen for months, Graham and Kerri. Most every expat in Trinidad vanishes over the summer, so come September, there’s lots of catching up to do. During our catch-up, Kerri, asked, “Have you adjusted to being a grandmother, yet?” then leaned over and whispered, "I know how worried about it you were.”
Worried, me? You bet!
Now, with another grandboy from different parents in a different state, coming soon, make that Gran worryx2!*
Like a 47th round draft pick, I had been stressing over being a grandmother. Still am. Not because I wasn't ready to be one, but because I know great grandparents. And being a great Gran takes commitment, practice, effort, time!
My grandmother, Nanny, at my baby shower for Max, July 81. I'm sorry to day I don't have any pictures of my grandfather
I only had one set of grandparents, my mother’s parents, Nanny & Poppy, who took the job seriously! The time—play and otherwise—they lavished on me and my brother, is the reason we are the adults & parents we are today. (BTW: Wholly deserving of their own holiday.)
However, Nanny & Poppy lived close, in the same house, or a few blocks over for our early years, a day away after that. about 2000 miles, oceans, borders, schedules lie between me and my gran. I can't just pop over for a quick visit, recital, ball game, etc. the way my grandparents did.
Is it any wonder I worry? How are me and my grandbabies supposed to bond with all that's keeping us apart?
“What’s my Grandparent Wish? That one day, after my grandson stops trying to eat the phone, he’ll pick it up and say, ‘I’m telling Grandma on you,’ the way my kids did.”
Grandma Lee never lived close by, but that never kept her from being close to Lexi & Max. This is in Phoenix 1985
When Gran worries hit hardest, as they have with Grandparent's Day--the annual time for Gran self-appraisal--looming, I calm myself by thinking of these Gran-friends, Mom and my 2 mothers-in-law. They never let distance or technological difficulties come between them and their grans.
Grandma Lee called herself "The Coat Grandmother" because she always gave coats for Hanukkah. She could write with either hand, backwards, forwards and both at the same time.
Gramadele used to live in Texas. Now she divides her time between there and Montana. She's up for anything!
Gramadele is "the Birder Grandmother". Sort of the Auntie Mame of the bunch, always going off on adventures, and laughing about them later.
Having come into the Max and Lexi Gran game when they were 8 & 10, she's proof that starting late doesn't matter. What really counts with grans is heart.
Post Disneyland adventure with Grandma Mary, Max, Lexi and their Wonka pops collapsed in a heap.
My mom, Grandma Mary, was "the Toy Grandmother." Infamous among friends, known for huge sunglasses and a passion for chocolate!
When the kids were small, she never failed to send goody boxes of decorations & treats on holidays. And every school holiday and summer break, she'd send herself to visit us.
She and Nanny invented what our Watsonville neighbor, Donna (now a Gran to 2--both kinds), called the "30 mile vacation." We'd load up the car for a road trip, 1st stop might not get us out of town, drive over the pass, pull in at the first hotel with a pool (often Anderson's Pea Soup), stay a few nights, then return home. Total trip: 30 miles, tops.
Grandparent's Day is Sunday. In honor of the holiday, I'm getting off this bench and into the Grandparent game. I aim to score some big league Granny-to-Gran bonding time. I've started a HOW TO BE A GREAT GRAN list. Suggestions please:
“How can we long-distance Grandparents get in more Gran-to-Grand Play Time?”
Let's hear it for Grands!
*How do grans with more than 2 children in different places, do it? (I've asked Marty, just back from the birth of her sixth, but she's too jet lagged to answer.)
Here’s this blog’s playlist:
- I’ve Got the Sun in the Morning from Annie Get Your Gun
- Billy’s Soliloquy from Carousel
- Getting to Know You from The King and I
- Dance Little Sister by Terrance Trent Darby
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One Candle, My Ferris Wheel, a Potato
Marvelous the way memory works. I think of mine like a Ferris Wheel*. When the music starts, the squeaky wheel spins for a while, slows to a stop, the door on the little cage closest to the ground swings open to let someone--or some memory--out, the door closes, the wheel starts spinning, that cage swings up out of reach, another cage swings to a stop.
I know what's in the cages on either side. I can almost reach them . . . almost.
As for those cages way up at the top? If I squint hard, I can see them. But danged if I know what's in them . . .
