Dave's Still Here

I haven’t put out a blog in a month.  Not so.

For a very long time, I’ve sat on a book of farm stories.   Some of them were written a long time ago, when I was travelling.  I digitized them, brought them together in one Microsoft folder, and eventually put them into a single file.  Going out on a creative limb, I named the file Farm Stories, whole thing.  I’ve never found a title.  I managed a table of contents though.

Ten years ago, I sent a few farm stories to people close to me, mostly family and a few close friends.  One was “Shelling Corn.”  Another was “Christmas on the Farm.”  To a very few I sent a story called “Trust.”  They urged me to write more stories like them.  My nephew said something that sparked my interest.

“When I read your stories,” he said, “I can hear your voice.”

 I wasn’t sure what that meant but it seemed positive. 

I added stories, rewrote some, put them in some vague order.  Three years ago, I sent them out to a wider audience, maybe a dozen Alpha readers, which included both friends and acquaintances.  Some were people from my childhood I’d found on Face Book and not talked to in many years.  In addition to them I shared the stories with people that had no connection to farming or my early days in Central Illinois.

I found my former English teacher, who accepted the assignment gladly and made individual comments on each story.  I felt a little like she was grading my paper.  One of the Alpha readers tried to categorize them into farm stories and family stories.  They read my stories and gave them real thought.  I was amazed in a way.

I have always had feedback on my blog, most of it immediate, but this was different.  They read over 90,000 of my words and communicated in a thoughtful and helpful way.  That’s a wonderful thing to do for a writer.  It helped me a lot.

But still I concentrated mainly on my blog.  The book was put on the digital shelf.  But as an old psalmist once wrote, “who knows from whence cometh our help?”  Sometimes assistance bubbles up from unexpected sources.

I made a friend at church who was new to town.  He lived most of his life in or near diverse and vital cities before relocating here.  To adapt to small town life, he tries to recreate some of the things he experienced in cities and misses.

He had been part of a group on the West Coast who met regularly and listened to each other’s poetry read aloud, either original or admired.  He pitched the idea to our church, Open Table in Ottawa, and they agreed to let it happen monthly in their space. 

From that monthly group of poetry enthusiasts a group of regulars formed.  The regulars, which included me, became so comfortable talking and listening to each other, that this conversation occurred.

“I enjoyed your last blog.”

“I’m glad you did.  What was it about?”

“You were talking to the Republican guy in the BBQ joint in Alabama.”

“Yeah.  That was a fun one to write.  I was afraid it was too long.  Too political.”

“No, it was good.  The dialogue worked well.”

“Thanks.”  

“How many blogs do you think you’ve written?”

“A lot.  I started writing them years before I retired, but those were about the agency.  I first sent the blog to board members, then donors, and later staff and referral sources.  It grew.  Started in the early 2000’s I’d say.  Used to do it weekly without fail.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons I retired.  The blog was all I wanted to do.”

“So more than ten years?”

“Oh yeah.  Probably.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When there is a lot of stuff to go through, a lot of material to consider, it bogs people down. Overwhelms them.  Rereading and grouping old pieces together is not like working on the same book draft every day.  Your thoughts jump around, unless you confine yourself to a narrow topic.  Do you have a fairly narrow focus to your blog?”

“No.  Not at all.  When people ask me what my blog is about I say, “Whatever I want.”

“But you might think about publishing anyway.  I think your voice is strong.”

“What do you mean "voice"?  I’ve heard that before and I don’t exactly know what it means. “

“Hard to explain, but its something like authenticity.  Believability.  Think of reading Mike Royko.  Were you around for Royko?”

“Sure I was.”

“You didn’t even have to look at the byline to know you were reading Royko.  It was the way he used words.  Made sentences.  It was like putting his handwritten signature on the page even though it was a standard commercial font.  It made you comfortable, like a pleasant voice does.”

“I see.”

There was a pause.

“I’ve never pulled out blog posts and tried to group them together in a coherent way, but I do have a collection of old farm stories.”

“Why farm stories?”

“I grew up on a farm.  Dairy farm.  On Route 9 between Bloomington and Pekin.  Went to a tiny school in a small town.  The first story is an early memory at age four and the last is me leaving the farm for college and not looking back.”

“Boyhood story then.  Takes place on a farm.”

“Yeah, I guess, if you put it that away.  But a collection of stories.  Not a book.”

“Would you share it with me?”

“It’s long.  Somewhere over 90,000 words”

“That’s all right.  I don’t care.”

“Sure.  I’ll send it.”

That’s how stuff happens.  You talk to someone. Listen.  Make a connection.  Offer an idea.  It’s simple really.

The person who agreed to read my stories was first accepted by a publisher in 2006.  Several books of poetry and two novels later, she knows what it takes to get published. 

I don’t.  I’ve been silently trying to plot some course toward that goal ever since the first day I retired.  Silently is the key word in that sentence.  I read articles on writing and publishing.  Signed up for digital discussion groups with emerging authors.  It got me nowhere.  Why do we think we can do things on our own without real and tangible help from other people?  How often does that happen?

Read the dedication pages of books.  Honest authors thank a whole list of people.  It takes a village to raise a child and that same village is required, I think, to get one of its member’s written thoughts distributed to a wider public.  I’ve barely admitted publishing was a goal and talked to very few people about it.  It was like a hope I dared not mention lest it break into a thousand pieces.  Who knows why we think the way we do?

She told me she thought what I sent her was good.  She not only read it she began to edit it.  Together we rearranged the stories.  We cut stuff.  We thought some threads needed to be expanded, and some themes better developed.  We asked and answered questions of each other over email.

One of my  questions to her was this.  “Instead of a book of stories, do you think these might be chapters in a book?”

She responded right away. “I’ve been hoping you’d see them as chapters.  If you think that way, you will change your approach.  To me, your book is a memoir, a coming of age story of a boy who experiences the world through the people and animals on his family’s small farm, and the community around it.  Each chapter advances his learning, gets him closer to maturity, and prepares him for the day he leaves.  If you concentrate on it as a book, each chapter will advance that theme.”

I’m on my fifth draft.  Each draft requires less changes.  I’ve drafted an author blurb and a blurb about the book.  We’re getting closer.  The next big step is submission to publishers.

So that’s what I’ve been doing instead of blogging.  I’ll try to talk to you more often.