I can’t find an image link for him yet, so you’ll have to actually visit the site to see.
I love him. I LOVE him. David Goldin did NOT pluck him right out of my brain. He went somewhere way better!
Ain’t he adorable? (or “adububble” as Lew might say)
Do you remember Ruth M. Arthur? Well I do. I loved her books. Adored them.
But they are all out of print, I think.
So I wondered what it would take to harass the right people, see if we could maybe bring them back. Do you think it might be possible?
Let’s start with A Candle in Her Room. Remember Dido? I still shiver when I think of her.
I have no idea how to go about this. Arthur died in 1979. I don’t know who controls her estate, or even if Macmillan was the last edition. (on Worldcat it looks like this is the last edition) But it seems crazy to me that a dark weird magical novel like this is out of print. I’m pretty sure it would sell.
Wouldn’t it?
Anyone have any ideas on where to begin? Or know anything? Since as I’ve already admitted, I haven’t the first clue.
But I’m superexcited. I’ve never been blurbed before, and I just found out that…
Penny Dreadful is being blurbed by Rebecca Stead and Jennifer Holm!
AND
Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher is being blurbed by Lemony Snicket!!!
Des that make you want to add them to your Goodreads list? Does it? Huh? Huh?
(in other news, it is cold and gray and Lew refuses to potty-train and my house is still a mess. BUT SO WHAT!)
Today, I’m thrilled to be part of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour. Joining me is Elka Weber, author of the THE YANKEE AT THE SEDER, which was published by (my own darling) Tricycle, and is an Honor Award Winner for 2010.
Everyone… welcome Elka, and enjoy the interview…
Hey, Elka! Lovely to have you here, and huge congrats on your honor! To begin with, I wonder if you can tell us how/why you struck upon the idea for this book. I think you grew up in Canada, right? Why’d you choose the American Civil War as the backdrop for a Passover story?
Thanks, great to have landed in such a lovely part of cyberspace.
The idea for The Yankee at the Seder had actually been buzzing around in my head for about thirty years. I did grow up in Montreal, Canada, but my father, who was a rabbi, was originally from the US. One year at the Seder he told us the small true story that is the historical basis for The Yankee at the Seder. I remember thinking, Boy, that must have been an awkward meal. The book grew from there.
In any case, the American Civil War is a perfect setting for a Passover story. People at the time regularly used the imagery of the enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt when they talked politics. The Passover story is THE story of slavery and redemption.
For American Jews celebrating Passover, looking back to the Civil War makes perfect sense. In every generation, we are supposed to imagine that we ourselves were liberated from Egypt. Not that easy, is it? Just close your eyes and think “slavery”. For most of us, the first image that comes to mind is not ancient Egypt but the antebellum south. So I wanted to use that connection to understand the Passover story and make it real.
Not unrelated, as an author and a mom, I have particular interest in books that help us expand– as yours does–our idea of “Jewish books for kids”, and our understanding of “The Jewish Experience” more generally. I wonder what a “Jewish story” was growing up at your house? And what a “Jewish story” is like for your own kids?
I think there are two kinds of Jewish stories. One is the overtly Jewish story – like Yankee at the Seder – that has Jewish themes and Jewish characters. Every year, more and more quality Jewish books are published (a shout out to all the other Sidney Taylor winners and to Baxter!), and I think it’s amazing to be a part of that trend. But I think it’s a mistake to restrict our understanding of a “Jewish story” to those books that deal with Jewish themes.
There is definitely another kind of Jewish story, and that’s just good literature. The Jewishness there isn’t in the content of the book. It’s in the mindset of the reader. Every time you open a book, you bring your values and experiences to what you read. Children who’ve been exposed to Jewish values naturally approach literature through a Jewish lens.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house filled with good books, and I’ve tried to do the same for my children. I’ve got five of them, ranging in age from 9 to 18, so I’ve done my share of reading aloud and buying kids’ books. And I think over the years I’ve come to see that the classics endure because they speak to children’s better natures.