A book review of Eve Bunting's One Candle, on Lori Norman's writer blog: StoryQuill conjured a cage that must have been so far up on my Ferris Wheel it was lost in the clouds. It's out of season. Random, totally. But, that's how my wheel rolls:
The door swung open to a long ago Christmas Eve when in a panic, I pulled off the highway to call Ronnie because I'd forgotten the menorah.
I'd called from a gas station pay phone because we didn't' have cell phone back then. Rosie (as we called Lexi back then) and Max (ever Max) were especially excited because that year Hanukkah and Christmas Eve were on the same day, so we NEEDED a menorah!
With the last name of Goldman, everyone but the few acquainted with the prominent "Catholic Goldmans" of Tulsa, assumed we were Jewish, and I, a non-practicing anything, with two half-Jewish as possible--considering the Jewish half was not their mother's half--children was committed to upholding all traditions. Fortunately, my dear friend and writing partner, Ronnie, a full-blood Jewess and, as it happens the first women in Oklahoma to have a Bat Mitzvah.
In addition to baking & decorating the best Hanukkah sugar cookies, was educated enough for both of us.
"You can use a potato!" Ronnie told me. She went on to explain how during the Holocaust, because Jews were not allowed to keep traditions, were, in truth, imprisoned or killed if any religious accouterments were discovered in their possession, they improvised: thus the Dreidel game, a secret way to study the Torah; the common potato, a secret menorah.
We stopped at a grocery story before we stopped for the night. And that night and for the following seven nights, light our potato menorah, said prayers, and opened gifts.
This photo is not mine, but this is including the birthday candles--sans the gold paint--what our menorah looked like.
In One Candle, Eve Bunting shares another grandmother's potato menorah story. Hers wasn't a Piggly-Wiggly supermarket russet, hers was stolen from a Buchenwald prison kitchen. Here's a snippet of the review:
“With a little stolen butter and a thread from Rose’s skirt placed in a hollow she’d carved out of the potato, and with a stolen match, they made a candle in their barracks on the first night of Hanukkah. ‘It lifted us to the stars,’Grandma says. ”
Up up up to the stars . . . And on the way, nudged my Ferris Wheel. The power of words: it takes so few to coax down a distant cage.
*Wait! Before the music plays and the wheel spins again: Be sure to check out Dani Sneed's book, THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE FERRIS WHEEL. about George Ferris and his World's Fair Wonder! You and every kid you know will be glad you did.
Thanks for reading!
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LISTEN!
/I’m not at home in my own home/
MY Life Is A Musical! Yes, it's true, Songs play in my head all the time. Almost any phrase suggests a song, or a line from one, sometimes an entire score.
And it's the title of a new musical comedy. I’m not like Parker, the lead in the show. No one around me burst into song or busts out dancing. I’d love that! Unfortunately, singers, dancers or otherwise, there is no one near. I am alone. Alone at a crossroad . . .
Cast from the play belting out a song in Parker's personal musical.
I saw My Life is A Musical at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. (You can see it too, if you hurry; show runs until Aug. 31.) That title is what drew me to the play--that and because my visitor Dawn suggested it. (That’s the Truth About Visitors…can’t deny them.) Here’s the blurb:
“MY LIFE IS A MUSICAL is about Parker, who isn’t like anyone else. When Parker wakes up in the morning and leaves his apartment, he hears people singing, he sees people dancing - and no other person on earth knows this is happening. Because Parker’s life is a musical. And Parker hates musicals.”
This morning, my fourth day back in Trinidad after being gone for more than 2 months, that line: I’m not at home in my own home/ from that song Listen sung by Beyonce in the movie version of Dreamgirls, is cycling in my head I’m not at home in my own home/
Have you ever noticed how, as soon as you share a problem with certain someones, they respond with a solution? Usually the perfect fix! Exactly what you need to do! According to them… and without you even-ever-asking for their advice, expert though it may be. (I know--squirm, squirm--I’m guilty of jumping in with the quick fix, too.)
Then why share our problems if we don’t want answers? Why not keep it to ourselves?
The answer is the title of that song; we want you to Listen!
Maybe more than that, we want to/need to talk it out. We know something wrong. But it’s all tangled up in other stuff. First, we need to figure out exactly what is the problem. And in order to do that, we often have to pull a situation apart, study it, turn it over, dissect it, chew it up and spit it back out in order to break apart to find out what it’s all about, Alfie. . .
