When I sold my first book to Avalon, I learned that the
print run would be about 2,000 copies. Of course I was thrilled anyway, and the
thought of having several thousand people read my book made me giddy. The print
runs on the other four Avalon books were similar, and since I chose to put the
last Wally Morris mystery out myself, with the help of CreateSpace, it was
probably less.
But the amazing thing is that I once had an audience of over
a million readers. A long time ago I had read an op-ed column by Anna Quindlen,
a person whose opinions I respected, and I strongly disagreed with her. You can
read my letter to the editor, thanks to the magic of the internet. Believe me,
though, if I couldn’t have found it that way, I have copies of the newspaper
from that day tucked safely away.
LIVING DESK
|
Nesting |
Published:
February 10, 1988
To The Living Section:
To The Living Section:
Anna Quindlen's column on the
nesting instinct [ Life in the 30's, Jan. 27 ] reminds us that the grass is still
greener on the other side.
Nesting is not all what a person
who doesn't have a job does all day. Those of us who don't have jobs do not all
spend the entire time our children are in school having lunch with our friends
or furniture shopping and picking out wallpaper. We have the luxury of having
time to do these things occasionally (and without the children, which is the
only sane way), but we also feel strong responsibilities to various activities,
which we probably wouldn't have time for if we were working.
We make sure our children get to
their different after-school activities. We also work on committees handling
such trivialities as improving our children's education and starting recycling
programs in our towns. Some of us even have to find sitters to take our infants
so we can have the time to do such things as performing in a puppet show that
seeks to sensitize third graders to the handicapped. We don't expect help from
working mothers for these things, although some of them occasionally ask us to
chauffeur their children around since they think we have nothing better to do.
One thing that I have noticed is
different: we don't have to send a sick child to school. That's usually the day
we do a lot of nesting, because it stops our whirlwind of activities and
there's not much else we can do. One or two days spent at home nesting,
particularly with a cranky child, is plenty for most of us, and more than
satisfies that need for months. JOANI ASCHER South Orange, N.J.
Looking at that letter all these years later. I hope I did
not hurt anyone’s feelings. It is hard to get everything done, I’m sure, especially
if a person has a full-time job. And now, from the standpoint of a writer
trying to get book after book finished and published while people think that
just because I only work part time the rest of my time is available for whatever,
I find myself just giving in, putting off my work, so that I can do those jobs
that full-time workers don’t have time to do. My children are grown and gone,
and the only person home with me, during the days when I’m not working at my
outside job, has four legs and a tail. But she needs time too, so that she can
develop into a good Seeing Eye® guide dog.
And I can always hope that someday I’ll have a circulation
closer to the one I had for my letter to the editor over twenty years ago
before I started writing professionally.
True that Joani. I have never had the pleasure of being a stay at home mom but I know if I had I would have been just as busy as a person with a job. Writing is also a job. Sometimes harder and more stressful than a workplace. Thanks for sharing
ReplyDeleteYou're so right, Joani. We all have busy lives and, as writers, we still have to carve out time for our "work". It's so easy to let the time slip away and the story go untold. Good luck finding that million-reader mark again.
ReplyDeleteHi Joani--
ReplyDeleteNow that I write fulltime I don't know how I did it when I worked outside the home for all those years. The day is filled with so many tasks to do. I was more productive as a writer with an 8 hour a day job! You're right, people do assume we have time to do whatever because we only write and we're at home all day.
Victoria--