Charlotte’s Web is about fighting for life in the face of adversity. Alice in Wonderland is about self-awareness. The Magic Tollbooth is about not letting the little stuff get in the way of living. Goodnight Moon is about love and security. The Harry Potter books are about finding your own strength and standing up for goodness in a complicated world. These are values that shape a Jewish life.
Wow. Good answer.
Now, I’d love to know how you felt about the art in the book, as you watched it take shape. Did it match up to the images in your head? If not, how was it different?
I consider myself really lucky to have worked with Adam Gustavson. Tricycle Press did a great bit of matchmaking in pairing my words with his illustrations. Here’s how I know: as I wrote the book I had absolutely no idea what the narrator would look like. Then I got Adam’s illustrations and said, “Yup, that’s Jacob.” I recognized him without even knowing why.
Adam’s illustrations actually made the book better than the one I wrote. The Yankee at the Seder is about seeing the world from a different point of view, and Adam managed to express that by painting from unexpected perspectives.
Adam’s also a stickler for historical accuracy (and you have to be when you’re dealing with the Civil War because there are an awful lot of Civil War buffs out there). He bought period clothing to see how it would look on a character. The pattern on the rug in the hall is authentic. There is nothing in the book that couldn’t be found in Virginia in 1865. Even the readers who don’t pay much attention to historical accuracy will tell you there’s a sort of magical quality to the illustrations. It’s because they transport you to a different time.
(I do think the book can stand on its own without illustrations. In fact, I’m really gratified to know that it’s just been rendered into Braille.)
Braille!
I’m excited about all the new things happening in Jewish kidlit right now. I wonder if– as part of that trend– you you’d be willing to share a few ideas for things you’re working on, or works in progress. What’s the wackiest Jewish pickture book you can imagine wanting to write? They book you’d liketo write, but have a hard time imagining anyone would publish?
As you say, this is an exciting time in Jewish kidlit. The Jewish community in the US has always been diverse, but we’ve gotten better at reflecting that reality. Children’s literature in general grows more sophisticated and Jewish literature is part of that larger trend. I just hope we don’t get too sophisticated to have fun.
My next book (One Little Chicken, June 2011) is a retelling of a story in the Talmud, but with a slight twist. It’s about a rabbi who was so committed to returning a lost chicken that he sells the eggs, invests the proceeds and ends up with a houseful of animals before the original owner shows up to claim his one little chicken. In my telling, the story gets a little antic toward the end.
The wackiest Jewish picture book I’d love to write would be What Do You Mean, You Don’t Want Seconds? starring feisty Jewish grandmothers from different times and places defending their traditional cooking. Naturally, it would be narrated by a piece of gefilte fish and end up in an all-out food fight at the central bus station in Jerusalem.
I am also writing for adults. I’ve finished a book about the last voyage of Henry Hudson. His men mutinied and set him adrift in the Arctic in 1611 and he was never heard from again. There’s nothing explicitly Jewish in the book but the question of what drives good men to evil deeds is most definitely a religious issue.
I was really impressed with the end of Yankee at the Seder. I was surprised and delighted at your ability to resist a pat ending. I wondered if you could talk about that choice. Did it just come out that way? Or did you work to end it in a slightly unresolved manner?
Some stories don’t lend themselves to pat endings.
The Civil War left hundreds of thousands dead and devastated the South. The resentment didn’t go away overnight just because the war ended. Ask any southerner.
It’s wonderful when people try to bond over what they’ve got in common, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to agree about everything. I’m living with my family in Israel this year, so all I have to do is look around the neighborhood to realize that some issues are too big to get resolved by sitting down to a meal together.