Hashing out a problem with someone else is easier, more fun, maybe less painful, definitely more social acceptable than talking to ourselves.
But, but, but, all we want you to do is Listen, not solve.
This crazy life I’m living—bouncing from home to home, Tulsa and Texas, Westhampton Beach and Port of Spain—sounds exciting, but the truth is, it’s strange. I'm not feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys, but I'm close . . .
Wait! James was helping me pack in Vermont. Did he take it?
Have you ever been on vacation, and woken in the night and not known where you are? Walked the wrong way to the bathroom? (One long ago Christmas, my brother turned left instead of right, opened the door and peed on the furnace.) Looked everywhere for a certain blouse or dress, but couldn’t find it?
With part of my wardrobe there, the other part hanging here, and more still stuffed in my suitcase, that’s every day for me. It's frustrating, but it’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is, it's lonely. Unlike the song, I am alone in my own home/
STOP! – I feel your wheels turning, already thinking up solutions to my aloneness. Thinking how much better off I am that someone else—just, Listen!
I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m not alone, alone. I have somebody, lots of somebodies. . . Yeah, but. . . . But, I’m alone—now—and it doesn’t feel good, so . . .
See, this is what we do: Writers. This is why we write it: to figure it out. Folks are called CRAZY for talking to themselves. But, when we write to ourselves, it’s called work.
That being said, er, written, on with the song: Now I’ve gotta find my own . . .
Just in case you want to be like Parker, here is today's playlist:
- Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1P8SEJyaME
- Dreamgirls: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443489/
- Alfie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCZNzydsLzU
- Luckenbach Texas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXYsLhTUvBo
- Crazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na5Y9FxR0lg
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Play it Again, Pal! or 2:48 Minutes More
Settle your little ones in front of the monitor, click on an Author Read-Aloud video (below), and let them watch and listen while you enjoy some lazy time. Okay, you can view, too--if you promise to act OUR age!
Reruns played a huge part in my summertime's past. (And, good or bad, are the reason why Gilligan's Island, Petticoat Junction, Beverly Hillbillies, "Dah-dah-dah-DA-daaa/Dah-dah-da-DAHHHHHHH"* & "People Let Me Tell You Bout My Beeeesssst Friend**...are high on my personal playlist.) We never minded--frankly enjoyed--watching reruns. Still Do!
With that in mind, I'm rerunning my blog post FREE BABYSITTING from a few weeks past. For those of you who viewed it then, and aren't into reruns, take heed: If you scroll to the bottom, you'll find a SURPRISE!!!! 2.48 minutes more (Thanks to Ink In Motion) and a chance to win a sweet SURPRISE!!!!
Here's What You May Remember From the July 30th Episode of Kelly's Fishbowl:
Summertime is fun time. Summertime is laz time. Summertime is read-all-those-books-you-don't-have-time-for-other-times. Summertime is I-don't-have-an-original-thought-in-my-head time.
Here's something that addresses all those Summertimes, especially if you may have had a little too much sun or fun time and need some laz time:
FREE-ABSOLUTELY NO OBLIGATION--BABYSITTING SERVICE!
"We want to hear you read it!" they tell me. "How do you say:
“ Bom bom bom baaaa Ba ba ba booo Bo bo bo beee?”
“ Oogie, boogie, bah bah lou.”
“Glug . . . Glug . . . Glug . . .”
The wondering is over! Thanks to my nephew Will O Bennett who recorded me reading, and Ink In Motion for their video magic, Author Read-Alouds are now available on U-Tube.
So, here's my Summertime Free Babysitting Service:
Settle your little ones in front of the monitor, click on an Author Read-Aloud video (below), and let them watch and listen while you enjoy some lazy time. Okay, you can view, too--if you promise to act OUR age!
And a preview of coming attractions:
If all went well, you've enjoyed 12:49 + 2:48 minutes = MORE! free time.
Don't you feel terriffic!
P. S. Should you need more time: Teaching Guides, Activities & Puzzles for these books and others are downloadable from my website. Click on the ACTIVITIES tab.
BTW: Yes, it's Beethoven's 5th Symphony on the sousaphone courtesy of Curtis.
* ** Play "Name the Theme Song" Correctly match these theme song snippets with their associated TV programs, post the name of the show in the comments section and you'll win a sweet surprise! (One entry per reader; No limit on how many can win!)
Bonus prizes if you sing one!!
