Oh, the pains and wonders of parenthood! Yes, from that first tiny wail as they take their first breath to flipping the cord as they complete their graduation from college, children enrapture, engage and enrage us, a very real extension of ourselves that shows the best and the worst we can be. The continuation (and hopefully improvement) of the species requires us to supply a warm and nurturing environment that enables them to grow and thrive and cause soccer balls to explode. They keep us young in a wild attempt to somehow keep up with them.
From my youngest child who – with only the tiniest of eye-rolls – helps me bring up Netflix on the TV and figure out how to operate a new table saw without either of us losing a digit. To my middle child who patiently reads and critiques every written word I send her, offering suggestions and insights that make every work stronger…with only the occasional peal of laughter. To my eldest child, the ever-patient software engineer who sends me reams of simplified instructions on computer management and file protection, ending in her confiscating all of my zip drives to finally force me into the nebulous and dangerous world of the Cloud (grumble…she always did have a mean streak…)
Yes, I could fill volumes of the deeds and misdeeds of these proto-women as they grow and mature and evolve, morphing from little cooing gobs belching from both ends to astonishingly complex and intriguing adults who are our equals or our betters at so many things. But that would not fit a blog post that is supposed to related in some fashion to writing. So, I will focus on Barbara, the eldest of the siblings and the person who has assigned herself as my advertising and production manager.
Know, first, that I am an author, not a publicist. I will also claim that my decades-long search for publication in the traditional houses was at least partially driven by my recognition of this deficiency. I wrote it, now somebody else has to figure out how to sell it. But the publishing industry and I have never seen eye-to-eye, leaving me to peddle my wares on my own, a Sweet Molly Malone with a broken wheelbarrow and laryngitis. And then along came Barbara.
Writing is a solitary profession, but publishing is not. It’s a big, scary world out there filled with a lot of people looking to make money off ME. So, the first contribution from Barbara was simply the encouragement to venture forth, Don Quixote able to face a field of wind turbines by the gentle presence of his Sancho. But this Sancho is a software engineer who virtually loaded my butt into an armored personnel carrier and set off scooting between the whirling blades with bewildering skill and speed. This was Barbara’s second contribution, plowing into the cyber jungle with utter confidence, snorting at the error messages that would have sent me screaming, and calmly answering the enigmatic questions that the computer sphinxes use to guard their lairs. Even shrugging off the typos as she pounds away at about 200 words per minute (I maintain a solid 50 with my two-finger technique and cringe at my numerous mistakes).
Barbara began knowing even less about the self-publishing field than me. But she is a quick study and is entirely unmoved by the vastness of the unknowns facing us. This is Barbara’s third and perhaps greatest contribution, renewing my faith in my own work and the simple certainty that good books will eventually find eager readers. I’ve been sending out old-style query letters for more than 40 years, literally before Barbara was born, and switching to the greater speed of electronic submissions just led to greater speed of rejection. I am a hopeless optimist, an energetic self-starter, and I am utterly unimpressed by failure, knowing my own value. But even a journeyman boxer with an iron jaw starts to feel the blows as the years and the losses pile up, and like one of these punchy palookas who’s taken one too many to the head, I was looking to hang up my gloves. Barbara has given me the courage to get back into that ring, and maybe, just maybe, with her in my corner, I still might land that one big punch on the jaw of Apollo Creed.
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