I also know, as a mother and as a writer, that you don’t do children any favors by ignoring the complexities in this world. What helps is discussing them in a safe and loving way. In Yankee at the Seder, the narrator Jacob is ten years old. He’s just old enough to notice that not all the grownups in his life see the world in the same way. After all, here on his doorstep is a Jew who fought for the Yankees! Jacob’s mother invited the Union soldier into their house; his father might not have done the same. That’s an unsettling realization but it paves the way for a very important step. Soon Jacob will be able to interpret events on his own, and sometimes his conclusions will be different from those of his parents. That’s called growing up, and it’s kind of complicated.
So the short answer is – yes, I wanted to be as honest as I could and I wanted to leave room for everyone in the story to move on. My favorite books are the ones that leave me wondering what’s next for the characters.
Elka, I can’t tell you how interesting and real and honest this has been for me as an interviewer. Thanks so much!
And CONGRATS!
Mrs. Piggle Wigggle sipped her glass of chardonnay. She stared through her upside down window, and out into the empty street beyond. Then she glanced at the clock over the mantle. Only 3:16?
Well, she figured, surely it’s five oclock somewhere…
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle polished off the glass and reached for the bottle with a sigh. It had been a good ten years since anyone—any lonely kids or harried parents—had come knocking at her door. So really, what difference could it possibly make if she had one more teensy tiny glass?
Next morning, still wearing her daytime apron and one lonely little black highheeled shoe, her hair a fright, she sat up from the hearthrug where she’d spent the night, and remembered. With a groan she sat up and massaged her temples. “Oh, my!” she said. “Oooch!”
Then, being an efficient sort of woman, she showered, changed her clothes, put the kettle on, brewed herself a cup of strong tea, and reached into her spice cupboard for an old yellowed packet that read, “The naughty-mommy tipsy-topsy cure.”
She shook the silvery lilac powder into her mug and took a deep gulp of the elixir. Then, as the pain in her head began to subside, as the world jumped into focus, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle resolved to fix things. She resolved to take the bull by the horns! She decided that today, she would do something she had never done before. She would make some calls.
Right after she took a bubble bath, and maybe a little nap.
**
That afternoon, refreshed and renewed, in a nice clean apron, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle picked up the phone to call some of her old regulars.
“Hello?” she said on her first try. “Mrs. Harroway? This is Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!”
“Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!” cried Mrs. Harroway. “How lovely to hear from you. It’s been years, dahling—simply years!”
“Yes, well,” said Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. “That’s what I’m calling about. “You see, business has been rather slow over here, and I wondered if you might have any problems to be solved? Any interrupters? Any dawdlers? Any issues I could help you with”
Mrs. Harroway laughed. “Goodness, no!” she said. “Of course, Fetlock is all grown up now, so we’re done worrying about him. And Bloom, his little girl, has never given us the littlest bit of trouble.”
“No trouble at all?” asked Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, puzzled. What child on earth, she wondered, has never been a bit of trouble?
“Not one whit,” tittered Mrs. Harroway. “When she started biting her nails, Fetlock just took her to the doctor and he prescribed a lovely medication that made her into a perfect doll. We’ve never had a problem since! She’s so good. Extremely docile. Like nothing you’ve seen.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. “Oh.”
“You know, though,” added Mrs. Harroway, “Now that I think about it, you might call my neighbor, Mrs. Muskrat! Her son Chard is a holy terror He’s been kicked out of four schools. For biting! And language!”
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle perked right up when she heard that. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “The information is much appreciated. I’ll call her right away!”
But when she did, she wasn’t quite sure what to say. She’d never cold-called a customer before. She’d never had to.
“Hello?” she tried. “Mrs. Muskrat? This is Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. I heard that you might have a problem I could help you with?”
“A problem?” said the tired-sounding woman. “Are you an exterminator? A landscaper? Has the yard grown too high? What exactly do you mean by problem?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, trying to be tactful. “You see, I specialize in helping children with their more, ahh, difficult traits. Their more challenging aspects…”
“Why on earth would I need help with my children?” asked Mrs. Muskrat. She sounded as baffled as she sounded worn-down.
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle wasn’t quite sure how best to proceed. “Well. I, ahh, I heard that your son has had some recent trouble. In school?”
