When a Grandchild Dies

Thoughts from 2011 #WLTcon

June 15, 2011 by admin

The Writers’ League of Texas held its annual Agents and Editors conference this past weekend in Austin, Texas. I, along with a few hundred of my new best friends, made the trek to attend workshops, make new friends, and pitch to agents. This was my second conference; I attended two years ago. In those two years, a lot has changed!

Much of the focus has moved to social media as a way of branding and marketing a writer’s work. A “tweet-up” allowed attendees to tweet their questions about publishing, and I learned that many agents LOVE Twitter. I’m still not sure about it, but if the agents are using it and sharing publishing information, I’m happy to dive in. Previously, my tweets were occasional, uncertain, and inconsistent. Now, I’m in the know–at least a little bit! I’m now following several attendees, including said agents, and it’s a great way to get information about books, blogs, agents, and writing workshops.

When I attended two years ago, I was trying to decide if I wanted to publish Patchwork and Ornament traditionally or independently. I am glad I chose the latter because it allowed me to print the book before my father-in-law died, allowing him to see and feel the book, read the reviews, and watch it win an Indie Excellence award. I made a fundamental mistake, though, in not hiring a PR service to help me market the book.

When I published When a Grandchild Dies, I had a built-in audience. Between Amazon and Centering Corporation, a publisher and seller of bereavement books, my first self-publishing efforts were more successful than many, and I took it for granted that I had some PR skills. However, Patchwork has not fared as well. Now, having attended WLTcon, I have some leads on PR firms that can help me market my current project and perhaps resurrect Patchwork. These firms work specifically with authors and small publishers, so I will look into them further now that I am home.

I had my first-ever pitch session with Amy Burkhardt of Kimberley Cameron & Associates. Amy represented The Safe Food Handbook by Heli Perrett, where I learned never to eat raw sprouts–just in time to hear about the German e. coli outbreak attributed to raw sprouts. But I digress. The agency also represents women’s fiction, including Free to a Good Home by Eve Marie Mont, which I loved. Amy comes across as reserved and quiet, which helped put me at ease, or at least as at ease as was possible. The good news? She asked for a partial manuscript! Read the submission guidelines, she advised me, and I heard this message frequently throughout the weekend. Agents will not review manuscripts where the author could not be bothered to read the guidelines.

The best part of the conference, other than hanging with other writers, was the optimism of those representing the industry. Times are tough, and it’s harder to sell books these days, but a lot of dedicated people are keeping the faith and working hard. Their passion remains strong, and for that I am grateful.

So, What Else Do You Do?

May 25, 2011 by admin

My late mother-in-law, Jenny Feldman, left behind an extensive body of artwork that she made long after she gave up the dream of getting recognition as an artist. Even when her hands hurt too much to make large works, she adapted by making little spiral-bound books of drawings. At some point in her life, though, she tired of what she called the “fine arts slog” of promoting her work and instead, made art that pleased her. Some of that artwork covers our walls, and we are proud to show off our Jenny Feldman Originals.

I shared her writings in Patchwork and Ornament: A Woman’s Journey of Life, Love, and Art, in part because I loved her, in part because I found her writing compelling, and perhaps, to a larger degree, because I wanted her to have some of the recognition that eluded her in life. I wanted that for her because I want that for me. Perhaps that isn’t the highest and best motive, but I think any writer or artist would understand.

Sitting each day at my computer, I write new work and polish existing work, knowing that much of what I do may never see the light of day. My work is less visible than Jenny’s, stored on computers and websites, but it’s a body of work that continues to grow. Will it sell? I don’t know. I will do what I can to make it so. I will make the best work I can and, if I don’t find a publisher, will put it online as e-books and podcasts in hopes of building an audience.

Whenever I meet someone knew, and they ask me what I do, I explain that I’m a writer. They always ask, “What do you write?” closely followed by, “And what else do you do?” When I went to an office every day, miserable though I was, no one ever asked me “what else do you do?” They accepted that I had a full-time job. Well, I work harder as a writer than I ever did on the job. Each morning I get up and work, writing and polishing. I contribute and submit to a critique group. I read writing books. I read endless novels, some of them not very good, to learn my craft. I blog to get in more writing practice. My husband, a playwright when he isn’t writing computer programs, understands. Writing is a profession and a practice, but for many of us, the work that we do goes unnoticed, even by family and friends.

So why do it, if there is, for most writers, little respect or money involved? What keeps us going when we have little to show for our efforts, including recognition of those efforts?

The other day I received a note from a grandmother in Massachusetts ordering a copy of When a Grandchild Dies. Her granddaughter, she explained, died at six months, and would I please send her a copy of the book? I knew that though my audience is small, I have felt much affection for those grandparents who sent me notes and told me their stories. People have told me that they passed the book around in their family so everyone could read it, and it helped them get through the pain. These grandparents may never realize how often their outreach to me has pulled me from a writer’s funk.

Today I pulled out a notebook from a novel writing class I attended a few years ago, and some loose pages fell out. When I looked at them, they were lists of possible agents, more people to research and query. Despite my moments of discouragement, I still felt hope when I saw the names. I took it as a message from my teacher, and perhaps a greater teacher, not to give up. Publication may never happen, but what if it didn’t only because I didn’t try hard enough? I don’t have enough rejections to say that I’m done.