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Happy Tears, "The Gap," and Embracing Rudy
I’m clicker challenged. After my boy Max left for college, I'd phone him when Curtis was out of town. Not because I was lonely. Not because I missed him. Not to see what he was doing or how he was doing.
Max in Prescott, AZ (note the squatter behind him.)
But to ask how to play a movie (“Videos” we called them.)
I share this not to show what a heartless mother I was. But by way of an explanation as to why, from 10:30-midnight last night, I watched a football movie called “Rudy.*"
The only clicker I’ve mastered in our uber tech media system is the TV channel changer “Guide” button.
It was either Rudy, HGTV, Full House, Crime or Reality. Those were my choices. Faced with a pile of ironing and nursing a HGTV hangover, I opted for Rudy. By the final scene I was sniveling, slobbery, soggy mess of happy tears.
As I sniffled and dripped through the final credits, I found myself wishing it were replaying so I could watch it again. Which got me wondering:
“What about it made me so miserably, snottily, soggily happy?”
I’m Rudy. I'm not the 3rd of 14 children; dyslexic, or a 5'6" 165 lb. pip-squeak aspiring to play Notre Dame Football; nor would Sean Astin play me in a movie (I hope). But, when it comes to hopes and dreams, I’m Rudy.
“Everyone striving to do creative work—be that as a writer, artist, actor, et al—is a Rudy.”
Unless—UNTIL—we are recognized for our creative work, we are a Rudy. Every one of us is an underdog. We are the little engines they say “can’t.” We are too this; not enough that. We may be almost, but . . . We are wrong.
“And the biggest-baddest-hardest part of being a Rudy is that even after we are recognized for our creative work, we will still be Rudy.”
Because our appreciation for creative work is what draws us to do it, there is a disparity between our skill level and what we recognize as good—what Ira Glass calls “The Gap” in a vimeo of that title*. And because that drive to go farther, experiment, stretch is inherent to creators, our skill level will always chase our sense of taste, our appreciation. So while it can shrink, the Gap never goes away.
“We begin as Rudy, and unless we quit, we will finish as Rudy.”
That’s why watching Rudy brings on the Happy Tears. Because it is so darn hard, but that doesn't stop him. Rudy set a goal, fought his his way to it, and won.
He could. He did. So maybe we—all of us Rudys—can too!
So what’s a Rudy to do?
Here's Ira Glass's Advice on how to close the gap:
“ Do a lot of Work
Put Yourself on a Deadline
Know it takes a while
Fight your way through the doubts”
— Ira Glass from the vimeo (Link below)
Watch: Ira Glass on “The Gap”
Read: More about Rudy Ruettiger
LIsten: To the Rudy Theme Song.
Thanks for Reading!
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Twenty-Two and Counting . . .
Today, twenty-two years ago, my first day as Mrs. Bennett, was a scorching hot Tulsa Saturday. One of those hens be warned it's egg-frying HOT! Blistering feet HOT! Saturdays that are best spent waist-deep in a wallow.
Today, other than being Friday, I'm gardening same as I was then. Knowing it was going to be hot--what July 25th isn't?--in the garden was where I started today. Then, I started at the car wash because I hadn't let Curtis go through the car wash last night. Johnny B had helped the kids "Just Married" up his precious BMW with tin cans tied to the bumper, whipped cream signs and hearts on all the glass. (Traditionally folks use shaving cream, but Johnny is a restaurant dog.)
"It's bad luck to wash it the wedding day,' I told Curtis.
"it will stink like sour milk tomorrow if we don't," Curtis told me.
We compromised.
US back then, on our Honeymoon bike trip in the San Juan Islands
The morning after our wedding, I was in the garden digging up plants; this morning after our anniversary, I was in the garden planting plants. That was Tulsa; this is Westhampton Beach; that was then, this is now. Same song's wafting through the windows.
Chet Baker's "Funny, each time I fall in love/it's always you" is the song. "Let's Get Lost" is coming next. I know because this album (that's what we called them back then) followed by Handel's Water Music is the sound track of our courtship. It's the Cafe Ole' weekend morning music. We didn't meet at Cafe Ole' but that's where we found each other.
I ask Curtis if he picked that music on purpose, because he was remembering me waiting on him.
"If someone asked me 10 things that come to mind when I hear this music," he said, "You waiting tables in Cafe Ole' would not be one of them."