“Oh that,” said Mrs. Muskrat with a sigh. “People just don’t understand my little Chard. He’s got a ton of creative energy. He’s not an in-the-box thinker. He’s a real boy, and schools can be so closedminded, don’t you think? The other children can be so oversensitive! And people can be so limiting with their silly personal boundaries.”
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but it didn’t matter, because just as she opened her mouth to speak, she heard a terrible noise through the phone—a sound of screaming, followed by a loud bang.
“I should be going,” said Mrs. Muskrat breathlessly, moments before slamming down the phone.
And one by one, call after call, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle hit dead ends.
Mrs. Coffeecake said that her twins, Tippy and Tappy, had been diagnosed by an expert for their sensitivity to certain colors, and she didn’t think a babysitter like Mrs. Piggle Wiggle should meddle, in case her methods weren’t the same as those of the esteemed medical professional.
Mrs. Macaroon said that her son, Marmite, had indeed a recent incident with a knife, but it wasn’t really his fault, because he was a Capricorn, and anyway that they were addressing that problem with a dietary regimen that required he not leave the house.
Mrs. Ballbearing informed Mrs. Piggle Wiggle that her daughter, Josiepie, had been dealing with some self-esteem issues last year, but that they’d fixed the problem easily.
“Really? How?” asked Mirs. Piggle Wiggle.
“It was the simplest thing!” chortled Mrs. Ballbearing. “We discovered that as long as we don’t ask Josiepie to do anything she doesn’t already do well, she’s as confident as anyone! Provided, of course, that she remains surrounded only by family and close reliable friends and there are no loud noises.”
And so it was at every house she called. Plenty of children were gifted and special, requiring special tutoring and extracurricular classes. Other children had very specific medical diagnoses that required trained professionals and medications. But most of the parents she spoke with swore up and down that their own children were quite perfect, though sometimes misunderstood by the world at large, on account of their delightful quirks and intense personalities. With each call, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle grew more frustrated. It seemed that bad behavior had simply disappeared.
On her seventeenth and final call, Mrs. Piggle at last cried out in frustration, “But Mrs. Sassafras, surely there’s something that could be improved about your little Sunshine! Perhaps I could help her work on a small thing like her table manners?”
To which Mrs. Sassafras responded in a condescending tone, “Oh, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. We do not embrace the idea of table manners in our house. This is an important part of our parenting philosophy.” Then she hung up.
Parenting philosophies? Mrs. Piggle Wiggle knew she was in over her head. So she sadly hung the old rotary phone in its cradle, crossed the room, rooted through Mr. Piggle Wiggle’s old sea chest, and emerged with what appeared to be a pack of cigarettes in her hand. Then she stepped out onto the porch and sat down in an old wicker chair. She drew out what looked like an ordinary cigarette, struck a match, and inhaled deeply, staring up at the sky.
But then, she heard a voice. A teeny tiny voice, coming from the tree above her porch roof.
“Jeex! You shouldn’t smoke cigarettes,” said the voice. “They will kill you dead.” A moment later, a small girl climbed down from the tree.”
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle blew a smoke ring. “They aren’t cigarettes,” said Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, holding up the pack. “They’re prescribed. See!”
The girl walked over towards the porch and peered curiously at the pack, which read, “Relaxo-sticks: In case of absolute-despair-itis.”
“They look ‘zactly like cigarettes to me,” said the girl, squinting at Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. “I think you’re just taking something you don’t like to fess up to, and renaming it, to make yourself feel better.”
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle laughed and drew on her Relaxo-stick again. “Smart kid,” she said, adding, “Who are you, and where did you come from?”
“I’m Jenny,” said the girl. “I ran away from home. My parents suck.”
“I don’t doubt it, my dear,” said Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. “I do not doubt it one bit. She stubbed out her Relaxo-stick, and stood up. “I don’t suppose, Jenny, you’d like to join me for a tea party? With cookies?”