Mostly, though, I write because that’s what I do. That is how I was hooked up from the beginning of my life, though it took decades for me to understand this. I feel better. I’m less cranky and more loving with my family. I feel alive. Maybe no one will ever know my characters, but I know them and love them as though they were real people. I laugh with them, weep with them, and sometimes get angry with them, but I can’t wait to get together with them when I get up in the morning. When I fall asleep at night, I ask questions about the story so that my mind can work in my sleep to come up with answers to plot dilemmas.

This morning I finished yet another draft of Change of Plans. Two weeks from Friday, I attend an Agents Conference, and I will share my novel, and my beloved characters, with an agent. I feel shy and afraid, but I know these women, these imaginary friends, inside and out. I will tell their stories in the hopes that the agent will agree that others will love them like I do. And, if I don’t get the message across, I have these lists of agents that fell onto my feet this morning. Hope springs eternal!

Mother’s Day and the Crisis Hotline

May 7, 2011 by admin

Shifts on the Crisis Hotline tended to follow a pattern. The callers were a mix, from those who wanted basic information about food, clothing, or shelter, to those who needed to hold on to life until the suicidal urge had passed. Sometimes the callers were “regulars,” who called daily, often several times a day, just wanting to hear a voice at the other end of a phone. There were even the occasional sex callers, hoping for a sexual release from hearing the sound of a woman’s voice. I could depend on this formula, shift after shift.

Then there was Mother’s Day 1994.

I was unprepared for the onslaught of calls that came in. “My mother died and I miss her.” “My family has ignored me on Mother’s Day.” “I’m angry with my mother.” “I never got to be a mother.” “I hate being a mother.” There would be no easy calls on this day, and certainly no comic relief. Each call was a cry of pain, and it took all of my training to maintain calm in the face of the emotions that slammed against me through the telephone. When I left, I shook all the way home, blindsided. Mother’s Day had touched people at their deepest primal core.

As I look back now, I can see that my compassion was distant and detached. Oh, I helped as best I could, and callers seemed to feel better after we chatted. I knew, after all, that when we are in pain we need most to be heard, and that I could provide. What I did not have was my own experience of Mother’s Day. My relationship with my mother was fine. I wasn’t a mother yet but assumed I would be, and that my family would be a happy one. I was full of the optimism of youth and the arrogance to think that making healthy choices would immunize me from suffering.

I am wiser now.

In 1997, I became pregnant–twice–only to lose both babies. First, a miscarriage. Nine months later, a stillbirth. After that, the silence of infertility. On each succeeding Mother’s Day after that, I would wake to feel the phantoms of my children, missing like amputated limbs, and the haunted heart that sought the heavens in vain for any sign of them. I have a box that holds the pitiful memories of my daughter, Rebekah Diane, Reba for short. She lived inside of me for 28 weeks, 28 precious weeks, before a tumor crushed her heart and mine. In it I have the scraps of broken dreams: condolence cards, a piece of fabric for the curtains in her room, a Noah’s Ark needlepoint, and, most precious of all, her footprints.

I learned, then, that some wounds do not heal, and in inconsolable grief, we can only put one foot in front of the other and find ways not to understand or even accept, but to integrate the loss into our lives and to honor those who have died. Over the years, I and my current husband have made donations in her name, to the March of Dimes, in particular, and Texas Children’s Hospital, where they now do the fetal surgery that might have saved her life back then. I wrote a book for bereaved grandparents, and have been touched by the many letters of thanks I have received from people, many of whom passed the book through their entire family. None of this takes the pain away, but it allows me to decorate her life and create a legacy for her, which is all I can do.

Mother’s Day, 1998, I stepped outside into the quiet, warm air of a Houston morning to find something littered all over the porch. Investigating further, I realized that a plant had bloomed–a plant that had been given to us when Reba died, a plant that had never bloomed before and would never bloom again. The blossoms, pink and white in the shape of hearts, had gently fallen from the plant and covered the porch. I choose to believe that Reba had found a way to say hello and to tell me that I would be okay.

Life has a funny way of coming back around. While some wounds never heal, they can transform us in a way that we can receive new and surprising blessings. While I never became a mother, I did get the privilege of becoming a stepmother to twins. I met them in their senior year in high school, a chaotic time for a woman with no parenting experience! I gathered around me a group of friends, parents of children in that age range, to get their advice and counsel. Most of the time I just made it up as I went along, assured by my wise friends that they did the same thing. I have since weathered the worries, the sleepless nights, the frustration at my own limitations and flaws, and the sometimes-difficult situations that life presents when young people are trying to find their way in the world. It has not been easy, but it has been blessed. Funny thing is, if Reba would have lived, I’m not sure I would be where I am now, which is exactly where I need to be. To my husband, Henry, and to Joe and Sarah, may I say this on Mother’s Day: Thank you for letting me into your lives and for letting me love you. Your lives are precious and miraculous; this much I learned when I had to give my biological child back to God.

If I were back on that hotline again today, I would come from a deeper place in my heart, the place that says, yes, I understand. Often Mother’s Day is filled with a mix of joy and pain, or even just pain. Cry on my shoulder, and I’ll give you a hug over the phone, and together, we will walk into the future, where we can grieve, recover, and hopefully, find new joy.