"Does it make you crave Ole' Hash or Huevos Rancheros?" I asked.
He shook his head. "It makes me want to make coffee," he answered. Transference?
Ours was a shotgun wedding of sorts. I'd been evicted from my house. I'd found another house to rent and had planned to move it, but Curtis--ever practical--and maybe, already, thinking marriage, decided why move twice--if I'd say yes."
We got married on a Friday at the Justice of Peace office in downtown Tulsa. "Which ceremony do you want" asked the JOP. We had a choice: The 3 minute quickie or 5 minute long "Ruth's Prayer" ceremony. We're only doing this once, we decided, let's make sure it sticks. So we opted for the long ceremony minus the Promises to "Obey" business.
Chelsie, several years older than she was back then. But she looks much the same then, back then, now . . . (this is from a dance recital.)
Lexi and Chelsie were flowers girls (we all had to have Laura Ashley flower girl dresses, of course),
Max was best man;
Barbara and Gene Johnson drove up from Houston to bear witness at our wedding as we had at theirs a few months earlier.
Max & Lexi with Barbara and Gene--back then! IThe photo is clear as a bell, it's our eyesight . . . don't see as well as we did back then. (Maybe it's a good thing?)
John, Joanne and Liz Kester were choir singers; Teri Fermo led the sing with "Going to the Chapel . . ." Everybody sang/everybody signed the certificate/everybody cheered. After, everybody feasted at McGill's Steak House--a celebration complete with flowers and cake courtesy of Barb and John. We have pictures--somewhere--Trinidad, Curtis's Mom's, Houston . . . one of those boxes.
Somewhere inside one of these pods on our driveway maybe. . .
That day, after I ccme in from the garden we finished packing up my household and moving it over to blend with Curtis. We found each other after both of us had moved away from Tulsa and returned having decided to stay.
But life doesn't always heed our decisions. After that came Houston, Indonesia, Trinidad to Westhampton Beach.
George called as I was coming in from the garden. "I'm on my way to your place with 4 guys," he tells me. "We're puling out your frigging big table today."
And so, 22 years later we're moving and unpacking again. Then across town; today across the driveway into our home.
Mixed in with the packing crates were several TV boxes Curtis has been saving. "Why does he have these?" George asked. "He keeps them to to repack the electronics when we move," I explained.
George yelled over to Curtis, "You're not moving again are you?"
Curtis laughed and said, "Hell, no!"
Twenty-two years, a day at a time, a month at a time, a box at a time, an adventure at a time... And Counting!
Whenever I roam through roses
And lately I often do
Funny, it's not a rose I touch
It's always you
Here's the link so you can have a listen: It's Always You, Chet Baker
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Why Paper Books?
“A paper book aids my concentration by offering to do nothing else but lie open in front of me, mute, until I rest my eyes upon it,”
I LOVE MY BOOKS!
“The question Isn’t what will books become in the world of electronic reading. The question is what will become of the readers we’ve been—quiet, thoughtful, patient, abstracted—in a world where interactive can be too temping to ignore.”
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A Pregnant Pause
As the millworkers sing in Carousel “June is bustin’ out all over…” Flowers are budding, birds are chirping, bees buzzing and as a recent grandmother to Ben,
Bennett experienced the wonders of Indepencence day: Parades, fireworks & watermelon!
Great aunt for the second time:
Welcome to the World Felicity Allain Smith, born June 9th, 2014.
And recently revealed gran-to-be:
Lexi & Ryan are expecting, their baby’s due the end of the year.
I have babies on the brain, literally and literate-ly.
They—Farmers in the know— say trees always produce best after a “hard” year (“hard” being either an especially cold winter or hot, dry summer). Which might be the reason for the largess . . . although I’m not questioning or complaining. Rather, I’m simply, joyfully, reveling…and pondering gestation:
Elephant gestation takes 547.9 – 669.6730 days (the longest period for mammals).
Salamanders—tiny as they are—about the same. And, considering it, size-for-size, mother discomfort, bulkiness, effort-wise, probably the same elephantian experience too.
Velvet worm—actually NOT a worm and NOT velvet—takes up to 456.553 days,
From conception to birth cat's gestation takes 58-65 days. (No wonder they're such hussies!)
Manatees 396 days on average.
Donkeys, "Jennys" 330-440 (with lots of variables), camels take 410ish.
Giraffes between 400-460, rhinos about the same, seals and sea lions: 330-350 days.