“I’m not supposed to drink tea,” said Jenny, shaking her head and disappointing Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to no end. “Or eat sugar.” But then she added, “However, I’m also not supposed to talk to strangers, and I’m already doing that, so sure! Why not? What the hell!”
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle opened the door and ushered Jenny inside, not even bothering to correct the child’s foul language. Times had changed. Her day was done. And anyway, she’d probably be arrested if she gave the child a dose of “cuss-be-gone” or even a stern talking-to.
But more than that, she found that she didn’t want to fix Jenny. Not at all. Jenny might well be the only plain-old-badly-behaved child left in the world. The final inheritor of a grand old tradition. The last of a dying breed.
It was enough—just to have her to tea.
I just wrote a big long post, and then took it down. I felt too scared. Too superstitious to write about all the things I’m grateful for, all the things this decade has brought me. This wonderful wonderful decade. I’m sad to see her go.
Instead, I’ll talk about where I was ten years ago, for a minute.
On December 31, 1999 I was depressed. Or confused. Something like it. Rabid. I was sadly rabid. Too unhappy to see clearly. Too bewildered to think about other people. I couldn’t stop shaking and dancing and shaking. My life was at its messiest, most confusing point thus far.
I was living in Iowa, in a cold apartment, with a roommate I didn’t know very well. I was in the process of ending (and oh, what a process! Oh, what an ending!) the hardest relationship of my life. Which meant a great deal to me then. I was destroyed by it all. I was drinking a lot of whiskey (see above).
I was wanting kids, feeling that pull, but I knew that whiskeydrunk rabid dogs make poor mothers. Which only made me feel worse. I was unsuitable for the things I thought I wanted most.
I was getting ready to finish my MFA, but I wasn’t writing much. I was listening to a lot of Lucinda Williams and feeling like she made a ton of sense.
Ha! When Lucinda Williams is making sense to you, find a therapist!
I was on the cusp, the brink… but I could only feel that it was an edge. Funny that–the difference between an edge and a brink.
I didn’t know what I was tipping over into. I had just met the man who would become my husband, but we probably hadn’t spoken 100 words to each other. I had just begun to think about genres outside poetry, but hadn’t found my genre yet. I was waiting for something to change. Grasping at straws.
Then, painfully, slowly, it all tipped, and I slid into what is now my life. It was a bumpy ride, but it happened, which is all that matters now.
One year later, I was with Chris. Three years later, I was writing Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, Five years later I was in Atlanta. Then I was a mom! A mom again! Publishing poetry! Publishing books for kids! Finding a career, my footing. And so… and so…
Here I am, now, looking back, and wishing I could send a message to that sad girl I was. At twenty five I was buying a pair of sturdy hiking boots and getting ready to disappear into the universe, because I felt like I had nothing. Really! That’s what I did–bought boots. I figured as long as I had sturdy boots, I’d be okay.
I want to say to my old sad self that the answer is always around the corner. That change is inevitable. That almost all edges…
…turn out to be brinks.
So I say goodbye, now, to this decade, the decade, my favorite decade. So far.
And I will toast departure as I toasted her arrival.
With whiskey (see above)!
No cover yet or anything, and the art I have isn’t official, so I can’t even post it here. But LOOK! BAXTER, THE PIG WHO WANTED TO BE KOSHER is coming to a bookstore (or progressive/inclusive Jewish library) near you…
Last night I went to see the amazing Neil Gaiman. I was prepared for him to be NOT WORTH IT, as huge events for celebrity-type-writers are often NOT WORTH IT. Celebrities can coast.
But this guy doesn’t. Really, he was gracious and honest and engaged with the audience. He’s a great great reader of his own work, and good on his feet. He seemed to be a truth-teller, fully reacting in the moment, and he played well to the hoards of clove-smoking college kids and the small children running around too. He’s a pro, and this was a performance for sure, but it wasn’t at all canned. Really, it was a stellar event.