Whales and dolphins: 517.426 (on average with some sperm whales taking 578), humans: 268 days give or take . . .
As for novels??????
Cause for my literary revelry stems from a cluster of new books by writer friends. With one exception, all by classmates of mine from VCFA. As I have been there through all of these books since inception, in some cases offering a shoulder, always watching admiringly, I’ve declared myself “auntie” to them and as such entitled to muse:
Here are some of the Unreliable Narrators at VCFA last summer. B.R: Trinity, Cindy, Sarah, Barb, Cynthia; F.R: Tam, Kelly, Erin. I fully expect all to be published authors!
I’ll begin with the exceptional Russell J. Sanders, who I first met back in/around 2000 when he was a newly retired High School English/Theater teacher and wanna be author at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston. Russell recently celebrated the birth of his second novel, which is garnering excellent reviews, Special Effects (Dreamspinner Press, 2014): More about Russell:
How long did Special Effects take from idea to sale?
About 2191.45 days . . .
Gestation: about 2191.45 days (with, as Russell noted “ some stops and starts”
Erin Moulton’s third novel came out this June. This being her third, one might think the whole “birthing a novel” thing would have lost its novelty for her. Maybe that’s why Erin “made things interesting” this year, but combining the birth of her newest novel, Chasing the Milky Way, with the birth of her first human baby, Tucker! Oh, yeah, and if that wasn’t excitement enough, timing it all to coincide with the date her new manuscript for her work in progress was due. More about Erin:
Gestation: It's a bit of a blurrrrrr
Jennifer Wolf Kam's path has been by award-hopping to publication! A 3-time finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing, Jen first won publication of her ghost story, White House, in Hunger Mountain. Spectacularly, publication of her debut novel came as a result of writing 2 of 5 finalist in the NAESP 2013 Children’s Book Contest. More about Jen!
Gestation: 5 years: 1826.21 days
Sarah Tomp, author of my often lauded, put-it-back-in-print fav, The Red, White and Blue Goodbye, had a relatively easy time of it with her debut moonshine novel, My Best Everything, which “walks the line between toxic and intoxicating” The gestation time was only 1 1/2 years=547.9632996 days! More about Sarah:
Gestation: about 1 ½ years: 547.863298611 days
Tamera Ellis Smith, who’s writing credits include a first-person essay in BREAK THESE RULES: 35 YA Writers on Speaking Up, Standing Out, and Being Yourself, welcomes her debut novel Another Kind of Hurricane, August 2015. (Publication is scheduled to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.) Here's More about Tam!
So, Tam, how long did it take to write Another Kind of Hurricane?: Almost 9 years . . . 3287.18 days, with “A lot of starts and stops along the way. Sometimes big stops.”
Last but not least for this crop: Teresa Harris, author of the spunky picture book, Summer Jackson: Grown-Up, won two prizes (one for humor) for this novel-in-progress while we were still at VCFA.
Teresa's WIP, acquired by Clarion, is forthcoming (I could not find a pub date on the web.) So by my calculations, gestation time: 5.6 years=2045.36 days. However, if you count post-sale as gestation,* the interview announcing the sale was Feb of 2012 and Teresa’s book hasn’t been published yet, gestation's is ongoing. So make that 2921.94 and counting . . . More about Teresa
Why the disparity?
I like to think of it in shark terms. Sharks are K-selected reproducers, (as are, cats aside, the other animals noted above.) Rather than producing a large number of poorly developed offspring, “they produce a small number of well-developed young.” In this way offering their offspring the best possible chances of surviving. Additionally, in these animals, birth can be delayed depending on a variety of external pressures.
That’s why I’m thinking shark. Maybe it isn’t’ about how badly we want to publish . . . what brilliant writers we are . . . the fantastic story premise we’ve dreamed up . . . Or about everyone, anyone, our expectations. Maybe there are other forces beyond our control determining how long it takes.
““You can feel it in your heart/
You can see it in the ground/
You can see it in the trees/
You can smell it in the breeze/
Look around! Look around! Look around!””
* The question of whether a book is “gestating” in that time between being sold and publication is up for debate. Might this time be the equivalent of Novel neo-natal?--It certainly adds to the w-a-i-t-i-n-g t-i-m-e. . . tick-tock
Care to give a little listen?? JUNE IS BUSTIN' OUT ALL OVER on Utube
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