Hurrah for Neil, and Hurrah for the nice folks at Little Shop of Stories, who regularly work magic!
But the thing I took away from the event, more than anything, was a thought about these here interwebs of ours. See, in the Q&A portion of the evening, someone asked Neil about “the line.” They wanted to know how he draws a line between his public (social networking) persona and his personal life.
His response (I’m paraphrasing) was that he can’t tell us what the line is, but that he knows it when he sees it. However, he added, his girlfriend (Amanda Palmer) draws the line 2.5 miles after he does. He joked about that a little, and then moved on…
But this got me thinking. What’s the line? For me, what’s the line?
See, in my own life I’m the Amanda Palmer (minus the sexy lingerie and hoards of fans). I only mean to say that I’m the one who draws the line 2.5 miles down he road. My first blog (back in 2001) was called Autobiography of Lost Loves, OR The Particular Boots I’ve Knocked (cringeworthy, I know…) It led to a lot of uncomfortable situations, and taught me a lot about what I wanted to reveal/conceal. In the radio commentaries I’ve done and the poems I’ve published, I’ve made these same missteps from time to time. But I try to learn from them. Because while I don’t seem to have any qualms about embarrassing myself, I do feel bad when I reveal secrets and stories about the people I love. Or even the people I loathe.
Plus, my husband is an especially private person. Which is why you don’t hear much about him here.
So I thought that I’d share with you the three things I consider before I reveal something online, through this blog, or on Twitter or Facebook:
1. Is it MY story? Obviously, people’s lives intersect, and we do share stories, but if I feel a story belongs more to someone else than to me, I tend to leave it out. Like, a story about how MY pants came off on the subway is MINE. But a story about how YOUR pants came off while I was standing next to you is YOUR story. If I use it, I’ll probably change names and places. I’ll obscure the details. (Which is hard with a husband or a sister. I can’t say, “One of my many husbands… but I won’t tell you which…”) If the tramp stamp above is MY new tattoo, I can tweet it. If it belongs to my best-friend-with-a-minister-daddy, I’d probably better not.
2. Is it a story I’d share with my pediatrician? With social networking, I tend to have a specific reader in mind. Jenny is pretty much my smartest, funniest, best online friend, and when I’m trying to be funny or clever, she’s who I have in mind as a reader. But she’s not who I have to worry about, is she? She’s much less offendable than, say, my Grandmother’s neighbor, or my stodgy English lit professor from college. AND THEY ARE ALL READING BLOGS! Whoever it is that you least want to read your Twitter feed will be the person who does. So I find it’s helpful to think of someone I’m careful in front of, someone I hope thinks well of me, and ask if I want them reading my posts… (Hi, Dr. Herrmann!)
3. Is it funny or smart? This is a very basic rule of writing, but it REEEEEEALLY extends to blogland. If you are planning to offend someone by writing something dirty or naughty or secret, for God’s sake, do it well! It is one thing to tell the world about your mother’s underpants in your dark, brilliant novel, and quite another to get tipsy on Hot Damn and text all your friends about those same leather panties. If you win a Pulitzer, your mother will probably find a way to understand. If the text gets forwarded to her boss, who points out that you don’t know how to spell the word LETTHER or the word UNDERPANTZ, she is less likely to forgive you anytime soon.
Well, that’s it. Thats what I got. Be brilliant, be careful and be respectful of the line between your life and the lives of other people, who might not like to tell the word all their secrets.
But also, I’ll add that people do get easily offended, and if you’re doing your best to respect them, you can’t beat yourself up for every offense. As private as my husband is, when I get worried about whether I might have upset someone with something I’ve written, he reminds me, “Are they mad because you said it, or mad because it’s true?”
By this he means, I think, that if I’m respectfully telling the truth as I see it, I should stand behind what I’ve said.
This helps a lot when I’ve said something generally irritating to many people, and I’m getting floods of hatemail. It does!
Anyone have rules to add?
Today, in the comment boxes at Heavy Medal, someone brought up the inconsistent quality of Kate DiCamillo’s books.
Which is funny, because it’s not like Kate’s THAT inconsistent. I mean, she hasn’t written anything bad. I myself like Winn Dixie better than Edward Tulane, but she certainly hasn’t had any major failures.
Some author are REALLY inconsistent. Try reading Owen Meany, followed by the Fourth Hand.
But I want to use the comment as a jumping off point, to talk about how we set our expectations for authors.
See, here’s the thing… when you cook dinner, sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s less good. Right? But if you stick to recipes you know by heart and eat the same casserole each week, you’re likely to turn out a similar product nightly. You’ll become a “solid” cook. People will know what to expect from your crock pot.
So, what happens when you experiment a lot? If you buy an Eritrean Cookbook, or decide to do some gluten free baking? If you add cinnamon to your chili or hot peppers to your pie? Likely, you’ll end up broadening everyone’s palate, but you’ll also end up with some disasters… if you’re VERY lucky you’ll strike gold once in a while.
Writing is like that. The further an author strays from their memorized recipes, the likelier they are to grow and learn, AND the likelier they are to make a big damn mess.
I’ve always been a writer who would rather make 99 messes to discover or learn one new thing. I can prove this, easily, by showing you the 40 unpublished picture books I’ve written, the novel I didn’t finish, or the two full-length poetry collections that will never see light of day. Maybe it’s because I’m a poet, and poets do that, start a lot of things they won’t finish. Dabble. Play. But that’s how I work. I don’t think about the end result very much when I attempt something. That’s why they’re attempts.
But here’s the catch: novelists get paid to finish books, not start them. Often they contract to write a book before they’ve finished a draft. And when you’ve already been paid for something, and you’ve hammered away at it for a year or more, it’s much harder to shove it in a drawer. A DiCamillo or Creech book, even an “inconsistent” one, is worth buckets of money. Buckets! How often do you toss buckets of money away?
The Fourth Hand was worth a bucket of money to a lot of people. I have to assume John Irving knew it was no Garp, and no Owen Meany. He’s no dummy. But it’s hard to imagine him saying to his editor, “Yeah this one kind of blows. Can I get a do-over?” I mean, it’s a looooong book. So it is that (I assume) the less-than-awesome book gets published. Because he’d been paid for it. Because it was worth money. Because Irving was tired. And he needed to clean his desk and start the NEXT book.
It’s always about the next book.
Now, I have no idea what any other writer might say about their work, but I will tell you that I have personally had some moments of great fear while writing my novels– fear that each one isn’t better than the last. Fear that I’ll be compared to myself, and found wanting. That upsets me. I can live with the idea that I’m no Roald Dahl. But I quake at the thought of people reading Penny Dreadful and saying, “Wow. I really liked Any Which Wall, but this sucks. I wonder what happened…”
If people feel that way, I’ll tell you exactly how such a thing might happen… an author leaves the recipe they know. They try something new.
In the case of Penny Dreadful, I’ve abandoned my intrusive narrator. I’ve abandoned the drama of magic. I’ve left certain tricks behind, in hopes of learning something new. In hopes of writing more real. I’m trying to pull a Velveteen Rabbit Not because there was anything wrong with what I did last time. Just because it’s WHAT I DID LAST TIME!
And in the next book, the one I’m working on now, I’m writing in first person, and attempting to address a very painful experience in my own life–divorce– which isn’t something I’ve ever done before. This next book, Bigger Than a Breadbox, is something that feels totally different, and weird and hard. It’s a difficult lessons, and it may bomb completely. I’m terribly afraid I can’t pull it off.
But that’s what I think I’m supposed to do, as a writer. Risk stuff. Learn stuff. Maybe bomb.
I hope. I pray. I really do. That each book will be better than the last. That each book will please my readers. But the more I push myself, the likelier I am to disappoint people…
And that’s, I think, my job.
Happy Hanukkah!